Dr. Laura Blankenship
Dr. Laura Blankenship is the Director of Research & Strategic Learning Initiatives at ICGS. Dr. Blankenship is a veteran independent school educator and administrator, and the former Founding Head of School at San Francisco Girls’ School. For the past twenty years, Dr. Blankenship has devoted her skills to girls’ and women’s education. At Bryn Mawr College, she worked as an Instructional Technologist for seven years, running a summer program to teach young women web development and technical skills. She then joined The Baldwin School, a PreK-12 all-girls school in Bryn Mawr, PA, where she spent ten years. There, she established the Computer Science program and served as the Computer Science Department Chair before serving as the Dean of Academic Affairs and finally Assistant Head of School. In these positions, she managed academic programming, faculty evaluation, hiring, accreditation, strategic planning, and leadership hiring.
Dr. Blankenship has also served as a board member of the Computer Science Teachers’ Association and on the CSTA Curriculum Committee. She received the National Conference of Women in Technology Educator award. Laura earned her BA in Creative Writing at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. She earned her Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from the University of Arkansas, where her dissertation focused on using web technologies to enhance writing instruction.