When she ended her October 24, 2001, investiture remarks with the Italian proverb "Il vino buono e'nelle botti piccole" or "Good wine is found in small barrels," Raffaella Borasi, new dean of the Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, characterized the 25-member faculty and 350-student graduate program she heads. What she didn't mention, though, was just how much wine she plans to produce from those small barrels!

Borasi wants to lead a school that excels in preparing outstanding education professionals, takes a leadership role in education reform, and produces important research that informs and enriches the nation's education practices. Less than two years after she was initially appointed acting dean in July 2000, she has already made substantive progress toward achieving all of these goals. She established the Warner Center for Professional Development and Education Reform, which will identify and test effective curriculum and teaching methods and share these with local schools. She has led the redesign of the School's teacher preparation programs to better align them with the needs of today's education system and to meet new state and federal standards, and instituted new initiatives to better prepare teachers to use technology in their instructional practices. Under her leadership, the Warner School has already acquired nearly $3 million from private contributions and government and foundation funds to support those efforts.

Her many projects have a common core--one she is quick to articulate. “All our graduates learn how to be reflective practitioners and to use research to enhance their work," she says, "but producing good teachers is not enough. Significant improvements will occur only when we transform an entire educational system, not just the individuals within it. [Transforming an entire educational system] means changing leadership, support structures, belief systems, curriculum, and teaching practices, and bringing all of those aspects together to be truly effective and to sustain the improvements over time."

Borasi believes the Warner School, as a small school with a focused mission, brings unique strengths to this ambitious agenda. The School's longstanding commitment to equity and social justice is central to the task of training teachers who are adept at helping all children, regardless of background or ability, to learn successfully. The Warner philosophy--that learning occurs in specific contexts and demands a multidisciplinary approach--is critical to reinventing the educational process and the curriculum needed to fuel it. The Warner faculty has an impressive record of unique scholarship and continues to garner international attention for its research in areas such as mathematics education, early childhood, the ethical necessity of public education, and the impact of institutional practices on aging.

Borasi grew up in a higher education environment: her father was a professor of architectural engineering at the Politecnico of Torino in Italy. She has been passionate about education for most of her life, completing two undergraduate degrees in mathematics and pedagogy before she left Italy and, with the help of a Fulbright scholarship and her parents' encouragement, traveled to the United States where she earned master's and doctoral degrees, specializing in mathematics education. For more than 10 years Borasi has conducted research and published widely on the subjects of curriculum reform and the professional development of educators. She is the author of the 1996 book Reconceiving Mathematics Instruction: A Focus on Error; and co-author of Reading Counts: Expanding the Role of Reading in Mathematics Classrooms, which explores how reading can be integrated successfully into the teaching of inquiry-oriented mathematics. Most recently she has co-authored, with Judith Fonzi, a monograph, "Professional Development that Supports School Mathematics Reform," which will be distributed nationally as part of the National Science Foundation's Foundations series.

Borasi joined the faculty of the Warner School in 1985, holds the Frederica Warner Chair in Education, and has filled other leadership positions at the Warner School, including chair of teaching and curriculum and senior associate dean. In addition to an impressive list of scholarship and leadership tasks, she has a busy life outside of the Warner School as the mother of two sons, Luca (12) and Madhu (9) and the wife of an academic, Ashok Robin, professor of finance at the Rochester Institute of Technology. The boys are students in grades 6 and 4 in the Brighton School District where they play soccer and participate in karate. When asked their opinion of their mother's consideration for the position of dean, they were immediately supportive. "I'm pretty sure, though," admits Borasi, "that they didn't really understand then what they were letting themselves in for!"

Just as she understands that she can't meet her goals for the Warner School without the collaboration of faculty; staff, and students, she knows that a small institution like the Warner School can't produce systemic education reform alone either. The necessary partnerships themselves are not always easy to sustain. "Engaging in collaborations with practitioners and with colleagues in different fields also presents its own set of difficulties," she notes. "Each partner brings different goals, assumptions, and ways of operating, which in turn require mutual understanding and respectful negotiations." She also recognizes the added challenges of working with limited resources, both in terms of funds and people.

"I am asking faculty, students, and our colleagues in the field to look for new ways to create synergy between research, teaching, and field work," Borasi says. "I strongly believe that collaborative projects with local schools and other educational institutions are not just ways for us to 'serve' the community, but can also become wonderful opportunities for research and for training better practitioners." Lift your glass: We can all toast to that.