Steve Tozer ’72

Jonathan Sa’adah’s How Many Roads, his book of photographs of the Upper Valley in the 1970s, includes a portrait of Steve as an example of someone living on the land. During his senior year, Steve squatted in a cabin on the Connecticut River in Norwich, commuting to his German classes by canoe.

Since graduating as a German major — after participating in the Mainz FSP that Bruce Duncan directed in 1970 — Steve has gone on to become Professor in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago, founding Director of the UIC Center for Urban Education Leadership, and Coordinator of the UIC Ed.D. Program in Urban Education that prepares principals for high-need urban schools. He has also been recently been designated a University Scholar. He began his career as a Hull House kindergarten teacher and director of an early childhood center in Uptown Chicago and later directed an alternative school for adjudicated Cook County youth. He has served as head of Curriculum and Instruction at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne; chair of Policy Studies at UIC; president of the American Educational Studies Association; Chair of the Governor’s Council on Educator Quality in Illinois; and Chair of a State Legislative Task Force that resulted in a new school principal endorsement for Illinois. His collaborations have been funded by the Broad Foundation, Chicago Community Trust, Chicago Public Education Fund, MacArthur Foundation, McCormick Foundation, National Science Foundation, Stone Foundation, US Department of Education, and others. He is Associate Editor of Educational Theory, lead author of a textbook, School and Society, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, 7th Edition (McGraw-Hill, 2013), and lead editor of The Handbook of Research in Social Foundations of Education (Routledge, 2011).