Our advisory board members provide the conference planners with suggestions on conference topics and presenters, and serve as the proposal review committee.
Marilyn J. Amey
Interim Associate Provost for Faculty and Academic Staff Development
Endowed Chair, Professor and Department Chair of Educational Administration
Michigan State University
Marilyn Amey is a professor of higher, adult, and lifelong education. In 2017, she was appointed as the Dr. Mildred B. Erickson Distinguished Chair in Higher, Adult and Lifelong Education. She studies educational partnerships, particularly those of community colleges, leadership, including how leaders learn, post-secondary governance and administration, and faculty concerns, including interdisciplinary academic work. Her current work focuses on education partnerships including a multi-year evaluation of a multiple- institutional interdisciplinary consortium and factors affecting student transfer and degree attainment.
Fred Burrack
Director of Assessment and Chair of Graduate Studies in Music
Kansas State University
Frederick Burrack is Director of Assessment, Professor of Music Education, Graduate Chair for Music, Distinguished Graduate Faculty. He joined the Kansas State music faculty as a music education specialist in Fall 2005. Burrack taught instrumental music education at Ball State University from 2002-2005 and instrumental music in the Carroll Community School District in Carroll, Iowa from 1982-2002. He has served as the Chair for the National Association for Music Education Assessment Special Research Interest Group and as Co-Chair for their work in developing Model Cornerstone Assessments that accompany the National K-12 Music Standards.
Katherine Frank
Chancellor
University of Wisconsin – Stout
Katherine Frank is the eighth chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Stout. Before her appointment as chancellor, Frank served from 2016 in two roles at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Wash., as provost and vice president of Academic and Student Life and vice president of Academic Innovation. She also held the rank of professor of English.
From summer 2014 until spring 2016, she was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Northern Kentucky University. Frank served as dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at Indiana University East, chair of English and Foreign Languages at Colorado State University-Pueblo, and a faculty member and administrator of programs involving student writing, faculty professional development, and student success. Frank, the first female leader of UW-Stout, grew up in Colorado and has a bachelor’s degree in English from Bates College, Lewiston, Maine. She has master’s and doctorate degrees in English from the University of Washington, Seattle. Her research interests include Romantic and Victorian English literature, rhetoric and composition, the scholarship of teaching, and academic leadership.
Kristi Haik
Dean, School of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics
Grand Rapids Community College
Kristi Haik holds a Ph.D. in Applied Experimental Psychology with a Neuroscience Concentration from Central Michigan University. In 2005, she became a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Northern Kentucky University where she became professor and chair of the department. In July 2016, she became dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Ferris State University. Haik left academia in 2020 to become the senior director of fund development for Girl Scouts of Michigan Shore to Shore. In 2022 she was named dean of the School of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics at Grand Rapids Community College.
Haik has presented invited talks and research on over 100 different occasions including national and international events such as the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting and the American Society for Neural Therapy and Repair. She is author of several peer reviewed journal articles in Experimental Neurology, Journal of Nanomaterials, Journal of Neuroscience Methods, and The Department Chair as well as book chapters. She has also received over 6.8 million dollars in grant funding from agencies including the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Christian K. Hansen
Professor and Chair, Department of Mathematics
Eastern Washington University
Christian K. Hansen is department chair and professor of statistics in the Department of Mathematics at Eastern Washington University and served as president of the IEEE Reliability Society (2014-2016). He has been a faculty member at EWU since 1993 and served in a variety of academic and administrative leadership positions including associate dean of CSTEM and director of the School of Computing and Engineering Sciences. Hansen has been active in the statistics and reliability engineering profession for over 30 years and published broadly on a variety of applications involving data derived from engineering systems. He is a frequently invited keynote speaker at international engineering conferences, and has given keynotes on such topics as big data, internet of things, and data management. He is also the author of the book Time Management for Department Chairs (Jossey-Bass, 2011) and frequently provides training and workshops for academic department chairs.
N. Douglas Lees
Chair Emeritus – Biology
Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis
N. Douglas Lees served as chair of the biology department for 18 years and also held the title of adjunct professor of Biomedical Engineering at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). He was formerly the associate dean for planning and finance in the School of Science at IUPUI. In this position, Lees worked with the dean in the allocation of faculty, staff and other personnel lines and financial, facility and program resources. He also assisted with annual budget planning and assessment as well as fiscal policy development.
Domenick J. Pinto
Director, MSCSIT Graduate Program
Sacred Heart University
Domenick Pinto has been director of The Master’s in Computer Science and Information Technology program at Sacred Heart University since 1998. He has been with Sacred Heart University for 47 years and for 29 of them served as chair of the computer science department. In addition, he was the director of the School of Computing for two years (2016-2018). He has been active in the faculty governance organization (University Academic Assembly) and three times served as president the Assembly. Pinto has presented or developed over 55 workshops for conferences since 1987 and published numerous articles in the Department Chair Journal.
He has presented numerous times at the Academic Chairperson’s Conference, CIC, SIGCSE, ACM, CAUSE, and Academic Impressions workshops as well as the Academic Leadership Conference. In addition, he has received numerous awards for teaching, technology and service from Sacred Heart University and Florida State Teaching and Learning conferences.
Daniel Wheeler
Professor Emeritus
Former Head of Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication
University of Nebraska – Lincoln
Daniel (Dan) Wheeler is professor emeritus of Leadership Studies and former head of the Department of Ag Leadership, Education and Communications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Previously he was coordinator of the Office of Professional and Organizational Development at UNL. He has degrees from Antioch College, Cornell and SUNYAB. Wheeler has made numerous contributions to faculty development, chairing departments and leadership. He is author of the 2012 Jossey-Bass book Servant Leadership for Higher Education: Principles and Practices.