The University of Oklahoma
College of Liberal Studies
Brock International Prize in Education
Lieutenent Governor Barbara O’Brian
2010 Brock Prize Nominee
Lt. Gov. O’Brien chairs Colorado’s team for competing for the U.S. Department of Education Race to the Top funding for education reform. She also serves as co-chair for Colorado’s P-20 Education Committee, appointed by Gov. Bill Ritter to recommend changes in Colorado’s preschool through post-secondary education system in order to position it for the 21st Century. Since 2007, the committee has proposed numerous changes in state policy including creating an educator identifier for the data system, revising all content standards from preschool through post-secondary, extending the student identifier to young children in publically funded early childhood education programs, creating statewide, full day kindergarten, expanding preschool for the most at-risk children, creating a fund to support district level alternative teacher compensation plans, improving data systems, standardizing alternative teacher licensure, and many others.
Prior to becoming lieutenant governor, she served 16 years as president of the Colorado’s Children’s Campaign, a statewide public policy and advocacy nonprofit organization. Her leadership has produced major statewide policy initiatives including a passage of a constitutional amendment to increase funding for schools, creation of the state’s preschool program for low income children, passage of a bill to allow school based health clinics to receive funding through Medicaid and the Child Health Plan. In 1993 she led the successful effort to pass the Colorado Charter School Act.
In addition, under her leadership the Colorado Children’s Campaign participated in the Bill and Melinda Gates Small High School Project and helped create fourteen new, small high schools in Colorado, including the highly successful Denver School of Science and Technology (DSST). DSST has almost forty-five percent low income, minority students and is Denver’s highest performing high school. She has also served as the Executive Director of the Institute for International Business, at the University of Colorado-Denver, Director of Campus Affairs at the University of Colorado-Denver and was former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm’s Senior Advisor for Education. Lt. Gov. O’Brien holds a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University in New York.
