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R. Keith Sawyer, Ph.D.

Keith Sawyer, Ph.D., a professor of psychology, education and business at Washington University in St. Louis, is one of the world's leading scientific experts on creativity and improvisation. He combines this scientific expertise with a strong hands-on background in real-world creativity. After receiving his computer science degree from MIT in 1982, he began his career with a two-year stint designing videogames for Atari. In 1990, Sawyer began his doctoral studies in psychology, where he studied creativity with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of the books "Flow and "Creativity." After receiving his Ph.D. in 1994, Sawyer has dedicated his career to research on collaboration and group creativity. He has been a jazz pianist for more than 20 years, and spent several years playing piano with Chicago improv theater groups.

His 2007 book "Group Genius" draws on his research of jazz and improv theater to show readers how to be more creative in collaborative group settings and how to change organizations for the better. "Group Genius" is his 10th book; others include "Explaining Creativity" and "Improvised Dialogues." He has published more than 50 scientific articles.
Sawyer is frequently interviewed on television and radio.

Stanley Madeja, Ph.D.

Stanley Madeja holds a Ph.D. in art and art education from the University of Minnesota. He was dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Northern Illinois University, head of the Division of Art Education, and currently serves as professor of art and education emeritus. He is principal of the design group Madeja and Associates and is an metals artist/craftsman. Madeja has authored, co-authored and edited numerous articles and books on the arts and arts education. His most recent work examines electronic portfolios as assessment instruments, summarized in the text "Assessing Expressive Learning."

Madeja administered a nonprofit corporation outside of higher education, in which he directed programs related to education and the arts such as the initial Arts in General Education Project of the John D. Rockefeller the 3rd Fund, the Aesthetic Education National Endowment for the Arts. His research in evaluation and test development started with a comprehensive review of exiting tests in the visual arts and creativity. As director of the Aesthetic Education Program, he pioneered controlled classroom observations as an evaluation technique to facilitate the development of educational materials in the arts and aesthetics. Madeja also acted as an outside evaluator of art programs in higher education at institutions such as The Ohio State University, University of South Carolina and the University of British Columbia. He has been in arts administration and arts consulting since 1967, and was a part of the United States Office of Education as the research specialist in the visual arts and arts and humanities.

F. Robert Sabol, Ph.D.

Robert Sabol, Ph.D., is a professor of visual and performing arts at Purdue University, chair of art education, and former chair of the division of art and design. His research interests include assessment, multiculturalism, gifted and talented education, curriculum development, and professional development of art educators. He has given more than 150 presentations of his research at state, national and international conferences and conventions. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S. Department of Education and the National Art Education Foundation to support his research.

Sabol has published numerous articles in professional journals and is co-author of "Assessing Expressive Learning." He conducted a secondary analysis of data from the 1997 National Assessment of Educational Progress in Art for the U.S. Department of Education and studies the assessment of digital portfolios in the visual arts and the affects of incorporating language arts into visual arts learning. Currently he is conducting a national study about the impact of No Child Left Behind on art education programs across the United States. He has served on the editorial boards of several scholarly journals and has received numerous awards for his research and teaching, including the National Art Education Association Manual Barkan Memorial Award, NAEA Western Region Higher Education Division Art Educator of the Year, Art Education Association of Indiana Distinguished Fellow, and twice received the Purdue University Excellence in Teaching Award. He has been vice president of the NAEA and president of the NAEA public policy and arts administration issues group.

Leslie Cunliffe

Leslie Cunliffe is a senior lecturer at the School of Education and Lifelong Learning, University of Exeter, where he runs the post-graduate course in art education. He also has taught studio-based art, art history and critical theory, and has conducted research on art education for the British government.

Cunliffe has authored several chapters and exhibited paintings and drawings at a number of venues, including the Royal Academy of Art, the Royal Exchange and the Edinburgh Festival. In the last year, he has published an article on painting in the Encyclopaedia of Communication, an article on interdisciplinary creativity using ICT and a creative partner in the International Journal of Education through Art, and an article on assessment and nurturing knowledge-rich creativity in Innovations in Education and Teaching International. His chapter in "The Problem with Assessment in Art and Design" explores the role of assessment as a practice for nurturing strategic intelligence in art education.

Recently, Cunliffe's research has focused on the problem of nihilism and the importance of meaningful differences for sustaining quality in art education. Other research interests include: cognitive and sociocultural processes and art education; assessment and art education; declarative and procedural forms of knowledge and art education; forms of creativity and art education; ethical responsibility and art education; the technological understanding of being; and the art curriculum. His research draws on the overlapping features of Gombrich's and Wittgenstein's work. His work recently has appeared in the Oxford Review of Education, Journal of Aesthetic Education, Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology, Journal of Empirical Aesthetics, and the International Journal of Art and Design Education.

J. Joseph Hoey IV, Ed.D.

Joseph Hoey, Ed.D., is vice president for institutional effectiveness at the Savannah College of Art and Design. His responsibilities include regional and specialized accreditation, strategic planning, assessment of student learning, institutional research and academic program review. Hoey is past president of the Southern Association for Institutional Research, chair-elect of the Association for Institutional Research Professional Development Services Committee, and a frequent speaker on assessment, evaluation and accreditation issues at conferences nationwide. He has served as workshop presenter for the SACS Commission on Colleges annual meeting since 1999 and as an invited presenter at the SACS Summer Institute since 2003. He serves on accreditation reaffirmation teams for SACS and WASC. His background includes eight years as founding director of the Georgia Institute of Technology office of assessment, five years in university planning and analysis at NC State University and seven years in the North Carolina Community College System. His published research encompasses engineering program assessment, graduate program assessment, academic program review, building trust in assessment processes, alumni and employer feedback, validating student engagement research, community college transfer, developing online assessment data management systems and evaluation of online academic programs.

Hoey's first career was as a classical guitarist, which included four years as a visiting artist in the North Carolina Visiting Artist Program, two years on the North Carolina Arts Council Touring Program, recording a CD for Liscio Recordings, and performing at venues such as the Kennedy Center.