In Your Transition, Leadership Experience Counts Mostly in the Classroom
BY DAVID J. HVIDSTON/School Administrator, November 2020

David Hvidston discovered a world of difference between school administration and higher education.

As a newly hired tenure-track assistant professor in educational leadership fresh on the heels of 32 years in the principalship and other administrative roles, I wasn’t fully ready for the new work world I’d entered.

The most daunting aspect of my encore career involved research and publishing, two requirements that rarely confront those who spend their lives in district/school administration. The expectation to publish scholarly work was communicated by the hiring committee and the education school dean during the interview process.

I learned that the previous hires in my department of educational leadership who had come from superintendencies worked at the university for only two to three years because they did not meet publishing requirements. As with many K-12 education leaders, my only experience in academic writing was completing my doctoral dissertation years earlier.

Now I was expected to ramp up to publish at least one article a year in a refereed journal (meaning articles published in practitioner-friendly magazines such as School Administrator would not count).

A Six-Year Path

Ultimately, my success in developing a publishing record came about because my educational leadership colleagues involved me in their research and writing and provided mentorship. My research agenda eventually resulted in 19 refereed journal articles on supervision and evaluation of principals and their leadership behaviors over my eight years.

Anyone considering a tenure-track post should be ready to select topics of interest to be investigated for at least six years. The tenure and promotion process normally takes that long for a faculty member to be promoted from assistant to associate professor. A typical tenure track in educational leadership breaks out responsibilities this way: 65 percent teaching, 25 percent research, 5 percent advising and 5 percent professional service.

Career advancement will involve one’s departmental colleagues in reviewing teaching evaluations submitted by students, research output, completed service and advising. In some cases, anonymous student evaluators write statements of approval or disapproval that feel a little like getting a physical examination in public. I received comments from fellow faculty annually. Several of my third-year tenure and promotion comments noted my lack of first-author journal articles and recommended I publish single-author articles. 

I attended to this feedback and demonstrated remediation. The following year, I had a first-author article published in AASA’s peer-reviewed quarterly, The Journal of Scholarship and Practice, to show I had established my research agenda.

The expectations for job performance also ratchet up. Teaching evaluations from students are expected to remain high, and you must demonstrate your ongoing contribution to research through journal writing. Publish or perish applies.

Questionable Practices

I felt a disconnect between my 32 years of teaching and administrative experience in K-12 schooling and my first-year tenure-track assistant professorship. Abruptly, the accumulated knowledge as an education leader only mattered among my students in the classroom. My academic peers at the university were typically non-tenured faculty who completed doctoral degrees anticipating a career in higher education. In the bureaucratic hierarchy, I was on the lowest rung.

Some universities confuse academic attainment with leadership skills. I observed practices that would be inefficient and ineffective in the K-12 world, but I no longer had an authorized opinion. I had no access to an administrative assistant, requiring some personal adjustment in regard to correspondence and copy machines. It can be humbling.

University life has its own pace. It’s a world where emergencies are few and serious concerns are reconciled over months or years. Superintendents are accustomed to operating regularly at crisis speed, exceedingly rare at the university.

Because compensation as a professor is so much lower than a superintendent or principal, universities have a difficult time attracting and compensating those leaving K-12 in mid-career. I had retired from the public schools and sought to use my doctorate and experience to develop school and district leaders so the $50,000 drop in annual salary was not a deal breaker.

The best reason to be a professor in educational leadership is to prepare your graduate students to take their places as instructional leaders as principals and superintendents for the next generation.

DAVID HVIDSTON retired recently as an associate professor of educational leadership at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyo.