David has worked in alternative education, out-of-school youth education, adult literacy and nonformal education, all of which he says were themes of his studies at UMass.

 "My education journey with C.I.E. began in 1969 with a Teacher Corps M.Ed program that was unequaled in it's opportunities for academic and community-based learning in competency-based, culturally appropriate and non-formal teaching and learning.  I continued with an Ed.D.program that both provided me with more in-depth education research and evaluation opportunities and through which I met wonderful lifelong colleagues and friends. My C.I.E. journey continues to this day!"

In the early 1980s, following his work as founder and first director of a publicly-funded alternative high school in Waltham, Massachusetts, he was the  Director of Education at Boston's Jobs for Youth, now JFY Networks. He was for 15 years, until 2003, the Director of the Adult Literacy Resource Institute at UMass Boston.

As an independent consultant, David is the President of Newsome Associates. In the 1990’s he worked in the Philippines with a World Education Philippines project supported by an Asian Development Bank loan and a Swedish embassy grant to create a national non-formal alternative education system for out-of-school youth and adults. The project, the Alternative Learning System, received a United Nations Award and has continued to the present under the sponsorship of the Philippines Department of Education. Through Education Development Center (EDC) David later worked in Northern Cyprus on a public school occupational education project, and then on EDC non-formal education projects in Haiti, Bangladesh, Liberia and Afghanistan. He also worked in South Africa and Haiti on YouthBuild International-sponsored integrated curriculum projects. He is currently the Adult Literacy Program leader for the Friends of Liberia’s Family Literacy Initiative.

Among other projects in the past decade, David’s work in the U.S. includes: the Learner Web - a U.S. national adult learner and college student learning support system developed as a response to the Longitudinal Study for Adult Learning (LSAL); the Media Library of Teaching Skills - a web library of free, short, adult education and English language learning classroom and tutoring videos designed for teacher professional development. He was for six years, until March 2021, the moderator of two Community of Practice groups in the U.S. Department of Education-sponsored Literacy and Communications System (LINCS). He has been an advisor to the Center for the Study of Adult Literacy at Georgia State University.

He has been and is an advisor to: the World Education Ed Technology Center, for example on it’s English Now! Learning circles project; the University of Memphis on the development and testing of an adult literacy app; and to California’s statewide adult basic skills technology education professional development system known as OTAN. David is also a Board Member of ProLiteracy International, and of the Association of Adult Literacy Professional Developers (AALPD).

Co-author of two recent guides for blended learning in the adult education classroom, Blended Learning For Adult Basic Skills Learners (downloads pdf) and Blended Learning for the Adult Education Classroom (downloads pdf). David is also the writer/editor of the “Technology Solutions” column for the Adult Literacy Education journal.

David is a musician, too. With former CIE Teacher Corps African Studies Project member, Owen Hartford, in 1975 he founded the Gloucester Hornpipe and Clog Society. Still performing, this Celtic, maritime, American colonial and New England music folk band does concerts primarily in Eastern Massachusetts. [11-21]

Email: djrosen123@gmail.com