Dr. Kingston's Biography

Thomas S. Kingston, PhD, has been the Superintendent of the Chelsea Public Schools since January 2004. Previously, he had been assigned to Chelsea by the Boston University Management Team as the Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction, a position he assumed in September 1994. Upon the formal conclusion of the Boston University/Chelsea Partnership in June 2008, the Chelsea School Committee retained Dr. Kingston as its independent superintendent.

Currently on leave-of-absence from his professorship at Boston University, Dr. Kingston holds a dual appointment to the School of Education and the College of Arts. He had been a member of the professorial team that leads one of the core doctoral seminars at the School of Education, SED 703, Philosophical Foundations of Education. He also co- taught an advanced doctoral pilot seminar on the theme of Justice and Education and led a semester-long short course on Careers in Education.

Dr. Kingston joined the Boston University faculty after more than a decade as a senior executive at the National Endowment for the Humanities and as liaison to small and independent federal agencies for the National Performance Review. Dr. Kingston's academic research is in the area of eighteenth-century British literature and the sister-arts tradition. He began his career as a high school English teacher in Illinois. Subsequently, he spent several years with a national, nonprofit, professional development group that served teachers at all levels. He has also had a lifelong interest in church music. A member of Phi Beta Kappa and the American Guild of Organists, he is the organist and choirmaster for the Church of our Saviour (Episcopal) in Arlington, Massachusetts.

Earning a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, Dr. Kingston went on to receive a Master of Arts in Teaching degree from Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. His doctorate is in English language and literature, earned at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.