Martha Norris

Dr. Martha Norris’s career includes service in education at many levels. In public education she taught secondary English and night programs for adults. She served as a middle school teacher and reading specialist. She led her school’s accreditation review. She began her career in higher education teaching English/Reading at Wytheville Community College in 1994, where she had taught many evening and summer classes. She retired after a decade, as a full professor. She wrote grants and led efforts to integrate technology into the curriculum. Dr. Norris was tapped by the University of Virginia to teach M.S. classes in Reading Education across Virginia. She joined Walden University in 2004 as a contributing faculty in similar work.
In the Virginia Community College System, she worked to help many dislocated workers from local apparel factories earn the degrees that would help them reenter the workforce in professional roles. It was her work with adult learners that led to her dissertation for her Ed.D. degree in Higher Education and Leadership and Policy at the University of Virginia. Her degree contained a strong emphasis on adult learning.

Her work naturally led to a strong interest in assessment, and she earned a graduate certificate in Institutional Research at the University of Missouri at St. Louis. She worked with a colleague at Virginia Tech to analyze data and publish results regarding an assessment tool used for assessing information literacy skills for first-year students and presented results at a Virginia Community College Conference.

At Walden University, she has taught a number of MSED classes. Making sure that candidates get a good start in their first course is a special interest. She has worked to chair and serve on dissertation committees, mentoring ten through the final steps to the Ed.D. degree.

Courses Taught

EDUC 6610 - Teacher as Professional

Education

EdD, Univeristy of Virginia

MS, Radford University

MS, Radford University

BS, Radford College

Post-master's Certificate, University of Missouri at St. Louis