Educational Leadership - Higher Education

The Higher Education concentration within the Ph.D. in Educational Leadership is designed to serve higher educational faculty who have not yet obtained a terminal degree, as well as those working in student services or other administrative areas within universities, community colleges or other institutions focused on adult learning. The overall focus will be on leadership knowledge and development, applicable to both instructional and management aspects of higher education institutions.

Program Benefits:

The Higher Education concentration is focused on the non-traditional student, offering courses on weekends.  In addition, the program allows students to tie their career project experiences into their coursework.  Finally, the program contains a very unique Professional Inquiry, Research, and Dissertation Core for all students which “flips the dissertation process on its head,” by having students focus on possible dissertation topics during the first year of their program (both through the initial doctoral studies seminar and their first professional field experience course). This will allow students, during their second and third years, to be working on their research ideas while taking core research and higher education courses.

This approach is very unique in that most doctoral programs require students to initially take a number of different content and research courses, pass their comprehensive exams, and only then begin to focus on their dissertation research. This places the burden of “guidance” for the dissertation primarily on the student’s advisor and committee members since all other courses have been completed. It also helps contribute to a large number of ABDs (students leaving a program with All But Dissertation complete). Faculty within WMU’s Department of Teaching, Learning, and Leadership are committed to significantly decreasing the number of doctoral students not completing their programs due to concerns with the dissertation.

Admission requirements and procedures:      open close

Send to Western Michigan University, TLL Graduate Office, 2217 Sangren Hall, Kalamazoo, MI, 49008:

1. Three completed Graduate Reference Forms: http://www.wmich.edu/tll/gradref.html
2. Resume of Leadership Form: http://www.wmich.edu/tll/resume.html.  On this you should summarize your key leadership experiences.
3. Complete Vita or Resume.
4. Autobiographical Statement (note: this is a two or more page typed paper that shows a clear and complete statement of your professional goals, and how those goals relate to achieving a doctorate degree in Education Leadership. Please be aware that this paper is also viewed as a "writing sample").
5. Completed Program Goals Form: http://www.wmich.edu/tll/programform.doc
6. Official Transcripts from every higher education institution you have ever attended (except WMU), even if you didn’t receive a completed degree from them.

Course Requirements:      open close