Chair's Welcome

This fall, as the incoming chair of the Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations, I had the pleasure of welcoming a new group of graduate students to Peabody and our department. Students come from over 30 states, 7 countries and 70 undergraduate institutions. Graduate students have such varied backgrounds as architecture, religion, and Romance languages. Students include former Peace Corps members, Coast Guard officers and educators. We also welcomed Mimi Engel, Ph.D., an assistant professor in K-12 education policy and leadership who studies urban education issues.  I am privileged to be part of an exciting, diverse, and talented community.

I am often asked what is unique about our department. We have a mission that unifies our research and teaching: to understand and enhance the social, institutional, and organizational contexts in which people learn-schools, universities, and workplace settings among them. We accomplish these goals through conducting research, implementing innovative teaching and training programs, and evaluating and influencing policy. Our work is both multidisciplinary and collaborative. We have faculty and students who work in a variety of intellectual frameworks; the assumptions and differences of these frameworks are key to the discourse, the research and everything we do. Collaboration characterizes our research and teaching to address the enormous challenges facing all types of organizations

My fellow faculty members and I are studying some of the most contested and complex educational issues of our times: school choice and charter schooling, pay for performance and incentives, access and equity for immigrant and at-risk students, financial aid policies, human resource policies for leadership development, and international comparisons. Our research has attracted strong support through extramural grant funding from prominent entities including, The Gates Foundation, The Institute of Education Sciences, The Lumina Foundation, and the National Science Foundation. We invite you to learn more about our work, our faculty and our students, and we hope you will stay in touch with us through our publications and Web pages.

Ellen B. Goldring,
Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Education Policy and Leadership
Chair, Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations

Peabody is the top-ranked school of education in the nation according to U.S.News & World Report's 2010 survey. Peabody has held a top-10 ranking for the last 14 years.