Education
- Doctor of Education (Ed.D.), Harvard Graduate School of Education
- Master of Education (M.Ed.), Harvard Graduate School of Education
- Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) - Social Sciences, University of Michigan
Biosketch
Paul Kuttner is a life-long educator, scholar, and community engagement professional. Paul directs the Tsongas Industrial History Center and the newly-launched Center for Educational Partnerships, which supports university collaborations with local communities and schools. Prior to this position, Paul served as Director of Partnerships with Community-Campus Partnerships for Health, and Associate Director with University Neighborhood Partners at the University of Utah.
Paul began his career as a community-based arts educator before earning his master’s and doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is a community-engaged scholar who studies and teaches about the relationships between communities and educational institutions at the K-12 and post-secondary levels. He is a co-author, with Karen Mapp, of Partners in Education: A Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships and has written and taught on topics including community-campus partnerships, community engagement evaluation, family engagement, and culturally sustaining approaches to civic education. Paul hosts the podcast Partnership Work: The Art and Science of Bringing People Together.Paul grew up in the Boston area and now lives in Malden with his wife and son.
Selected Awards and Honors
- Community Engagement Professional Research Fellow, Campus Compact, 2025
- Coalition for Urban and Metropolitan Universities (CUMU) - Collaboratory Research Fellow, Coalition for Urban and Metropolitan Universities and Collaboratory, 2023
- National Family Engagement Fellow, Flamboyan Foundation, 2018
- John E. Thayer Dissertation Award, Harvard University, 2012
Selected Publications
- Kuttner, P. J., Denzongpa, K., & Wells, A. (2024). Navigating the tensions of community engagement evaluation through culturally responsive and equity-oriented approaches. Metropolitan Universities, 35(1).
- Kuttner, P. J. (2023). The right to belong in school: A critical, transdisciplinary conceptualization of school belonging. AERA Open, 9.
- Kuttner, P. J., Yanagui, A., López, G., R., Barton, A., & Mayer-Glenn, J. (2022). Moments of connection: Building humanizing relationships between families and educators through participatory design research. Journal of Family Diversity in Education, 4(2), 141-159. DOI: 10.53956/jfde.2022.160.
- Antunes, A., Cachelin, A., Fitesemanu, L., Folau, M. Hart, S., Kuttner, P.J., Salcedo, A. (2022). Establishing principles for community-based research: Story and power in the Community Research Collaborative. Metropolitan Universities, 33(3), 52-68. DOI: 10.18060/25819
- Kuttner, P. J., Weaver-Hightower, M., Sousanis, N. (2020). Comics-based research: The affordances of comics for research across disciplines. Qualitative Research. Advance Online Publication. DOI: 10.1177/1468794120918845.
- Kuttner, P. J., Munro, S., Byrne, K., & Schmit, K. (2019). The art of convening: How community engagement professionals build place-based community-university partnerships for systemic change. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 23(1), 131–160. DOI: 10.1177/016146812012200311.
- Kuttner, P. J. (2015). Educating for cultural citizenship: Reframing the goals of arts education. Curriculum Inquiry, 45(1), 69–92.
- Mapp, K. L., & Kuttner, P. J. (2014). Partners in education: A dual capacity building framework for school-family partnerships. Austin, Texas: Southwest Educational Development Lab.
- Bahena, S., Cooc, N., Currie-Rubin, R., Kuttner, P. J., & Ng, M. (Eds.). (2012). Disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Educational Review.