Diana E. Hess is 2017 Jean Dresden Grambs Distinguished Career Research in Social Studies Award recipient. Hess is the Dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Karen A. Falk Distinguished Chair in Education. She has been a professor in the School’s #1-ranked Department of Curriculum and Instruction since 1999.

Since beginning her teaching career as a high school teacher in Downers Grove, Illinois in 1979, Hess has contributed greatly to the advancement of the field of social studies through her research, teaching, developing new curriculum and programs, mentoring of teachers, non-profit leaders, and graduate students, and service to the field. Her groundbreaking studies, including most recently, a five-year longitudinal study which involved observations, interviews, and surveys with over a thousand students in 21 schools and multiple states, have provided compelling evidence that engaging young people in discussion of controversial political issues is an essential component in preparing them for full participation in civic life.

Throughout her career, Hess has shared her research broadly with educators, researchers, and administrators through extensive professional development programs for teachers, conference presentations, speaking engagements, articles in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, and two books: “Controversy in the Classroom: The Democratic Power of Discussion,” which won the NCSS Exemplary Research Award in 2009; and “The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic Education,” coauthored with Paula McAvoy, which won the American Educational Research Association’s Outstanding Book Award in 2016 and the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in 2017.