Perspective | A new blueprint for educational leadership
Across North Carolina, educational leaders confront complex challenges without simple solutions. They work to improve achievement, strengthen student support, retain effective educators, and make organizations work better for the people they serve. Many of those leaders are also doctoral students.
That reality raises an important question for universities that prepare educational leaders: What if earning a doctorate did more than develop expertise in one research topic? What if the doctoral experience equipped leaders with a repeatable set of methods for identifying, analyzing, and improving complex problems throughout their careers?
At East Carolina University (ECU), that question shaped the redesign of our Doctor of Education (Ed.D) program, earning it the 2026 Program of the Year award from the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED). We are proud of that recognition, but the larger story is what the work behind the award suggests about educational leadership preparation in North Carolina. Schools, districts, colleges, and other educational organizations need leaders who can enter complex systems, make sense of difficult problems, and lead disciplined improvement.
A doctorate organized around improvement
ECU began reexamining its Ed.D more than a decade ago. An external evaluation in 2011 raised questions about the degree’s professional identity and outcomes. Faculty concluded that changing a few courses would not be enough; the program needed a clearer purpose.
Following ECU’s membership in the CPED in 2014, faculty undertook a backward-mapping process that connected our mission, student competencies, coursework, field-based learning, and dissertation expectations. We introduced our first cohort into the redesigned three-year pathway in 2018.
The central change was to make the Dissertation in Practice, or DiP, the organizing focus of the doctoral experience rather than a culminating requirement at the end of the degree. Students take leadership and research-design coursework concurrently, learning immediately to identify meaningful problems of practice, collect local evidence, examine contributing causes, develop improvement aims, test potential changes, and learn from results. The individual problems students study vary but the improvement process does not.
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Diagnosing problems before prescribing solutions
A signature first-semester experience is the Practitioner Supervisor Dissertation in Practice Pitch. Before moving deeply into a topic, students must demonstrate their problem is real, supported by local evidence, and within an area where they can reasonably lead improvement.
Students gather data and use tools such as a fishbone analysis to examine root causes and assets. They develop driver diagrams that connect an improvement aim to factors that influence the problem and to possible changes that could be tested. This matters because even experienced leaders can be tempted to move quickly from noticing a problem to proposing a solution. Improvement work requires a different perspective: understand the problem first.
Our students have described this process as forcing them to move beyond an “abstract idea” and examine data and research before deciding what might work. Others have reported narrowing the scope of their proposed study after repeated examination of their data, fishbone analysis, and driver diagrams.
These are not simply dissertation skills. They are leadership habits. A superintendent facing staff turnover or a principal confronting chronic absenteeism can use the exact same approach: define the problem, understand the system, identify factors influencing change, test, and adjust.
Bringing the workplace into the process
After developing the initial problem analysis, students formally pitch their proposed improvement work to a supervisor in their professional setting. This step is critical as the supervisor brings contextual knowledge that the university and the student may not have. This conversation can affirm the problem matters, reveal constraints, or redirect the work before a student invests months in the wrong direction, creating a true partnership between the university, the student, and the workplace.
Dr. Matthew Cheeseman, superintendent of Craven County Schools and ECU Ed.D program graduate, describes the pitch as “an invaluable opportunity to better understand and support the meaningful research educators are conducting within the district.”
He noted, “the process creates intentional alignment between doctoral research and district priorities and develops shared ownership so that the work has practical relevance for students, staff, and the broader school community.”
That early alignment matters, as it sets the stage in their first semester of study to engage in critical conversations that will move them into the right direction for their DiP.
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Developing portable capabilities
The most important outcome of the DiP is not that a graduate becomes the institution’s expert on one narrowly defined dissertation topic. The larger goal is to prepare a leader who knows how to approach complex organizational problems systematically.
Across our three-year program, students repeatedly practice a common set of capabilities: precisely defining problems with evidence, examining root causes rather than symptoms, mapping factors that influence outcomes, collaborating with diverse stakeholders, designing feasible changes, and refining work through cycles of learning.
These capabilities are portable. A graduate who researched professional learning during the DiP may later be asked to address attendance, staff retention, academic performance, or an operational process. The specific issue changes, but the disciplined way of approaching it does not. Universities cannot prepare leaders by giving them ready-made solutions to every problem they will encounter. What universities can do is prepare leaders who know how to learn their way through a problem.
Evidence from the program
Programmatic data confirm the pitch’s value. Through our research and across multiple surveys, students consistently reported the experience clarifies their focus, secures early alignment, and reduces feelings of imposter syndrome, rating their workplace support at 9.04 out of 10.
Completion metrics further reflect the redesigned program’s success. Since 2018, admission-to-graduation rates have ranged from 67% to 82%, with up to 97% of doctoral candidates (those completing the first year of the program) successfully graduating.
Ultimately, the pitch mitigates the risks most likely to disrupt progress, namely, discovering too late that a proposed problem lacks evidence or workplace support.
Why this matters for North Carolina
ECU’s Ed.D serves leaders across diverse PK-12 and higher education settings. With 111 current students and 130 graduates from the award-oriented program, each graduating cohort places leaders into North Carolina who share a common approach to improvement: Start with evidence, understand the context, resist premature solutions, and use results to decide what comes next.
In eastern North Carolina, this capacity is especially important, as organizations need leaders who understand that local contexts matter and that implementation requires adaptation. This CPED recognition is an opportunity to celebrate our partners and ask a larger question: What should North Carolina expect from universities that prepare its educational leaders?
We believe leadership preparation should create benefits that extend beyond the person earning the credential. The problems facing education will continue to change, and leaders need reliable ways to study systems, build shared understanding, and test improvement strategies.
When that happens, a dissertation does not have to sit on a shelf after graduation. The lasting outcome is a leader equipped to enter a new context, ask better questions, and lead a disciplined process for making results better.