2012 Leadership Institute  -  Keynote Speaker Andrea K. Rorrer, Ph. D.

UCA is proud to announce the annual Leadership Institute for district and school leaders. The keynote speaker for this event is Dr. Andrea  K. Rorrer. Dr. Rorrer is one of the  nation’s premier scholars on the role of district and state leaders in organizational and policy changes aimed at increasing equity in student access and learning outcomes. Her research has been published in leading journals such as Educational Administration Quarterly, Educational Policy, Theory into Practice, and Journal of Special Education Leadership. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Utah. She serves as Director of the Utah Education Policy Center and has conducted policy research and evaluations for the Utah legislature, Utah State Office of Education, local schools and districts, and community organizations. She became the co-principal investigator for the Utah Data Alliance in 2010.The Alliance is the state’s recipient of the Department of Education’s State Longitudinal Data System Grant. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Virginia and a PhD from the University of Texas.

You can download a Dr. Rorrer's full bio by clicking here.

Andrea Rorrer Presentation - Districts as Institutional Actors in Improving Achievement and Advancing Equity

2011 Leadership Institute  -  Keynote Speaker Joseph F. Murphy, Ph. D.

UCA is proud to announce the annual Leadership Institute for school leaders.  The keynote speaker for this event is Dr. Joseph F. Murphy.  Dr. Joseph Murphy is the Frank W. Mayborn Chair of Education and Associate Dean at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University.  He has also been a faculty member at the University of Illinois and The Ohio State University, where he was the William Ray Flesher Professor of Education. A nationally renowned researcher, he has devoted his career to studying the area of school improvement, with special emphasis on leadership and policy.  He has authored or co-authored 16 books and 2 major monographs in this area and edited another 12 books.  His most recent authored volumes include: Understanding and Assessing the Charter School Movement (2002), Leadership for Literacy (2004), Connecting Teacher Leadership and School Improvement (2005), Preparing School Leaders: An Agenda for Research and Action (2006), Turning Around Failing Schools: Leadership Lessons from the Organizational Sciences (2008) and The Educator's Handbook for Understanding and Closing Achievement Gaps (2010).  He has also published over 200 journal articles and book chapters on school improvement and leadership.

Read his full bio, here.

UA-Fayetteville Office of Education Policy Presentation

Office of Ed Policy Agenda
UA-Fayetteville Office of Ed Policy Spotlights on Success Education Report
OEP Spotlight On Success Presentation

2010 Leadership Institute  -  Keynote Speaker Dr. Ellen Goldring

In this presentation Dr. Goldring presents a framework that describes learning-centered leadership, a set of behaviors rooted in the literature that are associated with effective leadership and a corresponding leadership assessment system, the Vanderbilt Assessment For Leadership in Education (VAL-ED). Learning-centered leadership is leadership for student performance. One of the greatest needs in the field is to develop leadership assessment that can be used to pro-vide high quality performance feedback to school leaders.

The presentation will focus on two key dimensions of highly effective leader-ship behavior: core components and key processes. Core components refer to what principals or leadership teams must accomplish to improve academic and social learning for all students, while key processes refer to how leaders create those core components. Core components refer to characteristics of schools that support the learning of students and enhance the ability of teachers to teach. Key processes are leadership behaviors that raise organizational members’ levels of commitment and shape organizational cul-ture. Effective learning-centered leadership is at the intersection of the two dimensions: core components cre-ated through key processes.