Top Five Reasons to Participate in the 2013 Graduate Student Summit

1) You get to make connections with your peers.

When we were debriefing the very first summit last year, the one theme that came up repeatedly, in both formal and informal conversations, was that graduate students were really happy to have had an opportunity to network with each other. Between sessions, the room was abuzz with people talking about their research and sharing ideas.  There were even some students talking about potential collaborations on future research.  When the conference gets underway, you will be too busy to have the chance to make those kinds of connections. 

Also while some schools come to the conference with several graduate students, plenty of students attend alone or only with an advisor.  Since the summit takes place directly before the conference, it provides an opportunity to meet people who you can attend sessions with, watch present, or grab lunch with.  These friends will be your colleagues as you enter academia or become a practitioner and you will be attending conferences with them for years to come.  The sooner you make connections, the better your conference experience will be.

 2) It provides a (slightly) less stressful and supportive environment for presenting your research.

Nerves can get the best of all of us.  You don’t want your good ideas to be overshadowed by your fear of looking stupid or your anxiety over how other people will react to your research.  If you’re anything like most of the graduate students I know, you spend a lot of time worrying about whether or not your ideas are good or whether you are “smart” enough.  The summit provides a great opportunity to receive the support needed to remain confident in your work, while also providing you the opportunity to grow. 

      Don’t just take it from me, here is a comment from the survey last year:

“I really appreciate the effort that UCEA has made to welcome and celebrate grad students. I likely would not have submitted to the conference if it weren't for the grad student summit. I appreciated the "safe" opportunity to present my first work to peers in a nonjudgmental forum (2012 Summit Participant).”

3) Practice makes perfect (or at least better!).

For most of us, we have a long career of presenting ahead of us.  As with all skills, we only get better at it the more times we practice.  Last year, several students had their paper accepted into the summit and the convention.  The summit gave them a great opportunity to practice their timing and to get feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of their presentation, with time left to work out the kinks.  Regardless of whether you are presenting at the convention, the summit gives you an opportunity to practice condensing all your work into a short, interesting, thought-provoking presentation.

4) You will be mentored by amazing academics.

This year we are lucky enough to have 12 of UCEA’s past presidents serving as discussants for the paper sessions.  While this does raise the ante on the quality of your presentations, these leaders in our field will provide you with very specific and insightful feedback.  In addition, you will have the opportunity to sit down with them in a separate session that is intended only for feedback and small group discussion.  This type of mentorship is invaluable to us, and we are thankful to be in an organization led by professors that provide support to future generations of scholars. 

Dr. Daniel L. Duke, past president of UCEA and University of Virginia professor, responded to the request by saying, “Of course I'll participate in the Graduate Student Summit!  I can't think of anything I'd rather do than listen to the next generation of scholar-practitioners and learn from them.  Count me in.”   How lucky are we to have mentors like that? 

5) It's cheap!

Well, at least relatively cheap.  On a graduate student budget, everything is expensive!  You do have to arrive a day earlier than planned, but since it is directly before the UCEA Convention, you save on travel costs.  You register for the summit when you register for the conference, so you can include the cost in your registration fees.  For the low price of $35 dollars, you get a sit-down lunch at the 2013 Awards Luncheon, a reception with Plenum Session Representatives on Wednesday night, and much, much more.

Have I convinced you yet?  If so, submit your proposal today (or by May 13^th) on the UCEA website: http://ucea.org/2013-summit-submission/. 

If you don't believe me, check out the feedback from the 2012 survey:

National Education Finance Conference: Request for State of the States Representatives

National Education Finance Conference: Request for State of the States Representatives

State of the States: Overview

NEFC is pleased to announce a new opportunity for the advancement of professional discussion and information dissemination regarding educational finance and policy. Dr. William Hartman, Pennsylvania State University, and Dr. Spencer Weiler, University of Northern Colorado, will co-chair the inaugural NEFC's State of the States session at the 2013 conference in Indianapolis.

We are currently seeking scholars and practitioners to present recent activities in their state with regard to educational finance and policy. Please review the following request for representatives.

Guidelines 

To ensure the round table experience is beneficial to all, a template has been created that focuses discussion points around four specific areas. Scholars and practitioners are encouraged to structure submissions around these four discussion points. Submissions should be limited to a maximum of two-pages.

• State Issues Affecting P-12 and/or Higher Education Funding

• Funding Priorities/Trends for P-12 and/or Higher Education

• Changes to Funding Formula for P-12 and/or Higher Education

• Impact on School District or Higher Education Budgets

Presentation 

On the day of the round table, participants will be divided into small groups to ensure all have an opportunity to share what has been prepared around these four discussion points. In addition, Dr. William Hartman, Pennsylvania State University and Dr. Spencer Weiler, University of Northern Colorado, will provide a summative assessment related to observable trends from all of the submissions. Presenters are encouraged to bring 15 hard copies of their two-page document to share with others. In addition, steps will be taken to provide all attendees of NEFC 2013 with electronic access to all submissions.

