Chapter 7: Successes, Challenges, and Hopes of an Educational Leadership Program Coordinator: Balancing the Self and Others

The program coordinator (PC) for the educational leadership program wears numerous hats and serves as a referee, at times, in helping to craft the vision and purpose of the program. In the university setting, those who oversee, teach, and serve within the Master’s in Education (MEd) degree/principal certification, the Education Doctorate (EdD) or the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degrees, and superintendent certification possess a varied set of experiences, knowledge, understanding, and skills. Some are more closely aligned with policy and research with little to no actual leadership experience in schools or districts. Others bring a vast array of leadership experiences that are relevant to school-level and/or district-level leadership positions. Additional factors relate to the various philosophies of how schools and districts should operate and function and the policies and politics of higher education. The PC must address each of these factors within the program while navigating, adjusting to, and balancing the expectations of leaders in one’s department, college, university, EC-12 surrounding school districts, and the multiple perspectives of the students the program serves. This chapter focuses on the successes, challenges, and hopes of a PC at a Tier 1 university as I attempted to reestablish and maintain unity and cohesion among members of the educational leadership program between 2019 and 2022, prior to, during, and following the pandemic and some of the events that occurred within that timeframe.