Stanford Accelerator for Learning faculty leaders and Stanford Graduate School of Education professors Victor Lee and Susanna Loeb have been appointed to endowed chairs, the highest honor the university can bestow on a faculty member.
The Stanford Board of Trustees approved the appointments at their meeting this week.
“These appointments recognize three extraordinary scholars whose work is shaping education policy, practice, and research in profound ways,” said Dean Dan Schwartz.
Victor Lee, a learning scientist and technologist whose work includes research and design projects involving data and AI literacy, computer science education, and maker education, has been appointed to the Khosla Family Professorship.
Lee, who joined the GSE faculty in 2019, serves as faculty lead for the Accelerator's AI and Education initiative. His research explores how students and educators can develop the knowledge and skills needed to engage critically with data, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies. His most recent book, Advancing Data Science Education in K-12, was released in 2025. He is a past president and elected fellow of the International Society of Learning Sciences.
Schwartz noted that Lee’s work reflects the evolving focus of the professorship from open access resources to considerations of technology education more broadly. “Professor Lee is one of the world's foremost scholars on how to give children and teachers insight into the use of data and AI technologies,” he wrote, and Lee’s work “has the impact and scale that merits the honor of endowed chair.”
The Khosla Family Professorship was established in 2008 by Vinod and Neeru Khosla to support a faculty member whose teaching and research are concerned with access to knowledge. Lee succeeds Professor Emeritus John Willinsky as holder of the chair.
Susanna Loeb has been appointed the inaugural Kissick Family Professor.
Loeb is the faculty director of the Accelerator's SCALE initiative, which aims to develop and disseminate evidence-driven learning solutions, and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). Her research focuses on education policy and its role in improving educational opportunities for students, addressing issues including educator career choices and professional development, school finance and governance, and early childhood systems. She leads the Getting Down to Facts initiatives, which provide nonpartisan research and analysis to inform education policymaking in California.
Loeb, who first joined the faculty of the GSE in 1999, directed the Annenberg Institute at Brown University from 2018 until she returned to Stanford in 2023. During her first appointment at Stanford, she founded and directed the Center for Education Policy Analysis and held the Barnett Family Professorship in Education. In 2020, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In his nomination, Schwartz highlighted both Loeb’s scholarly accomplishments and her leadership. “John Kissick was a leader's leader,” Schwartz wrote. “The family has a great interest in honoring John's legacy with a faculty member who is both a leader and a supporter of leadership. Professor Loeb fits both of these criteria."
The Kissick Family Professorship was established this year through a gift from Mary Kathleen and the late John Kissick, MBA '70, whose philanthropic and volunteer work has supported educational opportunity and student success.
This story was originally published by the Stanford Graduate School for Education.
