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Board
of Directors Candidates
David
Baker | Thomas Clayton
| Macleans Geo-Jaja |
Mary Ann Maslak | Diane
Napier | Jim Williams|
 David
Baker (Pennsylvania State University)
has been involved with CIES since the late 1980s, regularly presenting
papers at the annual meetings and publishing in
the Society’s journal Comparative Education
Review. He has served on two program committees
for CIES annual meetings, as well as writing a special
CIES committee’s report on ways to increase
the prominence of CIES among international and American
policy-makers. His scholarship focuses on the question:
How does education as an institution influence and
shape society? David has employed a number of comparative
strategies to answer this question, including historical
analyses of education expansion, cross-national
quantitative assessment of school organization and
achievement, and qualitative case study of how local
and global cultural forces shape ideologies of education.
A recent example of his scholarship is National
Differences, Global Similarities: World Culture
and the Future of Mass Schooling, (with G. LeTendre)
Stanford University Press, 2005. Also he is often
involved in the development of large cross-national
studies of education such as IEA and OECD-PISA projects.
David write that It would be a great honor to serve
as a board member of the CIES. He owes a lot of
his career development to the collegial contacts
and intellectual support that he has received over
the years as a member of the Society. He feels
it is essential that CIES maintain and deepen its
role in developing the next generation of comparative
scholars of education. The key to this is an inclusive
and collegial professional association. The social
and international diversity of CIES strengthens
its unique charter and ensures its intellectual
vitality.
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 Thomas
Clayton (University of Kentucky)
has been a member of CIES since the early 1990s,
when he entered the program in comparative education
at the University of Pittsburgh. Clayton received
his Ph.D. in 1995. He has attended, organized
panels for, and given papers at most conferences
since joining the Society. In recent years, he
has been active in committee work for CIES. He
served on the Gail Kelly Outstanding Dissertation
Award Committee in 2002, and he chaired this committee
in 2003. This year, he is chairing the committee
that presents the Kelly, George Bereday, and Joyce
Cain Awards for comparative education scholarship.
As a scholar, Clayton pursues his interest in
language and educational policy issues as an associate
professor of English and linguistics at the University
of Kentucky. He has written two books on language
and education in Cambodia. The first appeared
in the “Studies in Comparative Education”
series published by the Comparative Education
Research Centre at the University of Hong Kong;
the second will be published in Kluwer’s/Springer’s
“Language Policy” series. Beyond language,
he is interested in conceptualizations of the
world, and he has shared his evolving understanding
of these conceptions with Society members in two
articles in the Comparative Education Review,
in November 1998 and August 2004. As a CIES board
member, Clayton would continue efforts begun as
chair of Society committees to encourage the participation
of diverse members in CIES activities. He would
also work to support the increasing interest among
Society members in language policy scholarship
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 Macleans
A. Geo-JaJa (Bringham Young University)
is an Associate Professor of economics and education
at Brigham Young University, where he chair’s
the masters program in Educational Leadership
and Development Education. Geo-JaJa previously
served on the faculty at the University of Utah,
and University of Port Harcourt. His research
interests focus on economics of education, and
education reforms that connect equity, equality,
and nation-building. Geo-JaJa has published numerous
research articles and has contributed chapters
to the International Handbook of Research on
Globalization, Education and Policy Research and
has two books forthcoming. He serves as co-editor
of two volumes of Kluwer book series on Globalization
and Comparative Education, and serves on several
International editorial boards, including World
Studies in Education. Geo-JaJa’s activities
in over eights years of membership within CIES
include Chair of UREAG, member travel grant committee,
reviewer Conference proposals, chair and discussant,
chair of Technical Advisory Panels, and facilitated
the inclusion of new Special Interest Groups in
CIES committees. Geo-JaJa’s vision is to
expand public awareness of CIES research contributions
on what best promotes education for economic development,
and for freedom and human dignity. As a board
member, he will undertake the initiative to enhance
research rigor while maintaining the explanatory
power that comes from multiple perspectives, and
seek ways to make research more relevant to policy
and practice. He will encourage Special Interest
Groups involvement in these goals and will help
shape Conference programs to gain wider attention
of and respect from the public, and policy makers.
