HYDE PARK — Robin Appleby, current head of GEMS Education, has been appointed director of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools.
“We were looking for someone who has a deep respect for Lab’s progressive tradition, and who also has the leadership and vision necessary to guide the Schools as we grapple with the idea of what ‘progressive’ means in the 21st century,” said Janice Moy, a sixth-grade teacher who served on the committee that selected Appleby.
Appleby will replace David Magill, who in January said he would retire after serving as director of the Lab Schools.
Starting in July, Appleby will take over the private school that serves students form preschool through high school, including the children of University of Chicago professors and some of Chicago’s elite, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s children.
Before taking the helm at the Global Education Management Systems American Academies, which has campuses in Dubai, Egypt, Switzerland and Uganda, Appleby served as high school principal at the American School of the Hague; director of the upper school at Hathaway Brown School, an independent girls secondary school in Shaker Heights, Ohio; and senior dean at the Nichols School, an independent day school in Buffalo, N.Y.
