RENCONTRE

Rabbi Carrie Vogel

I serve as Director of Undergraduate Initiatives, where I oversee the American Jewish University’s (AJU) "Jewish Learning Experience," which provides high school students the opportunity to earn undergraduate college credit for learning which takes place in their home community. I received a Master of Arts in Jewish Education, as well as rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union College and fulfilled my early childhood units at AJU.

Previously I served as a rabbi and Jewish educator for 14 years at Kehillat Israel in Los Angeles, overseeing all programming for students in kindergarten through twelfth grade (as well as serving as Interim Director of our Early Childhood Center during the 20-21 school year). In that time, I developed a nationally recognized Hebrew program, a unique outdoor education option for religious school and a project-based learning curriculum. I also chaired the Association of Reform Jewish Educators' rewriting and implementation of its new Code of Ethics, including seeing the final draft approved by the board on which I serve. I believe understanding a child's cognitive, emotional, physical and behavioral development is a critical piece of creating programming that is meaningful, inclusive, joyful and educational and so I can best support my work, I have studied Positive Education, Anti-Bias Education and learned a great deal about the brain development of tweens and teens. I have written publicly on several topics pertaining to Judaism and family life, including adoption, infertility and nontraditional families.

I currently live in Columbus, Ohio with my family, roughly ten thousand LEGO bricks and our enormous Bernadoodle puppy.