Craig Harrer announced as the Director of the Ricks Center for Gifted Children

March 6, 2020

Dear Morgridge College of Education Community, 

I am pleased to announce that Craig Harrer has been named Director of the Ricks Center for Gifted Children. Since last summer, he has been serving as the Interim Director at Ricks. Craig will now serve as the permanent Director.

As our Interim Director at Ricks, Craig has been focused on community building, gifted learning, and creating internal and external organizational trust at Ricks and the University of Denver (DU). This work has been vital to Ricks and its continued success as a national leader in gifted education. Under Craig’s leadership, we will continue to provide our community – Ricks parents, students and families – an unprecedented educational experience. Something that I have appreciated about Craig and his approach to gifted education is his physical presence in the classroom specifically leading project-based initiatives.

With over 25 years of educational experience in Denver, we are lucky to have Craig as the Director of Ricks. As a native, he grew up blocks away from the DU campus and graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School. Since then, he has taught Kindergarten and grades 2 through 8 in a variety of subjects. As an Administrator, he was Principal of Rishel Middle School before helping to open the Denver Green School, a Pre-K through 8 innovation school in Denver Public Schools. Read more about Craig’s success at the Denver Green School.

Before coming back to Ricks in February 2019, he worked as a high school Assistant Principal and as a School Leadership Consultant. During his doctoral coursework, he worked part-time at Ricks from 2016-2018 and was excited about the opportunity to rejoin the Ricks community. Craig is also a proud Pio and values his deep ties with DU, including being a member of the doctoral cohort in our nationally recognized Educational Leadership and Policy Studies program with a dissertation in shared leadership.

Personally I am so thrilled to have Craig leading the school and look forward to working with him long into the future.

Please join us at a celebratory reception to congratulate Craig on Tuesday, March 10 at 3 p.m., Ricks (2040 South York Street, Denver, CO 80208).

Best,
Dean Karen Riley