Microsoft Word - Peterson VF.doc Articles  in  this  journal  are  licensed  under  a  Creative   Commons  Attribution  4.0  International  License.   This  journal  is  published  by  the  University  Library  System  of  the   University  of  Pittsburgh  as  part  of  its  D-­‐Scribe  Digital  Publishing   Program  and  is  cosponsored  by  the  University  of  Pittsburgh  Press.   33 This journal is supported by the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate: A Knowledge Forum on the EdD (CPED) cpedinitiative.org impactinged.pitt.edu ISSN 2472-5889 (online) Vol.2 (2017) DOI 10.5195/ie.2017.30 Preparing Scholarly Practitioners Redesigning the EdD to Reflect CPED Principles Deborah S. Peterson Portland State University dperterso@pdx.edu ABSTRACT CPED presents guiding principles, rather than a prescriptive program model, for the EdD, requiring each CPED- influenced institution to engage in a program design process specific to its context. Over 80 CPED schools and colleges of education offer an EdD program that endorses the CPED framework which “blend[s] practical wis- dom with professional skills and knowledge to name, frame, and solve problems of practice…”(CPED, 2010). As with any design process in a complex organization, faculty members may wonder where to begin. This arti- cle describes the context, guiding values, characteristics of our redesigned EdD, lessons learned, and implementation challenges of the education administration faculty in the Graduate School of Education at Port- land State University as we increased our focus on CPED principle #1, a focus on “equity, ethics, and social justice to bring about solutions to complex problems of practice” (CPED, 2009). INTRODUCTION CPED-inspired institutions of higher education endeavor to pre- pare scholarly practitioners who frame their focus on “questions of equity, ethics, and social justice to bring about solutions to complex problems of practice” (CPED, 2009). This means that scholarly prac- titioners in CPED-inspired EdD programs are prepared to lead complex organizations in which students of all backgrounds have equitable access to and success in rigorous, rich, culturally respon- sive educational opportunities. Because CPED presents guiding principles, rather than a prescriptive program model, each CPED- influenced institution engages in a program design process specific to their context. The problem many institutions encounter, ours at Portland State University included, is designing and engaging in a successful change process that reflects and responds to their unique context. Within our current environment of corporate-style educational reform (Ravitch, 2016), those within educational organizations often critically challenge redesign efforts. Although market-driven reform efforts have failed (Bryk, Gomez, Grunow & LeMahieu, 2015), we know from local and national data that our schools are perpetuating educational inequities for children of color and recent immigrants resulting in lower high school graduation rates, lower post-secondary educational attainment, and increased incarceration for those from the non-dominant culture (Fasching-Varner, Mitchell, Martin & Ben- nett-Haron, 2014; National Urban League, 2015). To combat these longtime inequalities, schools, and school leaders, must change. Consequently, leadership preparation programs must also change to become a place where social justice leaders are prepared to inter- rupt systemic inequities in schools. If our goal is to prepare social justice leaders skilled at reducing educational disparities in a variety of contexts and under ever-changing conditions, the focus of our leadership programs must move away from solely teaching the technical aspects of leadership (bell schedules, facilities, contracts, budgeting, and transportation), a focus that unintentionally perpetu- ates inequities in our schools by ignoring the unique conditions of each community and the rich cultural backgrounds of the children in each community. Similarly, if we in higher education blindly replicate the components of traditional PhD programs under the name of the professional EdD, we will likely perpetuate ineffective practices that have contributed to practitioners who are ill prepared to reduce edu- cational disparities in our schools. Developing school leaders into scholarly practitioners who are social justice leaders “requires inten- tionality in program design” (Peterson, Perry, Dostilio & Zambo, 2016, p. 59), not replication, and each university’s context must be reflected in the program design. The purpose of this article is to share lessons learned when one university redesigned its EdD to better meet the needs of its students. This article begins with the context of our program’s need to redesign our education administra- tion EdD, our guiding values during the redesign process, characteristics of our redesigned program, and the role of stakehold- er consensus. I then conclude the article with lessons learned during the redesign process and implementation challenges. THE CONTEXT FOR REDESIGNING OUR EDUCATION ADMINISTRATION EDD Our department chair and the professors in our program had several indicators of the need to redesign our doctoral program. An examination of our program completion data revealed previous doc- toral students had low completion rates. We found that students admitted under our existing program model were struggling at three critical times in their doctoral studies. They were dropping out after completing their first-year coursework, prior to an oral presentation of their comprehensive examination, and after completing their second year of required coursework, prior to their dissertation proposal de- Peterson Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional Practice impactinged.pitt.edu Vol. 2 (2017) DOI 10.5195/ie.2017.30 34 fense. We also lost students who passed their dissertation proposals and were working independently on their dissertations. As a second issue, in our most recent doctoral admission cycle, our program had not clearly stated the professional roles for which our EdD was pre- paring future students. In addition, our increasing commitment to CPED principle #1 (equity, ethics and social