Teachers become leaders who help themselves and others around them to inspire change in their educational community. These teachers ideally become leaders who advocate teacher development, classroom achievement, and school improvement. Students will go through a course work on coaching and mentoring, decision making, planning, action research, and evaluation. This program is field based and students will get much experience outside the classroom. Students will gain an understanding of the practical and relevant ways in which teachers assume leadership roles in various aspects of education, and they will take a forward-looking, proactive stance toward the ever-changing nature of these roles and responsibilities. A few goals of this program are to foster collaboration among instructional professionals from educational institutions and corporate organizations, develop an understanding of outcome and performance based assessment.

This major will prepare you for:

The program prepares teacher leaders to assist other teachers to collect and analyze evidence of student learning, to provide informed and ethical leadership at the school, district and state levels, to foster professional learning communities, and to build meaningful and engaging partnerships with families and community contributors. The Master of Arts in Education is an interdisciplinary program that seeks to prepare graduates for effective leadership in schools, colleges, and other education organizations. Many of the program's graduates have continued their education through doctoral studies.