Leadership for Educational Equity
(formerly known as The Joint Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership)

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The Leadership for Educational Equity Program (LEEP) prepares unusually promising individuals for leadership roles in school districts, reform-minded educational organizations, and groups involved in practice-oriented policy research. The Program welcomes applications from outstanding school principals and unusually promising individuals whom imagine themselves as champions for the conceptualization, implementation, and continuous improvement of evidence-based instructional practices, settings and organizational arrangements.

Specific Fields of Emphasis

LEEP's courses, seminars, workshops, professional residencies, and research activities are organized around four thematic areas:
1) Systemic educational reform: theory, policy, and practice;
2) Curriculum planning, coordination, assessment, and professional development;
3) Educational excellence and equity in practice; and,
4) Budgeting, financial planning, and resource allocation.

These thematic areas are supported by two horizontal activities:
1) Thematic practicums and professional residencies; and,
2) An integrated serious of courses in evidence-based educational decision-making.

Schedule

LEEP is designed to accommodate the schedules of working professionals. Formal instruction is offered during the summer (8 Weeks, with 2 weeks of independent study) and every other weekend during the school-year (8 weekends per semester). The schedule takes advantage of the cohort learning model an approach to adult learning that leverages the collective expertise and wisdom of Leepsters.

In line with the cohort model, Leepsters are encouraged to select thesis topics within the Program's four thematic areas. LEEP also encourages students to conduct their research in adjacent topics. If four or more Leepsters are interested in principal professional development, for example, they might be encouraged to analyze the experiences of four groups:

i) Novice principals (less than four years of service
ii) Mid-career teachers (between 5 and 10 years of service)
iii) Master principals (more than 10 years of service)
iv) Senior principals (immediately following promotion or retirement.)

The major advantage of the adjacent research topics approach is that it enables students to share research ideas, to leverage their individual and collective understandings, and to function as one another's first readers.