Educational Administration and Policy Program Recognizes Accomplished Leaders
The University of Georgia College of Education's educational administration and policy program recognized the achievements of two alumni and a former faculty member at their recent annual awards luncheon.
Johnnye V. Cox Award
Edward F. Pajak received the Johnnye V. Cox Award, which recognizes an individual for significant contributions in supervision and leadership. Cox was considered a trailblazer as one of the most preeminent early supervisionists in the state and served as mentor to many other icons in the field of instructional supervision.
Pajak is interim associate dean and director of the Graduate Division of Education, professor and chair in the department of teacher development and leadership in the School of Professional Studies in Business and Education at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore , MD.
He was a faculty member at UGA for nearly 20 years (1982-2001) where he headed the department of educational leadership (1992-94), served as faculty administrator for the College's Academic Outreach (1994-97), and directed the Northeast Georgia PreK-16 Initiative (1996-99). He also co-directed Georgia 's Plan for Having a Qualified Teacher in Every Public School Classroom by 2006 for the University System Office of the Georgia P-16 Initiative from 1999 to 2001.
Pajak has written six books, and co-edited the Handbook of Research in School Supervision (1998), considered one of the most seminal books in the field of instructional supervision. He has also written 20 book chapters, 60 articles, five book reviews and countless research reports for school systems in Georgia.
Nationally, Pajak has been a leader in the field, serving as president and secretary/treasurer for the Council of Professors of Instructional Supervision and on the Board of Directors for the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. He has also served as a reviewer for such scholarly journals as the Review of Educational Research, the International Journal of Leadership in Education, the Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, Teaching and Teacher Education, and the American Educational Research Journal. In addition, he served on the editorial board of the Journal of Curriculum and Supervision.
In Georgia, Pajak served as university consultant for the Georgia Association of Curriculum and Instructional Supervisors (GACIS), on the Board of Directors for the Georgia Staff Development Council, on the Executive Board for the Georgia Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (GASCD), and president of GASCD. He also served on the Georgia Professional Standards Commission as a member of the Planning Team for Developing the Georgia Performance-Based Accreditation System and as a member of the Educational Leadership Task Force.
Pajak has received the Distinguished Research Award from the American Educational and Research Association's Instructional Supervision Special Interest Group. He also received the Outstanding Service Award from GACIS and the President's Leadership Award from GASCD. He was a Danforth-Johnson Scholar in the National Training Institute for Problem-Based Learning in Educational Administration and he received the Creative Research Medal from the UGA Research Foundation.
Excellence in Educational Leadership Award
J. Alvin Wilbanks and Gale Dugas Hulme received the 2004 and 2005 University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) Excellence in Educational Leadership Award. This prestigious national award from a consortium of higher education institutions recognizes practicing school adm inistrators who have made significant contributions to the improvement of administrator preparation.
Wilbanks, of Lawrenceville, has served as superintendent of Gwinnett County Public Schools since 1996. Prior to that, he was the school system's assistant superintendent of human resources and continuous improvement. Concurrently, he held the position of president of Gwinnett Technical College, the largest technical institute in Georgia, a school he opened as president in 1984. Wilbanks received his bachelor's and master's degrees of education at UGA.
Hulme, of Duluth, is program director for Georgia 's Leadership Institute for School Improvement (GLISI). She is the principal investigator for the institute's Wachovia Leadership Preparation Performance Coaching grant, a key component of GLISI's Rising Stars Program. Through Rising Stars, an alternative, performance-based leadership preparation initiative, GLISI engages leaders of higher education, districts and regional educational service agencies in collaboratives that are designed to develop a shared vision of performance-based leader preparation. Prior to that, Hulme made significant contributions to educational leadership while serving as executive director for professional development in Gwinnett County Public Schools. Hulme earned her bachelor's, master's, specialist and doctoral degrees in English Education.from UGA.
Friday, May 13, 2005
Writer: Katherine Dodd, 706/542-5889, katdodd@uga.edu
Contact: Sally Zepeda, 706/542-0408, szepeda@uga.edu