Eric Haas

Dr. Eric Haas is a professor in Educational Leadership for Social Justice at Cal State East Bay, where he was the doctoral program director from 2018 - 2025. He has been in education for over 40 years. He started as a teacher and science center director as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Liberia, West Africa. Since then, he has worked as a teacher in London and Caracas, Venezuela, a teacher and principal in Phoenix, Arizona, a senior researcher at WestEd, and a faculty member or instructor at six universities before coming to Cal State East Bay. During his career, Dr. Haas has conducted research and program evaluations, managed schools, classrooms and research teams, and directed trainings of teachers, graduate students and community leaders. His research interests are in the legal rights and education experiences of English learners, promoting school reform, and the process of education policy change, with a focus on the influence of unconscious mental models on conscious decision-making. He has been the principal investigator of an IES Goal 3 evaluation of the WRITE English learner writing program and the lead evaluator of the Lindsay USD (CA) Race to the Top grant for developing their personalized performance-based learning system. His work has been published in Educational Administration Quarterly, the Bilingual Research Journal, and the American Educational Research Journal, among others. Dr. Haas has written two books: the first on how unconscious mental models influence education policy decisions and the second on best practices for educating English learners with learning disabilities. Dr. Haas received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Notre Dame, a law degree from The Catholic University of America, and an MEd in Curriculum and Instruction and a PhD in Educational Leadership from Arizona State University.