DR. ALENE H. HARRIS taught both elementary and secondary students in English and life science in Nashville, TN, for sixteen years, including suburban, inner city, and private school classrooms, before pursuing a Ph.D. in Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University, where she currently teaches graduate education courses.

For three years as Research Assistant Professor of Special Education at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, she coordinated research involving classroom management, effective teaching, and mainstreamed students. For the next ten years as a Research Assistant Professor of Education she developed and disseminated materials that have now reached over 50,000 teachers across the U.S. to assist them in creating optimal conditions for learning. She has personally conducted over 150 classroom management workshops throughout the United States and American territories, interacting with over 2,500 teachers and administrators and always encouraging each of these educators to share what has worked for them in their classrooms and schools.

She is the author of the program Getting Off to a Good Start (GOTAGS), a one-day research-based workshop (with follow-up) that guides teachers and administrators in developing a proactive beginning of the school year. Materials in the program reflect both educational research and her many conversations with teachers and administrators across the nation. For the past five years this program has been used by Universities for preparing future teachers, by new-teacher induction programs for orienting new hires, and by entire faculties for developing a consistent school-wide approach in starting the school year. Recently, at the request of the TN Academy for School Leadership (TN DOE), she also developed a 2-day version for administrators to assist them in getting their school off to a good start and in mentoring teachers --- especially new teachers -- to get off to a good start in their classrooms.

For the past eight years her focus has included the postsecondary level, and as the Director of the Educational Program for the VaNTH (Vanderbilt-Northwestern-University of Texas-Harvard/MIT Health Sciences) Engineering Research Center in Bioengineering Educational Technologies, she developed and conducts workshops in applying principles of effective teaching and learning in college-level classes.