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With more than two decades of distinguished service to the School of Education community under his belt, Derek Briggs embarked on his new role of as school's Associate Dean of Faculty on Jan. 1.

A respected faculty member of the Research and Evaluation Methodology (REM) program, Briggs has shaped the school’s research and faculty culture through teaching, mentorship and his methodological expertise. Since 2016, he has also directed the Center for Assessment, Design, Research and Evaluation (CADRE), where he has guided its impact across campus and with partners statewide.

Briggs was drawn toward the role because of this varied experiences with faculty development and reappointment, promotion and tenure processes. He has chaired numerous Primary Unit Evaluation Committees, contributed to the school’s merit and salary reviews and served on the Vice Chancellor’s Advisory Committee. He is currently a Faculty Salary Equity Fellow in the Provost’s Office.

Briggs' selection—shaped by an internal search committee and faculty feedback—aims to bring his principled, collaborative approach to School of Education leadership team and faculty support processes. His entire tenured faculty experience has been spent in the С���� Boulder School of Education, and he sees this new role as an opportunity to give back and contribute both continuity and a fresh perspective to this important role.

To help us get to know him in his new capacity, we caught up with Briggs for a conversation about his hopes for the role and to learn more about his passions at work and at play.


Q. Why were you interested in the Associate Dean for Faculty role and why now?

Briggs: There are a lot of reasons, but ultimately it just felt like it would be a good fit for me at this stage of my career. I’ve been a faculty member in the School of Education my entire professional career, for 22 years. I’ve benefited a lot from the leadership of faculty that came before me. So, this seems like the right time for me to give back, and do what I can to maintain a legacy that has been built up over decades.

I’ve always considered myself fortunate to be a faculty member at an institution of higher education where I can pursue the research that interests me, and where I am rewarded for teaching and being creative. I know how hard our faculty work, and I appreciate all that they are able to contribute. I worry about the rising tide of anti-intellectualism and restrictions on civil liberties making its way into national policies that are likely to have negative effects on teaching, learning and research at every level. Our faculty need someone who can be advocate in these times, and I feel prepared to fill that role.

At the same time, as faculty in a School of Education we need to ask ourselves some hard questions, because in the United States in particular we have not made the kind of progress in fostering both opportunity and excellence in our educational system that I would have hoped to see some 20 years ago.  It’s going to take effective leadership team at the School of Education to move this needle. I’m excited to be a part of it and motivated to make a difference.

Q. What do you hope to bring to the position? 

Briggs: More than anything, I see this role as being about supporting our faculty to be successful. For faculty that are feeling demoralized or burned out by current events, I’m hoping I can help them get their mojo back. To accomplish this I'll need to earn people’s trust and show them through my actions that I care about their well-being. I think I’ve done that in my prior SOE leadership positions as chair of the Research and Evaluation Methodology (REM) program from 2008 through 2019, and the Director of the Center for Assessment, Design, Research and Evaluation (CADRE) since 2016.  I’m very proud of the stable, collaborative and productive environment I’ve helped to foster for not just faculty in REM and CADRE, but students and staff as well.  

A novel thing I’m going to bring to this role is an interest and familiarity with recent advances in generative AI. I just finished a year-long academic sabbatical during 2025 and I spent much of that time learning about AI and experimenting with its usage in both personal and professional contexts. I think this has made me pretty savvy about its possible affordances and very real limitations. In fact, I’m planning to teach a graduate level seminar course called “Using AI for Academic Research” in the Fall semester of 2026. Whether you are excited about AI, terrified or somewhere in between, it isn’t going away. Faculty are going to need to grapple with the impact that this new technology will be having on their teaching and research now and into the future.

Q. Tell us more about your life outside of the School of Education and CADRE. What do you like to do with your free time?

