UCEA Center for the Study of School Site Leadership

The UCEA Center for the Study of School Site Leadership

The UCEA Center for the Study of School Site Leadership was established in 1999 with the following set of four objectives:

1.  To foster collaborative forms of research about school leadership;
2. To provide regular syntheses about the state of the art of leadership preparation and practice, and disseminate this information to both the research and practitioner communities;
3. To foster collaborative partnerships between the Center and the field in order to develop and implement educational opportunities for school leaders to become more familiar with the practical implications of the research for their own practice; and
4. To provide advice for policy makers embarking on initiatives with implications for school leaders.

 Over the course of its first decade, the Center accomplished these goals through its research involvement with the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP), publication of the journal Leadership and Policy in Schools, and annual summer institutes on leadership held at the University at Buffalo that feature the Willower Family Lecture Series.

The Center, which is hosted by the University at Buffalo - State University of New York and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, expanded its efforts in 2009 to include five additional Center sites: the University of Arizona, Boston College, the University of Texas – San Antonio, Indiana University and Bank Street College, in cooperation with Hofstra University. 

This expansion is intended to facilitate the work of research teams at each of the sites as they contribute to the ongoing activities of the ISSPP.  Specifically, the Center will become an important locus for the dissemination of research about key aspects of school site leadership in North America as it contributes to the larger international study.  But while the ISSPP project has been and remains a major research initiative for the Center, other research opportunities are likely to be pursued in order to accomplish the Center's mission, most notably to better understand the implications of successful school site leadership in communities characterized by racial, ethnic and cultural diversity and/or economic disadvantage.