Educational Leadership Northern Arizona University

Overview

Leaders today must understand and practice leadership within diverse fluid contexts that include cultural, social, political, environmental, technological, and global borders.

The Educational Leadership program at Northern Arizona University provides courses within a leadership development program that integrates educational and professional foundations, leadership principles, professional ethics, and development of a research agenda that evolves from issue-focused and problem-based experiences and goals.

Learning Outcomes

The purpose of the EDL department is to promote the skills, values, and motivation for growth in leadership positions in Community College and Higher Education Administration contexts.  

EDL program-prepared leaders will be knowledgeable in the foundations of educational thought as well as in the science, the craft, and the art of leadership. In addition, students will study specialties appropriate to their career goals and acquire the research and evaluation skills essential to leadership practice, as well as to scholarly inquiry. 

More specifically, the curriculum will:

• Provide students with an opportunity to develop an understanding of the importance of education in our society, the significance of educational leaders, and in general, the effects leaders have on society;

• Enable students to gain higher-level skills necessary to pursue leadership careers in schools, colleges and universities, and other educational organizations;

• Provide experienced leaders with opportunity for growth in skills and knowledge to improve the services they provide; and

• Enable educational leaders to grow professionally throughout their careers by becoming dynamic lifelong learning professionals.

Leadership consists of skills and abilities applied in diverse settings. The knowledge base of this professional degree is reflected in current curricular design and course syllabi as well as in the use of a variety of instructional strategies that use major journals in the field, and which fully support faculty and student participation in research. 

Ethno-cultural diversity and global perspectives are integrated. Specific studies in this degree are sequential, developmental, and are drawn, in part, from professional association research.