Invited Keynote Speakers for Confratute 2009

More to Come! Check back soon.



Susan Baum Dr. Susan Baum is a professor at the College of New Rochelle. She spends much of her time writing, consulting, and teaching around the globe. Her books include Creativity 1,2,3; Chi Square, Pie Charts and Me; To Be Gifted and Learning Disabled: Strategies for Helping Bright Students with LD, ADHD, and More; Multiple Intelligences in the Elementary Classroom: A Teachers Toolkit; and Staying In Stepp: Nurturing the Social and Emotional Needs of Gifted Adolesecents. Her consulting takes her to exotic and not so exotic places around the world. From Zurich to Zimbabwe to Zagreb; from Colombia to Haiti to Nicaragua; from Prague to Helsinki to Estonia; from Malaysia to Shanghai to Eritrea; and from Oagadougou to Tegucigalpa to Cochabamba and Puerto Vallarta, you can find her spreading the word about twice exceptional students, talent development, differentiation, and stress management for adolescents.
John Brittain Dr. John C. Brittain is a professor of law at the University of the District of Columbia, David A. Clarke School of Law in Washington. Brittain formerly served as the Chief Counsel and Senior Deputy Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, DC, a 45 year old public interest legal organization started by President John F. Kennedy to enlist private lawyers to take pro bono civil rights cases. Brittain has served as the president of the National Lawyers’ Guild, on the Executive Committee and the Board of the ACLU, and legal counsel to NAACP at the local level and national office of the General Counsel. He received the NAACP’s highest honor for a lawyer, the coveted William Robert Ming Advocacy Award for legal service without a fee. He is a school desegregation specialist and one of the original counsel in Sheff v. O’Neill, a landmark case decided by the Connecticut Supreme Court in 1996. Finally, he has participated in the publication of two reports on judicial diversity. He has traveled extensively throughout the world on international human rights delegations in Africa, Central America, Middle East, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean and to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. He is the author of numerous articles and amici briefs in the United States Supreme Court.
Marcia Gentry Dr. Marcia Gentry is a UConn Ph.D. Graduate who has been coming to Confratute since 1988. She currently directs the Gifted Education Resource Institute at Purdue University, where she is Associate Professor in Educational Foundations and where she coordinates the graduate program in gifted education. Her work on Total School Cluster Grouping is widely recognized, and she recently completed a book on the topic with her colleague Rebecca Mann, also a UConn alumna. Marcia frequently contributes to the literature in her field and works with educators across the country on issues concerning gifted education and talent development. She serves NAGC on the program committee and AERA as the Secretary for the gifted SIG. She enjoys time with her husband and daughter, her Azteca mare, gardening, and collecting Navajo weavings.
E. Jean Gubbins Dr. E. Jean Gubbins is associate director of The National Research Center on the Gifted and (NRC/GT) and associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT. Dr. Gubbins is involved in research studies focusing on professional development and using gifted education pedagogy with all students, with a special emphasis on students with high abilities. Her research interests stem from prior involvement as a classroom teacher, teacher of gifted and talented students, evaluator, educational consultant, and professional developer. She teaches graduate level courses in gifted education and talent development related to identification, programming, curriculum development, and program evaluation.
Sandra Kaplan Dr. Sandra Kaplan is a Clinical Associate Professor at the Division of Learning and Instruction, University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Kaplan teaches the methods courses for the Multiple Subjects Teaching Credential. She is a consultant for several state departments and school districts nationwide on the topics of education for gifted students, differentiated curriculum in depth and complexity, and thematic interdisciplinarity.
Rachel McAnallen Rachel McAnallen, known simply as "Ms. Math" to children across the country, has devoted her life to sharing the joy and beauty of mathematics with learners of all ages. A professional educator for half a century, she travels the globe teaching her subject at every grade level. In addition to her experience in the classroom, Rachel has served as a department chair, a school board member, and a high school administrator—she claims the latter position is responsible for the majority of her gray hairs. Rachel has a passion for teaching, golf, and mathematical modular origami, though not always in that order. A life-long learner now pursuing her PhD at the University of Connecticut, Rachel approaches the world around her with a boundless curiosity and a playful sense of humor that is reflected in her teaching style. Her teaching philosophy exemplifies that mathematics is a language to be spoken, an art to be seen, a music to be heard and a dance to be performed.
Sally Reis Dr. Sally M. Reis is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor and Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut where she also serves as Principal Investigator of The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented. She was a teacher for 15 years, 11 of which were spent working with gifted students on the elementary, junior high, and high school levels. She has authored more than 100 articles, eight books, 30 book chapters, and numerous monographs and technical reports. She has traveled extensively across the country conducting workshops and providing professional development for school districts on enrichment programs and gender equity programs. She is co-author of The Schoolwide Enrichment Model, The Secondary Triad Model, Dilemmas in Talent Development in the Middle Years, and a new book published in 1998 about talent development in females entitled Work Left Undone: Choices and Compromises of Talented Females. Sally serves on the editorial board of the Gifted Child Quarterly, and is a past-president of The National Association for Gifted Children.
Joseph Renzulli Dr. Joseph S. Renzulli is a professor of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut, where he also serves as director of The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented. His research has focused on the identification and development of creativity and giftedness in young people, and on organizational models and curricular strategies for total school improvement. A focus of his work has been on applying the strategies of gifted education to the improvement of learning for all students.

Dr. Renzulli is Fellow in the American Psychological Association and he was a consultant to the White House Task Force on Education of the Gifted and Talented. He was recently designated a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor at the University of Connecticut. Although Dr. Renzulli has obtained more than $20 million in research grants, he lists as his proudest professional accomplishments the UConn Mentor Connection program for gifted young students and the summer Confratute program at UConn, which began in 1978, and has served thousands of teachers and administrators from around the world.
Del Siegle Dr. Del Siegle is an associate professor of educational psychology in the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut. Prior to earning his PhD, Del worked as a gifted and talented coordinator in Montana. He is currently President of the National Association for Gifted Children and sits on the board of the Association for the Gifted. He authors a technology column for Gifted Child Today and is coeditor of the Journal of Advanced Academics. Del's research interests include web-based instruction, motivation of gifted students, and teacher bias in the identification of students for gifted programs.