justice) caused us to evaluate our program, which lacked a consistent and coherent focus on social justice. Beyond the additional support our students needed and our in- creasing desire to include a commitment to social justice in our doctoral program, recent retirements had also changed the makeup of our faculty. Now, instead of senior scholars, our education admin- istration program was comprised of three untenured junior faculty members with limited resources to support additional doctoral stu- dents, particularly if future doctoral students’ interests were outside the professors’ scholarly focus. Despite multiple requests from our Masters (MA) and licensure graduates to have an additional admis- sion cycle for doctoral students, we had not admitted new doctoral students in the previous four years in order to allow existing faculty to support previously admitted doctoral students and to develop exper- tise as doctoral advisors. As a result, our MA and administrative licensure graduates who might have continued on to our EdD pro- gram, instead lost the support network they had created at our institution and enrolled at one of five local competing institutions. The combination of these factors contributed to our department chair asking our program faculty to redesign our EdD. GUIDING VALUES Several values that reflect components of transformational leadership (Leithwood & Jantzi, 2007) guided our change process: a social justice focus, building collaborative and trusting cultures, and empowering faculty. As noted in the previous section, while consider- ing changes to our doctoral program, our dean and several faculty had become increasingly interested in a focus on social justice lead- ership, which was influenced by the CPED-inspired EdD. Although our university and graduate school espouse a commitment to diversi- ty and equity, we do not have an institutional definition of social justice, and each faculty member defines social justice individually. Our program faculty places critical theory at the center of our com- mitment to social justice; however, we have not adopted a specific definition of social justice despite six years of discussion. Because our program relies on each faculty member defining social justice for themselves, I define social justice, as an orientation that includes both a goal and a process (Bell, 2016) in which the dignity of each person’s unique identity—including the intersections of their race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, home language, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identification, ability, religion, or any other manifestation of diversity that advantages or disadvantages a person by virtue of membership in that group (Gay, 2010)—is respected and enhanced. Social justice leaders ensure each person, of each cultur- al background, thrives as a person, as a learner, and as a cherished member of the community, whose perspective is reflected in each classroom and in each school. The process that school leaders with a social justice orientation follow is “democratic and participatory, respectful of human diversity and group differences, and inclusive and affirming of human agency and capacity for working collabora- tively with others to create change” (Bell, p. 3). Becoming skilled in leading processes that create the space for hearing the voices of and including the perspectives of all members of the community in deci- sions is a critical characteristic of social justice school leaders. Second, because CPED presents guiding principles, rather than a prescriptive program model, CPED-influenced institutions should engage in a collaborative program design process that reflects and responds to its unique context. While some change processes are prescribed and linear (Kotter, 1996), others are organic and unfold- ing (Hagstrom, 2004; Wheatley, 1992) and depend on developing a collaborative, trusting culture (Leithwood & Jantzi, 2007). Develop- ing a collaborative and trusting relationship among participants during the change process was a critical part of our work. As Combs, Harris and Edmonson (2015) note, “The presence of trust can en- hance an organization’s efforts to fulfill its mission, and the lack of trust can constrict those efforts” (p. 18). Combs and colleagues iden- tify communication as a primary tool for increasing trust. They further advise that leaders must have the courage to allow dissenting views. In our case, consensus decision-making was, and continues to be, our program’s preferred method of decision-making. In our program, consensus meant that we heard every faculty voice, addressed all concerns, and engaged in dialogue until we all agreed on the deci- sion. This decision-making structure increased the time we needed to make decisions, but also increased our commitment to our con- clusions. A third value included empowering faculty. Engaging those im- pacted by decisions is empowering and liberating (Freire, 1997) and contributes to success in learning organizations (Leithwood & Jantzi, 2007). Because consensus is a strong strategy for increasing partici- pant satisfaction with outcomes (Lambert, 1998), our university empowers faculty through shared governance. Our department chair believes in our program faculty’s ability to determine its doctoral program characteristics and the ways we would lead the redesign process. Within a month of my appointment to the Doctoral Program Council, the department chair asked me to lead the educational ad- ministration program redesign effort and to present a redesigned doctoral program within two months. While it empowered me as a faculty member and was in accordance with our university’s formal governance structure of shared leadership, asking me to lead the change violated informal hierarchical practices related to rank, as I was the most recently hired, untenured faculty member in our pro- gram (Peterson et al., 2016). Nervous about assuming this role as the most junior faculty, I nonetheless had substantial experience with complex change processes in other organizational contexts, having served most recently as a “turnaround” high school principal (Peter- son, 2013; Peterson, 2014). These experiences would enhance my ability