Submissions

Please submit your roundtable electronically through the NEFC website's RFP page www.nationaledfinance.com no later than April 1, 2013. Submissions can be made here.

Walking in Transformation from Practitioner to Scholar

As a doctoral candidate in educational leadership, I’d love to share some lessons I have learned from my transformation from a practitioner to a scholar. It’s a journey of self-discovery, a journey filled with struggle, frustration, support, encouragement, inspiration, and self-fulfillment. Be aware, I’m still at the starting line of my career in research and scholarship. Compared to distinguished scholars in the field, I’m more like a scholar warming up with my eyes on a career track that never came across my mind five years ago. With this said, some of the lessons I share here might not work for all graduate students. Please feel free to individualize what I share here, so that you might discover something that could send you positive energy each day.

Coursework

Don’t hoard unnecessary courses on your transcript. Your scholarship is not defined by what courses you take, but by what publications you have. Don’t get me wrong—required courses are important. These courses are required for a reason. But after I finished my required courses, I did my best to translate what I learned from a variety of courses into research and scholarship. I don’t want to spend my time in course assignments which rarely contribute to my publication agenda.

A case in point: I’ve been obsessed with social network analysis (SNA) since I walked out of a 15-minute brief seminar delivered by a medical school faculty member in my first semester as a doctoral student. Unfortunately, no SNA research methodology courses were offered by my school. No faculty in my school could guide me in studying SNA, either. The faculty member who introduced SNA to me declined to be my mentor or committee member because he was fully occupied. I managed to find some courses related to SNA at the undergraduate level in other schools. But after being informed of those courses were designed for other majors, I saw no point in wasting my time doing assignments for undergraduate courses. Since then, Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, and the library have become my best friends in my self-taught SNA course. To date, I’ve already presented my SNA studies at national conferences, had one of my SNA studies funded by my school, and my dissertation is, unsurprisingly, a SNA study. 

My inquiry in SNA might be an isolated case, as I couldn’t find a mentor or the courses that fit my need. You don’t have to do this if you find the right people who can guide you. My point here is to be resourceful. Isn’t it one of the requisite skills for a leader?

Research

Be humble! Be open-minded to fellows’ research, and critical of your own work. When it comes to methodology, despite the presence of mixed methods, more often than not quantitative and qualitative methods are pitted against one another. Just because you’re a quantitative researcher, doesn’t mean you own the right to look down upon qualitative studies, and vice versa. I find sometimes we, as scholars, are too critical of others’ work, but too lenient on our own work. Granted, no research design or methodology is perfect. If you can do a fairly good job as a critical reviewer, you should also keep the same critical eye on your own work.  

Publications

Publications used to be my biggest fear as a scholar. English is not my first language, and I didn’t come to the United States until 2009. How can my articles outperform others in the peer-review process? The advice I took to heart is to write each day. I like the quote that motivated me when I was in medical school: “What I lack in natural ability, I make up for discipline. I practice it all the time.” (My career path became an outlier after being a doctor in hospital, classroom teacher, principal, and graduate student.) Scholarly writing in my second language is clearly not my strength, but I can make up for it in discipline. Practice, at least, makes better, if it doesn’t make perfect. I write every morning. Practicing scholarly writing is part of my daily routine and discipline. This is why I rarely schedule meetings in the morning. I prefer to tackle scholarly writing in the morning, check emails at noon, and handle other tasks in the afternoon. I’m not a doctor on call anymore, so nobody is going to die if I let my emails sit in my inbox until noon. I’ve been keeping this schedule for over a year, and it has proven very productive as I’ve already had publications, articles under review, and more in the pipeline.

If I see scholarly writing as the output of my scholarship, then reading is my constant input. In addition to library resources at school, I created my Google Scholar Alert by keywords of my research interest. When new literature related to my keywords goes online, Google sends me email alerts. Moreover, journal e-alerts are a wonderful tool. To date, a lot of journals allow you to sign up for e-alerts, in which journals email you when they release a new issue. The literature from Google Scholar Alert and journal e-alerts have helped me tremendously in formulating research ideas, framing research questions, refining research design, and scholarly writing.

UCEA Graduate Student Council social media (i.e., Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ community) is another platform where you can access the latest publications in the field, discuss your scholarly work with peers, and grow professionally.

Social Life & Health

I did a horrible job on this front, so I can only be a counterexample. Family, friendship, and health should not be the sacrifice in our pursuit of scholarship. I should spend more time with family and friends. I should exercise more. I should breathe more fresh air ….

- Yinying (Helen) Wang
Student, Urban Educational Leadership
University of Cincinnati

University of Connecticut: Ph.D. Program in Learning, Leadership, and Education Policy; Leadership and Policy Concentration

The University of Connecticut’s Educational Leadership Department seeks outstanding candidates for its Ph.D. program in Learning, Leadership, and Education Policy with a concentration in Leadership and Policy. This concentration provides Ph.D. students with the opportunity to link their professional and academic goals to scholarship, faculty resources, and curriculum that are designed to meet their interests in educational leadership, education policy, or higher education.

