This fall the Iowa Academy of Education inducted Susan Assouline and Don Yarbrough, professors in the University of Iowa College of Education’s Psychological and Quantitative Foundations Department, as new members for making significant scholarly contributions to the field of education.

Assouline and Yarbrough join 19 active scholars in the academy, whose mission is to inform educational policies and practices in Iowa through scholarly works and analysis of significant educational issues and trends.

The Iowa Academy of Education was created by the First In the Nation in Education (FINE) Foundation, a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving student learning through the use of educational research. Modeled on the National Academy of Education, the Iowa academy is believed to be the first such group at a state level and is designed to provide a forum where researchers from a range of fields can anticipate, address, and offer advice about Iowa’s educational needs.

Assouline is a professor in the School Psychology Program and associate director of the Connie Belin & Jacqueline N. Blank International Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development. She has earned national recognition for scholarly work in the areas of twice-exceptional learners, mathematically gifted elementary students, and academic acceleration policy.

Yarbrough is a professor in the Educational Measurement and Statistics Program and director of the Center for Evaluation and Assessment. He is nationally recognized for expertise in program evaluation, education performance evaluation, and evaluation standards.

The two new members will bring to 41 the total number of Iowa scholars inducted into the academy since 1995, nearly half of them from the UI College of Education.

UI faculty members previously inducted into the academy are: Professor David Bills, professor and associate dean for academic affairs and graduate programs; Robert L. Brennan, the E.F. Lindquist Chair of Measurement and Testing and director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Measurement and Assessment; Nicholas Colangelo, the Myron & Jacqueline Blank Professor of Gifted Education and director of the Belin-Blank International Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development; Douglas A. Grouws, professor emeritus of mathematics education; Brian Hand, professor of science education; Peter Hlebowitsh, professor of curriculum and supervision; Nancy Ewald Jackson, professor emeritus of educational psychology; David A. Jepsen, professor emeritus of counselor education; Michael Kolen, professor of educational measurement and statistics; David F. Lohman, professor of educational psychology and lead author of the CogAT Cognitive Abilities Test; James D. Marshall, professor of language and literacy education now at the University of Georgia; Ernest T. Pascarella, the Mary Louise Petersen Professor of Higher Education; Harold Schoen, professor emeritus of mathematics education; Robert E. Yager, professor emeritus of science education; and Steven R. Yussen, former dean of the UI College of Education, now at the University of Minnesota, was inducted as a charter member of the academy in 1996.

For more information about IAE, visit www.education.uiowa.edu/iae/.