Though the first two candidates awarded our Ph.D. in Education Administration was awarded in 1970, and Indiana State University and the College of Education established Education Administration as an area of graduate study as far back as 1971, the Department of Educational Administration was not officially established until 1982. 

Since that time, we have offered courses using a variety of delivery methods such as on-campus, distance education, Internet, hybrid, and we will continue to offer modified course settings to best fit today’s practitioners and students.

OUR MISSION

Our singular mission is to prepare today's practicing and promising educator to be tomorrow's complete administrative professional.

OUR VISION

We aspire to be the premier program in the preparation of working professionals for administrative leadership in elementary, secondary, and post-secondary education.

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES

• A scholar-practitioner orientation
• Program access for the working professional
• Varied course delivery (i.e., interactive television, Internet, and face-to-face)
• Cohort approach to learning
• Curriculum built around problems and opportunities for field-based experience and future practice
• Anchored by the disciplines of educational foundations
• Faculty engaged in a range of scholarly and service activities at the state, regional, national, and international levels
• Collaboration with practicing professionals

CORE VALUES

A commitment to:

• Quality programs and standards of excellence
• Diverse PK-16 administrative ranks by providing access for underrepresented groups
• Curriculum immersed in diverse perspectives
• Inquiry-based learning
• Collaboration in teaching, scholarship, and service among faculty and students
• Continuous programmatic and curricular improvement 

DIVERSITY STATEMENT

Much has been written and discussed about the importance of diversity, especially for educational institutions such as schools and colleges gave their role in addressing societal inequities and providing social mobility. Yet, like many organizations, their staffing and leadership do not always reflect the diversity of the larger society. For example, in relation to societal demographics, school and college leadership may be disproportionally white and male despite considerable research that affirms the benefits of racial, ethnic, and gender diversity for both majority and historically underrepresented persons within organizations and for those for whom the organization serves. Given our departmental responsibilities for preparing persons for school or collegiate level administrative leadership, then, it is important that these kinds of diversity at a minimum be reflected in our faculty, staff, and students. To this end, the Department of Educational Leadership, Administration, and Foundations affirms the following value statements around the issue of diversity:

• The recruitment and retention of underrepresented students, faculty, and department advisory board members within our administrative and academic fields are important.
• Curriculum, course content and instructional pedagogy that is inclusive of diversity benefits historically represented and underrepresented students as well as the faculty member that initiates such efforts.
• Intentional and purposeful efforts at including diverse issues and topics in our curriculum, course content, and instructional pedagogy is necessary irrespective of how diverse our students are.
• Faculty hiring searches should be intentional and purposeful at diversifying the candidate pool but also should be intentional and purposeful at planning and executing a search and screen process in order to maximize the chances of making a historically underrepresented faculty hire.
• Intentional and purposeful faculty recruitment efforts that lead to an historically underrepresented faculty hire should be matched with careful planning, discussion, and initiation of the kind of environment that supports their retention.
• Developing multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skill competence among our faculty, staff, departmental affiliates (e.g., adjuncts, advisory board) and students is important and must be purposeful and ongoing.
• Tenure, promotion, pay for performance, and annual review evaluations should include consideration of an individual’s efforts at developing multicultural competence in their teaching, scholarship, and/or service with documented evidence represented in their portfolio.
• Departmental office and commons physical spaces should project a message of inclusivity.
• Departmental assessment efforts in the area of diversity should align with the expectations of our accrediting agents.
• Effort at diversifying our faculty, staff, and students and developing multicultural competency is an ongoing improvement process rather than an “end state” that is achieved.