Professor, Educational Leadership
I was hired as an assistant professor and Director of the Center for Community College Education by East Texas State university (now Texas A&M University-Commerce) in August of 1992. Receiving both tenure and promotion to associate professor in 1998, I was promoted to full professor in 2002. In May of 2003, I was awarded the university’s Paul W. Barrus Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching. Now in my 20th year on the faculty at Texas A&M University-Commerce, I have taught all but two courses in our Higher Education program; was one of the first faculty members to begin using the university’s interactive video technology for instruction; published over 30 peer-reviewed and over 15 non-peer-reviewed publications; delivered 30 presentations at state, national, and international conferences; served on more than 50 university, college, and departmental committees, including 11 years of service on the Graduate Council, during which I chaired one of the Council’s committees and also served as vice-chair of the Council for 6 years; and served as Assistant Graduate Dean for 3 years. I also served as the Director of the Center for Community College Education for 13 years, from 1992 to 2005, which included continuous collaboration with an advisory council of representatives from the Northeast Texas community colleges and coordination and hosting of two conferences per year. My biography was included in Marquis’ Who's Who in American Education, 2007-2008 (8th ed.) and in Marquis’ Who's Who in the South and Southwest since 1995.
Currently, I am the coordinator for the doctoral program in Supervision, Curriculum, and Instruction-Higher Education, which includes the responsibility of preparing course schedules; coordinating the review and revision of the curriculum; coordinating the annual orientation sessions for new doctoral students; and chairing meetings of the Higher Education faculty for doctoral student annual reviews, curriculum reviews, and student outcomes reviews. As coordinator of all five Higher Education programs in 2005-2006 and 2008-2011, I prepared outcomes data reports for the institution’s first assessment database (SUPER); prepared all of the goals, objectives, and outcomes targets for the current database (WEAVE); and have maintained the annual review of the goals, objectives, and outcomes targets and prepared the annual reports of the outcomes data for the Higher Education doctorate, master’s programs, and certificate programs for the WEAVE database. In addition, I prepared the initial report in 2009 and the annual updates of the 18 Characteristics of Texas Public Doctoral Programs for the doctorate in Supervision, Curriculum, and Instruction-Higher Education, a report required by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
I originated the university’s first qualitative research course (HIED 696, Advanced Research Methodology: Interpretive Inquiry) as well as two other courses in the Higher Education program. My instructional work reflects my commitment to continuous quality improvement, in part, based upon nearly 10 years of experience in faculty development as well as instruction in one of the few Higher Education programs in the country that offers a graduate degree in college teaching. This discovery of our Higher Education program’s stature was made during some of my earliest research here, which culminated in a publication with two of our doctoral students. In addition to my efforts to constantly improve my teaching, I began using an online platform for course delivery in 2003 and have also incorporated some of my own research in the necessary conversions from face-to-face delivery to online course delivery.
From the beginning of my career at the university, I have advised doctoral students, serving as the chair of 38 doctoral graduates to date. In addition, I have been the major adviser of 63 master’s graduates and a committee member for 44 doctoral graduates.
From June 2005 through August 2008, I served as the Assistant Graduate Dean in the Office of Graduate Studies and Research, a half-time appointment that included a reduced teaching load. In conjunction with my duties as Assistant Graduate Dean, I took on the major responsibility for recruiting graduate students for the university, which included attending recruitment events at 10 institutions in Texas and Oklahoma and one university in Thailand. In addition, I participated in numerous university recruitment events. I also created and developed one of the most successful recruitment events for graduate students on the campus, Graduate EXPO, which was launched in 2006, and by the spring of 2008, has had a standing-room-only crowd in Mesquite annually. Additionally, I developed promotional brochures and informational kiosks to augment graduate recruitment. My duties also included the approval of master’s theses and doctoral dissertations for the Graduate School. Taking this responsibility very seriously, I prepared an addendum to the Doctoral Student Guidebook in the Graduate School that incorporated many of the common style manual errors that had appeared in several of the theses and dissertations I reviewed during my first year as assistant dean. This secondary guide is now part of the 2012 revised Doctoral Student Guidebook. In addition, I coordinated the graduate program reviews, which included my successful efforts to hire a graduate assistant who has proved invaluable in assisting departments in the preparation of their review documents. Further, I assisted the master’s and doctoral admissions coordinators with their duties, served in place of the Graduate Dean when he was unavailable for meetings and campus events, and served as the initial contact in the Graduate School for students who were appealing admissions decisions and academic action.
When my appointment as Assistant Dean ended in August 2008, I continued to review the dissertation proposals, completed dissertations, and completed theses presented to the Graduate School for the fall 2008 semester. I also reviewed each dissertation completed in the department in 2008-2009 and recommended changes to advisers and students. Today, the university’s doctoral program in Supervision, Curriculum, and Instruction-Higher Education is one of the five largest Higher Education programs in the country, due in part to my efforts over the past 20 years. The program is also second only to UT-Austin in the production of college presidents and chief academic officers in Texas.