Celebrating Dr. Kate Shaw, Pennsylvania’s New Deputy Secretary and Commissioner for Postsecondary and Higher Education
Dr. Kate Shaw
HCM congratulates our former postsecondary senior adviser, Dr. Kate Shaw, on her recent appointment as Deputy Secretary and Commissioner for Postsecondary and Higher Education by Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.
Dr. Shaw joined HCM Strategists as a consultant and senior affiliate before transitioning to senior adviser for our postsecondary team. As a nationally-known expert on state postsecondary policy, her expertise of both concrete executive-level state policy nuance and a three-decade track record of conducting large-scale studies of complex postsecondary reform initiatives, was instrumental in HCM’s state-level postsecondary initiatives related to, among others, our work establishing the Courage and Hidden Common Ground Collaborative and a range of analysis centered around equitable funding policies.
Dr. Shaw co-directs Paving the Way to Equitable, Adequate and Effective Community College Funding, a research and policy development effort to build the field’s capacity to enact funding policy and institutional practices that will increase college attainment and reduce equity gaps. Housed at the Community College Research Center, this three-year project in Texas, California and Ohio is supported by Lumina Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Ascendium Education Group. The project’s most recent report, Mapping Community College Finance Systems to Develop Equitable and Effective Finance can be found here.
Dr. Shaw’s appointment is a return to Pennsylvania’s State Department of Education: she previously served as a Pennsylvania State Higher Education Executive Officer in the administration of Governor Ed Rendell. During this time, she developed and executed a wide range of policy initiatives designed to increase the quality and accessibility of postsecondary education throughout the state. Dr. Shaw oversaw the creation and implementation of a statewide college transfer system, major reforms in the preparation and professional development of public school teachers and administrators, efforts to increase the prominence and effectiveness of the state’s community colleges, and a major restructuring of the state’s college retention program.
Prior to her state-level work, Dr. Shaw served for over a decade as the Executive Director of Research for Action (RFA). Under her leadership RFA grew five-fold and greatly increased its reach and capacity to use research as a tool to address and overcome education inequities across the P-20 pipeline. There she led a robust portfolio of research on state postsecondary policy that included multi-state studies of postsecondary funding and accountability systems, credit recognition and transfer, statewide college Promise programs, college placement reforms, and a range of retention reforms.
A true champion for equitable higher education access, affordability and system-wide accountability, we celebrate Dr. Shaw’s appointment and look forward to the work she will lead in Pennsylvania!
