DANVILLE, Ky. - On Thursday, March 4 at 7 p.m., Centre College will host Gene Wilhoit, Executive Director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, for a public presentation titled, “The Future of Education: Globalization and its Impact on the Next Generation of Learners.” Wilhoit’s lecture will take place in Weisiger Theatre (located inside the Norton Center for the Arts) and is free and open to the public.

Wilhoit assumed his role as executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) in November of 2006, having spent his entire professional career serving education at the local, state and national levels. Wilhoit began his career as a social studies teacher in Ohio and Indiana. He served as a program director in the Indiana Department of Education, an administrator in Kanawha County West Virginia and a special assistant in the U.S. Department of Education before assuming the position of executive director of the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE), which he held from 1986 to 1993.

From 1994 to 2006, Wilhoit led two state education agencies, one as director of the Arkansas Department of Education and the other as deputy commissioner and commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Education. In those positions, he shepherded finance reform, led equity initiatives, designed and implemented assessment and accountability systems, advanced nationally recognized preschool and technology programs and reorganized state agencies to focus on service and support.

According to Wilhoit, “a recent publication estimated that economic reordering of the world will eliminate national economic boundaries and result in China, the U.S. and India being the largest economies, in that order. And the inherent relationship between knowledge and economic progress is cemented in the minds of the leaders of those, and other, nations.”

He continues, “Our challenge is to transform learning for each of our students in a way that makes them not only productive members of our country, but prepares them for success in a global context.

“A recent business article stated that in the next five years, we will experience more inventions and innovative new products, gadgets and gizmos than have been produced in the past 50 years. The rate of change in the global knowledge economy is impacting everything we do-including everything we do in education. It is our responsibility as leaders to promote, identify and raise up this innovation in education and use it to change the landscape of teaching and learning.”

Education consultant Susan Perkins Weston commented, “Gene Wilhoit has organized a common core standards push that will be the most important education change in a quarter-century, one that will routinely show up in histories of the United States for the next century or more as an event that matters, long after NCLB is forgotten. He’s got his finger on the pulse of education when big things are happening.”