Welcome

The Student Experience

MS-EPoL is an in-person, four-term (12 month), cohort-based program, although candidates may opt to attend part-time, extending their study plan across two years. Program cohorts start graduate coursework in July.

Candidates develop close relationships with peers and faculty, through sequential course work that brings together the strands of (1) research methods, (2) educational theory, (3) policy studies, and (4) leadership studies. Although the cohort takes a core strand of classes together, roughly half of each student’s classes are electives, allowing individual students to tailor their coursework to their own interests and goals.

Electives range from methodological skills like EDLD 652 Data Visualization, to substantive courses like EDLD 631 Education, Immigration and Language. Candidates are also able to take relevant courses outside of the College of Education including in the School of Planning, Public Policy, and Management, as well as departments such as Economics, Sociology, and Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies.

Commitment to Social Justice and Systems Level Change

Faculty, students, and staff in the Education Policy and Leadership Program are committed to equity and justice in our own program and university, as well as in K-12 schools nationally. We believe in the potential of schools and school systems to create change toward racial, economic, linguistic, gender, and sexual identify justice. We also know that schools, including higher education institutions, do not live up to this potential, and too often exacerbate and perpetuate injustice and harm. We commit to the work of changing these deeply embedded patterns and structures both personally, as individuals and members of our larger communities, and professionally, as higher education leaders, researchers, advocates, and teach