"People who end up being deans or college presidents usually have not had specific training in their fields," Gora says. "Most have Ph.D.'s in academic training. There are few programs which provide these new administrators the opportunity to learn about those particular areas which they deal with in day-to-day issues."
Management of Lifelong Education
Like the IEM, the Institute for the Management of Lifelong Education (MLE) has changed since it was created in 1978 to encourage creation of continuing education programs. Because most colleges have now committed to such programs, Baden says, the focus of MLE is on teaching new administrators skills for continuing education and addressing concerns of directors of these programs.
The two-week program looks at management, leadership and adult development, Baden says, through three or four large, group case-study discussions each day. The 75 people also split into small sections and meet each night to examine the issues which will be discussed the next day.
The program ended in June and, according to the MLE evaluations, more than two-thirds of the participants mentioned the "quality of participant group and the opportunity for networking" as the most valuable part of the program.
"Seeing that what you do is valued by your peers and an institution like Harvard is very important and makes [the participants] go back feeling better about what they've committed themselves to doing professionally," Baden says.
Principals' Center
Another of the Ed School's bigger summer programs, The Institute on the Principal and School Improvement, focuses on administration in secondary education. This program is run under the joint auspices of the PPE and the Harvard Principals' Center, a local year-round organization of approximately 500 people who attend weekly seminars, dinner lectures and workshops during the academic year.
The program's 105 participants came to Cambridge this July for a 10-day series of workshops. The focus of the program is "sharing, reflection, writing and reading," in order to examine changes--and strategies for dealing with those changes--in the secondary school system, according to Nancy Broude Tepfer, Coordinator of Program Administration at the Principals' Center.
Large group discussions and a lecture series examine a particular theme each day, while small discussion groups meet every day for two hours to prepare for the next day's topic. Every participant is required to keep a journal and write on each day's theme.
Because of high demand for this type of program, the Principals' Center this year established a separate program, the Institute for New and Aspiring Principals, to work with less experienced secondary school administrators. This program focuses less on problem-solving and more on building skills for the job, according to Tepfer.
Plenty to Offer
While these are the best-known summer programs at the Ed School, they are by no means the school's only offerings.
The PPE offers several other sessions including the Seminar for Superintendents, Computer Technology in the Special Needs Curriculum, Institute on Thinking: Critical and Creative, the Institute on Writing, Reading and Civic Education, the Management Development Program and the newly-created Institute on Multicultural Education.