Katie L. Vale has served as the Director of Academic Technology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University since January 2008. She oversees initiatives in supporting teaching, learning and academic workflow within the Harvard University IT department. She is Course Development Manager for the first Harvard offerings via the EdX platform, and has helped launch and grow the HarvardX organization. She is co-chair of the University-wide Teaching and Learning Consortium and a member of the Committees on Pedagogical Improvement, Learning in Science and Engineering, and Harvard Academic Technology Management. In addition, she serves on the Instructional Support and Services Team, an interdepartmental group charged with helping implement Harvard’s new undergraduate curriculum in General Education. Dr. Vale's group supervises the Presidential Instructional Technology Fellowship program for FAS, in which students are trained in instructional design, technology, and educational assessment while developing course materials for Harvard faculty.
Before coming to Harvard, Dr. Vale spent twenty years in a variety of information technology roles at MIT and Brown University. She was a Faculty Liaison in the MIT Academic Computing Group, Manager of Instructional Design and Development at the Academic Media Production Services Center, and Assistant Director of MIT’s Office of Educational Innovation and Technology. Her tenure at MIT included work on the seminal Athena, TEAL Physics, iCampus, Project-Based Learning and OpenCourseWare projects. In 2004 she was awarded the Steven Wade Neiterman Prize in recognition for her efforts in fostering collaboration across departments, building effective teams, and mentoring colleagues. At Brown she worked on the IRIS Intermedia project (a pre-Web hypermedia system), managed the IT Help Desk, and authored a NASA-funded interactive museum exhibit on the Apollo missions. In all of her positions to date, Katie has worked closely with faculty, administrators, and students to design, develop and assess effective and appropriate learning technologies throughout the curriculum. She has also participated in the development of IT governance, project management and prioritization processes for Harvard FAS IT, as well as the merger of FAS IT with University Information Systems. Beyond these efforts, she has also collaborated with the University Planning Office on the renovation of classrooms and on the design and construction of new technology-enabled learning spaces.
In addition to her role as an administrator, Dr. Vale has extensive experience as both a faculty member and undergraduate advisor. She was Adjunct Faculty at the Boston University School of Education for six years, taught first-year seminars at MIT on a variety of topics including multimedia production and social media, and has been a guest lecturer for the popular CS50 course at Harvard. She is a 2012 Frye Fellow, and was member of the 2013 Nercomp Conference Program committee. Dr. Vale has also served as an academic advisor for students at both MIT and Harvard, and established new processes at both schools to support student innovation projects. She holds an Ed.D from Boston University as well as dual A.B. degrees in Cognitive Science and Anthropology/Archaeology from Brown University. Her dissertation work examined models of teaching and appropriate educational technologies, as well as factors contributing to the longevity of online courseware.