Shenandoah University now has three options for graduate students interested in a doctoral degree in either organizational or educational leadership.
The university’s Division of Education and Leadership has redesigned its Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) program in educational leadership and introduced a new Ph.D. in educational leadership as well as a Ph.D. in organizational leadership. The trio of programs feature low residency requirements and schedules that accommodate working professionals, along with an attractive price: $475 per credit hour.
Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership
The Ed.D. in educational leadership is tailored to meet the needs of students whose career goals include leadership and/or administrative roles in PK-12 and higher education, said Ed.D. Program Coordinator and Professor of Education Catherine Dunn Shiffman, Ph.D.
The program’s focus is firmly on using theory and research to understand problems of practice and lead change within educational organizations. The redesigned Ed.D. now has fewer dissertation credits as well as a series of progress benchmarks that make it possible for students to complete their dissertation and earn an Ed.D. at the end of the program’s third year, Dr. Shiffman said. The program also combines synchronous online classes and in-person weekend sessions with the support provided by a teaching-focused faculty and through learning with a cohort of students who are also employed full time within an educational environment.
An international requirement of the program can be met either through travel to see other educational systems at work, or through taking a course called International Education. Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) will be incorporated into courses as well. “The global learning piece is quite unique,” said Shiffman, who noted that a current Shenandoah doctoral student is comparing special education in their home region to that in Australia for their dissertation, and an Australian professor is part of the student’s doctoral committee.
This global component is important, Shiffman said, because these learners will lead organizations that are preparing students for a world of global interactions, meaning intercultural competence is a necessity. It also provides students with opportunities to explore how education is practiced in other parts of the world.
Additionally, the program includes a practitioner-focused research course. That class, however, differs from the coursework in the highly research-based Ph.D. in educational leadership program.
Ph.D. in Educational Leadership
The educational leadership Ph.D. is well-suited to students interested in teaching education at higher education institutions or conducting research for other research-based institutions such as policy centers, think tanks, government, education associations and more. At its heart, the program is for people who want to add to educational leadership’s research base, said Shenandoah Associate Professor of Quantitative Methods Sarah Daniel, Ph.D.
Students in the Ph.D. program take advanced research courses and must work with a faculty on a research project, Dr. Daniel said. For example, in the Directed Graduate Research course, students will receive research mentoring as they collaborate, for course credit, with faculty on new and ongoing research projects. The Ph.D. program can be completed in a minimum of four years, she added.
She noted that Shenandoah’s Ph.D. doesn’t hew to the traditional Ph.D. model of attending classes during the day, since it holds Zoom classes on weekday evenings and in-person classes on select Saturdays at Shenandoah locations in Winchester and Loudoun County, Virginia. Its schedule is much like that of the Ed.D. program.
Students in both of the educational leadership doctoral programs can also earn initial licensure for administration and supervision, which could be used as a concentration, she said. While the Ph.D. program does not have a global requirement, its students can also engage in international learning through global virtual exchanges embedded in coursework and by taking advantage of short-term study abroad opportunities, Daniel added.
While the Ph.D. and Ed.D. are distinct, there are several courses that the Ed.D. and Ph.D. students will take together, Daniel said. Shiffman added that she anticipates these cross-cohort interactions will be invaluable as the students in each program complement the other, seeing what works in practice and what works in research, to the betterment of both.
Ph.D.: Organizational Leadership
The Ph.D.: Organizational Leadership operates a bit differently than the educational leadership programs, although it is also a doctorate for the working professional. It’s an inquiry-based program centered on organizational theory, which makes it a perfect fit for people working at governmental and nongovernmental organizations or nonprofits, or who hold a professional doctorate and wish to advance in leadership positions within academia.
The organizational leadership Ph.D. is highly individualized, said Shenandoah Professor of Research John R. Goss, III, Ph.D. When students come into the program, they work with faculty to develop an individualized learning plan based around a concentration area. The nucleus of this concentration could be anything from a graduate certificate in a particular field of study to a clinical doctorate or first professional degree.
Students in the program meet as a group for weekend seminars at the beginning and the end of each semester, and one-on-one with course instructors and with mentoring faculty. “It’s kind of a team effort,” Dr. Goss said. A student can end up working with two to five members of a teaching group for any given course. “It depends on what you need,” he added. Within this structure, students learn how to think critically about what they have read, and in online, seminar-like meetings, they share how they’ve made sense of and/or use of course materials.
Those in the program also attend two in-person summer residencies, which run from a Monday evening to a Friday morning. The interdisciplinary experience feels almost like a conference, Goss said. It’s an intentional learning community, and within the program everyone’s a teacher and everyone’s a learner, he added.
The program is also global. Goss said he has students living around the world, ranging from New York to Atlanta to Botswana.
To learn more about all three of these programs, visit su.edu.
