Tom Akiva
EdD Program Director

Associate Professor and Director of Schoolwide EdD
Department of Health and Human Development

Dr. Tom Akiva is an Associate Professor in the department of Health & Human Development and Director of the Schoolwide EdD program. He publishes research about continuous improvement and professional learning, youth program features, social emotional skills, equity in out-of-school learning, and citywide ecosystem approaches to learning and development.

Check out his 2022 co-edited book, It Takes an Ecosystem: Understanding the People, Places, and Possibilities of Learning and Development Across Settings.


Instructional Interests

Dr. Akiva teaches in the schoolwide EdD program:

  • Foundations 1: Framing Identifying, and Investigating Problems of Practice
  • Practitioner Inquiry 1: The Science of Improvement
  • Youth Development in Out-of-School Settings


Scholarly Interests

Dr. Akiva's research focuses on understanding and improving out-of-school learning (OSL) program experiences for children and youth. His team increasingly focuses on city-wide approaches and he recently co-edited a book on learning & development ecosystems. Applied projects address youth-adult relationships, innovation, and equity. Current active projects include a Transformative Evaluation of Creative Learning in Pittsburgh; ongoing study of the Simple Interactions professional development approach in youth programs, libraries, and museums; a research and evaluation project with Generator-Z, and a multi-year research-practice partnership with the Remake Learning Network.


Selected Grants

  • Creative Learning: Transformative Evaluation, The Heinz Endowments, PI, 2019-2022, $450,000
  • Modeling the Creative Learning ecosystem in Pittsburgh, The Heinz Endowments, PI, 2019, $49,500
  • Simple Interactions 3.0, The Grable Foundation, The Heinz Endowments, PI, 2018-2020, $200,000 ($80,000 Grable, $120,000 Heinz)
  • Remake Making: Understanding Adoption and Adaptation of Facilitated Making in Libraries, National Science Foundation: Advancing Informal STEM Learning, PI, 2017-2019, $299,495


Featured Publications


Awards and Honors

  • The Provost’s Award for Diversity in the Curriculum, University of Pittsburgh, February 2021
  • Certificate of Excellence in Reviewing from the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, April 2020
  • Scholar Award from the Out-of-School Time Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association, April 2016
  • Emerging Scholar in Out-of-School Time Research from the Out-of-School Time Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association, April 2011


Engagements, Partnerships, and Professional Service

Tom Akiva

Contact

University of Pittsburgh
5311 Wesley W. Posvar Hall
230 South Bouquet Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
USA
412-648-7320
tomakiva@pitt.edu

View CV