Professor of School Psychology and Director, UI Belin-Blank Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development

Susan G. Assouline is the director of the Belin-Blank Center, holds the Myron and Jacqueline N. Blank Endowed Chair in Gifted Education, and is a professor of school psychology.  Throughout her career, she has been especially interested in the psychological principle of individual differences, which serves as a platform for the Belin-Blank Center’s research (with Megan Foley-Nicpon and Alissa Doobay) in the area of twice-exceptionality.  She also completed a two-year post-doctoral fellowship with the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) at Johns Hopkins University, which was the impetus for investigations and programming related to academic talent in elementary students and academic acceleration as an intervention for advanced students.  With Nicholas Colangelo and Ann Lupkowski-Shoplik, she co-developed the Iowa Acceleration Scale, a tool designed to guide educators and parents through decisions about grade-skipping students.  In 2015, she co-edited with Nicholas Colangelo, Joyce Van Tassel-Baska, and Ann Lupkowski-Shoplik,  A Nation Empowered:  Evidence Trumps the Excuses Holding Back America’s Brightest Students.  She received the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) 2016 Distinguished Scholar Award, the 2018 University of Iowa Award for Faculty Excellence, and the 2019 University of Iowa Leadership in Research Award.

Education:

• B.S. in General Science, The University of Iowa 1975 
• E.D.S. in School Psychology, The University of Iowa 1984 
• Ph.D. in Education, The University of Iowa 1988