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The JUDGES

Our Judges and Panelists for 2010:
DIANNE FERGUSON - Chapman University, School of Education; Teaching Research Institute at Western Oregon University
PHIL FERGUSON - Chapman University, School of Education
JAMISE GRACE LIDDELL - Phoenix-based film critic, lifestyle and entertainment reporter
ERIC MARGOLIS - Arizona State University, Division of Education Leadership and Policy; Visual Sociology
F. MIGUEL VALENTI - Arizona State University, Lincoln Professor of Ethics and the Arts & Assistant Director for School of Theatre and the Arts; Commissioner, Arizona Governor's Film and Television Commission; producer, director and entertainment attorney

JUROR / PANELIST BIOGRAPHIES

DIANNE FERGUSON
Dianne L. Ferguson is a Professor and administrator at Chapman University and at the Teaching Research Institute at Western Oregon University. She brings expertise and experience in the areas school reform, inclusive practices, teacher education, families and disability studies. She is an experienced teacher educator and has developed innovative designs for both initial and continuing teacher education. As a parent of a young man with significant disabilities, she has worked with families, schools, and service systems. She is currently the board president of a nonprofit organization that provides self-directed support services to adults with disabilities in Eugene, Oregon. Dr. Ferguson has taught classes and provided consultation for general and special educators in Canada, Iceland (as a Fulbright Scholar), Finland, Sweden, Denmark (also as a Fulbright Scholar), New Zealand, and India, as well as numerous states in the U.S. Her areas of interest and expertise include issues and strategies for school inclusion for students with disabilities, family experience and the relationships between school personnel and families, administrator and teacher support for licensure and professional development and collaboration, and use of interpretivist research methods in education. She has served as a college administrator and consultant on higher education reform in education, teacher education reform, licensure reform, and ongoing assessment of teacher quality. Dr. Ferguson has published widely (more than 90 journal articles and an equal number of book chapters), is the author or co-editor of six books and serves as an Associate Editor or on the Editorial Board of four professional journals. Click here for more about Dianne.

PHIL FERGUSON
Phil Ferguson is a Professor in the School of Education at Chapman University in Orange, CA. For almost three decades, Phil has pursued an array of interests in the general field of disability studies with a special emphasis on issues affecting people with intellectual disabilities. Prior to Chapman, he was at University of Missouri St. Louis, where he directed the Center for the Study of Disability, Education, and Culture. With workshops and lectures in Canada, Denmark, Sweden, New Zealand, and Iceland as well as throughout the United States, his research has focused on the areas of family/professional interactions and support policy, social policy and the history of disability, and qualitative research methods in disability studies and education. He has written numerous articles, book chapters and monographs in addition to a book and an accompanying video on the history of both policy and practice for people with intellectual disabilities (Abandoned to Their Fate: Social Policy and Practice toward Severely Disabled Persons, 1820 – 1920). Phil is past President of the Society for Disability Studies and remains actively involved in efforts to embed the study of the disability experience in all academic disciplines as a central element in our understanding of life and culture. Click here for more about Phil.

JAMISE GRACE LIDDELL
Dr. Jamise Liddell is a Phoenix based film critic, lifestyle and entertainment reporter. For more than a decade, she has interviewed a variety of industry folk including Dakota Fanning, Ice Cube, Josh Lucas, Laurence Fishburne, Jerry Bruckheimer, Robert Forster to name just a few. Liddell has written for a variety of publications including the Arizona Christian News, and the Time-Life periodical, Cleveland Life. Currently, she writes for several print and online publications including the The Foothills Focus, Que Pasa and The Glendale Daily Planet. Liddell, began her career as an edition editor at TV Guide magazine, and was a frequent guest film critic on The Fox 10 Morning Show, and Sonoran Living Live television shows. In addition to interviewing top Hollywood actors, directors and producers, Liddell enjoys writing, learning and teaching about the film industry. She has led film discussions at the Sedona International Film Festival, served as a panel workshop moderator and film judge for both the Phoenix Film Festival and the Arizona Black Film Showcase. Appreciative of both sides of the camera, she has been in a couple of gory, horror type B movies (for shame), and recently served as the Assistant Director on an independent film called ‘Remember Me’ that should be appearing on next year’s festival circuit. A former Congressional Fellow, Liddell has also enjoyed a rich career as a university administrator and professor. A former Director of Career Services at Grand Canyon University, Liddell is still serving up career advice as an Educational Consultant. She holds a bachelor´s degree in Journalism from Northern Arizona University, a master´s degree in Technical Communications from Colorado State University, and a doctorate´s degree in Educational Administration and Supervision from Arizona State University. Her ultimate dream is to serve as a full time professor and teach college level film criticism and history.
Click here for more about Jamise.

ERIC MARGOLIS
Eric Margolis is a sociologist and Associate Professor in the Division of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies in the College of Education at Arizona State University. His visual ethnography of coal miners was broadcast as Out of the Depths-The Miners' Story, a segment of the PBS series A Walk Through the 20th Century with Bill Moyers. An article, Class Pictures: Representations of Race, Gender and Ability in a Century of School Photography, (Visual Sociology Vol. 14, 1999) was reprinted in Education Policy Analysis Archives http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n31/ and received Honorable Mention for Best Article in an Electronic Journal by the Communication of Research Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. He has published widely on historic photographs and produced a number of visual sociology projects including photo exhibits, multimedia, and video programs, and photo essays for sociology texts. He has two recent edited books, The Hidden Curriculum in Higher Education, (Routledge, 2001) has been translated into Mandarin and The Blackwell Companion to Social Inequalities, (Blackwell, 2005) edited with Mary Romero. He is President of the International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA) http://www.visualsociology.org/. Click here for more about Eric.

MIGUEL VALENTI
F. Miguel Valenti has been an independent producer, director and entertainment attorney for 25 years. A Yale-trained scholar, Valenti now serves as Lincoln Professor of Ethics and the Arts at Arizona State University as well as the head of ASU's exciting new Film and Media Production Program. A member of the ASU Herberger College of the Arts faculty since 2004, Valenti founded the Film & Media Production Program in 2006 and is Assistant Director of the School of Theatre and Film. Valenti's book, More than a Movie, serves as the theoretical underpinning of the ASU Film Production Program--the first in the nation to incorporate principles of ethical decision-making into a hands-on production program while preserving First Amendment values, is based in the latest cutting edge digital technologies and focuses on narrative storytelling. Valenti has recently been appointed by the Arizona Governor as a Commissioner of the Arizona Governor's Film and Television Commission. Based in New York, Los Angeles and Phoenix, Valenti's film credits include Downcity, currently in pre-production for Warner Bros., The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (Tri-Star Pictures, 2004); and, Netherbeast Incorporated, a comedy starring Robert Wagner, Judd Nelson, Jason Mewes, Darrell Hammond and Dave Foley. Valenti also produced Vig (aka The Money Kings) starring Peter Falk, Timothy Hutton and Freddie Prinze, Jr. (Barbra Streisand's Barwood Films & LionsGate). Valenti is former Managing Partner of The Management Company, whose clients include noted writers, producers and directors in film, television and theatre. He specializes in working with young writers and has expertise in all aspects of development, creative packaging and producing, as well as entertainment industry business and legal matters. He has created courses on the economic, marketing & social realities of the contemporary film and television industries and the future of media at his alma mater and taught producing and the ethics of entertainment at UCLA. At ASU, he teaches Sex and Violence in Film and TV, Production, Independent Film, Business Ethics and Screenwriting, as well as an advanced seminar in entertainment law and practice at ASU's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law. Click here for more about Miguel.