Education (EdD) — Courses

Higher Education Administration

HIGHED 601
Educational Leadership Skills I

This core course focuses on a set of the individual, interpersonal and group skills that leaders of educational institutions must acquire if they are to effectively promote organizational change. At the individual level, the course focuses on five major areas of self-awareness: trust and trustworthiness, personal values and moral development, orientation toward change, interpersonal orientation and personal temperament (including cognitive style). At the interpersonal level, the course assists students in forming accurate interpersonal perceptions and building communication skills. At the level of the group, students learn to diagnose group problems using theory and research about (1) group size, composition and characteristics of group members; (2) stages of group development and team culture; (3) cognitive and relational roles in teams; and (4) patterns of intra-group communication. Particular attention is given to developing skills that enable students to function effectively in committees, interdepartmental working groups and leadership teams. In all coursework, students are encouraged to consider the impact of gender and culture on skill development and practice.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

HIGHED 602
Educational Leadership Skills II

This core course introduces practical skills needed to negotiate and intervene successfully in individual and group conflict among colleagues and students in the higher education setting. Emphasis is given to acquiring the tools and developing the skills for interpersonal and conflict management. Attention is also given to conflict theories, conflict analysis, the manager as mediator, and the role of a third party in conflict situations.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

HIGHED 610
Current Issues in Higher Education I

This core seminar is designed to allow students to explore current issues in higher education within three broad areas: the organizational structure and systems of colleges and universities, including governance, student life and fiscal affairs. A major goal of the course is to insure that students learn about and are able to describe the functions of an institution of higher education. Particular emphasis is given to the effect of current practices and concerns on urban higher education. Running concurrently with the summer Educational Leadership Skills workshop, the seminar also addresses the broader framework and common language within which specific problems must be considered. Special emphasis is placed on strengthening analytic skills.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

HIGHED 611
Current Issues in Higher Education II

This core seminar focuses on problems and challenges involved in managing institutions of higher education and on strategies to effect change in underlying educational systems.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

HIGHED 620
Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum in Urban Contexts

This core course investigates common concerns in addressing the needs of urban learners, both in K-12 and in community and four-year colleges. It considers questions of human development in several domains, current problems and controversies about learning and responsive curricula and pedagogies. Readings frame issues across age groups and educational contexts, with additional material for each topic focusing on particular age groups and levels of schooling.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

HIGHED 630
The History of Higher Education in the United States

This core course surveys the history of higher education in the United States with a dual focus on mainstream collegiate institutions and non-traditional alternatives. Early class sessions explicate the development of traditional higher education from its liberal arts origins through the growth of the research university. Subsequent sessions explore how, over two centuries, various groups such as women, blacks, working-class, immigrant and older students contended for places within higher education. Participants explore how institutions and their leaders responded to these challenges, sometimes creating accommodations or changes in traditional settings, and other times prompting new structures that often marginalized the newcomers. Several questions guide inquiry through the various eras and subjects: Whom do we educate? Why do we educate (our purposes and expectations)? How do we educate (in what sorts of institutions)? Where does responsibility lie for education? With what effects (or results) do we educate? The course does not presume a strong background in history.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

HIGHED 632
Organization and Leadership in Educational Institutions

This core course focuses on educational institutions as complex organizations. It pays attention to the operation of institutions with few resources, as well as those with more plentiful resources. Drawing on readings and examples from many sources, participants look both inside and outside educational institutions, especially those that affect resources; the industry as a whole and sectors within it and social definitions of educational institutions. Close attention is also given to the internal structures in these institutions, especially the interactions between bureaucratic structures and professionals; to organizational cultures; and to governance and decision-making. The course then turns to a close analysis of organizational change from several points of view.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

HIGHED 634
Public Policy Issues and Structures in Higher Education

This course explores the development of higher education policy. It is both a primer in how economics and politics form public policy and a critical look at this fusion in higher education. The course looks at the formation of public policy at the federal, regional and state levels of government.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

