LMU’s Ed.D. in Educational Leadership for Social Justice program prepares leaders for the highest positions of leadership in public, charter and Catholic schools. Recently a doctoral candidate and an alumnus were named to superintendent positions in Los Angeles and North Dakota respectively.
As he tackles a first-of-its-kind leadership role within the nation’s second-largest school district, Tommy Chang is drawing on knowledge and insights he continues to gain through LMU’s Ed.D. in Educational Leadership for Social Justice program. Chang, a doctoral candidate, started July 1 as superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Intensive Support and Innovation Center. Upon reorganization of local LAUSD districts into four Local Education Service Centers, the lowest-performing schools (called focus schools) and the most innovative (partnership and pilot schools) were placed in a fifth office, the Intensive Support and Innovation Center, headed by Chang, who oversees 130 schools with approximately 130,000 students. As he seeks to invest the best thinking and resources in these schools, Chang has benefited from his doctoral program professors and classmates. “We learn authentically with each other, through our dialogue and experiences,” he says.
Rick Kruska credits LMU’s Ed.D. program with “imparting in me a sense of wisdom – the ability to look at things differently and create something new.” That wisdom is serving Kruska well as he embarks on building from scratch a Catholic education system that could serve as a national model. In February, Kruska was hired as superintendent of The Light of Christ Catholic Schools of Excellence in Bismarck, ND. The position was created when five pastors in the Diocese of Bismarck established a nonprofit corporation that includes three elementary schools and a high school. Kruska will manage a system poised for significant growth as Bismarck benefits from the state’s oil boom. Initial challenges include streamlining the curriculum and developing a business model that will ensure access to Catholic education for all interested families, regardless of socioeconomic status. “Start-ups have always excited me,” says Kruska, who had a successful career in business prior to going into education. “I hope to stand up before a group in the next 2-3 years and describe a new approach that has worked.”
