Senior Editor, The Profession
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Expertise: Higher-education leadership | Faculty governance and culture | Academic workplace | Teaching and curriculum | Graduate students
Background: Sara Hebel has worked as a reporter and editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education since 1999. As editor of the Profession section, she oversees The Chronicle's coverage of faculty and administrators, including stories about leadership, executive pay, workplace issues, teaching, faculty culture, and graduate education.
Previously, she served as The Chronicle's politics editor, directing coverage of the Bush and Obama administrations, Congress, and state governments.
Before becoming an editor, Hebel was a reporter for The Chronicle, covering state and federal public-policy debates related to college preparation, access, cost, and accountability, as well as public-university governance and finance.
Hebel has served as an expert on higher-education policy and politics at national meetings of higher-education groups and at national forums. Before joining The Chronicle, she covered Congress and national politics for Legi-Slate, an online news service affiliated with the Washington Post Company (1995 to 1998).
She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism from Northwestern University.
Honors: National Award for Education Reporting, first place in trade-publication category, Education Writers Association, for a team report, “What College Presidents Think,” 2006 | National Award for Education Reporting, special citation in trade-publication category for a team report, “The Hard Birth of a Research University,” 2006.
Media appearances: Hebel’s radio interviews include those on CBS News Radio, The Kojo Nnamdi Show (produced by WAMU, Washington, D.C.’s public-radio affiliate), and National Public Radio’s Here and Now (produced by WBUR, Boston’s public-radio affiliate). She was a featured guest on Chicago’s Public Broadcasting’s “A Promise in Jeopardy,” a two-hour forum in October 2008 about the presidential candidates’ stand on community-college issues, which was broadcast live on public-radio stations across the country.
