IRA vice president, director candidates are announced

 The candidates for the 2007 International Reading Association election have been announced:

The candidates for vice president are Patricia L. Anders, department head and professor, University of Arizona and Kathryn H. Au, adjunct professor, University of Hawaii.

The candidates for director are Henrietta Dombey, professor emeritus of literacy in primary education, Brighton University, United Kingdom; Paul Kropp, teacher, consultant, author, Canada; Donald J. Leu, professor, John and Maria Neag Chair in Literacy and Technology, University of Connecticut; Pamela A. Mason, director, language and literacy program; lecturer on education, Harvard University; Taffy E. Raphael, professor of literacy education, University of Illinois at Chicago; and D. Ray Reutzel, Emma Eccles Jones Distinguished Professor of Early Childhood Education, Utah State University.

Members will elect one of the two candidates for vice president. That person will serve as vice president in 2007–2008, as president-elect in 2008–2009, and as president in 2009–2010.

Of the six candidates for a term on the Association’s Board of Directors, three will be chosen to serve three-year terms running from 2007 to 2010. The winners will be introduced at the IRA 52nd Annual Convention in May 2007 and will begin their terms of office then.

All individual members of the International Reading Association on record as of December 21, 2006, are eligible to vote in the election. Ballots and vita information on all the candidates will be mailed to all individual members in January. Information about ballot count procedures, as well as a detailed analysis of past election results by place of employment, sex, and geographic location, also will be included in that mailing. Ballots must be returned to Intelliscan, the independent firm that is handling the election, by 5:00 p.m. on March 13, 2007.

Members are advised to keep all the ballot materials they receive in the January mailing, because they will need their membership number and ballot number in order to vote.

Members will have the option of casting their votes electronically or mailing back their paper ballot. Next month, members will be able to visit the International Reading Association’s website at www.reading.org and click on 2007 Online Election Ballot to cast their ballots.