UCEA Webinar: District Conditions that Support School Leadership

On Thursday, October 13, 2011, at 2:30pm Central/ 3:30pm Eastern, UCEA will host a webinar, titled: How School Districts Support Effective Leadership Practice. School leadership often has been overlooked as an education improvement strategy, despite the evidence that leadership influences student achievement.  In this webinar, panelists will share research and experiences concerning the district-level conditions that improve the effectiveness of school principals. 

Meredith Honig (University of Washington), Karen Seashore (University of Minnesota), Daniel Player (University of Virginia’s Darden-Curry Partnership in Leadership Education) and Laura Mitchell, Cincinnati Schools will join Lee Williams (UCEA), for a presentation and discussion that will explore research and practice concerning the role of school districts in supporting effective leadership practice.  Presenters will share their insights as concerning the specific district policies, structures and practices that matter most in supporting effective leadership practice, particularly the practice of building level leaders.  The research and experiences shared is particularly relevant to districts working to support dramatic improvements at low-performing campuses. 

Register for this event today!  

Get Involved with Leaders Supporting Diverse Learners (LSDL) Project

In a recent blog, you may have noticed Catherine Lugg’s charge to us to speak up and speak out as educational leadership professors on controversial matters. In another blog post, Alan Shoho asked what do we want to be known for in our programs and in his blog he refers to UCEA’s FIPSE grant. One way that we can speak up, out and NOW is through challenging ourselves to really examine our respective program curriculums and determine if it is in fact they are tackling tough issues in our field like inequities that stem from marginalizing learners in schools and society because of attributes like race, sexual orientation, or gender. In many of our programs, we argue that we have a social justice focus. For most of our programs, we have learned, that really means having a diversity course within a set of other courses that relegate this content to the margins. Still some of our programs may not even have that diversity course. Hopefully, you have recognized that these conditions need to change and you may have had questions on how to integrate this content into your courses and your program.

 If you have or have not, I want to invite you to participate in the work being generated as part of a FIPSE grant that UCEA received. You may have read about the Leaders Supporting Diverse Learners (LSDL) project last year. The project seeks to develop, pilot, distribute, and support the use of a set of innovative instructional modules that can be used to support you in your programs. Soon, you will have a chance to participate in conversations and offer suggestions on how to use and improve this work.  Some of the modules include titles like Building Trust Through Racial Awareness, Action, and Advocacy so they are relevant. Though development is still going on, you will be able to see and hear about some of the results really soon. Please join in as colleagues to offer your insights and suggestion on how we can make this work better. After all, wouldn’t it be a good thing to really be known for truly changing the educational landscape for diverse learners?

Call For Nominations: 2012 David L. Clark Graduate Student Research Seminar in Educational Leadership and Policy

The David L. Clark National Graduate Student Research Seminar in Educational Administration & Policy, sponsored by the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA), Divisions A and L of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and Sage Publications, brings emerging educational administration and policy scholars and noted researchers together for two days of presentations, generative discussion, and professional growth.  The majority of Clark Scholars go on to become professors at major research institutions around the world. This year’s seminar will be held in the spring at the beginning of the AERA meeting in Vancouver (tentatively scheduled for April 12-13, 2012). 

Nominations for the David L. Clark National Graduate Student Research Seminar in Educational Administration & Policy are due November 1st, 2011.

Nominees should be outstanding doctoral students in educational leadership, administration, and/or policy, seeking careers in research.  Nominees must have substantially completed their courses and must have formulated a dissertation proposal.  Students who have already started or completed their dissertations are unlikely to gain as much from the seminar as students who are in the early stages of formulating their research. Nominations of students from underrepresented groups are strongly encouraged.  

Student proposals are blind reviewed by three prominent scholars. Invitations will be issued to 40 doctoral students, with competition based on the quality of the student’s proposal and their perceived capacity to gain from and contribute to the seminar.

Each university may nominate up to two students.  Nominations must be accompanied by a student research proposal.  Students may not not self-nominate.

This year, all materials must be submitted online at the following weblinks:

For the Student Nomination Form, Click Here

For the Student Research Abstract Form, Click Here

To be considered complete, both forms must be filled out completely. The information requested includes: nominator’s information, nomination statement, student information, abstract of student research, title, and statement of proposed research.  Nominating institutions must also indicate the level of financial support that will be provided to support their nominee’s travel and participation. 

Additional information concerning the seminar is available on the “Clark Seminar” page of UCEA website. We expect to extend invitations to 40 students between mid-December 2011 and mid-January 2012.  If you have any questions, please call (434) 243-1041.

UCEA Programs Make a Positive Impact on Education

UCEA institutions are unique in that they are research institutions that build knowledge for preparation and practice and also use that knowledge to prepare future leaders and researchers and to improve practice.  In this way, UCEA institutions are truly engines of innovation and educational improvement.  

Principals in Jefferson County, Kentucky, learned this first hand when they met with faculty from the University of Louisville to develop and implement action plans designed to significantly improve the county's struggling schools.  A local news reporter, Renee Murphy, of WHAS11's captured some of the meeting and the participants thoughts and expectations on video.  It is a short but powerful clip. 

 

The University of Louisville is only one UCEA institution, there are over ninety others with significant and impactful projects of their own.  For example, at the University of Virginia, faculty from the Curry School of Education have partnered with faculty from Darden School of Business to create a Partnership for Leaders in Education.  This partnership is working with districts across the US to improve district conditions and principal practice in low-performing schools.  Like the principals working with the University of Louisville, those working with the University of Virginia have access to an excellent set of scholars. 

 

UCEA institutions like these are making important contributions. As members of the UCEA consortium, faculty from different institutions have a wealth of resources that they can draw from—and so do their district and school partners.  This is a significant benefit of engagement in a consortium of institutions that values and engages in research, leadership preparation and efforts to improve practice. 

 

Branding: Is it Important?

This past week, our department initiated a forum for discussing what an upcoming retreat might look like and what we would like it to produce. From my perspective, at the center of the retreat is the identification and development of our department’s “brand.” In other words, what does our department want to be known for? As I reflect on my time on UCEA’s Executive Committee, while we have spent a lot of time in the past few years working a strategic plan, i.e., identifying goals and actions to implement, we have not spent a great deal of time discussing our identity per se. UCEA’s identity has been discussed previously at the UCEA Plenum and maybe it’s time to re-visit this issue as an organization as well as for its individual members. I don’t remember the exact timing, but I’d say it was at least 8-10 years ago when then Dean Dick Andrews and UCEA President Margaret Grogan, both of the University of Missouri, where UCEA was housed, raised the issue of “signature” pedagogy. At the time, it sparked some serious discussion in the plenum, yet it didn’t seem to go anywhere or have any sustainability within UCEA afterwards. Recently, through a FIPSE grant, UCEA has launched a project to capture “powerful learning experiences” in urban settings, although many of the projects could be applicable to any context with some adjustments.

For me, the key question remains, what do we want to be known for? I’m curious to find out how colleagues across the country would answer this question in relation to their own department as well as for UCEA as an organization. Or how does being a member of UCEA affect one’s departmental identity? It seems to me until we are able to articulate a clear vision of what our individual departments want to be known for and how this is perceived by larger communities, in particular, practitioners and the communities we serve, the greater good of our work may not realize its maximum potential. What do you think?