The Academy for Academic Leadership (AAL)
is a collaborative of scholars, educational specialists, and consultants providing services that help academic leaders pursue educational excellence, the application of knowledge, the discovery of ideas, and the quest of lifelong learning. The AAL team strives to build long-term relationships based on superior service, mutual trust, and intellectual inspiration. The AAL team below focuses on professional development and consulting services.

Karl HadenN. Karl Haden, Ph.D.
Dr. Haden is the founder and President of the Academy for Academic Leadership. Since its founding in 2006, the Academy for Academic Leadership has worked with nearly 100 higher education institutions and associations through faculty development programs and consulting services. Dr. Haden’s consultation and faculty development activities have included clients from dentistry, pharmacy, veterinary medicine, allied health, and medicine. Dr. Haden’s areas of expertise include leadership development, organizational change, team building, strategic planning, curriculum development and the scholarship of teaching and learning. He served as Associate Executive Director and Director of the Center for Educational Policy and Research at the American Dental Education Association (ADEA). He continues to direct the ADEA Leadership Institute, a premier leadership development program in health professions education. Dr. Haden regularly presents to organizations on issues and trends in higher education, health professions education, and policy-related matters in higher education. In the past 10 years, he has made over 250 presentations to groups in higher education. Dr. Haden has authored or coauthored over 70 articles and monographs in educational policy. In 2006, Dr. Haden received an ADEA Presidential Citation for his contributions to dental education and the profession of dentistry.

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Judith E. N. AlbinoJudith E. N. Albino, Ph.D.
Dr. Albino has served as president of two higher education systems, the University of Colorado, a public research university, and Alliant International University, a private nonprofit university with multiple campuses in California, Mexico and Kenya. Her higher education experience also includes service at the dean and vice-presidential levels, and she has spent more than twenty-five years as a faculty member in schools of dentistry and medicine, as well as departments of psychology and educational psychology. She received her baccalaureate and doctoral degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and the Certificate in Professional Coaching from the Zicklin School of Business of Baruch College, City University of New York. Dr. Albino’s leadership has extended to community and nonprofit groups, and she has served on corporate and civic boards. She also has been an officer and served on governance groups of numerous professional organizations, including the American Psychological Association and the Federation of Psychological, Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences; the American Association for Dental Research; the American Council on Education; the National Collegiate Athletics Association; and the Society of Psychologists in Management, a group which she recently served as president. Dr. Albino’s research in behavioral aspects of health and disease has been supported by the NIDCR and has resulted in numerous scientific publications and presentations. More recently, her work at the University of Colorado has focused on health disparities. At AAL, she works extensively in the areas of planning and evaluation, leadership and board development, and executive coaching.

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Cynthia C. AmyotCynthia C. Amyot, B.S.D.H., Ed.D.
Dr. Amyot is Professor and Director, Distance Education and Faculty Development, University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), School of Dentistry. Dr. Amyot has been a full-time faculty member at UMKC since 1993, serving three years as Director of Graduate and Degree Completion Studies and five years as Director of the Division of Dental Hygiene. Dr. Amyot developed online degree programs for graduate and degree completion studies during her tenure as director. She teaches at all levels of the curriculum; predoctoral, graduate and undergraduate. Dr. Amyot’s areas of expertise include educational methodologies, ethics, special issues in higher education and distance education and technology. Dr. Amyot has received numerous distinguished teaching awards from the School of Dentistry and recently was the recipient of the university wide Elmer Pierson Outstanding Teaching Award. She has published in several peer-reviewed journals (Gadbury-Amyot). Her research interests include: portfolio assessment of student competency, community-based service-learning, access to care and oral health-related quality of life. She served as Chair of the Council on Research for the American Dental Hygienists’ Association for several years. Dr. Amyot served as an educational consultant for the American Dental Association Commission on Dental Accreditation for over ten years. She has held several offices in the UMKC Alumni Association and served on numerous committees throughout the university. She recently was named the recipient of the 2007 ADEA/William J. Gies Foundation Education Fellowship.

