Department overview

Mission. The mission of the Department of Educational Policy and Administration (EdPA) is guided by the missions of both the University and the College of Education and Human Development, and is directed by an awareness of being part of a University that is responsive to its national and international opportunities in scholarship. The department is in a land-grant and urban university where scholarly and artistic activities, teaching and mission-related services are qualified by a realization that its programs should both contribute to, and be unique within, the State of Minnesota.

Purpose. Three related purposes give direction to departmental activities. A priority of the department is to initiate, sponsor, and support research and development activities that will enhance the body of knowledge and techniques that constitute the four program tracks: educational administration, evaluation studies, higher education, and comparative and international development education.

Central to the purpose of the department is the development and provision of professional preparation programs for persons seeking positions in the four areas. The Department of Educational Policy and Administration is committed to the study of educational policy and to the preparation of leaders who can act effectively and ethically within the structures, processes, and cultural contexts of organized education. The department prepares administrators, scholars, and analysts for leadership roles in education through the four complementary but distinct program tracks.

The department also seeks to provide mission-related service through disciplined study of the needs of educational organizations and to provide leadership in the solution of current problems in educational governance and management. All of the above illustrate the commitment of the Department to bridging the fields of practice and theory.

Details about the functioning of the department can be found in the constitution and bylaws.

Degrees and tracks. Four graduate degrees are currently offered through this department: master of arts, master of education, doctor of education, and doctor of philosophy. The M.A. and Ph.D. degrees are available in all four tracks: educational administration, evaluation studies, higher education, and comparative and international development education.

Academic work in EdPA is discipline-based, carefully designed, and yet flexible in the options for degrees and specializations. The graduate programs in the department incorporate relevant knowledge from the behavioral and social sciences and the humanities, with primary reliance placed on anthropology, economics, management science, political science, public affairs, sociology, philosophy, law, and history. While these disciplines undergird graduate studies in the department, each program draws upon them in particular ways.

Graduate School data for EdPA

Admissions

Fall term enrollment

Graduate student progress

Degrees conferred

Graduate School faculty