Professor Lorrie Shepard, interim dean of education at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has been elected president of the American Educational Research Association, the most prominent national and international organization devoted to advancing educational research.
AERA has more than 20,000 members including educators, behavioral scientists, administrators, and directors of research, testing and evaluation in federal, state and local agencies. Members come from disciplines including psychology, sociology, history, education, economics, philosophy, anthropology, statistics and political science.
AERA聮s annual meeting is attended by more than 11,000 registrants and is the world聮s largest gathering of scholars presenting the latest research on education issues and developments.
Shepard will serve as president for one year beginning with the 1999 annual meeting in Montreal. As president-elect she will begin making key committee appointments and appointing journal editors over the next year.
Shepard joined the CU-Boulder School of Education faculty in 1974 and was appointed interim dean in 1996. She is frequently cited as a national authority on K-12 standardized testing and kindergarten readiness. She also is known for her research on test validity and for documenting teaching-the-test practices that inflate test scores.
Shepard is a member of the National Academy of Education and has served as its vice president. She earned her doctorate from CU-Boulder in 1972.