CoSN: The Consortium for School Networking -
[Cached Version]
Published on: 10/6/2002
Last Visited: 1/6/2009
Eric Hamilton, Ph.D., Interim Division Director, EHR/REC Division, National Science Foundation,
4201 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, VA 22230
703/292-8650
703/292-9046 fax
Eric Hamilton currently serves as the Acting Director for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Research, Evaluation and Communication of the Education and Human Resources Directorate (EHR).
The Division has an annual budget of approximately $68 million, and is home to EHR's Research on Learning and Education (ROLE) and Interagency Education Research (IERI) Programs.
This Division supports mathematics and science education research, development and evaluation activities, including those involving learning technologies.
Hamilton came to NSF in 1996, on leave from Loyola University of Chicago, where he was a member of the graduate program computer science faculty.
While on the faculty there, he formulated and obtained funding for the Loyola University Young Scholars family of projects.
The project family provided middle and high school students with an intensive introduction to computer science and computer-based mathematics inquiry, was one of the first "make-your-own-computer" programs in the country, and significantly increased minority participation in AP Computer Science in Illinois.
He later organized and directed a consortium, involving most of the universities, museums, and leading community organizations in Chicago, known as the Access 2000 Chicago Partnership.
NSF supported Access 2000 as a regional center for minorities, providing the resources necessary to administer an array of salutary programs to increase underrepresented minority participation in science and technology.
While most of this effort supported university-based programs, part of it involved developing church-based computer camps in Chicago and in collaboration with the Chicago Public Schools to multiply access to computer technology in the inner city.
The Business-Higher Education Forum awarded Access 2000 the Anderson Gold Medal as the nation's outstanding partnership of business, higher education, and public schools.
Additionally, while at Loyola, he was a White House Fellowship finalist, was formally recognized by the Chicago Tribune as one of the city's most outstanding university professors, and was recipient of a Math/Science Leadership award from the US Department of Energy.
Hamilton was lead developer of and was then loaned to the Chicago Public Schools to direct its Urban Systemic Initiative, a comprehensive effort to improve mathematics and science education there, which he did until coming to NSF to oversee similar initiatives around the country.
In addition to his current work at NSF, he was NSF's staff representative on the federal interagency team that followed up the 1997 Presidential Committee of Advisors in Science and Technology (PCAST) report on K-12 educational technology, leading to the current Interagency Education Research Initiative (IERI).
IERI is now the federal government's largest field initiated education research program.
He has had program oversight responsibilities for Collaborative Research in Learning Technology, Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence, and Technology Integration in Education grants.
He has developed interactive, pen-based networking software for which he holds patents in the US, Canada, France, Germany and the UK.
This work is currently licensed in Internet telephony software and in educational and corporate training and collaboration software.
Dr. Hamilton earned undergraduate and master's degrees from the University of Chicago and a doctorate from Northwestern University.