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JoAnn Petty BreschJoAnn Petty Bresch, M.A.
For more than 23 years JoAnn Petty Bresch served in leadership positions for two national medical specialty societies: the American College of Radiology (ACR) and the Society of Breast Imaging (SBI). As Senior Director for ACR, she was responsible for graduate and continuing medical education programs for 30,000+ members. As a facilitator and consensus builder she identified and consulted with specialists in the medical community in the design of educational programs with defined objectives and measurable outcomes. She was instrumental in the development of a ground-breaking self-assessment examination in Mammography and received a national film award for Best in the Technical-Scientific category from the International Health and Medical Film Festival. She has taught on national faculties and is published in peer-reviewed literature. She consulted and interacted with stakeholders at the American Cancer Society, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, Food and Drug Administration and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, as well as with a variety of organizations that accredit medical education programs. From 1995 to 1999 she served as Executive Director to SBI, an organization whose 2000 members are Board Certified in Radiology with a special interest in Breast Imaging. She received her Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University. Ms. Bresch is directing the AAL's Athena Society.

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William L. ClarkeWilliam L. Clarke, M.B.A.
William L. (Bill) Clarke has more than thirty years of concentrated experience in entrepreneurial management and top tier management consulting. As an entrepreneur, Bill built an international retail systems company whose trade name became and remains a generic term in the retail industry. As a consultant, Bill focused on business planning, strategy and systems development as a partner with The Garr Consulting Group in Atlanta, the retail industry’s leading logistics consulting firm. He also served as the marketing and strategy development partner. The firm grew from 10 to over 100 professionals and was positioned for acquisition by Touche Ross (now Deloitte Touche). Following the acquisition, Bill was recruited by Ernst & Young, another Big 8 firm, to manage their national retail practice. During his consulting career he has managed hundreds of major consulting engagements for some of the leading firms in the Fortune 500. After retiring from Ernst & Young, he continued to consult in business planning, strategy development, organizational structure, management process, business startups, turnaround management, marketing, meeting facilitation and executive mentoring. In addition, he took on several interim management assignments in the CEO role for troubled or turnaround companies. Bill has served on a number of for profit and not-for-profit boards. As an avocation, Bill has been an adjunct professor of marketing for The Ohio State University system and more recently with Brewton-Parker, a smaller denominational college in Georgia. As a senior consultant working from the Academy for Academic Leadership’s Atlanta offices, Bill’s primary areas of focus include strategic planning, implementation planning and project management, and marketing.

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William D. HendricsonWilliam D. Hendricson, M.S., M.A.
William Hendricson has been a consultant in health professions education for 35 years starting with the University of Illinois Medical Center, Chicago where he was Director of Instructional Development for six years. He is currently the Director of Educational Research and Development at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio where he has directed the year-long University Teaching Excellence Course since 1997 and the TEXAS Faculty Development Program since 2001 (Teaching EXcellence and Academic Skills). He has been a consultant to 150 universities and associations, including 45 dental schools, in faculty development, curriculum, teaching best practices, evaluation and grant writing. He has published 94 articles, monographs and chapters on health professions education, has been the Principal Investigator on seven educational research projects funded by foundations and was educational director on eight federally funded training or program development grants. Prof. Hendricson is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Dental Education and from 1996 to 2005 directed a year-long Research and Grantsmanship Fellowship for the North American Primary Care Research Group. Bill Hendricson serves as Director of Educational Programs for the Academy for Academic Leadership.

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Paige MetzgerPaige Metzger, M.B.A.
Paige Metzger has worked as a Financial Analyst for four years and in the marketing field for over 10 years. Working in IBM as a Financial Analyst in the Sales and Distribution Division, she supported a staff of over 1,500 and created and managed an annual expense budget of $200M within the Software Division. She has worked for IBM Business partners as a Channels Communications Manager and Marketing Specialist where she helped design the first company website, developed databases for 500 IBM Resellers, and designed, managed and edited all marketing materials. She was awarded the Bravo Award for outstanding customer support and the Merchandise Award for providing unprecedented support to the S/390 organization within IBM, one of the largest organizations within the Sales and Distribution Division. In addition to her marketing activities at the Academy for Academic Leadership, she is currently working part time on her own business, Metzger’s Designs. She has an M.B.A. and a B.S. in Marketing from Clemson University.

