WASHINGTON, D.C., April 2, 2019—Shaun Harper, a Provost Professor in the Rossier School of Education and Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, has been voted president-elect of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Harper is also the Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership, founder and executive director of the USC Race and Equity Center, and a past president of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE). He joins AERA Council this year as president-elect. His presidency begins at the conclusion of the 2020 Annual Meeting.

For two decades, Harper has studied racial and gender equity in K-12 schools, colleges and universities, and corporate contexts. He has conducted pioneering, large-scale qualitative studies on academically successful Black and Latino male students in traditional public high schools and postsecondary institutions. Scholars around the world and across numerous disciplines have adapted his Anti-Deficit Achievement Framework in their studies of populations for which hopeless, one-sided narratives exist.

Data from qualitative racial climate studies that Harper has conducted on dozens of campuses across the United States since 2004 informed the development of the National Assessment of Collegiate Campus Climates (NACCC), the quantitative survey his center launched in September 2018. The NACCC has been administered to more than a quarter-million undergraduates at community colleges and four-year postsecondary institutions across the country this year.

“Black Lives in Urban Schools,” is the title of the music album on which Harper is presently working. As executive producer, he is engaging Black girls, boys, and gender-queer teen artists from Los Angeles public schools in writing and professionally recording songs about their educational realities and expectations. Once the album is complete, Harper and USC Rossier students will develop curricula and listening guides for educators and students in urban K–12 districts across the nation.

Harper is an AERA Fellow and recipient of the 2014 AERA Relating Research to Practice Award. He received early career awards from AERA’s Division J and ASHE. The American Council on Education, the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, and the American College Personnel Association have presented him with 10 of their most prestigious awards. In addition, he has earned four awards for outstanding teaching and student mentoring at USC.

Upon becoming AERA president in 2020, Harper will succeed Vanessa Siddle Walker, the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of African American Educational Studies at Emory University. Walker will assume the AERA presidency on April 9, 2019, at the close of the Association’s annual meeting in Toronto.

Key Members Elected to AERA Council

Along with voting Harper president-elect, members elected several new AERA Council representatives.

Council Members-at-Large

Two prominent scholars were elected to member-at-large positions on the AERA Council, commencing in 2019–2020. They will serve three-year terms.

  • Sylvia Hurtado, University of California, Los Angeles
  • Okhee Lee, New York University

Division Vice Presidents-Elect

Four education researchers were voted as division vice presidents-elect and will join AERA’s 2020–2021 Council, following the 2020 Annual Meeting. They will serve three-year terms.

  • Division B: Curriculum Studies
    Isabel Nuñez, Purdue University Fort Wayne
     
  • Division F: History and Historiography
    Katrina M. Sanders, University of Iowa
     
  • Division G: Social Context of Education
    Jerome E. Morris, University of Missouri-St. Louis
     
  • Division H: Research, Evaluation, and Assessment in Schools
    Bradley J. McMillen, Wake County Public School System

Special Interest Group (SIG) Executive Committee

Kakali Bhattacharya, Kansas State University, was voted chair-elect of the SIG Executive Committee and will join the AERA Council in 2020-2021.

Graduate Student Council

Tessa Johnson, a doctoral student at the University of Maryland, was voted chair-elect of the Graduate Student Council and will join the AERA Council in 2020-2021.

About AERA
The American Educational Research Association (AERA) is the largest national interdisciplinary research association devoted to the scientific study of education and learning. Founded in 1916, AERA advances knowledge about education, encourages scholarly inquiry related to education, and promotes the use of research to improve education and serve the public good. Find AERA on FacebookTwitter, and Instagram.

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