Items of Note, Keynote Speakers, and General Session Highlights at UCEA 2012

November will be here before we know it.  I hope you are looking forward to the 2012 UCEA Conference “The Future is Ours: Leadership Matters” as much as I am. There are terrific speakers and special sessions lined up, along with innovative opportunities to engage with new and current colleagues and friends. Many of these special sessions have been designed as vehicles to not only share research, but to also foster in-depth dialogue, spark new ideas and collaborations, or develop capacity for on-going collaboration, dialogue and action. For example, there will be special sessions for sitting and aspiring deans, department heads/chairs, and program coordinators – so encourage yours to attend UCEA this year. We hope that these sessions will be a starting point for on-going dialogues about issues of concern to UCEA and other professional organizations. Additionally, there will be Unconference sessions, lots of IGNITE! Sessions, a special 2-day Graduate Student Summit (Wednesday-Thursday), a job fair, a film festival (Saturday), and an International Summit hosted at the Morgridge College of Education (Sunday from 9:00-3:00) that will feature keynote speaker, Mika Risku, Vice Director/Project researcher, Institute of Educational Leadership, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.

On behalf of UCEA headquarters and the 2012 Conference Planning Team, I want to thank Jennifer Friend for her leadership with the Film Festival. Many excellent films were submitted and eight films were selected. Videos were judged by an independent panel of reviewers using a 5-point scale (1=not acceptable, 2=below average, 3=average, 4=above average, 5=exemplary) for each of five areas:

• Connection to conference theme
• Representation of educational leadership program features, innovations, or impacts
• Video Production Quality (Video- camerawork, lighting; Audio- clarity, consistency of audio levels, music)
• Post-Production (Editing, transitions, graphic design, pacing)
• Insights into Leadership Preparation (Potential impact on viewers and the field)

There will be two opportunities for viewing this diverse grouping of films on Saturday afternoon. You won't want to miss seeing them!

Below are descriptions of the general sessions:

General Session I: Texas A&M Social Justice Speaker (Thursday at 6:10-7:35)

Speaker: Sonia Nieto

Title: Teacher Leadership as Social Justice

Sonia Nieto is Professor Emerita of Language, Literacy, and Culture, School of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, she was educated in the New York City Public Schools. She attended St. John’s University, Brooklyn campus, where she received a B.S. in Elementary Education. Upon graduation, she attended New York University’s Graduate Program in Madrid, Spain, and received her MA in Spanish and Hispanic Literature in 1966. In 1975, she completed her doctoral studies in 1979 with specializations in curriculum studies, bilingual education, and multicultural education. Dr. Nieto has taught students at all levels from elementary through graduate school and she continues to speak and write on multicultural education, teacher preparation, the education of Latinos, and other culturally and linguistically diverse student populations. Her book Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education (5th ed, 2008, with co-author Patty Bode), is widely used in teacher preparation and inservice courses. She has received many awards for her advocacy and activism, including the 1997 Multicultural Educator of the Year Award from the National Association for Multicultural Education, an Annenberg Institute Senior Fellowship (1998-2000), the Outstanding Language Arts Educator of the Year from the National Council of Teachers of English (2005), the 2008 Social Justice in Education Award from the American Educational Research Association.

General Session II: Presidential Address (Friday 11:00-12:10)

Keynote Speaker: Andrea Rorrer 

 Andrea Rorrer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Utah and Director of the Utah Education Policy Center at the University of Utah. She received her master’s degree at the University of Virginia and her Ph.D. from the University of Texas, Austin. Andrea is an active member of the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA), which is the foremost organization in the field of educational leadership. Andrea has been an Executive Committee member since 2007 and now serves as President of UCEA. She is the 2006 recipient of the Jack A. Culbertson Award, which is given annually by the University Council for Educational Administration for outstanding contributions to the field as a junior professor, and the 2008 College of Education at the University of Utah Research Award. Andrea’s scholarship focuses on districts and the state as actors in organizational and policy change, particularly those changes aimed at increasing equity in student access and outcomes. Her scholarship has been published in multiple journals, including Educational Administration Quarterly, Educational Policy, and the Journal of Educational Policy, and book chapters, with forthcoming publications in the Journal of Research on Educational Leadership and Economics of Education Review. In the past, she served as an associate editor for Educational Administration Quarterly and the Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership and a co-features editor for the UCEA Review. Andrea currently conducts policy research and evaluations for and provides technical assistance and support to local schools and school districts, the Utah legislature, Utah State Office of Education, Utah System of Higher Education, and community organizations on educational issues. She is currently a co-principal investigator for the Utah Data Alliance, which is the state’s longitudinal data system.