HIGHED 641
Effecting Change in Higher Education: Strategies and Processes

This core seminar analyzes and evaluates both the challenges to change and the strategies and processes designed to effect change in higher education. It is an interactive seminar, consisting of lectures, case studies and student reports. Each student is responsible for a seminar presentation and the completion of a term project.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

HIGHED 651
Legal Issues in Higher Education

An increasing number of areas in higher education administration are governed by federal and state law. This course examines the legal status of colleges and universities and the laws that impact their operation. Areas of interest include the legal status and organization of the college or university and laws that affect the relationship between the institution and its faculty, staff and students. Topics include employment, academic freedom and free speech, student admissions, student discipline and dismissal and federal regulation of administration.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

HIGHED 652
Finance and Management in Higher Education Administration

This course examines both policy issues and operational procedures involved in the effective financial management of higher education. Major topics include the economic analysis of higher education, policy development, building and managing a budget, financial accounting and reporting, human resource management and fundraising.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

HIGHED 691
Professional Development Seminar I

The goal of this course is to assist practitioners in their efforts to become more systematic observers and analysts of their organization. Through the use of qualitative research techniques, students improve their ability to make sense of complex organizational settings and situations. Emphasis is given to learning techniques for conducting interviews and developing case studies. Through readings and field study, students acquire an understanding of the stages of qualitative investigation, including research design, data collection, data analysis and the interpretation of findings.
4 Lect Hrs, 4 Credits

HIGHED 692
Professional Development Seminar II

This course comes at the end of a student’s coursework. It is designed to help students assess their development as educational leaders as they move toward the independent work of the qualifying paper and dissertation. Emphasis is given to clarifying various theoretical frameworks that contribute to the study and practice of educational leadership. The course is also designed to help students evaluate ways in which the doctoral program has influenced their leadership development and to assist them in thinking about how completing the program will enhance their work as educational change agents.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

HIGHED 740
Research Methods in Higher Education I

This core course is the first in a two-semester research sequence. The first semester’s goal is to provide students with an overview of both the philosophical and the fundamental issues involved in conducting research in higher education. The course takes a systematic look at critical concepts in research methodology. In addition, it explores how various methodologies can be used to explore different types of data. Doctoral students taking the course become conversant with research paradigms and are able to understand the factors critical to formulating well-designed research studies. During the course, each student initiates exploration of a research topic, with the expectation that such an endeavor will lead to a dissertation topic.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

HIGHED 741
Research Methods in Higher Education II

This core course is the second in a two-semester research sequence. It guides students in modes of quantitative and qualitative data analysis. In quantitative analysis, it instructs students in descriptive statistics and works through problems utilizing tests of differences, association, the analysis of variance and correlation analysis. In qualitative analysis, it focuses on the framing of hypotheses, the analysis of content, coding, graphic displays and ways of utilizing data from observations and interviews. Connections with dissertation research in higher education are also explored.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

HIGHED 791, 792
Research Seminar on the Qualifying Paper I and II

These two one-credit courses focus on the qualifying paper. Drawing on readings and examples from the class itself, the courses help students develop a problem and determine what literature will be relevant to that problem.
3 Lect Hrs, 1 Credit

HIGHED 891
Dissertation Seminar

This seminar is designed to assist students in developing research ideas, writing their research plan, preparing a dissertation proposal and forming a dissertation committee. Satisfactory completion of the seminar requires submission of a dissertation proposal acceptable to the instructor and the chair of the student’s dissertation committee.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

HIGHED 892, 893
Dissertation Seminar

These seminars follow Dissertation Seminar 891, providing structured support as students gather data, research and analyze their dissertation topics; write the dissertation; prepare for its defense; and submit the final dissertation.
2 Lect Hrs, 2 Credits

HIGHED 899
Dissertation Research

Research conducted under the supervision of faculty and the dissertation committee leading to the presentation of a doctoral dissertation.
Hrs to be arranged, 1-9 Credits

