In our last episode, we dove into identifying the gaps between “learning” and “doing”, highlighting the work of University Principal Preparation Initiative. We learned that through thoughtful planning using frameworks developed by Wallace to address the growing need for more collaboration between districts and universities. In this episode, we’re going to dive into a case study of how one UPPI program at University of Connecticut and what they’ve learned from their program redesign. We spoke at length with Richard Gonzales, who oversees the principalship and superintendency program at UConn and serves as the director of UConn’s UPPI initiative project, specifically about the redesign of their core assessments.
Agnieszka Petlik ‘16 6th Year, a kindergarten teacher in Simsbury, Connecticut, and graduate of the Neag School’s UConn Administrator Preparation Program (UCAPP), knows this transition all too well. “When COVID hit, I had to make some choices because my parents live downstairs, and they’re [immuno] compromised,” says Petlik. “I was very nervous, just like the rest of the world, as to what is going on and what we are going to do.”
The Regional School District 17 Board of Education appointed Jeffrey Wihbey as its next superintendent of schools this week. He an extensive background and a distinguished career in public education, most recently as superintendent of schools for Connecticut Technical Education and Career System, leading and advocating for more than 11,000 students throughout the state. He holds a sixth-year degree in educational leadership from the University of Connecticut, and superintendent certification from the University of Connecticut’s Executive Leadership Program.
LEARN, the Regional Educational Service Center for southeastern Connecticut, has hired Tricia Lee as principal of The Friendship School in Waterford. Presently, Lee serves as assistant principal at The Friendship School.
Neag School students completing the UConn Administrator Preparation Program (UCAPP) this spring recently presented their capstone projects – the program’s signature final assignment in which students identify a need or opportunity for school improvement and work toward positive change. The UCAPP program went through a redesign in 2020 as part of a nationwide effort known as the University Principal Preparation Initiative (UPPI), funded by the Wallace Foundation. As a result of the redesign, the concept of family and parent engagement became a priority for the first organizational leadership course in UCAPP’s program of study.
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 program, 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.