General Session III: Evaluating and Promoting Educator Effectiveness Through National State and Local Policy Levers: A Town Hall  (Friday at 1:50-3:10)

For the last few years, the Wallace Foundation has sponsored a town hall conversation during the UCEA convention focused on critical issues related to leadership preparation, practice and policy. The focus of the 2012 town hall is educator effectiveness and how state level policies (and the national policy levers) are seeking to support educator effectiveness.  The panel, which will include the DPS superintendent, Tom Boasberg, Colorado Senator Michael Johnston, DPS leadership team member John Youngquist, Vanderbilt’s Joe Murphy, Dick Flannary of the National Association of Secondary School Principals and representatives from the National Council of State Legislators and the National Governors Association, will also focus on the implications of these trends for leadership preparation and professional development. 

General Session IV: In Honor of UCEA Barbara L. Jackson Scholars (Friday at 6:10-7:20)

(Everyone is invited to attend the keynote presentation) 
Keynote Speaker: John H. Jackson
Title: The Importance of National Networks in Supporting the Careers of Scholars of Color
John H. Jackson is the President and CEO of The Schott Foundation for Public Education and leads the Foundation’s efforts to ensure a high quality public education for all students regardless of race or gender. Dr. Jackson joined the Schott Foundation after seven productive years in leadership positions at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He served as the NAACP Chief Policy Officer and prior to that as the NAACP's National Director of Education. In 1999, President William Jefferson Clinton appointed Dr. Jackson to serve in his administration as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Education and he later served on the Obama-Biden transition team as a member of the President’s 13-member Education Policy Transition Work Group. 


General Session V: Penn State Mitstifer Keynote (Saturday at 11:00-12:20)

Keynote Speaker: Allan Walker

Title: The Leaders we Want? Drones, Clones or Dragons

 Allan Walker is Joseph Lau Chair Professor of International Educational Leadership, Head of The Department of Education Policy and Leadership and Co-Director of The Asia Pacific Centre for Leadership and Change at The Hong Kong Institute of Education. After gaining extensive experience throughout schools and universities in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong, Allan settled in Hong Kong in 1994,working in the field of cross-cultural comparative educational leadership and leadership across Chinese societies. He has conducted research in countries such as China, Taiwan, Norway, Finland, Vietnam, Malaysia, Netherlands, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Canada, the US, UK, New Zealand and Australia. In 2010, Allan was honoured with a Fellowship of the Australian Council for Educational Leadership for his outstanding contribution to educational leadership research and development globally. He has completed a number of large scale funded research projects and has written and edited a number of books, including School leadership and administration: Adopting a cultural administration published by Routledge-Falmer. He is presently working on a book targeting middle leaders in schools entitled – Leading Upstream.

General Session VI: Banquet and Auburn University-Truman Pierce Keynote

Speaker: Shelley Stewart  (Saturday at 7:00-11:00)

Title: Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Shelley Stewart is the Founder and Board President of The Mattie C. Stewart Foundation, a national non-profit organization creating tools and resources to help reduce the dropout rate and increase the graduation rate in communities across America. Born into the deeply segregated city of Birmingham, AL in the 1940s, Shelley Stewart endured severe child abuse and eventual homelessness after the death of his mother at the age of five. Befriended by a first grade teacher who encouraged him to go to school and learn to read, Shelley emerged from a childhood of poverty and neglect to become one of America’s most successful business leaders, a philanthropist and human rights activist. Beginning in the 1950s as a popular radio broadcaster, he helped launch the careers of artists like Aretha Franklin, Patti Labelle and Otis Redding, as well as, address many of the racial issues of that time. Shelley’s lifetime odyssey is chronicled in his best-selling memoir published by Time Warner Books called The Road South. Today, Shelley serves as the President and CEO of o2ideas, Inc., one of the country’s largest corporate communications and marketing firms. He is a dynamic and entertaining speaker with an important message. You won’t want to miss this year’s banquet!

The 3 Unconference Sessions at UCEA 2012 will be:

• Building Bridges Across Differences: Increasing Social Justice Discourse in Educational Leadership (organized by Cosette Grant-Overton)
• Emerging Policy Trends: What Do You See Coming Our Way? (organized by Lisa Kensler)
• Utilizing Student Voice to Accelerate School Improvement (organized by Susan Korach)

These sessions are designed to encourage in-depth, meaningful conversations about important topics. I hope everyone will try to participate in at least one unconference session!