“If we prioritize things like teacher retention; if we prioritize things like school culture and climate as much as student achievement,” says Richard Gonzales, “everyone focuses their time, money, effort, energy toward those things.”

This summer marks one year since the Neag School’s University of Connecticut Administrator Preparation Program (UCAPP) began implementing changes as part of a nationwide effort known as the University Principal Preparation Initiative (UPPI). In 2016, UConn was one of seven universities selected to join this initiative, funded by New York City-based Wallace Foundation, aimed at improving training for aspiring administrators.

With so many interests shaping its principal preparation program, how well is UCAPP addressing the needs of its students, who many consider UCAPP’s primary stakeholders? UCAPP connected the Wallace editorial team with four members of its class of 2021, the first class to train in the current iteration of the pr​ogram, so we could seek out their views about the new program.

“We had had a concerted effort to work with more urban districts in the state,” said Casey Cobb, professor of educational policy at the University of Connecticut, who helped reorient UCAPP’s approach to district partnerships. “But we never had formal partnerships beyond one with the Hartford School District. The Wallace initiative gave us the opportunity to reach out to districts to support their leadership development pathways.”

Six of these faculty members met earlier this year at the UConn Hartford campus in the historic Hartford Times Building to discuss changes in the program thus far, elements that appear to work well, elements that present some challenges and directions the program may take in days and years ahead. Wallace’s editorial staff had the opportunity to listen in and report back.

It’s one thing to learn a skill in a class. It’s another to practice it in the real world, where conceptual lines are blurrier than they are in textbooks. It’s a distinction that leads many professional training programs to feature internships, which some may call clinical experiences of practicums, to complement the skills students learn in class. It is one that led the University of Connecticut’s Administrator Preparation Program (UCAPP) to reexamine internships when it began revamping its offerings to strengthen principal training.

The University of Connecticut’s Administrator Preparation Program (UCAPP) aims to be a leading leadership program—with a curriculum that guides its students through rigorous, relevant learning experiences so they are prepared to serve as leaders and champions of equity on their first day on the job.

In this post, Dr. Richard Gonzales, director of the university’s educational leadership preparation programs, describes why the university decided to participate in the initiative, its general approach to the work, and the effects it is seeing so far. Other posts include descriptions of efforts to redesign curricula and internships, students’ and faculty members’ views about the new design, and the ways in which the university works with community partners to ensure it is meeting their needs.