Professor David Stern

New NCRVE Director

The center is the largest in the nation to study work-related education. It is a consortium of universities and research institutions that includes UC Berkeley; the universities of Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin; Teachers College at Columbia University; Virginia Polytechnic and State University; and two private research groups, MPR Associates and RAND.

The center focuses on developing new models of career-related education that prepare students for employment, further education and lifelong learning.

Stern was one of four people at UC Berkeley who planned the center in 1987, and he has been active in its research and development program since then. For the past two years, he has worked in Paris at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, conducting international comparative studies.

He is the principal author of "School to Work: Research on Programs in the United States" (1995); "School-Based Enterprise: Productive Learning in American High Schools" (1994) and "Career Academies: Partnerships for Reconstructing American High Schools" (1992).

Stern said his appointment as director of the center comes at a time of profound change in the relationship between education and work.

"The 1994 federal School-to-Work Opportunities Act is part of a broad trend occurring throughout the industrialized world. The boundaries between work and organized learning gradually are dissolving.

"What seems to be driving this trend is a growing functional integration of learning and work. It is a direct consequence of more rapid change in markets and technologies: individuals and organizations must learn all the time. When nothing stands still, you're an apprentice all your life."