A. Joseph Tamer
EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP
At Marianapolis, I served as Dean of Students, overseeing student discipline and grade-level coordinators, while also directing the residential life program. As part of a small executive leadership team rebuilding the school after financial hardship, I worked closely with the Board, Admissions, and other leaders to align staffing, facilities, and residential capacity with strategic growth, helping increase boarding enrollment by 30% during my three years.
Marianapolis Preparatory School
As Dean of Students and Director of Residential Life at Rancho Solano, I worked with school leaders and architects to advance a key element of the strategic master plan: relocating the high school to a more central campus. The new site brought students from three middle school populations together with the high school, creating a more integrated secondary-school community and stronger pathways between divisions while expanding capacity to support enrollment growth across the school’s four campuses.
Rancho Solano Preparatory School
ASU Center for Education Through Exploration
At ASU’s ETX Center, I grew from project and program management into progressively broader leadership as Assistant Director for Business Operations and Deputy Director, overseeing finance, people, partnerships, technology, and strategy. Recognizing the risk of relying heavily on federal grants, I led the design and development of the CourseWorks alliance, creating an earned-revenue model that diversified resources and strengthened the Center’s capacity to sustain its educational mission.
Website: etx.asu.edu Video Overview: 5 min 30 sec
CourseWorks - A Courseware Alliance
My work with CourseWorks grew from leading distribution of ASU’s Inspark courseware, its migration from Smart Sparrow to Torus, and the development and scaling of REAL CHEM with Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative. Building on that collaboration, I led the creation of CourseWorks as a financially sustainable shared ecosystem, negotiating the MOU, establishing governance and revenue distribution, and now overseeing marketing, sales, and national courseware distribution.
Website: courseworks.org Video: 2 min 30 sec
ASU Leadership Academy
At ASU, I supported two team-based Leadership Academy faculty cohorts as project manager and later participated in the 2018 Leadership Academy in Washington, D.C. There, I developed skills in advocacy and relationship-building with federal agencies and philanthropic funders, strengthening my ability to communicate the value of STEM education and cultivate support for educational initiatives with the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, NSF, Dept. of Education and NASA.
I entered NASA’s Astrobiology Academy as an intern in its inaugural Ames cohort and returned for four years to help lead the program. I built experiences connecting students with NASA researchers and aerospace leaders through authentic research, site visits, and mentoring. More than 25 years later, I remain active in the Academy alumni network, supporting the next generation of scientists and engineers.
The NASA Ames Astrobiology Academy