Leadership in Urban Schools

EDLDRS 701, 702
Leadership Workshop I and II

These required courses, offered in the first and second summer, focus on the knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviors that participants in the doctoral program need to develop or acquire to be effective leaders in promoting organizational changes in schools. Participants explore five interrelated facets of their own leadership development: 1) their operating conceptions and definitions of leadership and their set of understandings and beliefs about organizations, change and leadership; 2) their visions and goals for schools and why those goals are important to them; 3) their individual, interpersonal and group skills, including their sensitivity to how issues of race, ethnicity, class and gender affect these; 4) the organizational and broader sociocultural contexts in which they work and their understandings about how these contexts affect issues of leadership and organizational change; and 5) their personal journey toward leadership roles in schools, including their own history and how it is affected by their cultural background, their self-assessment of their strengths and weaknesses and their plans for personal learning. Participants develop a leadership and learning portfolio, which is added to and modified over the course of their doctoral work.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

EDLDRS 703, 704
Critical Issues I and II

These required courses, offered in the first and second summer, examine a range of critical issues of importance to urban school leaders in the context of the changing relationship between schools and society. Issues discussed in Critical Issues I typically include demographic changes in the K-12 student population, multiculturalism, desegregation, bilingual education, special education, tracking, curricular and pedagogical reform, school reform movements and school finance reform. Critical Issues II covers fewer issues in greater depth; typical issues might include conflict resolution or the relationship between educational technology and school change.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

EDLDRS 710
The Culture of Urban Schools

This required course, taken in the student’s second spring, focuses on inquiry into the nature of urban schools, including social contexts and structural inequalities. Participants study social and cultural practices and relations in an urban school site, examine how structural concerns influence school culture and read studies of urban schools that highlight problems, successes, struggles and transformations. Through active dialogue with their peers, they reflect upon the complexities of daily life and change in urban schools and identify questions and directions for further exploration.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

EDLDRS 714, 715, 716, 717
Integrative Seminar I-IV

These required courses, offered once a month on Saturdays during the fall and spring semesters, provide opportunities for students to integrate their daily experiences as practitioners with the goals and academic content of their coursework. They also provide a bridging mechanism to form connections between and among courses and to discuss issues which cut across several courses. In them, students continue to develop interpersonal group process and leadership skills helpful to supporting and making change in schools.
1 Lect Hr, 1 Credit

EDLDRS 720
Teaching, Learning and Curriculum in Urban Contexts

This required course investigates common concerns in addressing the needs of urban students in elementary and secondary learning environments and community settings. It considers questions of human development in several domains, current problems and controversies about learning and responsive curricula and pedagogies. Readings frame issues across age groups and educational contexts, with additional materials for each topic focusing on particular age groups and levels of schooling.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

EDLDRS 730
Historical Roots of Contemporary Urban Schooling

This required course, taken in the first fall semester, is built on the premise that most issues of educational policy and practice are rooted in some historical context that is deeply influential but often widely unexamined. This course considers the historical development of several contemporary educational issues, recognizing their roots in intense debates in American history. Although it does not provide explicit guidance for today’s practitioners, this historical understanding should inform their approaches to the complexities of their current concerns. With 19th-21st-century urban schooling as the focus, topics include responses to racial, ethnic and gender identities of students; the development of national standards for curriculum and testing; the relative responsibilities of public and private educational institutions; the professional identities of teachers and school administrators; and schools as the site of social reform.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

EDLDRS 732
Organization and Leadership in Educational Institutions

This required course, taken in the first spring semester, helps participants develop a diverse set of perspectives for analyzing organizations. Practitioners who are interested in leadership roles in schools and other urban educational settings function in a variety of roles in many large and small organizations: teachers and classroom administrators in buildings or programs, members of a department or team, students in a graduate classroom, union members and leaders, parents of school-aged children and part of a school community. Practitioners also play roles in organizations outside of schools—in community groups, sports teams, religious groups, etc. The course helps look at those organizations and the roles played within them, by offering a broad set of perspectives drawn from the extensive literature on organizations. Learning to understand and use multiple perspectives for analyzing organizations allows us to reflect on our roles in them, even as it expands the set of possible choices for taking action and leadership within them.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

