IAFOR > IICEHawaii > Organising Committee

Organising Committee

The Organising Committee of The IAFOR International Conference on Education – Hawaii (IICEHawaii) is composed of distinguished academics who are experts in their fields. Organising Committee members may also be members of IAFOR's International Academic Advisory Board. The Organising Committee is responsible for nominating and vetting Keynote and Featured Speakers; developing the conference programme, including special workshops, panels, targeted sessions, etc.; event outreach and promotion; recommending and attracting future Organising Committee members; working with IAFOR to select PhD students and early career academics for IAFOR-funded grants and scholarships; and reviewing abstracts submitted to the conference.

IICEHawaii2018 Organising Committee

  • Professor Ronald Mellado Miller
    Professor Ronald Mellado Miller
    Brigham Young University–Hawaii, USA
  • Professor Barbara Lockee
    Professor Barbara Lockee
    Virginia Tech., USA
  • Dr James W. McNally
    Dr James W. McNally
    University of Michigan, USA & NACDA Program on Aging
  • Professor Curtis Ho
    Professor Curtis Ho
    University of Hawai’i at Manoa, USA
  • Dr Xu Di
    Dr Xu Di
    University of Hawai’i at Manoa, USA
  • Dr Joseph Haldane
    Dr Joseph Haldane
    The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
  • Kiyoshi Mana
    Kiyoshi Mana
    Director of International Operations, IAFOR

Previous Organising Committees

View details of organising committees at past IICEHawaii conferences via the links below.

Professor Ronald Mellado Miller
Brigham Young University–Hawaii, USA

Biography

Dr Ronald Mellado Miller received his PhD from Purdue University in Experimental Psychology, USA, and is currently a professor at Brigham Young University in Hawaii. Dr Miller’s main interests have been in the area of applied statistical analysis and predictive modelling. As a result, his research and work have been quite eclectic. He has research published in journals ranging from Animal Learning and Behaviour, Learning and Motivation, Applied Neuropsychology, TechTrends, and the Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, out of Oxford University Press, where he has also served as a reviewer. He has worked for a number of major airlines (Fedex, United, US Airways, etc.) in the area of safety. His international projects have ranged from India and the Philippines, where he was able to assist NGOs established to aid those in poverty, to China, where he worked with the largest entertainment company in the country. He has led research in Tonga, Fiji, and Samoa, working with governments and NGOs to improve educational and other social outcomes. He has a great love for teaching and mentoring. His students have participated in each of his consulting projects and have been accepted to prestigious schools around the world, including Oxford University, MIT, and Columbia University, among others.

Professor Barbara Lockee
Virginia Tech., USA

Biography

Dr Lockee is Professor of Instructional Design and Technology at Virginia Tech., USA, where she is also Associate Director of the School of Education and Associate Director of Educational Research and Outreach. She teaches courses in instructional design, message design, and distance education. Her research interests focus on instructional design issues related to technology-mediated learning. She has published more than 80 papers in academic journals, conferences and books, and has presented her scholarly work at over 90 national and international conferences.

Dr Lockee is Immediate Past President of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, an international professional organisation for educational technology researchers and practitioners. She earned her PhD in 1996 from Virginia Tech in Curriculum and Instruction (Instructional Technology), M.A. in 1991 from Appalachian State University in Curriculum and Instruction (Educational Media), and BA in 1986 from Appalachian State University in Communication Arts.

Dr James W. McNally
University of Michigan, USA & NACDA Program on Aging

Biography

Dr James W. McNally is the Director of the NACDA Program on Aging, a data archive containing over 1,500 studies related to health and the aging lifecourse. He currently does methodological research on the improvement and enhancement of secondary research data and has been cited as an expert authority on data imputation. Dr McNally has directed the NACDA Program on Aging since 1998 and has seen the archive significantly increase its holdings with a growing collection of seminal studies on the aging lifecourse, health, retirement and international aspects of aging. He has spent much of his career addressing methodological issues with a specific focus on specialized application of incomplete or deficient data and the enhancement of secondary data for research applications. Dr McNally has also worked extensively on issues related to international aging and changing perspectives on the role of family support in the later stages of the aging lifecourse.

Featured Presentation: Methodologies for the Collection of Comparative Community Level Public Health Data: Obtaining Powerful and Statistically Meaningful Findings for Small Populations

Professor Curtis Ho
University of Hawai’i at Manoa, USA

Biography

Curtis Ho is Professor, Department Chair and Graduate Chair of the Learning Design and Technology department at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. He has been a UH faculty member for over 30 years, teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in educational media research, interactive multimedia, web-based instruction, distance education, video technology, and computer-based education. He has taught courses in American and Western Samoa and Saipan, and was the first to offer a course statewide over the Hawai’i Interactive Television System.

