Each year, IAP sponsors the UCEA's "Master Professor Award." The UCEA Master Professor award is given to an individual faculty member whose record (as indicated by the following characteristics) is so distinguished that the UCEA must recognize this individual in a significant and timely manner.

We are pleased to announce that Diana Pounder of the University of Central Arkansas is this year's award winner.

Diana Pounder is College of Education Dean at the University of Central Arkansas and former Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Utah-Salt Lake City. She earned her PhD in Educational Administration from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has worked as a university professor and researcher for over 25 years, after working in public schools for 10 years as a high school math teacher, a secondary guidance counselor, and a middle school principal.

Dr. Pounder has been active and assumed leadership roles in national professional organizations, including past Educational Administration Quarterly Editor, President of the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA), Secretary of Division A of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and Co-Chair of the Joint UCEA, AERA-Division A, TEA-Sig Task Force on Leadership Preparation Effectiveness. She participates actively in a variety of state and national education and policy initiatives, the most recent of which have focused largely on improving and assessing school teacher and leader preparation. In recent years, she frequently serves on research advisory teams for various large-scale national research projects, including revision of the NCES SASS 2011 survey, the Clark County Nevada School Empowerment Study, and the Vanderbilt University VAL-ED Instrument Development and Validation project.

Dr. Pounder’s scholarship focuses primarily on building a more equitable and effective education profession to better serve all K-12 students. Her scholarship includes largely empirical studies using correlational and quasi-experimental designs, survey methods, and multivariate quantitative data analysis techniques. These works include largely empirical research on school leader preparation effectiveness, professor and principal shortages and job desirability, teacher work group effectiveness, distributed leadership, equity in personnel selection and compensation, and other interests related to attracting, retaining, motivating, and developing professional educators. Her research awards include the 1996 Davis Award for Outstanding EAQ article (co-authored with Rod Ogawa and Ann Adams), and both the Department of Educational Leadership research award and the College of Education research award from the University of Utah. Her scholarly publications appear in Educational Administration Quarterly, Journal of School Leadership, the Australian Journal of Education, Educational Leadership, the School Administrator, and other prominent academic publication outlets.