Awards

School of Education Distinguished Alumni Award - 2011

About James D. Mervilde

James D. Mervilde has been recognized as an outstanding leader in many different capacities during a 37-year career in education. His experiences range from teaching social studies and English in a Detroit parochial school to being the superintendent of the Metropolitan School District of Washington Township in Indianapolis, from which he retired in June. Along the way, he worked as a long-term substitute teacher, teacher of English in a high school, high school assistant principal, high school principal and assistant superintendent. Those experiences took place in a multitude of communities ranging from inner city to rural and urban/suburban. Mervilde has guided several significant change and redesign projects, including block scheduling in high schools; conducting a successful remonstrance campaign for a school building project; designing and implementing innovative curriculum design projects; redesigning secondary and alternative education in a large, diverse district; leading a successful general fund referendum campaign; and leading Washington Township to become the first K-12 international baccalaureate school district in Indiana.

He received an M.S degree in 1981, Ed.S. in 1986 and Ed.D. in 2000, all from the IU School of Education. Mervilde also received the Dean Berkley Emerging Leader Award from the IU School Administrators Association in 2006 and was honored by the University Council for Educational Administration with the Excellence in Educational Leadership Award, "In Recognition of Extraordinary Commitment and Support for the Improved Preparation of Educational Administrators."