National

University Council on Educational Administration (UCEA) – Co-chair – Technology and Educational Leadership SIG

I continue to serve as the co-chair of the Technology and Leadership special interest group (SIG) of the University Council on Educational Administration (UCEA). For the last two years, this SIG has held a business meeting at the annual meeting of UCEA. Attendance has been terribly low, partly due to the 7:00 a.m. time slot reserved for UCEA SIG business meetings. However, the lack of attendance is mostly due to the fact that, as far as my colleagues and I can tell, there are literally a handful of professors of educational leadership in UCEA institutions (and probably elsewhere) who are concerned with technology leadership. Thus, the major goal of the SIG is to increase awareness among educational leadership faculty of the importance of leadership for 21st Century, technology-infused schooling. To that end, my co-chair (Dr. David Quinn, U. of Florida) and I have created an online network through NING.(see http://edtechleader.ning.com). This space will be used as a storehouse of technology-related resources for school leaders and will host several electronic forums and conversations.

University-Level Service

Research Computing Work Group

Spring 2010-Summer 2010

In the middle of the Spring 2010 semester, I agreed to serve on a VCU committee, The Research Computing Work Group. According to Dr. Frank Macrina, this group was charged with:

assessing technology needs of faculty researchers
identifying common requirements that could be shared across individual researchers, departments, schools, or the University
evaluating where and how well these services are currently being provided
recommending opportunities for improvement

This group evaluated general technology needs including but not limited to consulting on technical components of grants and research projects, server acquisition and support, database development and support, application development and support, software needs and consulting (such as survey or statistical software), and high performance or high bandwidth networking. The Research Computing Work Group is advisory to the Vice President for Research and reported its finding and recommendations to Dr. Macrina on September 10, 2010.

University Graduate Council (UGC)

September 2008 – August 2010

For two years, I served as the School of Education representative to the University Graduate Council (UGC). The UGC met as a whole a few times during the year and I was also a part of the Policy and Procedures Sub-Committee. As a member of the Policy and Procedures Sub-Committee, I was able to lend my voice to a number of important issues. Specifically, that sub-committee conducted a thorough review of the graduate bulletin to make clarifications and to look for inconsistencies.

Instructional Technology Advisory Group (ITAG)

September 2008 – present

The VCU Instructional Technology Advisory Group (ITAG) is a University committee tasked with addressing issues related to faculty use of instructional technology, and providing related recommendations to the Vice Provost for Instruction, Dr. Joe Marolla. I am one of only four tenure-eligible faculty on this committee.

This working group meets monthly. The group collectively wrote a report on instructional technology recommendations that was shared with Dr. Marolla and interim provost, Dr. Beverly Warren.

School of Education

Search Committees

At the college level, I have served on two different search committees. First, I served on the search committee for the Coordinator of Doctoral Studies. That extensive search yielded Dr. Leslie Bozeman; an outcome that we should all be really proud of based on early evidence working with Dr. Bozeman. Second, I served on the search committee for the Director of Technology. That extensive search came up empty in the Summer of 2010 and is ongoing.

Research and Professional Development Committee

September 1, 2008 – August 31, 2009 (Chairperson)

September 1, 2007-August 31, 2008 (Member)

As a member and chair of the ad hoc Research and Professional Development committee, I helped to organize the faculty research colloquium that took place in the Spring 2009. This well-attended event involved a keynote speaker (Dr. Joseph Maxwell from George Mason University) and presentations by VCU SoE faculty members. I agreed to present twice and was pleased to do so.

Department of Educational Leadership

Track Coordinator – Ph.D. in Education – Educational Leadership track

September 1, 2008 – present

As the educational leadership track coordinator for the Ph.D. program, I have numerous responsibilities. I attend monthly Ph.D. advisory board meetings, and serve on the appeals subcommittee of that advisory board. Additionally, I am one of only three faculty members regularly tasked with grading the new qualifying exams and the research portions of the comprehensive exams. Finally, I facilitated department-level discussions about curriculum changes and exam formats.

I continue to communicate with and advise all continuing and new Ph.D. students.

Additionally, as track coordinator, I:

Manage the online community space for our doctoral community, Leadership Commons
Recruit new doctoral students
Advise the Educational Leadership Doctoral Students Association (ELDSA)

Faculty Learning Community Coordinator

September 1, 2009 – May 15, 2010

The Department of Educational Leadership was fortunate to be accepted as an external Faculty Learning Community (FLC) for AY 2009-10. As a department, we set aside one of our weekly meetings every month to explore uses of technology that are relevant to our work and to the work of our students who are sitting and aspiring school leaders. As the facilitator of this FLC, I had to plan and lead the monthly sessions. I also had to attend the regular meetings of FLC facilitators at the Center for Teaching Excellence. We started the year by discussing big picture questions of technology in education and the future of educational leadership. From there, we tied specific technology tools to what school leaders are expected to know and be able to do. Then, we spent the last few sessions tinkering with various Web 2.0 technologies including RSS, social bookmarking, screencasting, etc.

Local / Community Service

VASCD Webinars

On a monthly basis over the course of AY 2009-10, I facilitated/lead webinars around issues of educational technology and school leadership. These hour-long webinars were sponsored by the Virginia ASCD and were open to educators across the Commonwealth as well as anyone across the country (and internationally) to whom we could get word of the events. These webinars were held through Wimba Live Classroom and were based on the following topics:

Educational Technology and School Leadership
Educational Technology – Legal and Ethical Issues
Free Speech Rights of Teachers and Students in the Digital Age
Information Privacy – FERPA, FOIA, etc.
The law and ethics of Internet filtering
Technology Tools for School Leaders

Albemarle County Public Schools – Technology Planning Committee

The Albemarle County Public School District was re-writing their division’s technology plan during academic year 2009-10, partly because they are due for a revision and partly in response to the Virginia Department of Education’s new technology plan. The leadership of this school division is passionate about creating relevant, meaningful learning experiences for students in the 21st Century and I was thrilled to be asked to serve as an outside member of their technology planning team. I attended one of the meetings of this team face-to-face and a few of the meetings I joined by videoconference.

Committees and administrative responsibilities