Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership
Program Goals
Upon completion of all program requirements of the Doctorate in Education degree, learners will be able to:
- Demonstrate their competence in creating new models to explain, predict, and improve performance of organizations in their doctoral discipline.
- Conduct research as a foundation for creative action.
- Exercise leadership to influence policy decisions.
- Manage and lead complex organizations through strategic decision-making.
Program Structure
At no time in history has the need for quality education been greater. At the same time, educators face challenges unlike those faced by their predecessors. They must facilitate learning in culturally diverse classrooms, prepare students for roles in a global, information-based economy, manage their classrooms, schools, and systems effectively and efficiently in the face of severe funding pressures, and produce all the other outcomes traditionally expected from our educational institutions. It is clear that as the education system works its way through this period of radical change, leaders capable of dealing with complexity in creative ways must be found and developed. Professional practice in this environment will require more sophisticated educational preparation for greater numbers of practitioners.
The Ed.D program has a 62-credit requirement that involves both residency and online modalities of instruction. The majority of the program will be delivered in an online, virtual classroom setting. In these courses, learners will work in a cohort of approximately 12 peers and be required to spend approximately 25 hours per week on required course work.
Courses offered during residency sessions cover a variety of areas essential to the successful completion of this advanced degree program, including insights into dissertation preparation. Additionally, in the third year residency, learners will apply their knowledge to a comprehensive, collaborative case study. This case study is the University's vehicle for assessing programmatic learning. Because of the nature and value of the information presented in the residency environment, learners must attend all residency sessions. To enhance the self-reflective nature of the Ed.D program, learners are required to capture the knowledge they acquire by maintaining a journal throughout their studies. This journal will be reviewed annually by faculty to ensure the domains, sub-domains, and competencies of the program are addressed.
The most important milestone of the Ed.D degree is the successful completion and oral defense of a significant, substantial, and independently completed doctoral dissertation that adds new information to the body of educational leadership knowledge. The dissertation provides the learner an opportunity to demonstrate mastery of germinal and current literature and express their competence in applying learning to actual organizational issues. To ensure the quality of this effort, the program's curriculum is designed to develop the learner's ability to create original solutions to complex issues and to carefully identify and apply the most appropriate research methodology for addressing these issues.
Because of the highly independent nature of the program, learners must be self-disciplined and exceedingly motivated to earn this degree.