David F. Ayers, Ed.D.
Associate Professor
[email protected]Bio
David F. Ayers, Ed.D., completed an Ed.D. in higher education administration at N.C. State University in 1999. His prior studies included an M.A. in higher education with a minor in Spanish and a B.S. in Spanish, both from Appalachian State University. In 2008, he completed a certificate in critical discourse analysis and social research at Lancaster University (United Kingdom), and in 2016, he earned a Master of Studies in Law at Wake Forest University School of Law.
His first professional job was teaching English and world history at Instituto Laurens, A.C., in Monterrey, Mexico. In the years following, he taught Spanish in K-12 and in community colleges. Since 2002, he has held faculty appointments in higher education and community college leadership, first at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and then at Old Dominion University. In 2019, he received the Senior Scholar Award from the Council for the Study of Community Colleges. He currently serves as editor of Community College Review.
David’s research focuses on the historical and sociocultural contexts of community college leadership. He aspires to help more educators identify as leaders and, ultimately, to reimagine leadership work.
Area(s) of Expertise
Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development
Publications
- Conclusion: Reimagining Leadership , Springer eBooks (2026)
- Historical Overview , Springer eBooks (2026)
- Imaginaries and the Legitimation of Community College Responses to the Energy Crisis , Springer eBooks (2026)
- Introduction , Springer eBooks (2026)
- Leadership Imaginaries: Cultural, Political, and Economic Contexts , Springer eBooks (2026)
- Mission: The Evolution of a Contested Organizational Genre , Springer eBooks (2026)
- Theory and Method , Springer eBooks (2026)
- Vision: Knowledge or Prophecy? , Springer eBooks (2026)
- Techno-pedagogic discourse and the online learning assetization regime , Higher Education (2025)
- Community college discourses of sustainability in an academic and professional corpus , International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education (2023)