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About.

Julie Schell's Innovations are Changing the Landscape of Education.

Eric Mazur, Harvard University

Julie Schell, EDD

The University of Texas at Austin

Assistant Dean for Instructional Continuity and Innovation, College of Fine Arts

Executive Director - Extended and Executive Education

School of Design and Creative Technologies

Assistant Professor of Practice

School of Design and Creative Technologies, College of Fine Arts

College of Education Program in Higher Education Leadership

Harvard University

Research Affiliate, Mazur Group

Dr. Julie Schell is the Assistant Dean for Instructional Continuity and Innovation in the College of Fine Arts (CoFA) at The University of Texas at Austin, where she led the transition to online learning for over 200 Fine Arts faculty and academic staff during the CoVID-19 pandemic. She currently represents the College on UT's university-wide online learning task force, working to respond to the rapid need to ensure academic continuity for 50,000 students. Dr. Schell also serves as the Executive Director of UT's School of Design and Creative Technologies (SDCT) Extension. Dual appointed as an Assistant Professor of Practice in SDCT and the Program in Higher Education Leadership within the College of Education, Dr. Schell is an award-winning expert in teaching and learning. She teaches graduate courses on technology and innovation in higher education, college teaching and learning, design thinking in education, and design pedagogy. She completed her doctorate in higher and postsecondary education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and a four-year post-doctoral fellowship focused on the science of learning in the Mazur Group at Harvard University. Dr. Schell has published and spoken world-wide on pedagogy and learning science. From 20013-2017 she served as the Director of Texas OnRamps, a state-wide distance and online learning initiative to bring UT Austin courses to tens of thousands of high school students. Schell began her journey at UT Austin as the lead instructional designer for Texas OnRamps. While at UT Austin, Schell also won a grant from the Longhorn Innovation Fund for Technology (2013), where she co-designed a collaborative, online learning game called ConceptQuest. In 2019, Dr. Schell designed and launched an online course on design thinking called Think Before You Design Think (c) for the Fortune 10 company, AT&T.

Research and Scholarship

Dr. Schell is an award-winning education scholar with 25 years of experience behind her. Dr. Schell has held positions at the nation’s top research universities, including Yale, Stanford, Columbia, and Harvard. Before joining The University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Schell received her doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University and completed a four-year postdoctoral fellowship in the Mazur Group at Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. In 2014, Teachers College, Columbia University identified her as an Early Riser in Higher Education for her original contributions to the field. In 2009, her dissertation was awarded Dissertation of the Year from the higher education division of the American Educational Research Association.

Speaking and Consulting Experience

A prominent, sought-after speaker and consultant on learning, Dr. Schell has worked on learning and design initiatives with thousands of national and international audiences. She has led design and learning projects on site in Aruba, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Dominican Republic, Germany and throughout the United States. Dr. Schell has also designed and implemented online learning projects for universities in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and South Africa.