Key NCTE Staff

Executive Director Kent Williamson 

Before assuming his current post as Executive Director, Kent Williamson served as Associate Executive Director for Business and Director of Marketing and Membership for NCTE.

He earned a bachelor's degree in advertising and a master's in political science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He also attended the University of Illinois College of Law and Salzburg College in Salzburg, Austria, and he served as a Peace Corps Trainee in the Kingdom of Tonga.

Williamson often speaks on NCTE's administrative policies, official Council positions, and organizational practices.

Senior Program Officer for Higher Education Paul Bodmer

Paul Bodmer taught college English for over 30 years, coming to NCTE from a post as associate professor of English at Bismarck State College in North Dakota.

Bodmer serves as staff liaison to and coordinates the work of the several college-level groups within NCTE. He helps coordinate the professional development interests of two- and four-year colleges and universities, English educators, and composition and rhetoric faculty.

He is involved with re-envisioning the approach of graduate education for English doctoral students through the Preparing Future Faculty grant project. Another of his areas of interest is the articulation between two and four-year colleges, particularly in English programs. 

Bodmer often speaks on issues related to two-year colleges, first-year college composition, program and course assessment, and introductory literature courses.

Visit the NCTE College Level Web area at http://www.ncte.org/college.

Senior Program Officer for Pre-K-12 Barbara Cambridge

Before joining NCTE in 2005, Barbara Cambridge held various roles at the American Association for Higher Education, including director of the Assessment Forum, director of the Teaching Initiatives, and vice president for programs. She is currently co-leader of the National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research and an Associate with the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. She is also a professor of English at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and a former president of the National Council of Writing Program Administrators.

Her areas of expertise include assessment of student learning, e-portfolios, peer review of teaching, and fostering the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Visit the NCTE Elementary Web area at http://www.ncte.org/elem.

Visit the NCTE Middle Level Web area at http://www.ncte.org/middle.

Visit the NCTE Secondary Level Web area at http://www.ncte.org/second.

Director of NCTE-West Dale Allender

Dale Allender spent five years teaching in middle schools and high schools in Milwaukee and Iowa City and a year as an adjunct professor at Grinnell College in Iowa before coming to NCTE.

He is helping NCTE in its advocacy efforts on behalf of teachers, and is promoting and helping to answer the needs of urban teachers. He contributes his expertise to NCTE's Classroom Notes Plus, a practical publication of teaching ideas for the secondary level, and to The Council Chronicle, NCTE's membership newspaper.

Other topics he is addressing are reading at the secondary level, multicultural education, and professional development for teachers.

Allender often speaks on topics related to secondary English language arts instruction, such as literature instruction, multicultural literature instruction, critical literacy, reading at the secondary level, and media literacy.

Visit the NCTE-West Web area at http://www.ncte.org/about/over/west.

NCTE/SLATE (Support for the Learning and Teaching of English) Representative Millie Davis

Millie Davis has more than 20 years of experience in the classroom, teaching at the high school and college levels. 

Davis began her work with NCTE’s Anti-Censorship Program when she arrived at NCTE in 1989. She was instrumental in developing NCTE’s current system of response to challenges to instructional materials and in establishing NCTE’s collection of rationales for instructional texts. In addition, Davis continues to work with NCTE members developing and revising position statements to support NCTE’s belief in the student’s right to read and the teacher’s professional judgment in the selection of instructional materials and methods of instruction. 

Through NCTE’s Intellectual Freedom program, Davis offers advice, resources, and letters of support for teachers who face censorship challenges or who want to prepare themselves in advance for such challenges. See NCTE’s Anti-Censorship Center at http://www.ncte.org/about/issues/censorship .