Executive Director
Previous Executive Directors
Dr. Tracy L. Cross
Dr. Tracy L. Cross held the endowed chair, the Jody and Layton Smith Professor of Psychology and Gifted
Education and was the Executive Director of the Center for Gifted Education at William & Mary until his retirement in July 2024.
Previously, he served Ball State University as the George and Frances Ball Distinguished Professor of Gifted Education, the Executive Director of the Center for Gifted Studies and Talent Development, and the Institute for Research on the Psychology of Gifted Students. For nine years, he served as the Executive Director of the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities, which is a residential high school for intellectually gifted adolescents.
He has published over 300 articles, chapters, and columns. Dr. Cross has also made over 400 presentations at conferences and has published 14 books. He has edited 8 journals, five in the field of gifted studies, and is the former editor of the SENGJ: Exploring the Psychology of Giftedness. He received the Distinguished Service Award from both The Association for the Gifted of the Council for Exceptional Children and the National Association for Gifted Children, the Early Leader and Early Scholar Awards and the Distinguished Scholar Award from NAGC, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the MENSA Education and Research Foundation. In 2022, Dr. Cross was honored by the National Association for Gifted Children by being named a Legacy in the field of Gifted Education.
Founding Executive Director - Dr. Joyce VanTassel-Baska
Dr. Joyce VanTassel-Baska retired as the Jody and Layton Smith Professor of Education and founded the Center for Gifted Education at William & Mary in 1988. She is past president of The Association for the Gifted (a division of the Council for Exceptional Children), the Northwestern University Chapter of Phi Delta Kappa and the National Association for Gifted Children.
Dr. VanTassel-Baska has received numerous honors for her work, including the National Association of Gifted Children Distinguished Scholar Award in 1997, the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award in 1993, and the Phi Beta Kappa faculty award in 1995. She was selected as a Fulbright Scholar to New Zealand in 2000, a visiting scholar to Cambridge University in England in 1993, and was awarded the MENSA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011. Her major research interests are in the talent development process and effective curricular interventions with the gifted.
Dr. Van Tassel-Baska is the creator of the Integrated Curriculum Model (ICM, VanTassel Baska, 1986), a theoretical model of curriculum design for gifted learners, emphasizing the integration of advanced content, higher order thinking process, and connections to overarching themes and issues as the foundation for curriculum development. The ICM model is the basis for over 50 published curriculum units developed by the Center for Gifted Education.
