University Council for Educational Administration

The University Council for Educational Administration is a consortium of major research universities with doctoral programs in educational leadership and policy. The dual mission of UCEA is to improve the preparation of educational leaders and promote the development of professional knowledge in school improvement and administration. UCEA's origins date to 1954 when members of the Cooperative Program in Educational Administration (Middle Atlantic Region) proposed an organization that would be devoted to improving the professional preparation of educational administrators. To help establish such an organization, a central office with part-time staff was established on the campus of Columbia University, financed by a grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to Teachers College of Columbia.

Between 1956 and 1959, UCEA's constitution and by-laws were formulated, the organization's purposes were defined, and additional financial support was obtained in the form of a 5-year grant from the Kellogg Foundation. The organization was officially founded in 1959, and the UCEA central office moved to Ohio State University when a small, full-time staff was hired. Since that period, UCEA has been housed at Arizona State University, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Missouri-Columbia.

UCEA has been a major contributor to

• Broadening the content of preparation programs for educational administrators
• Extending the use of more effective methods of inquiry in educational administration
• Shifting educational administration from an anecdotal orientation to a more scientific one, leading to generalizations about organization and leadership
• Developing new instructional materials for administrator programs
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• Fostering exchanges in research and in program development between professors and administrative leaders in the United States and their counterparts in other countries
• Continuing efforts toward standards of excellence in research and in preparation programs for administration.

With the expiration in 1969 of a second 5-year grant from the Kellogg Foundation, UCEA has been supported through a combination of membership dues, donations of resources, facilities, equipment and staff time from member institutions, sales of publications and instructional materials, and investment income. The council's governance is vested in two official bodies, the executive committee and the plenum. The executive committee is composed of nine individuals elected from member institutions. The executive committee makes decisions about appointments and compensation of personnel, develops plans for and makes recommendations to the plenum, and, when necessary, makes interim program decisions. The plenum, comprised of one representative from each member university, elects the executive committee, helps make governance, finance, and membership decisions, provides linkages with member university faculty and students, and promotes programmatic involvement with UCEA. Day-to-day operations of UCEA are the responsibility of the executive director. In its history, UCEA has had seven executive directors (including two interim executive directors). Two of these executive directors, Jack Culbertson and Patrick Forsyth, guided the organization for 37 years of its 51-year history.

The founding of UCEA in 1956, led by Daniel Griffiths, Jack Culbertson, Daniel Davies, and Paula Silver, coupled with the creation of the National Conference of Professors of Educational Administration (NCPEA) in 1947, has been instrumental in the emergence of the theory movement in educational administration, which represents an attempt to define the knowledge based in the fledgling field of educational administration. The activities of professional organizations such as UCEA and NCPEA reflect the belief that educational administration is more than a loose collection of individual, anecdotal experiences—a collection of war stories told and retold by retired school administrators. Accordingly, UCEA has been a major player in shaping (and reshaping) the knowledge base in educational administration.

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