Governor Tom Wolf has announced that PDE Secretary Dr. Noe Ortega will resign his position with the commonwealth on April 29, 2022. The governor also announced his intention to name Eric Hagarty to serve as Acting Secretary.

Prior to Secretary, Ortega  served as the Deputy Secretary and Commissioner for the Office of Postsecondary and Higher Education (OPHE) at PDE. Before joining PDE in 2017, Ortega spent eight years at the University of Michigan (U-M), where he held several academic and administrative roles, including working as the Assistant Director and Senior Research Associate at the National Center for Institutional Diversity and as the Managing Director for the National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good. Ortega also spent nearly a decade working in the areas of financial aid and enrollment management at both public and private universities in Texas and served as a P-16 Specialist for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. He also spent nearly seven years as director of a language institute in Japan where he trained teachers in the area of early childhood language acquisition.

Following Secretary Ortega’s departure, Hagarty will serve in the acting position. Hagarty currently serves as Governor Wolf’s Deputy Chief of Staff responsible for implementing the governor’s priorities and policies relating to education, including the historic “Level Up” program to invest more in Pennsylvania’s most chronically underfunded schools, the COVID-19 vaccine initiative for teachers and the safe return to in-person learning, the first regulatory reforms to Pennsylvania’s charter school system, and generational investments in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE).

To read the press release, click here.