The Award
Quality leadership preparation is essential to quality leadership practice. Research reveals an important relationship between preparation and leaders’ career outcomes, practices, and school improvement efforts. Exemplary/effective university-based programs evidence a range of program features that collectively contribute to robust leadership preparation. To celebrate exemplary programs as well as to cultivate a group of exemplary programs that model and can help to catalyze and support ongoing program improvement in other universities, UCEA has established the UCEA Exemplary Educational Leadership Preparation Program (EELP) Award. This award complements UCEA’s core mission to advance the preparation and practice of educational leaders for the benefit of all children and schools.
Leadership educators are invited to nominate their programs for recognition at the UCEA Convention. The program or programs (up to three) determined most worthy of recognition will receive a cash award, an engraved plaque, and recognition in multiple UCEA publications. In addition, the award-winning program(s) will be recognized at a session during the UCEA Convention, on the UCEA website, and through a case-study publication. Award-winning programs/faculty are likely to be tapped by UCEA at various junctures to serve as models and illustrations for other preparation programs or faculty teams engaged in ongoing program improvement.
This award will be made to programs within colleges, schools, and departments of education. For example, university- based programs preparing leaders to lead in elementary, middle, or high schools or programs focusing on the development of district-level leadership are eligible for recognition. More than one program within a department, school, or college of education may apply.
Award Criteria
Applications will be judged on the extent to which the programs are (a) aligned with research and scholarship about exemplary and effective leadership preparation and (b) have evidence of program effectiveness and impact. Although the 2012 research- based document titled UCEA Institutional and Program Quality Criteria provides an accounting of features, content, and experiences associated with effective leadership preparation, more recent empirical and scholarly literature on effective and exemplary leadership preparation provides additional insights about important dimensions of these criteria that are considered as programs are reviewed for this award. The Handbook of Research on the Education of School Leaders (2nd ed., Young & Crow, 2016) is one such source of more recent information.
The Procedure
Intent to Apply due by May 1st, 2023.
Deadline to Submit All Materials: August 1, 2023.
Step One – Read through the award criteria and instructions. View the EELP Award Rubric.
Step Two – Submit a statement of intent to apply (through the link above) by May 1st, 2023. Upon receipt of a program’s intent to submit an Award Application, the program contact will be invited to an Award Dropbox Folder where program application materials should be deposited.
Step Three –
Review recent empirical and scholarly literature on exemplary/effective leadership preparation and review program information associated with prior EELP award-winning programs. This information will help your program to deepen its understanding of exemplary/effective principal preparation and things to “look for” when completing a self-assessment of your program. Use the UCEA Institutional and Program Quality Criteria to identify potential sources of evidence to self- evaluate the extent to which your program meets the 2020 EELP Award Rubric criteria.
Step Four – Fill out a EELP Cover Sheet
Step Five –Prepare Parts I–V of the Award Application as described at the above URL.
Please note: We encourage all programs to carefully craft Parts I, III, and IV of your Award Application for the purpose of this award submission. If your program pulls existing documents/text not expressly written for this application, it is likely that the strengths of your program will not be effectively made visible to award review readers.
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Step Six – Prepare Parts I-V of the application and save each part as a separate PDF file. Be sure all file names correspond to the applicable part, for example: Part.I.ProgramDescription.pdf. Submit the Cover Sheet and Parts I-V by depositing them in the Dropbox noted in the explanation for Step 2 above.
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Please Note: Nominations must be received by August 1, 2023.
Formalities
The application should have the support of the program head, department chair and dean as appropriate. If you have further questions about the application or review process, please contact us at uceaawards@gmail.com.