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Dr. Tom Alsbury

Dr. Tom Alsbury

Adjunct Faculty

Center for Leadership Studies

  • Ed.D. Washington State University
  • M.Ed. University of Washington
  • B.S. University of Washington
  • B.A. University of Washington

Email: tom.alsbury@northwestu.edu

Dissertation Title: “Superintendent Turnover in Relationship to Incumbent School Board Member Defeat in Washington from 1993-2000: A Quantitative and Qualitative analysis.”

Background

Dr. Thomas L. Alsbury served 22 years as a tenured, Full Professor of Educational Leadership at Iowa State, North Carolina State, Seattle Pacific Universities, and Northwest Universities and is founder and president of Balanced Governance Solutions. He served 18 years as a high school science teacher, principal, and district administrator and for 8 years as Director of the national UCEA Center for Research on the Superintendency and District Governance. Dr. Alsbury’s dissertation is entitled Superintendent turnover in relationship to incumbent school board member defeat in Washington from 1993-2000: A quantitative and qualitative analysis, which earned the AERA dissertation of the year award. Dr. Alsbury has chaired over 50 doctoral dissertations using quantitative and mixed methods analysis. Five of Dr. Alsbury’s students won the AERA dissertation of the year award.

Dr. Alsbury is listed as one of the foremost experts on school governance by the Associated Press and has been interviewed and quoted in over 150 news publications including NPR radio, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Dr. Alsbury is a featured speaker, consultant, trainer, and evaluator of school governance issues in 12 countries and across the United States. He has over 50 academic publications on school board and superintendent research. His book “The future of school board governance: Relevance and revelation” earned Dr. Alsbury the UCEA Culbertson Award for the best research among research universities nationally. Dr. Alsbury shared the NSBA Shannon Award for individual most impacting school boards nationally. His 2015 book by Harvard Press entitled Improving local school board governance: A Balanced Governance approach introduced Dr. Alsbury’s Balanced Governance™ model and is the top selling School Board book in the U.S. The Balanced Governance™ model is unique amongst school governance models, in that it is developed from 50 years of research on exemplary school boards and the findings from the only national and international studies of school board members.