Bringing Together Professionals in Education

What kind of place would bring together high school principals, college presidents, adult education deans, school system superintendents and people looking to improve their fictional writing skills?

Summer Camp for adults, you say?

No, it's the 10 summer career-development programs offered by the Education School's Programs in Professional Education (PPE) to a nationwide audience of college and secondary school educators and administrators.

"It's sort of fun watching the people with all their nametags and wondering, `Does this person look like a president, superintendent, principal or someone studying creative writing,'" says Arthur E. Levine, faculty chair of the Institute for Educational Management (IEM), the most prestigious of the Ed School's summer programs.

After the IEM was successfully started 20 years ago, administrators at the Ed School created the PPE to give educators at the secondary and college levels an opportunity to supplement their skills in a variety of non-traditional programs.

"The strongest part is the power of these programs to validate the importance of what educators are doing in their professional lives," says Clifford H. Baden, the PPE's director. "We bring them here, give them a professional development program that informs them about content and theory and puts them in touch with some of the best thinkers in the country on these topics."

"But in the process, it also puts them in touch with their peers from around the country who care about the same issues and lets them know they are not alone in their concern for whatever issue they are concerned about," Baden adds.

Although PPE is by no means the only such program in the country, administrators at the Ed School say it is one of the only ones which caters to a national audience.

"There aren't a lot of programs in the field of education which attract a national audience," says Baden. "Most continuing education schools reach out to the community, but Harvard and this office see our mandate as being different."

Most participants and coordinators of the summer programs at the Ed School consider the most valuable aspect of these programs to be the opportunity for a frank discussion of educational problems among peers from around the country.

"The opportunity to spend informal time with your peers at other institutions and just talk shop with them on your own terms without the pressure of work is impossible to put a value on," Baden says.

"We try to create a real community among the people so that they feel safe," Levine says. "It's an environment good for letting people talk to each other, try out different ideas and hone their skills."

Baden says that to this end he tries to create a learning environment which is informal and engaging. More than one-half of the faculty is made up of Ed School regulars, while others are recruited from around the country.

"I put a lot of emphasis on ability to stand up in front of everyone without reading from a prepared text and lead an exciting, stimulating discussion--something that gets the participants involved," Baden says. "What the participants want is the opportunity to mix it up with the faculty and mix it up with each other."

PPE students even live in University dorms, which Baden says encourages a community atmosphere, since students don't have much incentive to stay in their rooms.

"Housing is important because hotels send out the wrong message," Baden says, refering to past years when some students were housed in hotel rooms. "I much prefer dorms, where rooms are uninviting and people don't want to spend a lot of time in them and are forced into common spaces. That's where the learning happens."

But while all of the summer students live together, and their programs are under the organizational umbrella of the PPE, each is totally independent and the programs cater to a wide variety of student needs.

Institute for Educational Management

Each summer the IEM--which completes its 20th reunion ceremonies today--brings together college presidents, vice presidents and deans to discuss and analyze problems in the management of higher education.

In its earlier days the IEM, modeled after a similar program at the Business School, focused discussions on the campus issues of the time, such as, Levine suggests, "how to respond to campus rioting." True to its Business School roots, the IEM utilized the case-study method which continues to dominate the PPE summer programs today.

Although the IEM has developed and changed a lot since its 1969 inception, some students of the program suggest that the case study method is not as useful today as it might have been in the days of campus riots.

Charles F. Meng, the vice-president of administration and facilities at Georgetown University, says that straight lectures and multiple case studies might be better means for addressing some of today's issues.

And some of the program's graduates say they think it could be important to provide further in-depth analysis of some of the issues presented. 1989 IEM participant Jo Ann M. Gora, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Farleigh Dickinson University in Madison, N.J., suggested an "IEM II."

And Meng says that for veteran administrators, the program teaches too much of what experience has already provided.

"It's a great program," Meng says. "For new administrators, it does provide a level of information which is vitally important for them. But I've been at George-town for 14 years and the program for me was a lot of things I'd known."

But these complaints are minor compared to the praise which IEM graduates give the program.

"With the advantage of the expertise of the IEM faculty, you come away with a real sense of having gained in wisdom," Gora says. "And we rely on these programs to give us expertise in the areas of management, academic planning and financing."

"Currently, the IEM is the fast track to becoming a college president in America," Levine says. "[Ten] percent of presidents in the country are alumni of the program."

Levine describes IEM as a "boot camp," with a 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. schedule during the week and half-days on Saturdays. Comparing the program to the regular degree programs at the Ed School, Levine says that the degree programs can be compared to West Point for soldiers, while IEM is a war college for generals.

The 1989 IEM brought together 95 participants in seminars designed to provide skills for advancing in higher education and for performing better in a current job, Levine says.

"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.