CPED Challenge Friday

Improvement Science Dissertations and Culminating Projects: Setting the Bar for Rigor through Rubrics and Resources

Date: Friday, May 8, 2026

Time: 12:00 - 1:00 PM ET 

This is the 2nd meeting in a Spring series focusing on Culminating Projects for Improvement Science EdD programs. Participants are encouraged to share, discuss and brainstorm approaches to the culminating project and consider how to design programs and coursework to support students in successfully completing these projects. In this session, we will focus on examples and tools (e.g. Rubrics, Resources) used to set the bar for "Rigor" of an Improvement Science culminating project across Improvement Cycles, data collection, analysis and decision making. Participants are encouraged (but not required) to bring outlines, rubrics, or related artifacts for their own culminating projects to contribute to the discussion.

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Presenters:

Chris Borgmeier

Chris Borgmeier, PhD, is a professor in the Special Education Department at Portland State University. His research interests focus on School-wide Positive Behavior Intervention and Support (SW-PBIS), Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA) and intervention, implementation of evidence-based practices and systems change in schools.

Dr. Borgmeier is particularly interested in working with schools and school districts to maximize resources to implement evidence-based practices for students with challenging behavior and behavioral disorders. This begins with a strong foundation in universal (Tier 1) intervention that provides a safe, positive school experience that maximizes instructional time for all students. Much of his current work focuses on developing tools to train school personnel to better understand students with challenging behavior and how to intervene based on an understanding of the function or purpose of the problem behavior.

Dr. Borgmeier earned his PhD at the University of Oregon and worked as a PBIS coordinator at a school district in the Bay Area in California before coming to Portland State University. He has been a trainer and consultant for SW-PBIS implementation efforts across the United States and Canada. Dr. Borgmeier currently serves as board vice president for the Northwest PBIS Network, Inc.

Max Yurkofsky

Maxwell Yurkofsky is an assistant professor in the Doctor of Education Program at Radford University. He obtained his Ed.D. in Educational Policy, Leadership, and Instructional Practice from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2020. His research and teaching centers on understanding how school systems can organize for continuous improvement towards more ambitious and equitable visions of learning, and he is committed to preparing school and system leaders to strategically utilize improvement science, organizational theory, evaluation, and design principles to inquire into and address high-leverage problems of practice.

Dr. Yurkofsky has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, including Review of Research in Education, The Harvard Educational Review, Teaching and Teacher Education, Computers & Education, Teachers College Record, Educational Policy, and the Peabody Journal of Education. His dissertation won the “Dissertation of the Year” award from the Leadership for School Improvement Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association in 2021.

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