2008 Hatton W. Sumners Undergraduate Student Leadership Conference
Online Registration
Conference Agenda
Speakers
Electives
Conference Brochure
Confirmed Speakers
Michael K. Powell
The Honorable Michael K. Powell served as Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission at a time of revolutionary change in technology and communications. He was appointed by President Clinton in 1997 and was designated Chairman by President Bush in 2001.
Mr. Powell graduated in 1985 from the College of William and Mary with a degree in Government. He earned his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. Upon graduation from William and Mary, he served as an armored cavalry officer in the United States Army. While on active duty, Mr. Powell was seriously injured in a training accident and—after spending a year in the hospital—was retired from service.
Mr. Powell previously served as the Chief of Staff of the Antitrust Division in the Department of Justice. Before joining the Antitrust Division, he was an associate in the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers. He also was a clerk for the Honorable Harry T. Edwards, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Mr. Powell currently serves on the Boards of the Rand Corporation and the Aspen Institute. He also serves on the board of ObjectVideo Inc., a leading video surveillance software company. Powell is the Rector of the College of William and Mary. Powell is also the Trustee of the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial. Mr. Powell is now the chairman of the MK Powell Group, LLC, a consultancy focused on investment and strategic advice in the areas of technology, media, and communications. He is senior advisor in Providence Equity Partners, a private equity firm investing in technology, media and information companies; and is senior advisor to Reactrix-a new media, interactive advertising system.
Howard Prince
Dr. Howard Prince is the Loyd Hackler Endowed Chairholder in Ethical Leadership and the Director of the Center for Ethical Leadership in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Prince is a 1962 honor graduate of West Point who also holds a Master of Arts degree in International Relations from American University and a Ph.D in psychology from UT Austin. Additionally, he is an Olmstead Scholar who studied at the University of Bonn in Germany, a Distinguished Fellow of the APA, and a graduate of the US Army's War College.
At three very different institutions of American higher education, the United States Military Academy, the University of Richmond, and the University of Texas at Austin, Howard Prince has been the focal leader in developing groundbreaking programs of leadership education and leadership development. At West Point, Howard was the founding chair of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership, now a premier department at West Point. At The University of Richmond, Howard was the founding Dean of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies, the world's first undergraduate degree granting program in leadership. And at UT Austin, Howard Prince, as director of the CEL is playing a central role in UT's efforts to develop ethical leaders for Texas and beyond.
After over 28 years of service in the United States Army, Howard Prince was advanced to the grade of Brigadier General and presented the Distinguished Service Medal. His other military awards and decorations include the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross, two Bronze Stars for valor, the Bronze Star for service, two awards of the Purple Heart for Combat wounds sustained in the Viet Nam War, the Ranger Tab, Senior Parachutist's Badge, Expert Infantryman's Badge, and the Combat Infantryman's Badge.
More recently, in 2006 Howard Prince was named a Distinguished Graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, the highest honor given to a graduate of the United States Military Academy. In the comprehensive and laudatory narrative explaining Howard Prince's life work in developing ethical leaders for the nation, the nominating committee gave Howard Prince a high compliment by referring to him as a national treasure.
Rosemary O'Leary
Rosemary O’Leary is Distinguished Professor of Public Administration at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University, and the author of six books and over one hundred articles on environmental management, environmental policy, public management, dispute resolution, bureaucratic politics, and law and public policy. She is the only person to win three awards from the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA): Distinguished Research (2004), Excellence in Teaching (1996), and Best Dissertation (1989). In 2003, O'Leary was awarded the Syracuse University Chancellor's Citation for Exceptional Academic Achievement, the highest research award at the university.
She has won eight teaching awards and was the recipient of the Distinguished Service Award given by ASPA's Section on Environment and Natural Resources Administration. An elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Public Administration, she was a senior Fulbright scholar conducting research on environmental policy in Malaysia and the Philippines. She was professor of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University, and cofounder and co-director of the Indiana Conflict Resolution Institute. O’Leary has served as the director of policy and planning for a state environmental agency and has worked as an environmental attorney. She was a consultant to the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution, the International City/County Management Association, the National Science Foundation, and the National Academy of Sciences. She served on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Return to Flight Task Group and the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel as a consultant to NASA management on issues pertaining to organization culture and change. O’Leary received her J.D. from the University of Kansas in 1981 and her Ph.D. from Syracuse University in 1988.
Chris Myers Asch
Chris Myers Asch is the cofounder of the U.S. Public Service Academy. Before launching the U.S. Public Service Academy in 2006, he taught elementary and middle school for three years in Sunflower, Mississippi, as part of Teach For America/AmeriCorps, and for one year in Taejon, South Korea, with the William J. Fulbright program. He cofounded the Sunflower County Freedom Project in 1998 and served as executive director until 2006. A national finalist for the Advocacy Institute’s Leadership for a Changing World Award 2003, Mr. Asch won the 2007 Eli Segal Award from AmeriCorps Alums and recently became an Echoing Green Fellow. His first book, The Senator and the Sharecropper: The Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer, will be released in May 2008 by New Press.
Ginger Kerrick
Ginger Kerrick was born in El Paso. She received a bachelor of science degree in physics from Texas Tech University in Lubbock in 1991, followed by a master's in physics in 1993. She began working at JSC as a summer intern in 1991, and began her first permanent job in 1994 as a materials research engineer in the Safety, Reliability and Quality Assurance Directorate. Since 1995, she has worked in the Mission Operations Directorate as a Space Station systems instructor. After working as a crew support engineer at the Mission Control Center, Moscow, she became the first non-astronaut spacecraft communicator. She has been the lead Space Station CAPCOM and was deputy chief of the CAPCOM branch before being selected as a Flight Director in February of 2005. She was lead Flight Director for the Expedition 14 crew and is currently assigned as lead for the STS-126/ULF2 mission scheduled for October of 2008.