What free time? Just kidding. Well, I’m pretty religious about three things that I do on a weekly basis when I’m in town. I do CrossFit workouts 4 to 5 times a week, usually in the late afternoon. So if you ever see me rushing out of the MBE building around 4:30 on a weekday, you’ll know why. My gym CrossFit Roots is a really important outlet and source of community for me. No matter how stressed I might be, it’s all out of mind when I’m doing burpees, deadlifts and box jumps. Another routine I’ve gotten pretty serious about is that after dinner with my wife, Whitney, and son, Lucas, I usually spend up to an hour practicing songs and technique on my acoustic guitar. I’m still just at a beginner’s level, but I find it to be a great creative outlet. Finally, pretty much every Saturday morning, regardless of weather conditions, Lucas and I do a three-mile round trip hike up to the NCAR building and back.

My family loves to travel. My mother is Austrian and when I was growing up I used to spend about a month or so every summer visiting my grandmother and family friends in Austria. Perhaps as a consequence, I love to travel to new places, to immerse myself in a different culture, to try new things. Just last May, I hiked a portion of the Camino de Santiago with one of my closest friends that I’ve known for 35 years. We started on the border of France and Spain in the town of St Jean Pied de Port and hiked into Spain over the Pyrenees mountains. Five days and 75 miles later we ended our trek and got to see a running of the bulls in the town of Estella. It was one of the best combined physical, spiritual and gastronomic experiences I’ve ever had, and I plan to keep going back over the next few years until I finish the full 400 miles and make it to Santiago de Compostella.

Q. We've heard you moonlight as a karaoke enthusiast. How did you get into that hobby? 

Briggs: I actually was doing karaoke before it was widely known thing back in the late 1980s. When I was a teenager, my dad would take me to a small karaoke bar down in the Little Tokyo area of Los Angeles. Most of the people there were Japanese businessmen getting drunk, so it must have been amusing to see my dad come in with his teenage son and order himself a diet Coke (my dad doesn’t drink). Their selection of songs in English was pretty limited, so I was singing a lot of Elvis Presley and the Beatles. I think I actually won some sort of “crowd favorite” award when I was 16 for a rendition of Blue Suede Shoes.

Q: What’s your go-to karaoke song and why?

Briggs: Oh wow, it’s very hard to pick just one. It kind of depends on my mood. I think most of the friends who’ve karaoke'd with me would say my best song is "Purple Rain." Prince is my favorite artist, and "Purple Rain" is my favorite song. When Prince died in 2016, I was in Nashville, and I bought myself some cowboy boots with a purple lightning bolt in his honor. Then I went out and sang "Purple Rain" wearing those boots at a big karaoke bar on Broadway. I love singing anything by Prince. Other ones I like doing for karaoke: "Your Song" by Elton John, "The Scientist" by Coldplay, "Mr. Brightside" by the Killers.

Q. Any tips for those of us who are still in search of their on go-to song? 

Briggs: First, try to pick a song that people will recognize and want to sing along with. What’s great about karaoke is it's fundamentally a participatory experience. It shows just how much and how quickly music can bring people of all walks of life together. That said, it’s also important that you like the song you pick! If you’re having fun while you sing, that energy will rub off on others. Sometimes a great way to find a go-to song is just to listen to the songs other people pick and notice when you find yourself singing along most enthusiastically. I often find someone will pick a song to sing that would have never occurred to me, and if I enjoy it, I’ll file it away as a song I might want to pick in the future. If you care about how you sound and/or want to make sure that there are no unforeseen surprises, it’s really easy these days to try out pretty much any song you can imagine on YouTube in the privacy of your own home. 

A last tip: I try to stay away from artists whose trademark is a vocal range I have no prayer of reaching. I learned this the hard way as a teenager when I tried to sing “8 days a week” by the Beatles. Until that moment I had never quite realized just how high Paul McCartney’s voice could go. Along those lines, be careful if you pick songs by Adele, Lady Gaga or Whitney Houston among female artists and by Freddy Mercury (Queen), Axl Rose (Guns n’ Roses), or Steve Perry (Journey) among male artists. But don’t overthink things too much. Smile, have fun, strike a pose, and the rest will work itself out.