Our Team
The Tripod Project is supported and operated as a partnership between Cambridge Education and Dr. Ronald F. Ferguson, the project’s founder. Dr. Ferguson is also the Director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University. Cambridge Education’s qualifications and expertise position it as an ideal choice to support leaders in schools, districts and states. Cambridge Education is a leading provider of education services with over 25 years of experience working in over 45 countries throughout the world. In the United States it has partnered with over 2,500 schools in more than 200 districts across 25 states.
Ron Ferguson and Rob Ramsdell lead the Tripod Project and a team of analysts and project managers support the project from within Cambridge Education. These colleagues managed all aspects of the deployment and data analysis associated with surveys (questionnaires). The Tripod Project is also able to tap its broad network of education professionals when additional resources are required.
Ronald F. Ferguson, Ph.D.
Ron Ferguson is an economist and Senior Research Associate at Harvard’s Weiner Center for Social Policy and has taught at Harvard since 1983. His teaching and publications cover a variety of issues related to education and economic development. Much of his research since the mid-1990s has focused on racial achievement gaps, appearing in publications of the National Research Council, the Brookings Institution, and the U.S. Department of Education, in addition to various books and scholarly journals. He participates in a variety of consulting and policy advisory activities, including work with school districts on closing achievement gaps. He is the founder and director of the Tripod Project for School Improvement and is also the Faculty Co-Chair and Director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University. Ron earned an undergraduate degree from Cornell University and a Ph.D. from MIT, both in economics.
Rob Ramsdell, M.Ed.
Rob began his career as a high school social studies teacher and founded FreshPond Education in 1996. Since that time he has worked with hundreds of schools and districts to design and implement high quality school improvement programs and professional development initiatives. During a three year period from 2002-2005 Rob served as Senior Director of PBS TeacherLine, an online professional development initiative funded by the US Department of Education (www.pbs.org/teacherline). In 2007 FreshPond Education joined Cambridge Education where Rob serves as its Vice-President of School Improvement Services. Rob holds a B.A. from Brown University, an M.A. in educational administration from Teachers College, Columbia University, and an M.Ed. in educational technology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.