Immediate Past President

Gloria J. Ladson-Billings
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Gloria J. Ladson-Billings, Ph.D., Kellner Family Professor in Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, assumed the presidency of the 22,000-member American Educational Research Association (AERA). Her term as president starts April 15, 2005, at the conclusion of AERA's 2005 Annual Meeting in Montréal.

Dr. Ladson-Billings succeeds Dr. Marilyn Cochran-Smith, professor of education at Boston College's Lynch School of Education and an expert on teacher education across the professional lifespan and teacher research/practitioner inquiry.

An AERA member since 1989, Dr. Ladson-Billings has served this professional society in many positions, including editor of the Section on Teaching, Learning, & Human Development of the quarterly American Educational Research Journal; member-at-large of AERA's Council, the Association's governing board; affirmative action officer and faculty mentor in several Divisions; and as a member of the Association's Professional Development and Training Committee. She also has been presented several Association-wide awards, including the Palmer O. Johnson Award and the Early Career Award.

At the University of Wisconsin's School of Education, Dr. Ladson-Billings, who also serves as a project director at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER), has concentrated her research on multicultural education, social studies, critical race theory and education, and culturally relevant pedagogy. At WCER, she and colleagues developed Teach for Diversity, a graduate program for teachers who want to teach in diverse racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic settings. In 2003-2004, she was a visiting scholar at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California.

In 1994, Dr. Ladson-Billings authored the book, The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children, in which she examined eight outstanding teachers who differ in personal style but approach teaching to affirm cultural identity. "The quest for quality education remains an elusive dream for the African American community. However, it does remain a dream-perhaps the most powerful for the people of African descent in this nation," she wrote.

In the spring of 2005, Dr. Ladson-Billings was elected to membership in the National Academy of Education, which advances high quality education research and its use in policy formulation and practice. Among her other professional activities, this 1984 Stanford University graduate has been a senior fellow in urban education of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University and has also published scholarly articles in journals such as Teachers College Record, Qualitative Studies in Education, Journal of Teacher Education, and Qualitative Inquiry.