Curtis Ho received his PhD in Educational Technology from Arizona State University where he served as instructional designer. He has consulted for public and private schools, financial institutions, and higher education. For several years he directed the Office of Faculty Development and Academic Support for the University of Hawaii’s Manoa campus. He has presented extensively at national and international conferences at locations including Beijing, Copenhagen, Eskisehir, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Lugano, Rome, Kumamoto, Kyoto, Melbourne, Montreal, Osaka, Panang, Taipei, Takamatsu, Tokyo, Toronto, and Vancouver.

Professor Ho was a Principal Investigator, Co-Principal Investigator and Project Director for three US Department of Education grants totalling over 9.8 million US dollars. He is a co-organiser of TCC Worldwide Online Conference, an executive committee member of E-Learn, Association for the Advancement of Computers in Education, and is also past-President of the Pan Pacific Distance Learning Association, a chapter of the United States Distance Learning Association and of the Pacific Association for Communications and Technology, a chapter of the national Association for Educational Communications and Technology.

Previous IICEHawaii Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | Educating for Change: Challenging and Preserving Traditional Cultures

Dr Xu Di
University of Hawai’i at Manoa, USA

Biography

Xu Di (许笛) is a professor in the department of Education Foundations, College of Education, University of Hawai’i-Mānoa. She is a member of the board of examiners for the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE, now Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation [CAEP]), which has provided national accreditation for teacher education programs in the United States since 2007. Her recent publications focus on bridging Eastern and Western philosophy for educational practices and include Chinese Philosophy on Teaching & Learning: Xueji《学记》 in the Twenty-First Century (2016), The Wisdom from the East: A Holistic Theory and Practice of Health and Wellness (2013), Spiritual Heritage and Education Today (2013), Taoism: Origin, Essence, and Practice (2013), and A Reading of Lao Zi for Educational Philosophers Today (2012). In addition, she published A Comparison of the Educational Ideas and Practices of John Dewey and Mao Zedong in China (1992) and various chapters and articles on teacher education, educational foundations, multicultural education, international education, and ESL education. She worked as an international consultant in teacher education and educational reforms in Central Asia and Africa for the World Bank in 2002 and 2001. She served on the Hawai’i Teacher Standard Board (2005–2008) and as the president of the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE) Hawai’i Chapter as well as Hawai’i state representative (2006–2008). She was a visiting scholar and research associate at the Philosophy of Educational Research Center at Harvard University (1999–2000), a visiting professor in Peking University (2015, 2011, 2009, and 1997) and in Renmin University (2012, 2014, and 2016), and an exchange professor at National Kaohsiung University in Taiwan (1998). She served as manuscript editor as well as editorial board member for Harvard Educational Review during 1988–1990. She was honored in Who’s Who among American Teachers in 1996, 1998, 2000, 2001, and 2008.

Previous IICEHawaii Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | Aloha as a Way of Being: Hawaiian Perspectives on Learning

Dr Joseph Haldane
The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan

Biography

Joseph Haldane is the Chairman and CEO of IAFOR. He is responsible for devising strategy, setting policies, forging institutional partnerships, implementing projects, and overseeing the organisation’s business and academic operations, including research, publications and events.

Dr Haldane holds a PhD from the University of London in 19th-century French Studies, and has had full-time faculty positions at the University of Paris XII Paris-Est Créteil (France), Sciences Po Paris (France), and Nagoya University of Commerce and Business (Japan), as well as visiting positions at the French Press Institute in the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas (France), The School of Journalism at Sciences Po Paris (France), and the School of Journalism at Moscow State University (Russia).

Dr Haldane’s current research concentrates on post-war and contemporary politics and international affairs, and since 2015 he has been a Guest Professor at The Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP) at Osaka University, where he teaches on the postgraduate Global Governance Course, and a Co-Director of the OSIPP-IAFOR Research Centre, an interdisciplinary think tank situated within the university.

He is also a Member of the International Advisory Council of the Department of Educational Foundations at the College of Education of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

From 2012 to 2014, Dr Haldane served as Treasurer of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (Chubu Region) and he is currently a Trustee of the HOPE International Development Agency (Japan). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2012, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2015.

A black belt in judo, he is married with two children, and lives in Japan.

Kiyoshi Mana
Director of International Operations, IAFOR

Biography

Kiyoshi Mana is the Director of International Operations, and is responsible for overseeing the global operations of the organisation, including IAFOR's conferences in Asia, Europe, North America and the Middle East. He is also the Vice President for Global Partnerships and Affiliations, developing our expanding relationships with universities and organisations around the world.

An American of Japanese descent, Kiyoshi has long been fascinated by the country of his ancestors, studying both Japanese language and culture at San Francisco State, and also successfully training to be a sushi chef. Coming from a family of educators, he came to Japan in 2009 to continue his studies and to teach, before joining IAFOR in 2011 in a position that utilizes his marketing experience, and his strong commitment to education.