HGSE Announces 2012-2013 Ed.L.D. Residencies

Posted July 19, 2012
By News editor

The Harvard Graduate School of Education today announced the residency locations for the first cohort of the Doctor of Education Leadership (Ed.L.D.) Program. The sites include urban school districts, state departments of education, education nonprofits, and education startups. The residency experiences will enable students to put two years of innovative coursework taught by HGSE, Harvard Kennedy School, and Harvard Business School faculty members directly into practice on projects of consequence for transformational education organizations.

“The residency component of the Ed.L.D. curriculum is part of what makes this degree program innovative,” says Dean Kathleen McCartney. “Like medical students who spend a significant portion of their training in hospitals gaining hands-on experience, our Ed.L.D. students will have the opportunity to immerse themselves in education leadership experiences with committed partner organizations. During the residency year, students will practice and demonstrate the skills of transformational leadership in a setting where their actions matter.”

These Ed.L.D. students, who have completed two years of an intensive, interdisciplinary curriculum focused on learning and teaching, leadership and management, and understanding and transforming the education sector, will spend the next 10 months in a meaningful leadership role alongside senior leaders in the field. In addition to the day-to-day work onsite, each student will complete and document a strategic project as part of the degree requirements. In these projects, students will help plan, implement, or assess a significant improvement effort that is of high priority to the organization, test their own theories of change, and reflect on their own leadership styles. Unlike a traditional doctoral dissertation, this capstone experience is based entirely in practice.

Students will present their capstone work publicly in April to ad hoc capstone committees – each comprised of a student’s academic advisor, an additional Harvard faculty member, and a representative from the residency site. Members of the committees will vote to approve the capstones in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ed.L.D. degree.

The list of residency sites reflects the diversity of interests students have in the education sector. While 15 of the 25 students will work in an urban school district or state department of education, others will be at a range of well-established and startup education organizations.

“One of the things I’m excited about in the residency matches is that we have students going to so many different kinds of organizations,” says Ed.L.D. Faculty Director Elizabeth City. “We can start to see how together students will be able to move the whole education sector, operating from many different vantage points.”

The following is the current list of 2012-2013 Ed.L.D. residency locations:

About the Ed.L.D. Program

In September 2009, Harvard University announced the Doctor of Education Leadership Program, a three-year, practice-based doctoral program to prepare graduates for senior leadership roles in school districts, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and mission-driven for-profits. The tuition-free program is taught by faculty from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Harvard Business School (HBS), and the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). The program offers an unprecedented approach to preparing leaders equipped to transform the American education system in order to enable all students to succeed in a 21st-century world. The three-year program began in August 2010 with an enrollment of 25 students.