to lead the education administration EdD redesign process. In addition, despite our team having over 75 years combined experi- ence as educators in state and district leadership roles, traditional academics might question the wisdom of empowering untenured faculty to determine components of a doctoral program. However, our team appreciated the trust our chair and dean had in us, and we ultimately embraced the opportunity to design the program we be- lieved would work for our students, all of whom were seated school leaders. We were originally given two months for our change process, a timeline imposed by our department chair based on common appli- cation deadlines within our department. Creating a sense of urgency for change (Kotter, 1996) and having a tight timeline (Fullan, 2003) might be especially important in graduate schools, which are ex- tremely slow to change. As Cassuto (2016) points out: “… the changes in graduate school are typically measured in geological time” (para. 5). At a time when public criticism of institutes of higher education permeates public discourse, change must happen faster. However, when the department chair subsequently delayed admis- sions by a year, we were given more time for our redesign process. Preparing Scholarly Practitioners Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional Practice impactinged.pitt.edu Vol. 2 (2017) DOI 10.5195/ie.2017.30 35 While the initial deadline created a sense of urgency to com- plete the task, this extension of time allowed us to engage more deeply in a process that matched our collaborative, consensus- driven decision making model in which our direction organically “un- folded” (Hagstrom, 2004; Wheatley, 1992), rather than proceeding in a prescribed manner. Thus, our change process resembled a jour- ney (Fullan, 1993) and reflected Bell’s (2016) concept of social justice processes. The additional time was also critical for our team’s ability to ask questions and explore possible responses, while also reaching consensus on every aspect of our program redesign. With an extension on our timeline, our faculty explored the fac- tors influencing the model we would propose. These included available doctoral faculty and their scholarly interests, the desired level of support we wanted to provide future students, and compo- nents of CPED-influenced and other successful doctoral programs that we wanted to incorporate into our redesign. Identifying the fac- tors that would influence our design, rather than the specific characteristics of the design, seemed to minimize the stressors of the change process for our faculty. While program faculty had origi- nally spent meeting time expressing resistance to the chair’s charge to redesign our program, after identifying factors we needed to con- sider, they began to participate willingly and fully in discussions about program components. OUR REDESIGNED MODEL While this article is not intended to be a thorough explication of the characteristics of our redesigned model, I share a few of its key components next. I do so not because these components should necessarily be replicated by other institutions, but rather because they reflect our program’s interpretation of CPED principles, existing university policy, and our faculty’s scholarly focus. Key components of the new model are our mission and its connection to university goals and curricular changes, a discussion of which follows. Mission As a part of our redesign process, we articulated a mission for the Education Administration EdD. Because most of our program faculty were either long-time, active members of Oregon Leadership Network, a statewide consortium of school districts committed to equity and/or had a known commitment to leadership for equity, reaching consensus on our mission of having an equity focus in our doctoral program was readily reached without conflict. In addition, while our faculty consisted of both academic scholars with a PhD and practitioner scholars with an EdD, we believed that our strength was in preparing practitioner scholars, rather than future academics. Thus, our mission, which also explicitly defines the professional roles our students would be prepared to fill, was articulated as follows: The Graduate School of Education EdD In Educational Lead- ership (Educational Administration Specialization) prepares students to serve as executive educational leaders in district, state, regional, and national educational organizations through rigorous and rich program offerings with a deep focus on edu- cational equity in our K-12 schools (Graduate School of Education (GSE), 2012). We also wanted to include our faculty commitment to students throughout their careers in education, which we described thus: The Portland State University Graduate School of Education Educational Administration faculty members are committed to sup- porting the career aspirations of Portland State University Educational Administration students as they explore and identify their career pathway and elect to earn the degree and licensure that best matches their career aspirations, including the MA, Initial Administra- tive License, Continuing Administrative License, and doctorate. We agreed to adopt a cohort model for the Initial Administrative Licensure and EdD programs, which would provide, in our view, the best support for our students as they complete a rigorous and rich program with a deep focus on educational equity in our K-12 schools (GSE, 2012). With this model, students develop a network of support for completing their rigorous programming and have a consistent group of colleagues who can serve as resources for leading for equi- ty in their schools. In addition, we agreed to only admit students whom our current faculty could support based on faculty scholarly focus and professional expertise. Finally, as a part of our discussion of our mission, we connected our EdD learning outcomes to the then stated university goals in the areas of communication; creative and critical thinking; diversity; culturally responsive engagement with families, students, community leaders, and partners; ethics and so- cial responsibility; internationalization; and sustainability (Portland State University, 2012). Doctoral