Professor Emerita Joyce VanTassel-Baska
Honored by the National Association for Gifted Children
VanTassel-Baska has been very active in NAGC having served as president, chair of several committees, and presenter at numerous annual conferences. Her recent work on educator and program standards with NCATE has greatly benefited the field of gifted education. During her term as NAGC president, she contributed four major books on the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students as service publications of the organization.
VanTassel-Baska has been the recipient of numerous awards for her service from organizations including NAGC, CEC-TAG, AERA, the World Council of Gifted and Talented, and the states of Illinois, Ohio, and Virginia. She has been recognized for outstanding service in every state in which she has been employed. These awards attest to her many contributions in terms of advocacy, policy development, and direct services to parents, teachers and students in the form of workshops, conferences and educational programs.
A prolific scholar, VanTassel-Baska has also advanced the field via her voluminous publications {vitae}. She is credited with 27 books and over 500 other types of publications since 1977, which represents an incredible rate of over 16 publications per year—outstanding by anyone's standards. She spearheaded the production of most of the specialized curricula that currently exist for gifted and talented learners during her tenure as executive director of the Center for Gifted Education at the College of William and Mary.
Paula Olszewski-Kubilius, Director, Center for Talent Development, Professor, School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, said in her nomination letter, "Joyce is passionate about gifted children and gifted education. She has worked tirelessly to increase the influence of this field on general education, to improve the quality of research in the field, to increase the number of educators trained to work with gifted children, and to create and/or improve national and state-level policies to benefit gifted children. I cannot think of anyone more deserving of the Distinguished Service Award from NAGC."