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 Mary
Ann Maslak (St. John's University)
has been a member of the Comparative and International
Education Society since 1997. She received her
Ph.D. from Pennsylvania University in 1999. Regular
conference attendance, active reserach in South
and East Asia, and university classroom teaching
provide the foundation for her current interest
in serving CIES as a board member. Mary Ann regularly
presents papers at CIES and international conferences.
She has served as the Chair of the CIES Gender and
Education committee from 2001-2004. During the 2004
conference, the committee sponsored a symposium
entitled "Examining the Social, Cultural and
Political Contexts of Gender and Education."
The symposium addressed the impact of both agency
and structure on participation in education, and
propose viable and innovative strategies for achieving
gender parity in education for females. Maslak is
an Assistant Professor of Education in the Early
Childhood, Childhood and Adolescent Education program
at St. John's. She teaches courses in the areas
of educational foundations and the sociology of
education. Her research interests include examinations
of educational stratification in South and East
Asia. Her book, "Daughters of the Tharu: Gender,
Ethnicity, Religion and the Education of Nepali
Girls" was published by Routledge/Falmer Press
in 2003. Maslak maintains that one of the profoundly
unique and fundamentally important aspects of the
Comparative and International Education Society
is its diverse membership. Maslak hopes to uphold
the mission of this CIES community by serving on
the Board.
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 Diane
Brook Napier (University of Georgia)
joined CIES in 1991-2 and has participated regularly
since then. She pursued undergraduate study in South
Africa, her home country. She received her doctorate
in 1992 from the University of Georgia with a dissertation
on postcolonial educational reform and in Zambia,
Zimbabwe, and Botswana. She is an Associate Professor
and a member of the Institute of African Studies
at UGA. She teaches courses in comparative and international
education, environmental justice, immigrants/migrants/refugees,
cultural politics of postcolonial education, African
development, schools and society, and social studies
methods and curriculum for teachers. Her research,
consultation and training activities, and publications
focus on educational reform in developing countries,
particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, and especially
South Africa. She examines issues of policy versus
practice in educational transformation, race, environmental
conservation versus development, and language rights
and policy. She has consistently recruited her own
graduate students and international students to
join CIES as new scholars, to benefit from the CIES
community. She was a co-organizer of the group within
CIES proposing a Language Issues interest group
as a forum for professional exchange on language
issues through organized sessions of papers and
a bi-annual newsletter. She writes: “CIES has
been my primary intellectual home and inspiration
for research in a truly international supportive
community of scholars. I would relish the opportunity
to serve on the Board to argue for Language Issues
having a recognized place in CIES, and to help promote
international inclusive participation and interdisciplinary
scholarship in the Society."
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 Jim
Williams (George Washington University)
currently directs the International Education Program
at The George Washington University, where he has
taught since 1998. Previous to that, he taught
educational research and evaluation at Ohio University,
where he served as Director of the Center for Higher
Education & International Programs. As AAAS
Fellow in USAID, Jim provided analysis, research,
and technical support of the Agency’s basic
education programs in sub-Saharan Africa. He served
as editor of The FORUM for Advancing Basic Education
and Literacy at the Harvard Institute for International
Development, and, prior to doctoral work, taught
at Obirin University, Tokyo. He received his doctorate
from Harvard University in 1994, where he specialized
in educational policy and planning in developing
countries. Jim has worked in a number of countries,
in Asia Africa and has written broadly on educational
reform processes, the role of education in conflict,
and policies to improve equity. A CIES member since
1990, Jim has helped organize two national CIES
conferences and one regional meeting. He has served
as faculty advisor on four doctoral workshops sponsored
by the Society and has attended every annual meeting
since 1989. As CIES Board member, he would like
to work primarily toward three objectives: an increased
support and role for graduate students in the Society,
especially at the annual meeting; increased use
of electronic means to support dialogue among Society
members between meetings; and greater contact between
CIES and sister comparative education societies
throughout the world, especially in poorer countries.
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