Curricular Changes We made several changes to our curriculum, including enhanc- ing supports for doctoral students, modifying the focus of our comprehensive examination, and adding a capstone option. To en- sure that our students were supported, we made some structural changes to coursework. First, students enrolled in a leadership sem- inar that I taught parallel to their other doctoral courses, which focused on providing intellectual access to research. In each ses- sion, we also ensured that they knew how to examine research that would support their developing concepts of leading for social justice in their schools. The class also prepared students for the first major benchmark in the program. Papers assigned in this leadership seminar were comprised of components of the comprehensive examination, an examination that caused previous cohorts of students to struggle. We also made significant changes to our comprehensive exam- ination. Instead of a traditional presentation and defense of a core paper, we asked students to respond in writing to three questions based on the content in the core courses. The questions corre- sponded more appropriately to the practitioner-focused goals of the program and were more relevant for our students who are seated administrators engaging in praxis. Students would have 20 days (three weekends) to complete the 25 to 30-page paper. The questions were shared in advance with students and included the following: What is one significant problem of practice related to educa- tional disparities and leadership for equity in our nation and state? How would you analyze the problem using appropriate theoretical frameworks and critique their application to the problem related to core content in Principles and Practices of Learning, Organizational Leadership Theory and Research in Education, and Educational Policy and Politics? What conclu- sions do you draw from your analysis and what recommendations/actions do you recommend to address the issue? Our team also decided to include a “capstone project” as an op- tion to a traditional dissertation, which reflects a traditional PhD dissertation study. The capstone project could be developed “in col- laboration with district, state, regional and national educational Peterson Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional Practice impactinged.pitt.edu Vol. 2 (2017) DOI 10.5195/ie.2017.30 36 organizations that are of value to the educational organization of the EdD student as well as to the field of educational administration in general” (GSE, 2012). Next, we decided we would support a collabo- rative dissertation/capstone in which two or more students would collaborate, and their capstone project would include the following characteristics: identifies a problem of practice in educational admin- istration leadership for equity in a K-12 educational setting; uses common data sets; and is evidence driven” (GSE, 2012). Further, our team concluded that both the dissertation or capstone options could be a 100-150 page paper that “includes a focus on a problem of practice in K-12 education with original research and appropriate literature/research context OR it may be a capstone project that pro- duces a product of compelling interest to the school/district as well as the broader educational administration community” (GSE, 2012). Our decision to include the option of a capstone project was im- portant, especially due to our focus on preparing practitioner- scholars rather than aspiring academics. Our graduates needed to be able to demonstrate the ability to “construct and apply knowledge to make a positive difference in the lives of individuals, families, or- ganizations, and communities” (CPED, 2009)—a more situated, practice-focused goal than the generalized theory-building of the traditional dissertation. As explicated in Peterson et al. (2016), our program model reflected, “that each university campus was unique which may or may not limit what could or couldn’t be changed pro- grammatically” (p. 60). Because major changes to the doctoral curriculum would take two or more years to go through our shared governance committees, we decided to only make changes that were allowed under existing university and graduate school policy and could thus be implemented more quickly. Aligning our Work with CPED Principles of Equity, Ethics, and Social Justice Early in the change process, we revisited the CPED working principles and identified which of the intended outcomes of CPED we wanted to focus on in our program. Key to this discussion was our commitment to ensuring a rigorous doctoral program with courses aligned with principles of social justice. One faculty member shared their view: We want to do this right. We want our EdD to be rigorous. We want our research sequence to produce competent people who can read, analyze, and supervise analysis of research in meaningful ways in context. We need to link this to our profes- sional doctoral seminar. We want all courses aligned with CPED principles for years one and two [of the doctoral cours- es] (Portland State University, Initial Administrative Licensure/Continuing Administrative Licensure Workgroup, 2013). While we did not have the authority to redesign all of the doc- toral courses, since they were graduate school courses and not program courses, we were able to have conversations with doctoral faculty about our interests in aligning the courses with CPED princi- ples. We also examined the resources available on the CPED website and invited our doctoral program coordinator to come to our meetings. We asked her to explain university doctoral program re- quirements, which we did not have the authority to change. Our doctoral program coordinator had substantially more experience with CPED and we invited her to help us understand CPED principles and to guide our work. Guiding Questions to Align with CPED Principles We used the strategy of asking questions to guide our discus- sions. Our first question was, given our faculty expertise, for which positions we could best prepare our doctoral students. While some institutions are preparing future academics, we were clear that our focus was on preparing practitioners: superintendents, directors