Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education

Sharon Feiman-Nemser

Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Professor Emerita of Jewish Education

Founding Director of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education

Sharon Feiman-Nemser is the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Professor Emerita of Jewish Education at Brandeis University and was the founding director of the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education, a position she held until 2014. Before coming to Brandeis in 2001, she served on the faculties of the University of Chicago and Michigan State University where she directed innovative teacher education programs and did research on learning to teach. Sharon came to Brandeis because it offered a unique opportunity to combine her expertise in teacher education with her deep interest in Jewish education. This combination is reflected in the DeLeT/MAT program which she started, and which prepared teachers for Jewish day schools, and in the Teacher Leader Fellowship for Day School Teachers which she also initiated. Her book “Teachers as Learners” was published by Harvard Education Press in 2012. Her latest, “Inspiring Teaching: Preparing Teachers to Succeed in Mission-Driven Schools,” co-edited with Center colleagues, is about context-specific, mission driven teacher education. It is based on Choosing to Teach, a comparative, longitudinal study of beginning teachers in Jewish, Catholic and urban public schools. (See her faculty page for publications.)