February 2023
Dear Colleagues:
I hope you'll decide to join us in Chicago and virtually for the 2023 Annual Meeting as we, as a research community, engage our conference theme: "Interrogating Consequential Education Research in Pursuit of Truth." So many of you have dedicated your time, insight, knowledge, and skill in organizing and planning our annual meeting. I want to express my deepest gratitude to each of you, including our colleagues at the AERA central office. I also must acknowledge the incredible work of our program co-chairs, professors Ebony McGee (Vanderbilt University), Lori Delale-O’Connor (University of Pittsburgh), and Mark Gooden (Columbia University, Teachers College). I am also thankful to Dena Lane-Bonds (Vanderbilt University), assistant director of the Initiative for Race Research and Justice. Each of these people has been essential in the preparation phases of our conference.
I suspect 2023 will be a memorable conference for many reasons, and I invite you to consider the following.
It has been nothing short of an honor to serve this organization, which has given me so much over the years. Never—ever—would I have imagined when I attended my first AERA annual meeting as a doctoral student at The Ohio State University in 2000 that I would be voted president of this organization. Colleagues in AERA not only produce cutting-edge, world-class scholarship but operate from a set of values and principles that make me proud. We do not stand by as bystanders in the fight for justice. Rather, we position ourselves in community with others to co-create the kind of world in which we want and deserve to live. I thank you and look forward to seeing you in Chicago and virtually.
Rich Milner President, AERA Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair of Education, Vanderbilt University