of curriculum and research, and state and regional educational leaders. We knew that based on the extensive experience our faculty had as school and district leaders, we had the expertise to prepare future district and school leaders. We each identify as a practitioner-scholar and we believe that practitioner-scholars are well suited to prepare school leaders. We also asked what characteristics and skills we wanted our doctoral graduates to exemplify. We wanted students to apply re- search to how K-12 students and adults learn as a part of school improvement. We decided our graduates would engage in school improvement with demonstrated success reducing disparities in K-12 schools. Because our focus was on reducing educational disparities such as disproportionate graduation rates and disproportionality in suspensions and expulsions among children of color, we wanted our students to have a comprehensive understanding of leadership for equity with critical theory providing foundation for their work. We also believe in community-engaged scholars, and wanted our students to be able to work with and alongside families, students, community leaders and other partners in a culturally responsive manner. Finally, we wanted our students to demonstrate social and ethical responsi- bility through implementing inclusive and socially just policies, practices and change processes in school improvement as well as in finance, budgeting, policy, and legal arenas. In other words, our students would be known as leaders for equity who knew the re- search and the practices to effectively create socially just schools where all students thrive. While the ability to lead such school im- provement efforts is extremely complicated and requires a thorough understanding of the interplay of policy, law, finance, community engagement, and student and adult development, these responsibili- ties reflect national leadership standards. In particular, the National Policy Board for Educational Administration (NPBEA) (2015) recently released 10 newly revised school leadership standards that recog- nize the increasing complexity of school leadership in the 21st century. One standard specifies that school leaders must “employ situationally-appropriate strategies for improvement, including trans- formational and incremental, adaptive approaches and attention to different phases of implementation” which also managing “uncertain- ty, risk, competing initiatives, and politics of change with courage and perseverance, providing support and encouragement, and openly communicating the need for, process for, and outcomes of improve- ment efforts” (p. 18). We wanted our graduates to be skilled in these critical and complex leadership areas. We asked additional questions related to how we would engage local districts as partners. We identified numerous possible answers, including having our districts identify the problem of practice, using common data sets available to the district and our students, and ensuring that once a problem is identified by the students, that our course work would relate to that problem of practice. We knew we wanted to make a commitment to develop our students’ capacity at every step of their career from their first school leadership position, and the licensure required for that position, through their doctoral work. We also asked whether our existing faculty or clinical faculty would best serve as advisors and professors for our courses. Our answer was to begin with existing faculty, given that our professors Preparing Scholarly Practitioners Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional Practice impactinged.pitt.edu Vol. 2 (2017) DOI 10.5195/ie.2017.30 37 are all former practitioners. We identified additional questions for which we again needed the advice of our doctoral program coordina- tor--specifically whether we could modify our existing traditional comprehensive doctoral examination or whether it would need to go through program and policy review, a process generally requiring two years. Our coordinator indicated that if the Doctoral Program Council (DPC) approved our changes no further review would be needed. Recognizing the need for additional support in understanding how we could implement CPED principles in our model, we began connecting with professors at other institutions, primarily by attending CPED presentations at professional meetings. It was extremely help- ful to hear the recommendations of other institutions in terms of how they overcame faculty opposition to change, the role of the Dean or Department Chair, and components of CPED-inspired doctoral pro- grams. One institution shared that forming a collaborative team was critical to their change process, and that faculty had to want to put in the time to discuss changes. The most common barriers regarding the change process included faculty resistance to change, faculty not perceiving the need to change, and a lack of data that would con- vince faculty of the need to change. These barriers had slowed down or ended their redesign efforts. In addition, presenters indicated they did not have enough skill in or knowledge about what they needed to change. Because I had attended additional CPED meetings that other department faculty could not attend, I shared the lessons of other CPED institutions with our team during our regular meeting discus- sions. Our team continued to refine our program model at our twice/monthly meetings. Additional questions arose, including what additional data we needed to consider regarding our doctoral gradu- ates, and how we could use that information to inform our work. We also asked questions about who should teach in our program and who should advise our students. We asked questions about balanc- ing fiscal requirements with the demands of supporting doctoral and other graduate students. In other words, we understood that every decision we made had fiscal implications due to the small size of our doctoral program, staffing implications in terms of hiring clinical or adjunct faculty, and curricular decisions that could impact our future doctoral student success. STAKEHOLDER CONSENSUS I present next the process of obtaining unanimous approval of our model, followed