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About DEL

About ImageIn 2011, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth School of Education, Public Policy, and Civic Engagement launched the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies doctoral program.

Program Overview

The doctoral program in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies prepares future practitioners and scholars who will work as professors, researchers, administrators, or executives in leadership roles in a variety of institutional settings. The program, designed to be completed in four years, gives students the opportunity to earn either an EdD or PhD.

It is a critical and transformative leadership and policy studies program which will enable a new generation of professional practitioners and scholars to become:

  • Highly trained in educational policy and management who could exercise critical transformative leadership.
  • Committed to transforming students and institutions alike in pursuit of a more ethical, just and fair society and to improving educational achievement in environments that are dynamic, interactive, culturally diverse, and democratic.
  • Capable of understanding global dynamics who can lead systemic transformations that promote learning and improve educational attainment in schools.

Distinctive Program Features

The program is driven by a set of beliefs, namely that human growth and development are transformative lifelong pursuits; that schools are political and cultural artifacts of local and global contexts; that diversity strengthens organizations; that while transformative leadership implies individual and team work that stimulates differences, it is also driven by moral and ethical imperatives; and that one can only have an impact globally if one is capable of making a difference locally.

The Educational Leadership and Policy Studies program is distinctive in the following ways:

  • It combines different fields of study and disciplines to break with traditional epistemological boundaries to better address contemporary local and global challenges.
  • It blends theory and practice, grounds itself in campus core values, recognizes as essential the creation and nurturing of community-school environments, and supports the development of innovative pedagogy and of critical transformative leadership.
  • It draws on highly qualified, interdisciplinary faculty and staff resources and consolidates internal and external operating resources.
  • It allows the campus to focus new academic programming on a specific niche area that may help meet pressing local and regional needs in Education.
  • It creates the opportunity for stronger partnerships and collaborations within the campus, within the university system, and with other higher education and community partners in the region.

 

 

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