Transparent Engagement
As a school dedicated to solving real world public problems, we recognize the strong value of faculty
engagement with public and private actors outside of HKS. The school seeks to advance and strengthen
our connections to the world of practice in both its scholarship and teaching. We will continue to
promote and support these activities as appropriate.
At the same time, as a school dedicated to advancing the public interest, the reputations of individual
faculty members, the School, the University, and the credibility of our work itself can be damaged by
potential conflicts of interest. To address this, the University and the School have adopted a set of
disclosure and conflict of interest policies. Such policies aim to balance the value of involvement with
the real world actors we seek to understand, the legitimate desire of the public for transparency, and
the autonomy and privacy interests of individual members of the faculty. A simple summary of our goal is "transparent engagement."
This website is one of many tools available to HKS faculty to facilitate public disclosure of their outside professional activities.
Outside Professional Activities For Ronald Ferguson
Ron Ferguson participates in a variety of public policy advising and consulting activities. He is a founding equity partner of Tripod Education Partners, LLC, which provides student and teacher surveys and related services to school districts in the U.S. and abroad. Tripod Education Partners is now home to the Tripod Project for School Improvement, which had been delivered in collaboration with Cambridge Education of Westwood MA fromm 2007 through 2014. Professor Ferguson is a co-owner (along with Freshpond Education, Inc.) of Tripod Education Partners, LLC, which owns the intellectual property of the Tripod surveys developed over the past two decades through work with school districts. Professor Ferguson is also the president of the Board of Directors of The Basics, Inc., which is a non-profit organization founded to disseminate "The Basics" of early childhood caregiving, a project which grew out of the work of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard, which he heads. There are currently more than three dozen localities across the United States that are delivering the Basics in their communities as part of the Basics Learning Network. Professor Ferguson provides speaking and consulting services to some of these communities and often receives a consulting fee as compensation for that work.