by a brief overview of the model itself. At the end of our first year, we had numerous concepts in mind for our new model but had not yet solidified details regarding required credits, support courses, and what our dissertation/capstone would look like. In September of our second year in the redesign process, we experi- enced a change in departmental leadership. Our new Chair was also extremely supportive of our direction and provided significant back- ground expertise regarding university policy, potential options for program change, and general support for our progress. Our new Chair suggested we align our required credits with the other doctoral program within our department, which we did. His focus was on doc- toral student success, noting that he believed we could overcome any barriers and offer a rigorous program of study in which our stu- dents would finish their doctorate within three to four years. In October, he asked us to propose a staffing model that included clini- cal faculty, a model we ultimately decided not to implement, preferring instead to include tenure-line scholar-practitioners in our doctoral faculty. As our team coalesced around our final program design in early October, our Dean reviewed our work and indicated his support for key decisions regarding the goal of our program, the number of cred- its, our core examination and our dissertation/capstone project. Two weeks later our program faculty met with the state’s administrator licensing agency to examine our proposal through the lens of state leadership standards and leadership licensing requirements. The director affirmed that the changes we made would have a neutral to positive impact on our doctoral students’ ability to receive licensure. That same week we brought our staffing model to the Department Chair, who supported our model. We next presented our model to the department faculty for their suggested revisions. Based on their input, we revised the model again, creating the final draft in early November. Continually revising our model, with the support and input of numerous stakeholders, helped us to address unique faculty is- sues and deflect conflict, particularly regarding the use of clinical, adjunct, or retired faculty and whether junior faculty would advise doctoral students or chair dissertations. Eventually, we agreed that our most junior faculty would not teach core doctoral classes in order to protect their efforts toward tenure. We agreed on a timeline for announcing our admissions, reviewing files, and interviewing poten- tial students. The dean then reviewed our final proposed model and timeline and encouraged us to obtain department and DPC approval. Analysis of Benefits and Limitations of our Model In the first week in December, the DPC conducted an examina- tion of benefits and limitations of our plan. Most of the benefits identified were in the areas of student success, student skill, and faculty commitment to our students. We determined that when our program focuses on problem-based learning and real problems oc- curring in our students’ schools, they will develop the skills to successfully lead schools and districts. Next, we reiterated the strong commitment to equity in our schools shared by our state, university, graduate school and faculty. We believe we should prepare future leaders for leading for equity. Knowing that integrating our licensure and doctoral programs would allow us to offer continuous support for our students throughout their career development, we offered our licensure courses as an integrated part of the doctoral program, instead of in addition to the doctoral courses. We also noted that our faculty has deep experience as practitioners focusing on equity in schools and has continued the focus on equity through their scholar- ly activities as faculty. With a doctoral program focus on equity, junior faculty would be able to provide support to doctoral students while also continuing to engage in scholarly activity (Meeting Notes, 2012- 2013), a particularly well-received discussion point. While more ex- perienced and tenured faculty were worried that advising doctoral students could potentially take time and focus away from the re- search agenda of junior faculty, junior faculty felt that having doctoral students with a similar commitment to community-engaged scholar- ship with a social justice focus would be of mutual benefit to junior faculty and the doctoral student. Additional benefits of revising our program model echoed the reality of the changing arena of higher education. In our geographical area, six institutions offer a PhD or EdD in educational leadership. In addition, the expectation that superintendent and senior director positions are filled by candidates with an EdD meant that if our insti- tution did not offer a doctoral program, students who had been taking courses in our licensure program would have to transfer to other institutions. The council also identified limitations in our model, most of which related to the potential negative impact junior faculty might Peterson Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional Practice impactinged.pitt.edu Vol. 2 (2017) DOI 10.5195/ie.2017.30 38 experience when supporting doctoral students, the resources re- quired to ensure a quality doctoral program, and the possible influence of small doctoral class sizes on our department staffing budget. Tenured faculty members were primarily worried that if junior faculty focused on the success of doctoral students, they might not conduct their own research and publications to the extent required for tenure. These concerns were legitimate, as our institution com- mits substantial resources to the success of junior faculty, and their success rate is a source of institutional pride. Engaging in this process of identifying benefits and limitations allowed professors to examine dissenting views, opposition, con- cerns, and questions, a critical step in our process. We needed to recognize and honor concerns that ranged from protecting junior faculty’s time to how we would support adjunct faculty, retired, and clinical faculty should we choose to staff our program in that way. By addressing faculty concerns, our colleagues had a