The University of Vermont’s doctoral program in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies has won a $992,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The grant will fund a five-year project aimed at increasing the number and quality of special education administrators in the state.

The grant, among 16 selected from a pool of 85 proposals, will fund the Transformative Leadership for Special Education Administrators Project designed by faculty in the College of Education and Social  Services to prepare special education administrators at the local, district and state levels. Approximately 70 percent of the grant will be used to cover tuition, fees and a research stipend for doctoral students focused on special education leadership within the Ed.D. program.

Katharine Shepherd and Kieran Killeen, co-PIs and associate professors with experience in special education and leadership, wrote the grant partly in response to feedback from UVM alumni working in the field. “Our alumni, many of whom are experts in the field, brought us a tangible problem that we felt needed to be addressed,” said Shepherd. “A big impetus for this grant came from our former graduate students who are working in the field and care about leadership in special education.”

Meagan Roy, Director of Student Services at the Chittenden South Supervisory Union and 2010 graduate of UVM’s Ed.D program, was among the alums offering insight into how the program could better prepare special education administrators in Vermont, which has 90 supervisors and administrators serving about 14,000 students with disabilities. “Education is different than it was ten, fifteen -- even five -- years ago, and so are the skills needed for educational leadership,” said Roy. “The program that they’re developing starts to think differently about special and general education leadership. which prior to now have been seen as being very separate."

The program will fund two fulltime students to begin in the fall of 2014, with at least three slated to begin in the fall of 2015. For more information about the Transformative Leadership for Special  Education Administrators Project, please contact Katharine Shepherd or Kieran Killeen via email at  Katharine.Shepherd@uvm.edu or Kieran.Killeen@uvm.edu, respectively, or by phone at 802-656-2936.