CELL Executive Director Janet Boyle transitioning role to RECN project
Janet Boyle, Executive Director of the Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning (CELL), will be stepping down from her role at CELL and will transition to a part-time role with a sole focus on the Rural Early College Network (RECN) project, which she will continue to direct.
The Education Innovation and Research (EIR) program administers grants through the United States Department of Education and has awarded CELL a $7.9 million grant that allows CELL to support faster implementation of the Early College model by networking new schools with mentor schools throughout Indiana. The EIR program provides funding to create, implement or take to scale an evidence-based innovation to improve academic achievement for high-need students, and for a rigorous evaluation so that others may learn from its results. In addition to promoting innovation, the program has a focus on serving rural areas and promoting science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education.
Under Boyle’s leadership, CELL secured several key grants for important initiatives, including the $7.9M federal grant through the EIR program and a $2.4M award from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education. Boyle joined CELL as assistant executive director in 2011 and has served as acting executive director since 2014. At CELL, her work has included leading the statewide Early College initiative, an innovative high school model that allows underserved students to earn an associate’s degree or up to two years of bachelor’s degree credit while earning a high school diploma. In the past eight years, CELL has trained more than 120 teams from high schools and career technical education centers on implementing the Early College model. Boyle also led the creation of the STEM Teach initiative, a partnership with the Independent Colleges of Indiana that supports private universities in offering certification and increasing the number of highly qualified science, technology, engineering and mathematics teachers for Indiana schools. She also grew the original CELL Indiana’s Futures conference over three years to 1,000 attendees and spearheaded CELL’s technical assistance work in the Lilly Endowment’s School Counseling initiative.
Boyle has worked tirelessly during these past nine years to advance the mission of CELL to serve as the leading convener, catalyst and collaborator for dynamic, innovative education change to dramatically impact student achievement throughout Indiana. Throughout her tenure, CELL has continued to improve educational opportunities for Indiana’s students through teacher and principal professional development, research and evaluation, school transformation and leadership development.