voice in the pro- cess, and the model we ultimately adopted, including the decision to have only our tenure-line faculty members advise doctoral students and chair dissertations, was supported. Within hours of the DPC meeting, program faculty met to review and discuss the input of our colleagues. Program faculty decided that junior faculty members were highly committed to admitting students who were also interested in their area of research and believed doc- toral students would contribute to the scholarly focus of junior faculty, not detract from their scholarly production. Program faculty decided to follow current university policy regarding the number of credits eligible to transfer into the doctoral program and to ensure we devel- oped an individualized plan of study that would support each student’s career goals. Because our students’ licensure courses also apply toward required doctoral credits, each student would need an individualized plan for program completion. Because of our specific licensure renewal statutes, students who only had three years before they needed to complete all courses for licensure had to complete the remaining required courses in the summer months. However, students who had nine years to complete their courses for licensure renewal could “count” any courses that were a part of the doctoral program toward their license renewal. We were now prepared to present our proposed doctoral program plan to our department first and then to our Doctoral Program Council soon thereafter. The de- partment faculty reviewed our final recommendation in December, and it received unanimous approval. In January, the model was brought to the Doctoral Program Council. Twenty-three months after we received our initial charge to redesign our doctoral program, the Doctoral Program Council also unanimously approved our model. LESSONS LEARNED FROM OUR REDESIGN PROCESS Several characteristics of our redesign process contributed to successfully incorporating a social justice focus and CPED principles into our redesigned doctoral program. These included the original tight timeline for the redesign, redesigning the program within exist- ing policy, identifying our mission and the potential future roles for which we are preparing our doctoral students, anticipating the needs of our students, and most importantly, having CPED principles to guide our discussions. The first lesson points to a tight timeline for change. Our de- partment chair, a supportive, tenured professor who understood the need for scholarly practitioners in our communities, began the pro- cess by asking our program faculty to engage in a two-month change process. Her tight timeline followed Fullan’s (2003) concept of a fast pace for change, as well as Kotter’s (1996) recommendation to cre- ate a sense of urgency around the need for change. When I asked our program coordinator for time on our next program meeting agen- da to explain our department chair’s charge and solicit initial thoughts on our redesign, our program coordinator readily agreed. Not unexpectedly, and perhaps appropriately, program faculty spent the majority of that meeting challenging the original two-month time- line for our redesign. At that meeting, we reached consensus on only one decision: it would be inappropriate to defy our department lead- ers’ request to make recommendations for program redesign within the allotted time. While our timeline was ultimately extended past the original two-month deadline, the urgency caused us to engage more quickly than if we had been given two years. Without the initial urgent time- line set by our Chair, we would not have embarked on our change process. However, once we started the process, our program faculty needed additional time to ask the many questions we needed an- swered. Fortunately, our chair granted us an additional year for our process, giving us time to seek out the views of the new Chair, our Doctoral Coordinator, our Dean, and our Doctoral Council members. We had time to read and reflect on the CPED materials, to attend sessions at national convenings hosted by CPED, and to learn from the Another key lesson was the value of working within existing university policy. We realized early in our discussions that significant policy changes require the approval of our Program and Policy Committee, a process that can take up to two years after internal consensus is reached on program changes. Thus, we decided to work within existing university policy, changing only aspects of our program that did not require the formal Program and Policy Commit- tee approval: focus of the program, characteristics of whom we admitted, components of the qualifying examinations and disserta- tion, and number of credits required for completion. Working within university policy narrowed the scope of our changes, however, this allowed us to move more quickly with our change process. In addi- tion, we tied our mission and learning outcomes to the university’s and our school’s vision. We wanted to ensure our EdD program con- tributed to the larger university vision. Another key lesson was the value of identifying early on our mission and for which roles we were preparing our doctoral students. It was essential that we identified early in the process that our focus of the education administration EdD was to develop school leaders with a “deep focus on educational equity in our K-12 schools” (GSE, 2012). This helped us with our admission decisions and guided me as I made decisions regarding the literature students would be read- ing in the leadership seminar. Spending time developing this mission was key to our success; whenever we were stuck on an issue related to any aspect of our program, we returned to our mission. Next, we experienced the difficulty of matching the needs of our rapidly-changing world to the needs of institutions that have histori- cally been slow to change. CPED founder, David Imig (2013) succinctly addressed our struggle. Three months after approval of our CPED-inspired program model and timeline, Imig presented to our graduate school on “Professionalism and the Professional Prac- tice Doctorate.” One key concept he shared was “Don’t try to re- make yourself [through your