Leadership & Innovation - Overview

The College of Teacher Education and Leadership offers a doctoral program designed to make a difference in the way you think and work as a leader in education, for the immediate and local benefit of schoolchildren, adult learners, your school or organization, the community, and the world.

Program Philosophy and Approach

The Doctoral Program in Leadership and Innovation values learning and applied scholarship that is rigorous, useful, and situated in communities of practice. Our doctoral students are accomplished leaders in education who co-create learning communities to transform themselves into applied researchers and activist scholars. Our doctoral students, supported by faculty and peers, conduct and report on a series of action research studies in their workplaces, culminating in the doctoral dissertation. Successful graduates make a positive difference in their local workplaces through research in action and commit to continuing systematic study of their professional practice.

Features of Our Program

This doctoral program is unique. First it is aimed at helping you help yourself to become a more thoughtful, intentional, informed leader, willing and able to implement and study change. Leadership is informed by scholarship and learned by doing.

Second, the doctoral program is structured so that leaders learn in a community. This precept prompts us to plan for combined classes, a workshop approach to research, faculty embedded with students in Leader Scholar Communities, and a reciprocal relationship with other educational communities.

Third, the focus of the program is research in action. Students conduct multiple studies throughout the program to learn by doing, and to influence change based on scholarship.