University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA)

History and Structure

The initial idea for the Council came from the Middle Atlantic Region of the Cooperative Program in Educational Administration (CPEA), which in 1947 identified the need to create an organization to focus on the preparation and practice of educational administration. The organization now known as UCEA officially began in 1959 with financial support from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and technical assistance from staff members at Teachers College at Columbia University. It was housed at Ohio State University after its initial founding; since then Arizona State University, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Missouri–Columbia, and the University of Texas at Austin have also served as host institutions for the Council.

Structurally, UCEA has two main official governing bodies—the Executive Committee and the Plenum. Modeled after a state legislature, the Plenum includes a representative of each UCEA member institution. The duties of the Plenum include electing nine members to serve on the Executive Committee; addressing finance, governance, and membership issues for the Council; and encouraging students and faculty from member institutions to participate in UCEA programs by serving as liaisons at their home institutions. Members of the Executive Committee also serve as leaders and organizers for the UCEA Convention, which is held annually. Led by the UCEA president, the Executive Committee is responsible for approving appointments, establishing compensation for Council personnel, and helping to set the agenda and activities for the Plenum.

Outside of the two main governing bodies, UCEA also establishes task forces as needed to devote attention to special projects and issues. In [Page 906]2001, the Council created the Taskforce on Evaluating Leadership Preparation Programs (ELPP). The objectives of this task force are to compare and evaluate school leadership preparation programs according the reflections and feedback of their graduates and the graduates' impact on the schools that they lead, foster the development of instruments and methodologies that focus on evaluating and sharing knowledge related to effective practices in preparation programs, and encourage the entire field of educational preparation to increase efforts at evaluating the impact and effectiveness of these programs.

Similarly, UCEA also serves as a member and contributor to the Joint Research Taskforce on Leadership Preparation sponsored by the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Like the ELPP task force, this joint task force also focuses on improving educational preparation by fostering research on these programs, distributing related research data, and encouraging junior faculty members to complete research projects in this area. UCEA serves as a key member of this task force by using its journals and other publications to help make research materials on educational preparation programs available to a wide range of faculty members and institutions.

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