Educational Leadership
Plan Your Educational Leadership Degree
Map out your path to advanced institutional leadership. Academic coordinators help working professionals structure their 72 required credits, align mandatory summer hybrid coursework, balance evening scheduling demands, and successfully navigate preliminary exams and dissertation milestones toward graduation.
Purpose
The program prepares leaders for effective, meaningful roles in a variety of educational settings. Course instructors are highly experienced school professionals and nationally recognized academic scholars. The practical and scholarly content blends issues important to practicing leaders with research that addresses these topics. Post-coursework, students produce a dissertation that studies and addresses a contemporary problem of practice in K-20 schools.
State-Wide Program Delivery
Courses originate on one of the WSU campuses in Pullman, Spokane, Tri-Cities, and Vancouver, and they are available to students at all other WSU campuses via videoconferencing. Some courses use a hybrid model or are augmented through online and alternative forms of videoconferencing. Attending classes synchronously via Zoom might be possible for students who live 25 or more miles from a WSU campus. Further details can be found in the Application Packet or the Program Handbook.
Program Requirements and Schedule
The program requires a minimum of 72 semester credits, which includes 42 credits of graded coursework across 14 classes. Upon completion of graded coursework, students must successfully pass a written preliminary exam before advancing to candidacy. The exam is written at home over a period of three weeks and consists of three distinct, but related essays focused on three topic areas. The exam is rated as pass or fail.
During semesters, courses are offered one night per week in the evening from 5:45 to 8:30 p.m. Summer classes are required and are typically taught using a hybrid schedule that includes videoconference class sessions, online activities, and one or more face-to-face weekend sessions on a WSU campus.
Students enrolled in two classes each semester finish the coursework portion in two and a half years. Students making continual progress could complete the degree in four years, though it is common for students balancing educational, professional, and personal demands to finish in four to five years. The maximum time to complete the degree is 10 years.
Learning Outcomes
Identify and analyze theories, research, and policies related to K-12 educational leadership, ethics, social justice, inquiry, policy, and leadership development.
Prepare and present written work to both academic and practitioner audiences.
Understand, evaluate, and apply educational theory and inquiry knowledge and skills to problems of policy and practice.
Design, conduct, report, and present clear and coherent research studies that contribute to understanding and solving problems of practice on multiple levels.
Articulate core values and model guiding principles, including a commitment to social justice, ethical responsibilities, effective and respectful interaction with diverse cultures, and a commitment to increasing achievement for all students.
Program Milestones
Preliminary Exam: A three-week written synthesis of learning applied to a research topic or problem of practice within educational leadership.
D-1: Defense of the Dissertation Proposal: An oral defense testing conceptual and methodological readiness to pursue the dissertation research study. It is rated as approved, approved with modifications, or denied.
D-2: Defense of the Dissertation: This final oral defense tests the ability to integrate, interpret, and apply research and theory through a defense of the dissertation research. It is rated as pass or fail.
Application and Admissions
The program is based on a cohort model, with new cohorts beginning once each year in August. Late applications are accepted on a space-available basis. Students must apply to the WSU Graduate School and submit a departmental application. GRE scores are not required. The program does not offer teaching or research assistantships.
Degree and certification programs in Educational Leadership do not accept Washington state tuition waivers. This includes Ed.M., M.A., Ed.D., and Ph.D. graduate programs, as well as principal, program administrator, and superintendent certification programs.