Yvonna Lincoln's impact on research has left a lasting impression

5/7/09

As a Distinguished Professor of higher education administration, Yvonna Lincoln not only has made significant contributions to the body of knowledge, but she also has changed the direction of research.

"Over two decades ago, Yvonna co-published Naturalistic Inquiry, a book that helped mark a broad paradigm shift in the social sciences,” says Greg Dimitriadis, professor at the University at Buffalo.

"A quick look at a Google’s Scholar database shows that this book has been cited over 10,000 times in books, articles and dissertations," he adds.

"Through her research, Yvonna has been a major influence in shaping the content and direction of the body of knowledge on qualitative research methods broadly construed," says Rajan Varadarajan, distinguished professor of marketing in the Mays Business School.

Yvonna's impact on research was recently recognized. She was honored with the 2009 Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award for Research. This award is one of the highest honors bestowed on a faculty or staff member at Texas A&M University.

Yvonna earned her doctor of education degree from Indiana University. She joined the faculty of Texas A&M in 1991. She currently holds the Ruth Harrington Chair of Educational Leadership, a position she has held since 2001.

Over the course of her career, Yvonna has published approximately 117 scholarly pieces, including 16 books, 62 chapters or monographs, and 39 articles. She serves as co-editor of the American Educational Research Journal and Qualitative Inquiry, and as an editorial board member for Educational Researcher.

"No one in the fields of education, program evaluation, qualitative research or action research can consider themselves competent if they have not read and taken a position on Yvonna’s broad corpus of writing," says Davydd Greenwood, professor at Cornell University. "Only a tiny handful of scholars are this distinguished and this well-known."