Zelda F. Gamson

Born Zelda Finkelstein in Philadelphia, Gamson is the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. She attended public schools in Philadelphia, and studied at the University of Pennsylvania and Antioch College before completing her undergraduate degree at University of Michigan in 1958. She received a master's degree in sociology from the University of Michigan in 1959 and a PhD from the Department of Social Relations at Harvard University in 1965. She was married to the late William A. Gamson. They had two children, Jennifer (born 1960) and Joshua (born 1962).{{Cite web|url=https://contexts.org/articles/keeping-it-in-the-family/|title=Keeping it in the Family - Contexts|last=Magazine|first=Contexts|language=en|access-date=2019-07-26}}

Gamson's doctoral dissertation about Monteith College, an experimental college for non-elite students at Wayne State University, brought her into the orbit of David Riesman, with whom she later co-authored an in-depth study of mass higher education.{{Cite book|title=Academic values and mass education|last1=Riesman|first1=David|last2=Gamson|first2=Zelda|date=1970|publisher=McGraw-Hill|isbn=0070527903|oclc=2163890}} Her early research focused on student organizations,{{Cite journal|last=Gamson|first=Zelda F.|date=1974|title=Group Process and Organizational Environment: Student Organizations in the University|journal=Journal of Voluntary Action Research|volume=3|issue=3–4|pages=47–58|doi=10.1177/089976407400300305|issn=0094-0607|hdl=2027.42/68768|s2cid=143762591 |hdl-access=free}} student-faculty relations,{{Citation|last=Gamson|first=Zelda F.|chapter=Performance and Personalism in Student-Faculty Relations|date=1972|pages=[https://archive.org/details/collegestudentse0000feld/page/237 237–260]|publisher=Elsevier|isbn=9780080167855|doi=10.1016/b978-0-08-016785-5.50025-0|title=College and Student|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/collegestudentse0000feld/page/237}} higher education within Israeli kibbutzim,Gamson, Zelda F. "College and the Kibbutz." Change 5, no. 10 (1973): 22-24. {{JSTOR|40161918}}. minority experiences on college campuses,{{Cite journal|last1=Gamson|first1=Zelda F.|last2=Peterson|first2=Marvin W.|last3=Blackburn|first3=Robert T.|date=1980|title=Stages in the Response of White Colleges and Universities to Black Students|journal=The Journal of Higher Education|volume=51|issue=3|pages=255|doi=10.2307/1981008|issn=0022-1546|jstor=1981008}} and mass education. She later became involved in national efforts for higher education reform, with a particular focus on undergraduate educational practice. Her work has centered on the ways higher education is and can be organized for civic engagement and the common good,{{Cite journal|last=Gamson|first=Zelda F.|date=1997|title=Higher Education & Rebuilding Civic Life|journal=Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning|volume=29|issue=1|pages=10–13|doi=10.1080/00091389709603108|issn=0009-1383}} as well as on stratification and inequality in higher education.{{Cite journal|last=Gamson|first=Zelda F.|date=1997|title=The Stratification of the Academy|journal=Social Text|issue=51|pages=67–73|doi=10.2307/466647|issn=0164-2472|jstor=466647}} Her most notable work in this arena includes Liberating Education (1984),{{Cite book|title=Liberating education|last=Gamson, Zelda F.|date=1984|publisher=Jossey-Bass|oclc=557616710}} "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Higher Education" (1987, with Arthur Chickering),Chickering, A.W, and Gamson, Z.F. "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education." AAHE Bulletin, 1987, 39(7), 3-7. Applying the Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education (1991, with Arthur Chickering),{{Cite book|title=Applying the seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education|last=Chickering, Arthur W., 1927- Gamson, Zelda F.|date=1991|publisher=Jossey-Bass Inc|oclc=624966195}} and Revitalizing General Education in a Time of Scarcity (1997, with Sandra Kanter and Howard London).{{Cite book|title=Revitalizing general education in a time of scarcity : a navigational chart for administrators and faculty|last1=Kanter|first1=Sandra L.|last2=Gamson|first2=Zelda|last3=London|first3=Howard|date=1997|publisher=Allyn and Bacon|isbn=0205262570|oclc=832921644|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/revitalizinggene0000kant}} The "Seven Principles" continue to be widely circulated in settings such as college teaching and learning centers,{{Cite web|url=https://www.grandviewcetl.org/tag/chickering-and-gamson/|title=Chickering and Gamson – The Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning|language=en|access-date=2019-07-27}} as well as in the development of pedagogy {{Cite journal|last1=Myers|first1=Karen A.|last2=Pousson|first2=J. Mark|date=2018|title=Ignatian Pedagogy as a Frame for Universal Design in College: Meeting Learning Needs of Generation Z|journal=Education Sciences|language=en|volume=8|issue=4|pages=193|doi=10.3390/educsci8040193|doi-access=free}} and educational technology.{{Cite book|last=Urban|first=David J.|chapter=Using Technology to Implement the "Seven Principles for Good Practice" in Marketing Education–Abstract |date=2015|editor-last=Spotts|editor-first=Harlan E.|editor2-last=Meadow|editor2-first=H. Lee|title=Proceedings of the 2000 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference|series=Developments in Marketing Science: Proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science|language=en|publisher=Springer International Publishing|pages=179–180|doi=10.1007/978-3-319-11885-7_41|isbn=9783319118857}} Gamson was an invited member of the Study Group on the Conditions of Excellence in Undergraduate Education sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education's National Institute of Education.{{Cite book|url=https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED246833|title=Involvement in Learning: Realizing the Potential of American Higher Education. Final Report of the Study Group on the Conditions of Excellence in American Higher Education.|date=October 1984 |publisher=Superintendent of Documents, U }} Foundations that have supported her research include the Carnegie Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, the Ford Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Pew Charitable Trusts.{{Cite web|url=https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED410844.pdf|title=New College. Program Review. State University System of Florida.}} She has also written for non-academic publications such as Jewish Currents.{{Cite web|url=https://jewishcurrents.org/author/zelda-gamson/|title=Zelda Gamson, Author at Jewish Currents|website=Jewish Currents|language=en-US|access-date=2019-07-26}} Her latest publication is the memoir Don't Play Like a Girl: A Midcentury Woman Leaps Into Life.

Gamson spent more than seventeen years at the University of Michigan, with appointments at the Institute for Social Research, the Center for the Study of Higher Education, and the Residential College. In 1988, she moved to the University of Massachusetts in Boston, where she founded the Higher Education Doctoral Program and was the Founding Director of the New England Resource Center for Higher Education ([https://nerche.org/ NERCHE]). She retired from the University of Massachusetts in 1999, and currently lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

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Category:Living people

Category:1936 births

Category:People from Philadelphia

Category:Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni

Category:University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts alumni

Category:University of Massachusetts Boston faculty

Category:University of Michigan faculty

Category:American women sociologists

Category:Sociologists of education

Category:American sociologists

Category:Jewish sociologists

Category:People from Brookline, Massachusetts

Category:21st-century American women