Doing the Work or Sharing the Work? The Educational Leadership Program Coordinator's Role

Abstract

Using distributed leadership as a theoretical framework, this study investigated the educational leadership program coordinator's duties in selected research universities, through interviews of 11 coordinators and 9 department chairs. Coordinators and chairs agreed that a significant time commitment was necessary for coordinators to provide oversight to the leadership preparation program. Most coordinators did not have job descriptions to delineate their duties, and few incentives were provided. Coordinators sometimes asked their chairs to intervene to ask faculty colleagues for help with programmatic responsibilities. This study concludes with recommendations to provide structure to and support for the educational leadership program coordination role.