Educational Administration and Higher Education

The department of Educational Administration and Higher Education prepares educational leaders for institutions involved in the education of youth and adults from preschool through university and continuing education levels.

The department is committed to preparing leaders who bring perspectives from sociology, psychology, history and philosophy, as well as social justice and public policy concerns to their analysis and articulation of educational issues.

Course work, coupled with field-based learning experiences, attempts to develop reflective practitioners who integrate theory with practice in their professional agenda.

Master's
Educational Administration
Higher Education

Doctoral
Educational Administration
Higher Education

Educational Administration

All educational administration courses at the Lynch School encompass five primary themes.

1. Social justice focuses on issues of equity for both teachers and students, as well as developing anti-racist initiatives and integrating the ethics of justice, care, and critique.
2. Diversity emphasizes leadership that promotes learning for all students.
3. Reflective practice focuses on individual and collective learning through context and multiple perspectives which help illuminate the issues and lend intelligibility to what works and what does not work in schools and classrooms. It also implies a commitment to action-based research in the local school.
4. Constructivist learning implies a belief in the ability of students and teachers to construct individually, and especially in groups, the knowledge they need to solve problems, understand issues, apply knowledge to practical situations of daily life, and build theory from the ground up. This theme implies an active involvement with the material to be learned and a performance-assessment of knowledge.
5. Partnerships and collegiality implies a focus on shared responsibility for the work of the school, where parents, teachers and administrators work together; where teams of teachers work together with administrators to improve instruction; and where schools reach out to work with other professionals and community agencies that can help the students and their families cope with the problems and issues in their lives. By finding those themes treated in all or most of their courses, students are expected to develop consistent perspectives on their responsibilities as leaders of an educating community.

In its curriculum guidelines for programs in educational administration, the National Policy Board for Educational Administration for the Educational Leadership Constituent Council refers to "a constellation of social, economic, demographic and structural factors (that) are changing the world in which schools operate, leading to new expectations for the entire school community."

Courses in the various programs of study in educational administration at the Lynch School incorporate these forces:

• the internationalized economy and its demands on preparation for work in a world class workforce
• demographic changes requiring attention to diversity and the multicultural contexts in which schoolchildren are raised
• social and family modifications that require schools to coordinate with a variety of other social services that are serving their students and their families
• new technologies that require the learning of new literacies, and the use of these technologies for instruction and management tasks
• decentralized management and organizational systems that require greater teamwork, human resource development, delegating responsibilities close to the real work of the school
• expectations by both the policy community and the public at large that all students can and should achieve success in their schoolwork

The constellation of these forces has not only changed the way people think of schooling; it has changed the way people think about educational leadership.

Preparing educational leaders for schools challenged to respond to these forces is a basic premise of the educational administration programs in the Lynch School.

These forces refer to broad shifts in the knowledge and skills required of educational leaders today:

• from technical skills to interpersonal skills
• from command and direction to consensus building and motivating
• from resource allocation to being accountable for learning processes and outcomes
• from campus administrators to coordinator and integrator of school and community services
• from policy recipient to policy shaper and participant

These shifts have been reflected in courses throughout the educational administration programs, to include performance assessments and group projects requiring evidence of these skills and understandings.

Higher Education

The master’s program in Higher Education Administration offers courses in student affairs administration and general administration. Consonant with Boston College’s mission of student formation, Master’s students study the ways in which educational policies and practices affect the intellectual, social, and spiritual dimensions of student growth and change.

Master’s students study the ways in which educational policies and practices affect the intellectual, social, and spiritual dimensions of student growth and formation.  They work in supervised practicum experiences designed to put into practice principles of ethical administration, service on behalf of others, and the comprehensive formation of students by connecting the scholarly study of higher education with the development of administrative, teaching, counseling and leadership skills.  Consistent with human development principles that guide contemporary student affairs administration, student formation refers to the ways in which a college or university “communicates a sense of values worth pursuing and shapes habits of mind and heart that will achieve these goals” [Intersections, 2007].

The Higher Education Program has been awarding PhD degrees for more than 30 years. Our graduates have achieved significant distinction in academic administration and leadership over the years, holding senior administrative positions around the United States and abroad. We have been particularly successful in educating senior administrators, including many presidents, some at Catholic colleges and universities. We attract high quality students living in the area and those nationally who are attracted to BC and the Boston area. In the past decade, several of our PhD graduates have broken from our usual administrative mould and have become professors or policy makers in higher education.

We are committed to maintaining a small, selective, and focused PhD program in higher education administration. Most of our graduates aim toward top-level administrative careers, although a few may gravitate toward research and policy work. Our PhD will be carefully focused on student development and higher education policy. Thus we train professionals for work in the broad field of student services and in general academic administration.

The doctoral program is small and selective, but at the same time permits some part-time doctoral study. We seek to provide funding through research assistantships to approximately half the doctoral students we admit annually.  The doctoral students admitted part-time are non-funded students. Our faculty is committed to providing the appropriate advisement and dissertation direction to our doctoral students.