EDLDRS 740
Research Methods in Educational Leadership I

This required course, offered in each cohort’s second fall semester, provides both theoretical grounding and hands-on experience with design and implementation of qualitative and quantitative research methods. Work in this course and in EDLDRS 741 leads directly to the student’s qualifying paper proposal in the spring of the second year.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

EDLDRS 741
Research Methods in Educational Leadership II

This required course, offered in each cohort’s second spring semester, provides both theoretical grounding and hands-on experience with design and implementation of qualitative and quantitative research methods. Work in this course and in EDLDRS 740 leads directly to the student’s qualifying paper proposal in the spring of the second year.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

EDLDRS 742 (Subject to final University approval)
Team Research Projects

This course involves student teams in a site-based research project that allows them to explore, from multiple perspectives, a topic of interest to the team. In carrying out the project, the team will practice a variety of qualitative and quantitative techniques for data collection and analysis (e.g., interviews, focus groups, classroom observations, collection and analysis of documents, questionnaires) that are basic tools for research investigations in educational settings. The course also raises and gives students practice with larger questions of research design, such as question formation and identification of the best research methods for the type of question being explored.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

EDLDRS L755 (PPOL G L755)
Research in Special Education and Disability Policy

Students use current research to explore key topics that shape the policy and practice landscape for individuals with disabilities in schools, service agencies and communities, while applying skills to critically read and interpret the research. Topics include notions of disability; self-determination and person-centered service delivery; access, participation and progress in general curriculum; standards and educational accountability; and opportunities for community inclusion and improved quality of life. Students also critique and interpret relevant research in order to make policy and practice recommendations applicable to urban schools and to leaders of service systems working with diverse groups of students and adults with disabilities.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

EDLDRS L756 (PPOL G L756)
Disability Policy and Practice Frameworks

Focusing on the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Individual with Disabilities Education Act, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, this course introduces students to the process by which these laws have been articulated, framed as regulations, put into practice, and interpreted through the appeals process. Students will learn to identify: the values and principles of stakeholders who bring the mandate to the point of legislation, the role of written and oral testimony in the policy cycle, and the ways in which policy is interpreted in practice at the state and local level, as well as through appeals processes.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

EDLDRS 760
Qualifying Paper Seminar

This required course taken in the student’s third fall semester supports the work of developing the Qualifying Paper.
3 Credits

EDLDRS 796
Independent Study

This course involves the comprehensive study of a particular topic or area of literature determined by the student’s need; the study is pursued under the guidance and subject to the examination of the instructor. An application or outline of study should be submitted to the prospective instructor by the end of the semester previous to that in which this course will be taken. The instructor must agree to supervise the student, and the program director must approve the independent study.
1-6 credits

EDLDRS 797
Special Topics

This advanced course offers intensive study of selected topics in the field of educational leadership. Course content and credits vary according to topic and are announced before the advanced pre-registration period.
3-6 Lect Hrs, 3-6 Credits

EDLDRS 798
Internship

A one-semester, field-based internship experience designed by the student in collaboration with a faculty member. The internship must meet the following four criteria: it must focus on action; it must provide a student with mentoring; it must take place in an organizational context outside the student’s current professional role; and it must involve written reflection.
3 Credits

EDLDRS 891
Dissertation Seminar

This seminar is designed to assist students in developing research ideas, writing their research plan, preparing a dissertation proposal and forming a dissertation committee. Satisfactory completion of the seminar requires submission of a dissertation proposal acceptable to the instructor and the chair of the student’s dissertation committee.
Prerequisite: EDLDRS 760.
3 Lect Hrs, 3 Credits

EDLDRS 892, 893
Dissertation Seminar

These seminars follow Dissertation Seminar 891, providing structured support as students gather data, research and analyze their dissertation topics; write the dissertation; prepare for its defense; and submit the final dissertation.
Prerequisite: EDLDRS 891 (for 892), 892 (for 893).
2 Lect Hrs, 2 Credits

EDLDRS 899
Dissertation Research

Research conducted under the supervision of faculty and the dissertation committee leading to the presentation of a doctoral dissertation.
Prerequisite: EDLDRS 760.
Hrs to be arranged, 1-9 Credits