This program offers those students who wish to pursue a Ph.D. degree the opportunity to draw from their current careers, prior experiences, and previous education to achieve their academic objectives and long-term professional goals. The Leadership and Policy concentration is designed for individuals who intend to pursue a position in academia or policy analysis. Full-time matriculation is preferred. Funding is available for full-time candidates on a competitive basis. The application deadline for Fall, 2013 admission is March 1, 2013.  For more information, please see http://edlr.education.uconn.edu/programs/learning-leadership-education-policy-phd/llep/overview/ or email Morgaen Donaldson at morgaen.donaldson@uconn.edu

Dawn Hochsprung - Principal, Sandy Hook Elementary School

It has been 40 days since the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Over the past few weeks, I like so many of you, have confronted the unattainable in trying to make sense of what is a patently senseless event. Despite never having met the families of the victims and lacking the ability to even attempt to fathom the depths of their sorrow and despair, the massacre at Sandy Hook has had an incredibly personal impact upon me.

Just four years ago, I was a math and science teacher at an elementary campus outside of Houston, Texas. When I think of what happened at Sandy Hook, I cannot help but think of the same occurring at my former campus. I cannot help but to see the faces of my former students and fellow teachers, and consider how devastating the impact such an event would have had on our community.

I’ve spent a great deal of time and shed many tears thinking about Sandy Hook Elementary School and the surrounding community in Newtown. While my thoughts have primarily centered on the horrific loss of innocent children’s lives, I recently shifted to thinking about the school’s principal.

From all the news coverage since that fateful Friday, I have gleaned that Principal Hochsprung was respected in the community, well-liked by her faculty and staff, and that she even played an integral role in the diminution of the shooter’s impact. But still, I felt like I needed to know more. I felt like she was one of us, and deserved to have her story shared.

I have since learned that Principal Hochsprung was much more “one of us” than I had imagined. In fact, she was a doctoral candidate in in the Educational Leadership Ed.D. program in The Esteves School of Education at The Sage Colleges in Troy, New York.

Dawn Hochsprung’s career in education began as a classroom teacher. She held a bachelor’s degree in special education from Central Connecticut State and a master’s in educational administration from Southern Connecticut State. She was described in her obituary as “a fierce leader and educational activist” whom “referred to her students as her ‘children’" (Naugatuck Patch, Dec. 16, 2012).

Before her death, Principal Hochsprung was under the mentorship of Dr. Barbara Malkas, a graduate of the same Educational Leadership program at Sage Colleges in which Principal Hochsprung was enrolled. Dr. Malkas said of her relationship with Principal Hochsprung: “coaching sessions with her were not work. I'd walk away from coaching sessions so energized, it was like who's coaching who?” (Litchfield County Times, Dec. 16, 2012).

Principal Hochsprung even embraced social media in her administration of Sandy Hook Elementary School. If you visit her Twitter account, now with over 10,000 followers, you can see that she regularly updated the community about the goings-on of Sandy Hook Elementary, as well as news and developments in the world of public education. Her tweets are replete with pictures of school events and the faces of beautiful, happy children under her care. Reviewing her account is both a pleasing and heartbreaking undertaking.  

School shootings have long since become an all-too-common element of our society. Events similar to those which unfolded at Sandy Hook Elementary School could conceivably occur anywhere, in any school. Because nearly all of us have been educators, and many of us campus administrators, the tragedy in Newtown has been especially impactful. Yet the prospect of protecting the lives with whom we are entrusted each and every school day by the community and having to encounter such unadulterated terror as that which occurred in Newtown, remains alien and incomprehensible.

This morning, Principal Hochsprung should have been greeting her “children” as they entered the doors of Sandy Hook Elementary School. This afternoon, she should be observing her teachers, providing instructional leadership during planning sessions, and counseling with parents. Tonight she should be attending her doctoral classes and perhaps staying up much later than she would like in order to complete classwork. Tomorrow morning as she prepares for a new day, she should be thinking about her doctoral thesis and the new manner in which she proposes to approach that pesky analysis chapter.

Yet sadly, none of these things will happen. There will be no 48^th birthday for Principal Hochsprung, no final defense of her thesis, and no commencement ceremony in which she is surrounded by the love of her husband, five children, and four grandchildren.

In our lives as graduate students and academics, we remain occupied by our research and teaching. In times like these we are shocked from our comfort zones and reminded of life’s delicate and chaotic nature. Principal Hochsprung was a learner, an educational leader, and a graduate student – she was one of us. And she has been lost forever.

May this small corner of the Internet serve as a memorial to Principal Hochsprung, her five colleagues, and the twenty innocent souls whom lost their lives on December 14^th, 2012. 

- Bradley Davis