Educational Leadership & Innovation Department

About Us

The Educational leadership and Innovation department offers degree and certification programs that prepare students for leadership careers in educational organizations. Our faculty offer their expertise as professional practitioners, scholars, and researchers to develop students' understandings of historical and contemporary issues facing schools and communities.

Students are given a thorough grounding in the organizational environment of higher education, including its historical, social and philosophical foundations, and present issues, as well as introduced to the methods of educational inquiry and research in the fundamental core. The internship core is made up of two semester-long field experiences supervised by a university supervisor and an on-site mentor. Students study the primary functional areas of higher education as well as contemporary management science and leadership theories in the advanced core. The courses place a strong emphasis on problem-based learning, and the internship experiences allow students to connect theory to reality while also improving the learning environment for both students and professors.

Ladderized Curriculum

The benefit of the Alt+U ladderized curriculum is that students can receive advanced courses based on their qualifying GPA, allowing them to get credit for higher graduate courses right after completing requirements. Students will be able to exit at the appropriate intervals set by the curriculum with the necessary credential or continue their studies using our ladderized curriculum, like a ladder, student progress within the program with credentials at hand. Ladderized education is the harmonization of all educational and training processes that allow students to advance from specialized to higher education programs, or vice versa. It provides students the chances for good career opportunity and educational improvement.

The Program

Students are supported by Alt+U graduate instructors at all stages of the program. Academic experts from a variety of institutions and functional areas are also asked to participate in the program as guest lecturers, mentors, and program advisors, bringing their knowledge to the curriculum.

The curriculum is aimed to assist students develop leadership, inquiry and research, communication, and higher education knowledge, attitudes, and abilities. Specific proficiencies have been defined for students to develop and demonstrate throughout the program in each of the four categories.

• comprehensive knowledge of various leadership and management theories;

• the ability to critically reflect on historical and contemporary issues in education and relate them to leadership and practice;

• the ability to articulate an integrated philosophy of education and leadership;

• the ability to lead in an educational setting

Course Offerings

ELI 752: Organization and Governance in Higher Education (3 hours)

ELI 687: Higher Education in the United States (3 hours)

ELI 708: Seminar in the Foundations of Modern Education (3 hours)

ELI 755: Research Seminar in Educational Law (3 hours)

ELI 761: Inquiry in Higher Education (3 hours)

ELI 706: Foundations of Modern Educational Thought (3 hours)

ELI 786: Academic Leadership in Higher Education (3 hours)

ELI 763: Seminar on College Students in Higher Education (3 Hours)

ELI 759: Research Seminar in Educational Administration (3 hours)

ELI 760: Resource Management in Higher Education (3 Hours)

ELI 750: Advanced Leadership Theory, Governance & External Relations (3 Hours)

Master's Graduate Courses

500 to 596 Workshop

500 to 596 Seminar

500 to 596 Colloquium

597 Internship

598 Special Project

599 Professional Applied Research / Master's Capstone / Portfolio

699 Thesis

Doctoral Graduate Courses

780 Issues & Trends

790 Special Topic

791 Directed Research

792 Directed Readings

793 Independent Research

794 Independent Study

795 Fellowship Research

797 Practicum / Clinical / Clerkship

798 Fellowship Research

799 Dissertation / Applied Dissertation

*Advance course can only be taken twice (2), a waiver from the department chair is needed if it exceed the prescribe limit.