Research Job Became Career of a Lifetime for Charity CEO

When Janet Whitla arrived at the Education Development Center as a young researcher in 1966, she never imagined that she would remain there for 40 years, ultimately becoming president of the nonprofit health and education research organization. In fact, Ms. Whitla, who was born in Fall River, Mass., and has always called the Bay State home, got her start not as an educational researcher but as an aspiring playwright.

“I started out wanting to be a poet and a writer,” says Ms. Whitla, 74, who graduated from Wellesley College in 1952 before taking a research position at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Ms. Whitla would later go on to direct the social-studies division of the Education Development Center, before taking the helm of the organization in 1981. “I often joke that the only job I’ve ever applied for is the one I’m in today,” says Ms. Whitla, who was paid $350,000, according to the organization’s most recent tax return.

Her years as president proved to be extraordinarily fruitful for the charity in Newton, Mass.

Under her leadership, the organization’s budget grew from $4.5-million to more than $100-million. The international organization, founded in 1958 by professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, conducts research and develops programs to improve education and health around the world. It employs a staff of 650 in the United States and another 500 abroad, and oversees 335 projects in 50 countries and throughout the United States.

When Luther Luedtke, president of California Lutheran University, officially succeeds her on April 1, Ms. Whitla will finally return to her original career aspiration: writing.

She plans to divide her time between Cambridge, Mass., and Mattapoisett, Mass., a small waterfront town not far from the city where she was born, and reflect on her many years as an advocate for teachers and students around the globe — and what makes a great leader.

“I’m planning to write about what’s involved with leading creative people,” she says. “Much of the literature on organizational development uses a fairly traditional vocabulary to talk about leadership. I’d like to bring some fresh language to discuss the challenge of bringing out the best in people.”

In an interview with The Chronicle, Ms. Whitla discussed her career.

What has changed in the 40 years you’ve worked in education?

What goes around comes around. When I first started out at EDC, the National Science Foundation was under attack, just as it is today. There’s been progress too, of course.

We’re gradually advancing in our understanding of how kids learn and what makes for good instruction. Technology has obviously exploded. But what has changed in 40 years is the number and diversity of students we’re educating. This is the first truly multicultural society, and we’re trying to educate all kinds. That wasn’t uppermost when I first started out.

EDC has had to change. We’ve had to recognize a whole host of cultural and global factors.

EDC pushed classroom evaluation and now it is all the rage. Do you ever feel like you may have inadvertently opened a Pandora’s box?

Obviously you have No Child Left Behind [the federal education law enacted in 2002] that introduced new standards of accountability for states, school districts, and schools and a rush to impose more rigid forms of state and national tests. My fear is that we’re losing the very heart of education: opening up the hearts and minds of young people to the idea of knowledge.

Testing can also be a kind of straitjacket. You’re not just teaching to test, you’re teaching a child. We are all continuous learners from birth. It’s society’s responsibility to facilitate that thirst for knowledge. If it isn’t seen as unleashing human potential, it can be dangerous. Tests are just one mechanism.

How has the way that you work changed?

Just think about the whole idea of what it means to be a knowledge worker — to be part of a knowledge industry.

When I started out, communication would have to be dictated, then transcribed, then corrected and retyped. Now you get a message from anywhere in the world, you answer it in two minutes, and it gets to the person in five minutes. Today we work in Afghanistan, Indonesia, and Pakistan, and we can forward whole bodies of curricula via the Web. Access to the infrastructure of communication remains an issue, of course, but as long as people have access, we’ve essentially created one world.

Your organization has a budget of $104-million. Do you have a golden touch?

When I came in as president, EDC was going through a bit of a rough patch and the budget had dropped down from $10-million to around [$4.5-million]. People commiserated with me. Reagan had just taken office, and the National Science Foundation — with which we’d had a long relationship, based on our work to improve mathematics and science education — was under assault for too much of what its opponents called “experimental science.”

I looked at the climate as a challenge. For EDC to be successful, we’ve had to be very creative. How can we be ever more attuned to the needs of practitioners?

During the Reagan years there was a real emphasis on economic development, and money became available for preparing underskilled adults in the U.S. EDC had always had a commitment to that population and were already doing some work in that field. We saw an opening to create programs that would not just empower learning but enhance the role of the teachers doing the work, to enable them to be not just a talking voice in the classroom but a questioning voice. That was the kind of work we wanted to do, and we got government funds.

Before my tenure, the organization definitely had a more ideological bent — it was extremely liberal, groundbreaking, and innovative. Over the years we’ve learned to live through whatever political views are on the horizon.

ABOUT JANET WHITLA, OUTGOING PRESIDENT OF THE EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT CENTER, IN NEWTON, MASS.

Education: Earned a bachelor of arts degree in English from Wellesley College in 1952.

Previous work experience: Research associate at Harvard University

First book she plans to read in retirement: Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin

First adventure she plans in retirement: Kayaking and sailing along the New England coast

Alternative career she might have pursued: Poet or playwright