Alumni Hall of Fame
Academic and Professional Achievement (2010)

JDr. Catherine Durnell Cramton, a native of St. Marys, is a member of the Memorial High School Class of 1975. Dr. Durnell Cramton has notably distinguished herself as a renowned and respected expert in examining the processes and challenges that occur, and the strategies that are employed, when people work together on interdependent tasks from different geographic locations, particularly in engineering and technology driven contexts.

In 1975, Catherine graduated from Memorial High School and in the fall began her studies at Harvard University. In 1979, Ms. Durnell graduated cum laude from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in General Studies with a concentration in Government. During her studies at Harvard and for a few years following, Durnell worked as a journalist. From a career in journalism she would step into the world of politics, serving as Press Secretary for Mr. Michael DeWine, then a Republican United States Representative from Ohio, who would later serve as a United States Senator for Ohio. Catherine would eventually enter another Ivy League school to continue her education. In 1994, she would graduate from Yale University with a Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Organizational Behavior. In 1994, Dr. Catherine Durnell Cramton would begin her teaching and research career at the George Mason University School of Management as a Visiting Assistant Professor. In 1995, Catherine would be promoted to Assistant Professor. Currently, Dr. Catherine Durnell Cramton serves as Associate Professor in the George Mason University School of Management and Associate Faculty for the Center for Global Studies. She has served as Area Chair for Management and Business Law. In 2005, Dr. Cramton served as a Visiting Faculty at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, India. Most recently, Catherine was named a J. William Fulbright Scholar and spent the fall of 2008 lecturing and performing research at the Mediterranean School of Business in the North African nation of Tunisia.

Dr. Durnell Cramton’s research and work on distributed work has led to her 2001 seminal paper, “The mutual knowledge problem and its consequences for dispersed collaboration” being cited by other scholars in their published research more than 750 times and recognized as a highly cited paper. This paper which appeared in the top tier journal Organization Science, received the 2002 national Organizational Communication and Information Systems Best Published Paper of the Year Award. Another paper, “Finding common ground in dispersed collaboration” is widely used as assigned reading for Master’s of Business Administration programs and undergraduate business students at leading academic institutions such as Harvard Business School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Duke University and Stanford University. Catherine has received over one million dollars in grant funds from the National Science Foundation and Bechtel Foundation for her research and studies. Dr. Cramton has been published many times in numerous journals. Her many presentations at conferences and symposia have taken her to the United States’ greatest cities, from Boston to Philadelphia to Denver to Los Angeles; to our most distinguished institutions of higher education from Harvard University to Massachusetts Institute of Technology to Cornell University; and around the world from Italy to the Netherlands to Japan to India. Catherine has done review work with many journals and reviews. As an educator, she has mentored many doctoral students.



It is for her outstanding and superior professional accomplishments, and for her work that has impacted how collaborative and interdependent tasks are accomplished around the globe, that Dr. Catherine Durnell Cramton is inducted into the St. Marys Memorial High School Alumni Foundation Hall of Fame for Academic / Professional Achievement.