University Council for Educational Administration

22nd Annual Convention – Keynote Speakers

Preparing Democratic Leaders For Quality Teaching And Student Success:  A Time For Action

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Featured Speakers
	Dr. Jill Blackmore is a Professor of Education in the Faculty of Education, Deakin University and Director of the Educational Futures and Innovation Research Cluster. She is on several editorial boards of international journals such as the British Educational Research Journal, International Journal of Leadership in Education, and American Educational Research Journal. Jill’s research interests include feminist approaches to globalisation and education policy, administrative and organisational theory, educational leadership and reform, organisational change and innovation, teachers’ and academics’ work, and all their policy implications. Jill’s research interests include feminist approaches to globalisation and education policy, administrative and organisational theory, educational leadership and reform, organisational change and innovation, teachers’ and academics’ work, and all their policy implications. Publications include Troubling Women: Feminism, Leadership and Educational Change (1999, Open University Press), Blackmore, J., Wright, J. Harwood, V.(eds) (2006) Counterpoints on the Quality and Impact of Educational Research, Review of Australian Research in Education No 6, Special issue, Australian Educational Researcher and Performing and Re-forming Leaders: gender, educational restructuring and organisational change (2007, SUNY Press) with Judyth Sachs.
	Dr. Lisa Delpit, Executive Director for the Center for Urban Education & Innovation, received the award for Outstanding Contribution to Education in 1993 from Harvard Graduate School of Education, which hailed her as a “visionary scholar and woman of courage.” Her work on school-community relations and cross-cultural communication was cited when she received her MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. Most recently, Delpit has been selected as the Antioch College Horace Mann Humanity Award recipient for 2003, which recognizes a contribution by alumni of Antioch College who have “won some victory for humanity.” She describes her strongest focus as “finding ways and means to best educate urban students, particularly African-American, and other students of color.” Among her publications are Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom (1995); The Real Ebonics Debate: Power, Language, and the Education of African-American Children (co-edited with Theresa Perry, 1998); and The Skin That We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom (co-edited with Joanne Kilgour Dowdy, 2002).
	Dr. Stephen L. Jacobson is Professor of Educational Administration and the Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Education at the State University at Buffalo (UB). His research interests include teacher compensation, school finance, human resource administration, and the reform of school leadership preparation and practice. He has published extensively and his books include School Administration: Persistent Dilemmas in Preparation and Practice (Praeger, 1996), and, Transforming Schools and Schools of Education: A New Vision for Preparing Educators (Corwin, 1998). In 1994, Steve received the Jack Culbertson Award for outstanding contributions to educational administration by a junior professor. In 1999 he was elected President of the American Education Finance Association. He is currently co-director (with Kenneth Leithwood) of the UCEA Center for the Study of School-Site Leadership, and is co-editor (with Leithwood and David Monk) of the journal, Leadership and Policy in Schools. Prior to receiving his Ph.D. from Cornell University, Steve was a special education teacher with the New York City Public Schools for seven years.
	Kevin Jennings taught high school in New England after graduating from Harvard and is best known for his work creating safe schools for LGBT students. In 1988, Jennings helped establish the nation’s first Gay-Straight Alliance for students, and in 1990 he founded GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network, to bring together teachers, parents, students, and community members to end anti-LGBT bias in schools. Mr. Jennings led GLSEN to success in making Massachusetts the first state in the nation to outlaw discrimination against public school students on the basis of sexual orientation, and he helped establish the Safe Schools Program for Gay & Lesbian Students. Under Jennings’s guidance, GLSEN has become a national education and civil rights organization with a presence in all fifty states. Newsweek named him one of a hundred people to watch in the new century. Jennings tours extensively and makes frequent media appearances as an advocate and spokesperson for LGBT youth. The author of One Teacher in Ten and Always My Child: A Parent’s Guide to Understanding Your Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender or Questioning Son or Daughter, Jennings also wrote and produced the historical documentary Out of the Past, which won the 1998 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for Best Documentary.
	Dr. Susan Moore Johnson studies and teaches about teacher policy, organizational change, and administrative practice. A former high-school teacher and administrator, she has a continuing research interest in the work of teachers and the reform of schools. She has studied the leadership of superintendents, the effects of collective bargaining on schools, the use of incentive pay plans for teachers, and the school as a context for adult work. Currently, Johnson and a group of advanced doctoral students are engaged in a multiyear research study, The Project on the Next Generation of Teachers, that examines how best to recruit, support, and retain a strong teaching force in the next decade. The project, which is funded by several foundations, includes studies of hiring practices, alternative certification programs, new teachers’ attitudes toward careers, and new teachers’ experiences with colleagues. Johnson served as academic dean of the Ed School from 1993 to 1999. She has taught in the School’s summer institute programs for administrators and teachers since 1989. For more information, please read the article on her research, the article on the research of the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers in HGSE News, an interview with Dr. Johnson on the needs of educators in the current climate of high-stakes testing, or visit the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers web site.

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