Biography
Patricia (Patti) Gumport serves as Professor of Education in the Graduate School of Education and Director of Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research (SIHER) at Stanford University. Gumport is a sociologist of higher education whose primary expertise spans three areas: 1) knowledge change (academic restructuring, faculty’s knowledge work and collaboration); 2) institutional change (responses to environmental changes and ensuing shifts in institutional logics, including the ascendance of industry logic in public higher education); and 3) academic leadership (how leaders set priorities, with what rationales and strategies). Her research and teaching foreground the relationship between higher education and society, analyzing changes in societal expectations as well as responses across public and private higher education. Currently, she leads a project to provide insight into “public impact research.” The study examines how university leaders and faculty shape their research priorities, including whether and how to focus on societal problems and involve collaborators beyond higher education. University service provides additional data and opportunities to contribute: Since 2019, she is Co-Director of Stanford Leadership Academy, member of Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program Advisory Board, and strategic advisor to Stanford Impact Labs, Office of Community Engagement, and related initiatives. She served as Stanford’s founding Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs (2006-2019). After the Provost’s Budget Group (2004-2019), she was appointed to Board of Trustees’ Committee on Finance (2023- ). Publications include six books, among them Academic Fault Lines (2019), Sociology of Higher Education (2007), and American Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges, 5th ed. (2023)
