A national leader in gifted education, award-winning executive, and a trusted voice in emerging futures.

Corey Alderdice is a proven leader in gifted education, talent development, and emerging futures as well as a nationally recognized voice on how institutions can better identify, cultivate, and sustain student potential. His work spans educational innovation, public leadership, and systems-level change, with a consistent focus on access, excellence, and long-term impact.
 

From 2012 through 2025, Alderdice served as Executive Director of the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts (ASMSA), the state’s only public residential high school for academically and creatively talented students. As the longest-serving executive leader in the school’s history, he guided ASMSA through a period of national ascendance and institutional reinvention. During his tenure, the school was repeatedly recognized among the nation’s top public high schools by Newsweek, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, and the Jay Mathews Challenge Index, while Niche consistently ranked ASMSA as Arkansas’s top public high school and among the top 50 nationally.  He was previously a founding administrator at Kentucky’s Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Science.
 

Alderdice’s leadership was marked by both vision and execution. He championed new academic pathways in computer science, entrepreneurship, global learning, and the arts; expanded early college opportunities so that graduates routinely completed nearly three semesters of college credit; and positioned ASMSA as a national leader in serving high-ability students from rural, low-income, and first-generation backgrounds. He also led more than $40 million in campus redevelopment and capital investment, reshaping the physical and cultural footprint of the institution while laying the groundwork for its next decade of growth.
 

Beyond ASMSA, Alderdice has played a sustained civic and field-building role in education, the arts, and community development. He served as President of the National Consortium of STEM Schools, helping to shape national dialogue and collaboration among specialized STEM schools. His board and leadership service has included the Women’s Foundation of Arkansas, Arkansas Learning through the Arts, the Western Kentucky University Center for Gifted Studies, and Hot Springs Fifty for the Future. He has also chaired the Hot Springs–Hanamaki Sister City Foundation, advancing international partnerships and cultural exchange between Arkansas and Japan.
 

Alderdice is also an active public communicator and storyteller. He hosts A Slice with ’Dice, a weekly podcast exploring leadership, talent development, education policy, and the human side of high-performing systems. The podcast draws on his experience as a practitioner while engaging a national audience of educators, policymakers, and organizational leaders navigating change and complexity.

His broader advocacy has focused on expanding access to advanced learning, strengthening connections between talent development and workforce readiness, and ensuring the arts remain central—not peripheral—to innovation. His work has been spotlighted nationally, and he co-authored a chapter on public residential high schools in A Nation Empowered, a seminal volume on academic acceleration.
 

Alderdice’s contributions have been recognized with numerous honors, including selection as a Bezos Family Foundation Educator Scholar, Arkansas Business’s 40 Under 40, and the Future 50 by Arkansas Money & Politics. In 2025, he was named Arkansas Business Executive of the Year in the Public Sector/Education category, followed by the 2026 Governor’s Arts in Education Award, sponsored by the Arkansas Arts Council.
 

As he enters his next chapter, Alderdice is focused on roles and projects that allow him to translate proven institutional leadership into broader impact by supporting organizations, communities, and systems as they navigate change and opportunity.
 

He lives in Arkansas with his wife, Stephanie Patterson Alderdice, and their son, Elliott.