2024 Conference Speakers

Dr. Beverly Irby
Keynote Presentation
​(August 4, 8:45AM MDT)
Dr. Irby earned her doctorate from the University of Mississippi and her undergraduate degree from Delta State University. She is a Professor in Educational Leadership in the Department of Educational Administration and Human Resource Development and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) at Texas A&M University (TAMU). She serves as Marilyn Kent Byrne Endowed Chair for Student Success and​ has been the Director of the Education Leadership Research Center and Co-Director of the Center for Research and Development in Dual Language and Literacy Acquisition in CEHD during her tenure at TAMU. Dr. Irby holds a distinction is a twice-named Regents Professor for two university systems: Texas A&M University System Regents Professor (2019) and The Texas State University System Regents Professor (2009). She was also was awarded in 2021 another distinguished award, the Association of Former Students TAMU Association of Former Students Distinguished Research Award.

​She holds the distinguished title of Living Legend Award from the International Council of Professors of Educational Leadership. She served on Faculty Senate as the CEHD Caucus Leader and initiated the TAMU annual Women’s Research on Women Symposium. She is author of over 200 refereed articles, chapters, and books with two major Handbooks (Handbook of Educational Theories and the Wiley-Blackwell International Handbook of Mentoring). As a result of her strong research agenda involving longitudinal randomized control trials, she led the Centers in the commercialization of several evidence-based curricular materials for challenged students.

She has been nationally elected to several Executive Boards of the premier international research organization, the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA): Research on the Superintendency; Learning and Teaching in Educational Leadership (LTEL), Research on Women and Education, and Mentorship and Mentoring Practices, and she has served on the ICPEL Executive Board as well. For a decade, she served as Editor for Routledge’s Taylor & Francis Mentoring and Tutoring: Partnership in Learning Journal and now serves as Editor Emerita. She is the recipient of the many awards and honors for her research, advocacy, and mentoring, including the coveted AERA Willystine Goodsell Award (a diversity award for advancing women’s and girls’ issues), the Margaret Montgomery Leadership Award, Texas Association of Bilingual Education Higher Education Honoree, TAMU’s Administrator Women’s Progress Award, CEHD Climate Award, and the American Education Research Association’s Learning and Teaching in Educational Leadership Distinguished Faculty Award. Since at TAMU, she has obtained over $40,000,000 in research grants as PI or Co-PI, and over her career she has garnered over $100,000,000 in grant funding. She has established with her research team, an international research site in Costa Rica, two Asian research sites in China and in Cambodia and is working on one in Kenya, Georgia, and Uzbekistan. She is the author of the Synergistic Leadership Theory, the first leadership theory published in the 21st Century. 

Dr. Stacey Edmonson
Cocking Lecture
​(Friday August 5, 8:45AM MDT)
​Dr. Stacey L. Edmonson has served as Dean of the College of Education at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas since 2014.  She is active at the state and national policy levels related to educator preparation and supports the development of future-ready educators through innovative programming, strong school district and community partnerships, and meaningful global and local opportunities.   

Prior to serving as dean, she served in a variety of administrative positions including Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership and Counseling and Director of the Center for Research and Doctoral Studies in Educational Leadership. Before beginning her career in academia in 2000, Dr. Edmonson was a teacher, principal, and central office administrator in Texas public schools.  She is currently on the Board of Directors for the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE) and is a recent past-president of the Teacher Education Council for State Colleges and Universities (TECSCU) and the Texas Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (TACTE).  She was a board of examiners chair for the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and site team chair for the Council of the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP).   Previous roles include serving as President and Executive Director of the Texas Council of Professors of Educational Administration (TCPEA), President of the Southwest Educational Research Association (SERA), and executive board member for the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration (NCPEA).  She has served as principal investigator on more than $10 million in external grant funding and has published more than 85 articles on education topics such as trust, stress and burnout, legal issues in education, and educator ethics. 
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Dr. Edmonson received her Doctorate and Master’s of Education degrees in Educational Administration from Texas A&M University-Commerce and a Bachelor of Arts in English and Spanish from Texas A&M University.  

​Dr. Ric Brown
Living Legend 2022
(Thursday August 4, 6:30PM MDT)
Dr. Brown served 6 years as the Chief Academic Officer (Provost/ Vice President for Academic Affairs) at California State University, Sacramento until his retirement in 2007. In addition to being a professor for over 30 years, he also held the positions of Associate Vice President for Graduate Studies and Research at Sacramento State and Director of University Grants and Research at California State University, Fresno. He holds a doctorate from the University of Houston in Educational Psychology with specialties in research, statistics and measurement. 
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His academic areas include statistics, research, measurement, and evaluation. He has published and presented extensively, both nationally and internationally, including the areas of leadership, teaching effectiveness, student evaluation of instruction, locus of control and self-efficacy. He has co-authored books on higher education administration published in fall, 2008; one in 2013 regarding effective educational leadership and his most recent book involves effective online teaching (2017). 

He continues to do test reviews for Buros Mental Measurement online and his most recent writings include Taking the Magic Out of Algorithms for the 2021 Springer book Artificial Intelligence, Human Agency and Educational Leader and co-author for Necessary Components for Meaningful Results in Educational Leadership and Administration in the 2021 Oxford Encyclopedia of Educational Administration.

Over the past 15 years, he has served as adjunct faculty at Northern Arizona University teaching beginning and intermediate statistics, research methods and higher education online and hybrid; Soka University of America teaching educational psychology; and currently at St John’s University of New York teaching educational research methods and dissertation seminar online.
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He has been involved in NCPEA, now ICPEL, for over 30 years as a participant, presenter and journal reviewer. 

Louis Wildman, posthumously
​​Achilles- Hoyle Service Award Winner 2022

M. David Alexander
​Creighton Publishing Award Winner 2022
Louis wrote over a hundred publications, including editing The 1997 Yearbook of the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration; Let's Share Our Ideas About Educational Leadership; The Basic Antinomy; Public Schools Deserve Our Support; What School Administrators Need To Know About Academic Freedom; Finn and the Cult of Efficiency; and The Creation and Maintenance of Community.