Sara Ray Stoelinga is the Sara Liston Spurlark Director at the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute (UEI) and a Clinical Professor in the Committee on Education. Stoelinga leads all aspects of the Institute, with its 500 employees and a $50m operating budget. Dr. Stoelinga provides leadership across UEI’s four domains of work (applied research, a charter school serving 1700 children on the South Side of Chicago, urban teacher preparation, and the national dissemination of research-based, practice proven tools) and oversees Institute operations. Stoelinga is an expert on teacher leadership, teacher effectiveness, and urban school reform history and policy. As a faculty member in the Committee on Education, Stoelinga advises undergraduate and graduate students, and teaches courses in the Urban Teacher Education Program, public policy, human development and continuing education. In the Spring of 2015, Stoelinga was awarded the Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Undergraduate Teaching, the University of Chicago's most prestigious teaching award and believed to be the nation’s oldest prize for undergraduate teaching. Stoelinga received a B.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago.