Doctoral program in works at SAU
Degree aimed at education leaders
Southern Arkansas University wants to offer its first doctoral degree.
The Magnolia university has started processes with the state and its accrediting agency to change its role and scope to offer degrees above the master’s level. Once that is approved, the university needs a green light to offer its first doctoral degree — a doctor of education in rural and diverse education leadership.
“If this is a climb up the mountain, we just left the base camp,” said David Lanoue, the university’s provost and vice president of academic affairs. “We think of this as a role and scope change, and we take that seriously, but it’s also, I think, a logical extension of our mission as a comprehensive regional university, to serve southwest and southern Arkansas.
“It came out of the conversations: What can we do to serve our community better? And one of the things we can do is to help provide strong leaders in education.”
The doctoral degree program would be a first of its kind south of Little Rock. The University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff offers a doctorate in aquaculture and fisheries, and Henderson State University in Arkadelphia has two educational specialist pathways in curriculum leadership and another in educational leadership. The educational specialist programs are foundations for a doctorate in that area but not the full degree program, though Henderson also wants to add a doctoral program in instructional leadership.
“We have been studying this for quite some time now about the possibility of a doctoral degree in this area,” SAU President Trey Berry said. “We’ve done extensive surveys about this and see extensive need in our region of the state.”
The university surveyed employers and potential students, as well as its own employees. Questions ranged from how many open positions employers had in fields such as assistant principal and curriculum facilitator to when employers anticipated such openings.