Nicole Thompson

Nicole L. Thompson is a professor and vice dean of the division of teacher preparation in Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Her work focuses on how  best to prepare teachers to educate P-12 students. With a commitment to equitable and inclusive practices, her work creates, pilots, and brings to scale new roles for educators and new organizational structures for schools and systems that can better serve both learners and educators. Thompson works to create a sustainable workforce of educators prepared to work as members of collaborative teams of qualified professionals with distributed expertise who can support deeper and personalized learning for all students. 

Her research interests include teacher preparation, American Indian education and transformation and reform in education. 

Thompson came to ASU from the University of Memphis, where she was a dean's fellow in the College of Education. She's a member of the American Educational Research Association, American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education  and the Tribal Early Childhood Research Center and Native Children’s Research Exchange Network. 

Thompson has published more than 36 papers, including 20 in peer-reviewed journals, and eight in peer-reviewed books. She’s delivered more than 70 conference presentations as well as multiple professional workshops. Her work has been funded by USAID, the Kern Foundation and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, among other sponsoring organizations. She currently serves as Principal Investigator on Higher Education Partnership–Morocco and co-PI on several other projects including Character Education in Systems of Teacher and Leader Preparation and Teacher Candidate Pilot Documentation.