UNC’s School of Education will begin the University's first fully online doctor of education degree program in the fall of 2024, led by its inaugural program director Carrol Warren. Those who complete the program will receive a doctorate in Educational Leadership with a concentration in Organizational Learning and Leadership.
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the School of Education Thurston Domina said the School of Education's undergraduate major in organizational leadership is built on the idea of teaching and helping people learn and grow and it extending its goal to a new audience of doctorate students.
The online degree is the result of a partnership between the UNC Graduate School, the UNC Office of Digital and Lifelong Learning and 2U, a company that collaborates with universities to facilitate online degree programs. Courses centered around achieving organizational goals will be offered, including classes that cover improvement science, equitable and inclusive practices and research methodology.
“[The program] being online increases the level of accessibility automatically," Clinical Assistant Professor in the School of Education Jemilia Davis said. "As a working mom myself, I think of how important it is to be able to say, ‘Trust me that I am going to be able to pace myself at my own rate, to do the work that I need to and that I will still show up committed to this hour and a half, where we’re going to talk about what we’ve done over the past week.'"
The new three-year program will consist of both asynchronous learning and weekly synchronous meetings where students will check in with their professors and review the course material. Toward the end of the program, students will take three capstone courses, Warren said.
During these capstone courses, students will be tasked with identifying problems within an organization that they are a part of and solving them using the skills and research obtained throughout their time in the program. There will also be an optional in-person immersion experience each spring, beginning in the spring of 2025, Warren said. During the experience, students would be able to come to campus and engage with faculty and experts in the field of leadership and organizational planning.
Domina said an important aspect of the program is that it allows students to simultaneously learn and grow as leaders using the skills and knowledge that they’ve gained from their courses and apply them to their real jobs as they go.
“In the area of professional education, on this campus and everywhere else, people are doing more and more work online because when people are out there in the world working, it gets harder and harder to bring them to campus,” he said.
The program’s mix of interactive, synchronous and asynchronous learning styles will present a more accessible education for working students, Warren said. While in-person graduate programs provide a unique experience for students, Davis said, fully online programs and the benefits they have to offer are important.
