ELRT
Educational Leadership
Ph.D. Program Description 
Today’s educational institutions are faced with many societal, economic, and technological pressures. These involve increased calls for organizational accountability at the same time there are limited resources. Forward-thinking leadership is necessary to appropriately address these challenges. Current and future leaders must have a better understanding of how collecting and assessing data from their various organizational components will in turn assist with program improvements. Such leaders need to make research and data analysis a more integral part of their workplace.
The Ph.D. in Educational Leadership is offered due to the growing demand for strong leaders across all type of educational institutions, and the increasingly complex tasks faced within those institutions. Four concentrations offered within WMU’s Ph.D. in Educational Leadership: 1) K-12; 2) Higher Education; 3) Career Technical Education; and 4) Organizational Analysis.
Applying theory to practice is an overall theme, with the case-study approach to learning used extensively. In addition, a very integrated “professional inquiry, research, and dissertation core” has been developed to assist you in adding to your higher education knowledge base, and to ensure that such students complete a Ph.D., rather than adding to the number of ABDs (All-But-Dissertations). These concentrations prepare you to be transformational leader, ready to address the many current and future challenges facing educational organizations.
All four concentrations involve a minimum of 90 graduate credits. Most, if not all of your previous graduate credits earned may be applied toward this total, leaving you with a completed master’s degree with a total of about 54-57 credits (including 12 dissertation credits). If you are a working professional, able to take two classes per semester, you can complete your doctoral work (including dissertation) in about three and a half years.