doctoral students] for a world that doesn’t exist.” He encouraged us to care for and do “everything pos- sible to meet the needs of clients [our students].” Taking Imig’s wisdom to heart, our faculty focused on meeting our students’ and communities’ desire for leaders who are skilled at eliminating educa- tional disparities. We weighed the urgency of the need to change our Preparing Scholarly Practitioners Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional Practice impactinged.pitt.edu Vol. 2 (2017) DOI 10.5195/ie.2017.30 39 program to meet the needs of our students and communities, ad- dressing the concerns and incorporating the wisdom of our tenured colleagues. While our goal was to redesign our doctoral program, we ap- proached this redesign process within our existing collaborative decision making model. No decision was made regarding any aspect of our doctoral program redesign without consensus, which although time consuming, ensured that all stakeholders were invested in the success of our model. Another important aspect of our work was continual communication and complete transparency in our decision- making process. No one participating in our process had a hidden agenda, and differing perspectives were included in the discussions. All notes were taken during meetings and shared immediately with program faculty and our chair. No faculty member promoted an out- come that benefitted them over the needs of our students and communities. We had no preconceived notions of what our program had to look like. Throughout this process, we learned that the CPED design principles and the CPED framework provided significant guidance. Knowing that other institutions have piloted capstone projects and joint dissertations gave us the confidence to also pilot the concept. Knowing that the first principle for CPED is a focus on equity, ethics, and social justice contributed to our ability to put these values in our mission. The foundational design principles and concepts were a guide for examining our institution’s and our state’s context to deter- mine what our CPED-inspired EdD program would look like. Without the CPED framework and guiding principles, the examples from other institutions, and the willingness of other CPED institutions to share their institution’s work, we could not have redesigned our pro- gram. IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES As can be expected with implementing any program redesign, our implementation effort revealed additional areas for improvement, specifically in the areas of coordination across departments and doctoral specializations and communication among university faculty. First, our EdD students took their core courses with doctoral students from three other programs in the graduate school (curriculum, spe- cial education, and higher education). Each program has a different focus, including for which roles they are preparing their doctoral stu- dents. In addition, each program is implementing CPED principles in differing ways, with the education administration doctoral students focusing solely on reducing educational disparities in schools and the three other programs having a broader focus. Third, the required research sequence continues to reflect traditional PhD research courses (research paradigms, qualitative research, and quantitative research). The education administration faculty members have been working closely with CPED, the Carnegie Foundation for the Ad- vancement of Teaching and university experts on Improvement Science, believing that the research expertise of the doctoral stu- dents we are preparing (superintendents, curriculum directors, and principals) is different from the research experience needed by doc- toral students preparing to become professors or teacher leaders. Thus, students in the education administration doctoral program must be able to apply educational research to specific school and district problems of practice and lead their organizations in change efforts so students of all backgrounds are served. Our last implementation challenge was that our communication strategies with department, graduate school and university profes- sors were not well developed. We failed to ensure that our program redesign had been communicated to faculty in all program areas. We also failed to adequately communicate with the Graduate Studies Dean and the Chair of the Human Subjects Research Review Com- mittee (HSRRC) that our doctoral students would be jointly presenting their dissertation proposals, jointly submitting their study proposals and would be using common data sets. What we found was that because we had not adequately communicated our pro- gram changes in advance, we would share these changes with Graduate Office faculty representatives after students had presented their dissertation proposal or dissertations or during the faculty delib- erations. Communicating the program redesign at this time led to lengthy deliberations. In addition, approval of doctoral studies re- quired numerous phone calls and emails to the HSRRC to clarify why the education administration doctoral students were submitting joint studies. Our failure to communicate adequately with faculty, HSRRC and the Graduate Studies office did not negatively impact students; however, we could have increased support of CPED prin- ciples and our program redesign had we prepared a communication plan. CONCLUSION While our change process resulted in the unanimous approval of program faculty, department faculty, Chair, Dean, and Doctoral Program Council members, perhaps more important is that our rede- signed program contributed to our education administration doctorate remaining relevant for practitioner scholars. Our students are devel- oping the dispositions and expertise to lead organizations as social justice leaders and are highly engaged in school improvement efforts that reduce educational disparities. We offer our redesign process and resulting program decisions not as a prescribed model for others to follow, but rather as an example of the guiding values and pro- cesses that allowed CPED’s guiding principles to influence our professional educational doctorate. 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