Outstanding Leader: Alice Owen, division director of technology, Irving
Independent School District, Irving, Texas, USA
Alice Owen does more than advocate for technology in education.
For nearly four decades—as a teacher, a principal, a district leader,
and an educational technology promoter at the state, national, and
international levels—Owen has been a tireless supporter of getting
tech into the hands of students.
At the start of her career as a bilingual teacher in San Antonio,
Texas, Owen was an early adopter of technology in schools. Later,
as a principal, she personally set up the only computer lab in her
school and trained her teachers to use technology in an instructional
setting. As she progressed in her career, she became a staff development director, providing technology training for teachers and
administrators. The U.S. Department of Education recognized her training approach as a Model Staff Development Program.
She currently oversees a districtwide implementation of more than 12,000 laptops provided to all
high school students and teachers.
More recently, Owen has taken her passion for
ed tech beyond the school and district levels. She
served as the executive director of ISTE affiliate Texas
Computer Education Association (TCEA) and has sat on
numerous state and national committees, developing
standards for the ed tech community.
Some of her more notable roles include participating in the U.S. Office of Educational
Technology advisory group, serving as part of
the ISTE National Expert Forum to develop
standards for administrators, sitting on the
ISTE Technology Standards Index Task
Force, and participating in the Texas IQ Pilot to develop standards for online courses.
She’s held numerous national leadership
positions in ISTE and in the Consortium
for School Networking (CoSN), and she
recently traveled to South America to collaborate on technology topics with schools
in Uruguay and Argentina.
Owen has been a tremendous asset to
TCEA, says Barbara Brown, who served on
the association’s board with Owen. “Alice’s
remarkable leadership is an amazing gift
to her school district and to all of her colleagues in surrounding areas,” she says.
“She deeply cares about children and
wants to create possibilities where chil-
