The UIC Center for Urban Education Leadership (CUEL) has received a $250,000 grant from the Lloyd L. Fry Foundation to support a two year leadership development project (2022-2024) that is being enacted in partnership with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS).
This project seeks to contribute to the CPS 5-Year Vision by strengthening the CPS leadership pipeline with particular attention to the practice of Network Chiefs as principal supervisors who effect continuous improvement and help principals grow as instructional leaders. The figure below shares the project’s impact logic.
Initial learning content for the CPS Network Chiefs/Deputies targets deepening their shared understanding of and ability to diagnose school leadership team effectiveness with specific attention to considering the work of these teams for equity-oriented aims in schools. Network Chiefs will ultimately apply their learning to the development of principals who are able to cultivate effective, equity-focused leadership teams within their schools.
Shelby Cosner, who is the CUEL Director and Professor of Educational Policy Studies, is the Principal Investigator for this project. She has extensive expertise in the development and facilitation of leader learning designs for school districts, regional educational agencies, state departments of education and professional organizations, and national Ministries of Education. Beyond this project within CPS, she is currently engaged in two different projects that are developing and deploying leader learning designs in the state of Illinois (through federal funding through NSF, SEED, and EIR grants) and as well as a project for the nation of Qatar. She has been recognized for her teaching excellence two times at UIC including her receipt of UIC’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, UIC’s most prestigious teaching award, in 2016. She has also been recognized nationally by the University Council for Educational Administration. Dr. Cynthia Barron, who is a faculty affiliate in the center and who is the program coordinator for UIC’s Ed.D. program in Urban Education Leadership is Co-PI. A broad assortment of other CUEL researchers and faculty affiliate/leadership coaches will also be engaged in this two year project including Sam Whalen, Martha Hebert, Meagan Richard, Bev LaCoste, Stephen McClain, and Kenya Sadler.
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