Featured Presenters

Sharon Bowman
Sharon Bowman, a thirty-year veteran teacher and trainer and author of seven popular training and motivation books, welcomes you into her world of fast-paced, shorter-is-better, high-energy, "teach it quick and make it stick" training!

Sharon Bowman is the owner of Bowperson Publishing and Training, Inc.; the director of the Lake Tahoe Trainers Group; a member of the National Speakers Association; and a staff development consultant and instructor for school districts and colleges across the country. Over 60,000 copies of her previous six books are in print. Sharon is a sought-after speaker at national conferences such as ASTD and the VNU Annual Training Conference and Expo.

Michelle L. Deck, RN, BSN, M.Ed., LCCE, FACCE
Michele Deck, an internationally renowned presenter, author, and educator is the co-founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of G.A.M.E.S., a company that provides seminars for any organization, specializing in adult learning and interactive teaching methods. She is also CEO of Tool Thyme for Trainers, a company she founded that supplies the most innovative and creative presentation tools available to educators worldwide. Her extensive travels have resulted in thousands of people who gained valuable expertise of adult education and training, from Australia to Scotland, Canada to Taiwan. Her latest books are called Instant Teaching Tools for the New Millennium, Instant Teaching Tools For Healthcare Educators, More Instant Teaching Tools For Healthcare Educators, Presenter's Survival Kit: It's A Jungle Out There!, Getting Adults Motivated, Enthusiastic and Satisfied, Getting Adults Motivated, Enthusiastic and Satisfied Volume Two, The Presenter's E-Z Graphics Kit: A Guide For The Artistically Challenged, Live To Train Another Day and The First Aid Idea Kit, Parts 1 and 2.

Michele is known for her innovative teaching methods in the field of health care education and training. She has been training educators and trainers full time for the last eighteen years. She acted as a consultant to Creative Training Techniques International, Inc. from 1988 to 1999, and was named "Best Over All Trainer" by the Creative Training Techniques Companies. She has won the prestigious "Excellence in Nursing" has also been selected as a "Great 100 Nurse in Louisiana" and was elected to Sigma Theta Tau National Nursing Honor Society. The National Nursing Staff Development Organization named her the recipient of the prestigious Belinda Puetz award in 2000. She was named “Business Woman of the Year for 2003” by the National Business Council. She received the Margaret L. Messore Lectureship award from the Magnolia Chapter of SUNA in 2004. The National Business Council awarded her the Ronald Regan Medal of Freedom in 2004.

Larry K. Michaelsen, PhD
Larry K. Michaelsen is Professor of Management at Central Missouri University and is David Ross Boyd Professor Emeritus at the University of Oklahoma, a Carnegie Scholar, a Fulbright Senior Scholar, and former Editor of the Journal of Management Education. He is active in faculty and staff development activities and has conducted workshops on teaching effectively with small groups in a wide variety of university and, corporate settings. Dr. Michaelsen has also received numerous college, university, and national awards for his outstanding teaching and for his pioneering work in two areas. One is the development of Team-Based Learning, a comprehensive small-group based instructional process that is now being used in over 80 academic disciplines and on over 200 campuses in the US and in eight foreign countries. The other is an Integrative Business Experience (IBE) program that links student learning in three core courses to their experience in creating and operating an actual start-up business whose profits are used to fund a hands-on community service project.