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Paula N. O'NeillPaula N. O’Neill, M.Ed., Ed.D.
Dr. O’Neill has served in a variety of academic faculty and leadership roles in health science education for more than more than twenty-five years with the University of Texas System. Since she began her career she has served as a director of multiple departments and offices, been a department vice chair, and medical educator. She is currently a tenured professor of Diagnostic Sciences and the Associate Dean for Educational Research and Professional Development (OPD) at The University of Texas Health Science Center Dental Branch at Houston. Dr. O’Neill has consulted internationally and nationally with over eighty institutions and presented more than 150 invited seminars and workshops on the topics of faculty development and evaluation; developing leadership capacity; teaching and learning; the development of scholarship for faculty; faculty mentoring; planning for, developing and evaluating curricular change; team-based learning; becoming culturally competent; matching teaching styles to generational differences; and cultural competency. She has published nationally on faculty development and educational research in peer-reviewed journals, served two terms on the Editorial Review Boards of the Journal of Dental Education and on Computers in Nursing and chaired two NIH study sections. Her work on mentoring and faculty development has been recognized by ADEA as “best practices.” She is a 2002 graduate of the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) Program for Women from M. C. P. Hahnemann University and received The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston President’s Award for Mentoring Women in 2006. She has been the principal investigator for eight educational research grants, co-director for eight foundation or corporate grants, and is currently the principal investigator the four-year Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Summer Medical and Dental Education Program (SMDEP) and also for the Health Resources Service Administration (HRSA)-funded Hispanic Center of Excellence.

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Pam OvermanPam Overman, Ed.D., R.D.H.
Dr. Overman is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at UMKC School of Dentistry. Her teaching background includes oral health education and health promotion, educational methods for health professional faculty, and evidence based decision making. She currently teaches evidence based decision making methods to third year dental students and cross cultural communication to first year dental students. Her administrative responsibilities include faculty development. She brings to the program a wealth of experience in helping practitioners make the transition to their roles as new faculty. Dr. Overman received her B.S. in dental hygiene from UMKC School of Dentistry, her M.S. degree from UMKC’s School of Graduate Studies, and in 2001, a doctoral degree in education policy and leadership at the University of Kansas. Her professional service has included numerous positions of national leadership including chair of the ADEA’s National Dental Hygiene Directors, chair of ADEA’s Council of Allied Program Directors, and American Dental Hygienist’s Association Commissioner on Dental Accreditation. She is currently chair-elect of ADEA’s Section on Academic Affairs as well as a peer reviewer for the Journal of Contemporary Dental Practice, the Journal of Dental Education and the Journal of Dental Hygiene.

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Richard R. RanneyRichard R. Ranney, D.D.S., M.S
Since his first faculty appointment in 1969, Dr. Ranney has held faculty positions in four dental schools, and served as an advanced dental education program director, department chairman, assistant dean and dean. He was Dean of the University of Alabama-Birmingham Dental School and the University of Maryland Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, Dental School. He was continuously funded as a Principal Investigator on NIH research and training grants from 1970 to 1986 and was the Principal Investigator for one of the first specialized clinical research centers funded by NIDR in 1978. He is an author of more than 150 publications and has made 180 presentations nationally and internationally. Dr. Ranney served as President of both the American and International Associations for Dental Research. He is a Fellow of the American and International Colleges of Dentists and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He served on the editorial boards of five journals, and was an inaugural member of the Oral Health Advisory Committee for the State of Maryland. Among his academic honors are the Balint Orban Prize from the American Academy of Periodontology, the Basic Research in Periodontal Disease Award from the IADR, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Buenos Aires.

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Richard R. RanneyGeorge Weinstein, M.B.A.
George Weinstein has over a decade of experience in administration, project management, and marketing, working for companies such as Westinghouse, Lucent Technologies, and ARRIS. He has managed projects involving teams in the U.S., Mexico, the U.K., The Netherlands, Israel, India, and Taiwan. In recent years, he has written and edited numerous health-related articles and features, and created marketing collateral for placement in national trade publications. George is also an author with publishing credits in books and periodicals. In his spare time, he volunteers for two educational non-profits, promoting children’s interest in aviation and increasing opportunities for Atlanta-area writers. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a B.A. and holds an M.B.A. from Virginia Tech as well as a Masters Certificate in project management from the Stevens Institute of Business..

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