Motto | Learning Transforms Lives |
---|---|
Founded | 1958 |
Type | Nonprofit research and development organization |
Location | |
Area served
|
United States and 20 countries |
Key people
|
David Offensend, President and CEO Vivien Stewart, Board Chair |
Employees
|
1,400 worldwide |
David Offensend, President and CEO
Education Development Center (EDC) is a global nonprofit organization that advances lasting solutions to improve education, promote health, and expand economic opportunity. For 60 years, EDC has been designing, implementing, and evaluating powerful and innovative programs across the United States and in more than 80 countries around the world. EDC has its world headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts, and main offices in Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, and other locations in the United States and globally. EDC has 1,400 employees worldwide. The organization celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2018.
In a number of countries, EDC uses technology, most notably radio, to provide educational opportunities for hard to reach learners. For instance, during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Liberia, EDC and its partners used radio to provide lessons to students whose schools were closed due to the disease. Research conducted by EDC on teen smoking has been cited by communities and states as they consider raising the age to purchase tobacco to 21. EDC also works to improve the knowledge base in early childhood development.
Named twice to The Boston Globe’s “Top Places to Work,” EDC maintains a staff composed of scientists, researchers, mathematicians, educators, and health and technology specialists. Staff expertise includes research, training, policy, curriculum and materials development, and education technology, and their activities range from small seed projects to large-scale national and international initiatives.
EDC is known for creating the curriculum Man: A Course of Study. The organization was founded (as Educational Services, Inc.) by Jerrold Zacharias, an eminent physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who started the Physical Science Study Committee, and is credited with developing PSSC Physics funded by the National Science Foundation. PSSC Physics focused on science as the product of experiment and theory, constructed by real people. EDC introduced it successfully in schools across the country and eventually in many parts of the world. Zacharias is credited with changing the way physics is taught in secondary schools and many of the PSSC films are still used in classrooms today.