Jackson Scholars

UCEA Barbara L. Jackson Scholars Network

In November 2003, members of the UCEA Plenum voted to create the UCEA Barbara L. Jackson Scholars Network. Through this effort, UCEA will create a network of graduate students of color who are studying in UCEA members’ educational leadership doctoral programs and who are planning to enter the professoriate.
	Dr. Barbara L. Jackson
Jackson Scholar, Sonya Douglass Horsford, on the Importance of The Program
As a doctoral student (and first generation college student), I never much thought about a career in the academy. I had a profound interest in higher education and was determined to use my knowledge in ways to improve education at the school and university levels, but never "saw" myself as a college professor. That changed when my dissertation adviser, Dr. Edith Rusch, suggested I become a UCEA Jackson Scholar. I was suddenly connected to graduate students who shared my research interests and a national network of scholars willing to share their time, experiences, and professional insights as mentors.	Sonya Douglass Horsford
The leadership of Dr. Linda Tillman, inspiration of the program's namesake Dr. Barbara L. Jackson, and support and guidance offer by my assigned mentor, Dr. Kathryn Bell McKenzie helped me in my quest for the doctorate, and prepared me to not simply survive, but thrive in the professoriate. Through a collaborative effort between the Jackson Scholars Program and International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, we had the opportunity to publish a peer-reviewed article together and maintain a working relationship and friendship - one of many that were a direct result of the UCEA Barbara L. Jackson Scholars Program. I am grateful to have been a UCEA Barbara L. Jackson Scholar. It has been a gift to me both personally and professionally, and I hope many more students have the chance to share this meaningful and rewarding experience.

 

The Purposes of This Network are to:  

1. Provide a system of support for students of color across UCEA member institutions that will continue as they enter the professorial role and begin to mentor others into the profession.
2. Ensure the presence of minority faculty in educational leadership programs in numbers sufficient to assure that UCEA programs will reflect the diversity of our society and schools.

    

3. Support the K-12 environment’s need for a larger pool of administrators from minority groups, through enhanced abilities to recruit them into university programs
4. Demonstrate UCEA’s commitment to diversity, equity, and social justice

 

Guidelines:

  Each UCEA Institution is encouraged to identify a minimum of one and preferably more graduate students who will be named a UCEA Barbara L. Jackson Scholar.
Once identified, the UCEA Barbara L. Jackson Scholars will receive formal recognition at their institutions and within the UCEA consortium.
The UCEA Barbara L. Jackson Scholars will become part of a UCEA network, with a space on the website, and based on the ability of UCEA to acquire external funding, will engage in a graduate student seminar held annually during the UCEA Convention, participating in listservs and other forms of communication,
UCEA will develop a mentoring program for Jackson Scholars, through which scholars will receive mentoring in publishing, teaching and navigating higher education.
Each UCEA Institution is expected to make a financial commitment to sending the UCEA Barbara L. Jackson Scholars to the UCEA convention where they will have opportunities to connect and work with one another and to provide the scholar with research and teaching opportunities within their home institution.
UCEA will seek funds to support this network.
UCEA headquarters will assure that this information on this effort is disseminated widely to garner support and broaden job opportunities for the students.  

Rationale:

  Although the US, UK, and Canada are becoming increasingly diverse, the teaching and leadership corps of these countries, and higher education leadership faculty, continue to be predominantly white. Data from 1999-2000 % indicate that only 14.8% of school administrators in the US are people of color. In colleges of education, where most of these school and school system leaders are being educated, the percent of faculty members of color is 15.5 %. Without some proactive intervention, it does not appear that these figures will change very greatly in the next decade.

In his book Building Bridges delineating the history of UCEA, Jack Culbertson notes that UCEA was influenced at its beginnings by the fundamental belief that schools and universities must work together to improve educational leadership preparation and that “leadership was a prerequisite for human progress,” (p. 24) In recent years, both its membership criteria and its strategic plan, UCEA has taken a public stand to foster “human progress” through its support of equity and social justice in our institutions, our organization, and our work We pride ourselves on having a membership that is considered among the best doctoral granting educational leadership programs in the world. In order to maintain that status, it is imperative that we model what we believe by having a diverse faculty.

Establishing a support network for students of color planning on entering educational leadership programs in higher education will help in recruiting students from minority groups into our programs and thus into K-12 and higher education positions; will expand our capacity to place and retain minorities in positions in UCEA institutions, and will lessen the isolation often felt by minorities as they matriculate in their studies and work in our institutions, Taking this action will also assist in assuring that our institutional cultures are more welcoming and comfortable for students of color, enhance our capacity to more fully understand students from differing backgrounds, broaden the research perspectives in our field, and enhance our credibility in higher education and in K-12 schooling. Finally, this action continues the legacy upon which our organization was built.