People Watch

The School District of Beloit, Wis. is hiring a Career Technical Education administrator. The new administrator will be in charge of all career technical education programming in the district, including its relationship with Blackhawk Technical College, overseeing advisory committees and curriculum development, working with the counselors for career exploration programming, and more.

Math Recovery, a non-profit mathematics intervention council, announces that Carolyn K. Olijnek joins the organization as its first chief executive officer. Olijnek has supported Math Recovery in numerous ways, including as a mathematics trainer and as a presenter at various Math Recovery Conferences.

The School Committee for the brand-new $133 million Essex North Shore Agricultural and Technical High School is moving to hire the school’s first superintendent-director by July 1, if not sooner.

The Moon Area (Pa.) School District has hired Brian Campbell as acting technology director for the district effective April 8. He replaces former director Christopher Hatty. Campbell most recently served as the technology director for the Woodland Hills School District in Pittsburgh and as the tech coordinator for the Richmond Heights School District in Ohio.

Gregory R. Wolf, the executive director of research computing platforms at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR) in Cambridge, will join UMass Medical School as chief information officer in March.

The media is reporting that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is taking a lead role in a Silicon Valley SuperPAC organized by his former college roommate, Joe Green. Sources say that the group will focus on education and immigration reform, two issues that are crucial to Silicon Valley, which needs a healthy pool of talent to stay competitive.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt appointed Mary Cullinane chief content officer and executive vice president of corporate affairs. Charged with spearheading the company’s content development strategy for the K12 education market and consumer audiences, Mary will expand her current role to drive HMH’s content production and innovation efforts, developing the next generation of digital solutions.

The Cody (Wyo.) Public Schools Board of Trustees is holding public forums for superintendent candidates from 5:30-6:30 p.m. on March 20, 21, and 25 at the Holiday Inn in Cody.

Frank Rocco, who has been serving this year as interim principal of Kalamazoo's Woodward School for Technology and Research, has been named the school's permanent principal. Woodward is a K5 magnet school.

Scott Zimmerman, the only incumbent running in the Park Ridge-Niles (Ill.) School District 64 board election, described his job as the CIO of CenterPoint Properties, as being the "head computer geek there." He feels that his technology experience can add value to the board.