Joy L. Navan directs the Center for Gifted Studies at Murray State University in Kentucky, where she serves as an associate professor and program director for the graduate endorsement program in gifted and talented education. Navan is a certified practitioner of the Annemarie Roeper Method of Qualitative Assessment® and performs assessments in English and Spanish.
A teacher for 27 years, Navan spent many of them working with gifted students at the secondary level. During that time, she also served as an adjunct instructor at St. Lawrence University, where she taught a course in the methods of teaching second languages and supervised student teachers. With almost four decades in the field of education, she has developed curriculum and monographs for gifted and general education, and published numerous scholarly articles nationally and internationally. Fluent in Spanish, she initiated and directs an exchange program with gifted American and Spanish students and currently coordinates an online gifted and talented certificate program in Spanish. She served on the Kentucky Advisory Council for Gifted and Talented Education, is a member and past board member of the Kentucky Association for Gifted Education and serves on the board of the Kentucky Odyssey of the Mind. Navan is a member of the National Association for Gifted Children and the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children. She is an active member of Phi Delta Kappa International, an honorary association of professional educators.
Navan earned her PhD from the University of Ottawa, Canada, where she studied under Janice Leroux, and assisted her in researching the lives of eminent women.
