Symposium on Graduate Education
Three Magic Letters: Getting to Ph.D.
A symposium for graduate faculty, students, and alumni
Monday, February 26, 2007, 1:00-5:00 p.m.
Illini Union Rooms B & C
Speakers
Michael T. Nettles
Michael T. Nettles is Senior Vice President for Policy Evaluation and Research and holds the Edmund W. Gordon Chair for Policy Evaluation and Research at Educational Testing Service in Princeton, NJ. He has a national reputation as a policy researcher on educational assessment, student performance and achievement, educational equity, and higher education finance. Nettles' research covers such issues as educational access, opportunity, attainment, the consequences of education for various population groups in the United States, state and national assessment, educational funding policies, and educational testing of students at all levels of education. His publications reflect his broad interest in public policy, student and faculty access, opportunity, achievement, and educational assessment at both the K-12 and post-secondary levels. Nettles is the co-author of Three Magic Letters: Getting to Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins University Press.).
Nettles was a visiting lecturer in Public Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University in 2004 and 2005. He was a professor of education at the University of Michigan from 1992 until 2003. From 1996 to 1999, Nettles served as the first executive director of the Fredrick D. Patterson Research Institute of the United Negro College Fund. In that role he published the three volume African American Education Data Book series and Two Decades of Progress—the most comprehensive books of facts ever produced about the educational status and condition of African Americans in the United States. Nettles served as vice president for Assessment for the University of Tennessee System, Knoxville, Tennessee, and as assistant director for Academic Affairs at the Tennessee Higher Education Commission in Nashville. Nettles' first tenure at ETS was in the last half of the 1980s.
Nettles received the 2005 Iowa State University Alumni Association Distinguished Achievement Citation. Nettles currently chairs the National Postsecondary Education Cooperative (NPEC), working group on Postsecondary Linkage Efforts to Improve College Readiness. He is a member of the Board on Testing and Assessment (BOTA) at the National Research Council. Nettles is a former member of the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), where he has served as the vice chair. Previously, he served as a member of the Board of Trustees of The College Board, where he chaired the College Board Research and Development Committee.
Nettles serves on the Board of Directors of Love Thy Neighbor and Children's Progress, Inc. He has been appointed to the Corporate and Philanthropic Council of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU).
A native of Nashville, Nettles received his B.A. in political science at the University of Tennessee, and master's degrees in political science and in higher education, and a Ph.D. in higher education from Iowa State University.
Catherine M. Millett
Catherine Millett is a research scientist in the Policy Evaluation and Research Center at Educational Testing Service in Princeton, NJ. Her research focuses on educational access, student performance and achievement, educational equity, and student financing for various population groups in the United States at the postsecondary educational level.
She co-leads an evaluation of the Goldman Sachs Foundation's Signature Initiative "Preparing High Potential Youth for Excellence and Leadership." She is also the co-principal investigator of a national study of college student retention entitled "High Achieving African American and Hispanic College Dropouts: A Search for Strategies to Increase Their Performance, Persistence, and Degree Completion." One area of her current research is on the doctoral student experience. She is co-author of the book Three Magic Letters: Getting to Ph.D., which is based on a research study of over 9,000 doctoral students at 21 universities.
Millett was a visiting lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy at Princeton University in 2004 and 2005. From 1994 to 2003, Millett held various research positions at the University of Michigan. From 1989 to 1994, she was the housing officer for Harvard College. She received her B.A. degree in economics from Trinity College, Hartford, CT; her Ed.M. in administration planning and social policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education; and her Ph.D. in public policy in higher education from the University of Michigan. She served on the University of Michigan School of Education Alumni Society Board of Governors.
Millett is a member of the Association of the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), the American Education Research Association (AERA), the Association for Institutional Research (AIR) and the American Association of University Women (AAUW).
