University of Texas Permian Basin has revived its online superintendent certification program offering new and relevant subject matter.
Rod Uzat, assistant professor of Educational Leadership and coordinator for the Superintendent Certification program arrived at UTPB in January 2022 and the program had not been operating for about 18 months at the time.
“I’ll just say we weren’t marketing the program extremely well at that time. We had just sort of suspended everything. In addition to the enrollment being low, we knew the courses needed substantial update and revision,” Dean of the College of Education Larry Daniel said. “It was just as well we didn’t have the student demand because we never want to offer a program that is not fully up to date. And so enter Dr. Uzat. About this time, he joined our faculty.”
Uzat said they were able to restart the program mostly from contacting past applicants who had shown an interest. It is a four-course suite that takes seven or eight weeks to complete, depending on when students take them.
Everyone who completes already has a master’s degree and general certification as a building-level leader certification in Texas or whatever other state that person practices professionally, Daniel said.
“It’s an executive leadership certification, if you want to call it that and the state of Texas sets it up to be a sequenced curriculum, a post master’s. So it’s that extra level of executive preparation that a person needs to think about leading a district level vs. a building level,” Daniel added.
Uzat said probably half of their candidates have PhDs and many of them hold something beyond a school administrator’s position. They may be a director in the cabinet of their district, such as a chief financial officer.
To be certified as a superintendent in Texas, you have to do your internship in the state. But Uzat and Daniel said now people in other states can complete the program and they will write to the state certification agency where the students are to get them certification in their home state.
They are hoping to draw from a larger candidate pool with this option.
“It’s easy for us to do this because it’s always been an online program. … It actually makes a lot of sense to do it that way. Somewhere down the road we don’t know, but perhaps the state may revisit whether or not we continue with demanding that in-state internship. But right now, if we want to get it done, we have two things we can do. We can either become certified in a state that we’re trying to work in, which is really not very practical. Or we can talk with their certification offices and determine whether or not they will accept credentials as we’re able to issue them, which is basically to fill out a form that they will have and out of which we indicate that this person is not certified in the state of Texas, but based on the program, a state agency can determine that they’re going to accept it. So that’s basically how we’ve pursued it,” Uzat said.
“That’s one avenue. We will see whether or not we’ll proceed with more of that in the future. I think in general, these programs tend to be relatively small anyway in many universities. I think anything that we can do to grow our program and also to bring in different perspectives in a different experience is good for our program and for our candidates,” he added.
There will be about six people in the program when registration is finished. There were five in the last cohort.
Uzat noted that there has been a lot of emphasis on facilitating substantive discussions amongst the candidates, based on the academic material.
Daniel said the higher education standard is three-hour courses, but these are four to allow for internship activities as part of every class.
Uzat said they are also trying to make it practical.
When the second course was going on, the Uvalde massacre took place.
“We actually fashioned the discussion based on what people saw that was happening in their districts, because we knew first of all, there was a facility review that the state had mandated that was going to take place. And also, the practical part of that for people who were in school (administration), like, how is this going to work in the fall when people come back and they’re used to certain procedures and habits?” Uzat said.
As a superintendent, he said, you want to have a consistent response and at the same time also want to have some ability to have some flexibility based on the setting such as building and also how you’re going to deal with people and the different moods of the different groups.
There are also matters such as facilities, school district finance, or dealing with the relationship between the superintendent and school board in terms of governance and socio-cultural issues.
“There’s a lot of activity at school board meetings concerning curriculum; concerning materials. Those are also things that you need to have protocols in place for how you’re going to manage that. The state does a pretty good job of providing some guidance in terms of that, but how it gets rolled out and how it gets done specifically. There are a lot of details in there that people need the opportunity to think through … This kind of program provides you a chance to practice those things in a safe environment,” Uzat said.
The course objectives have not changed.
“From my perspective, I felt that the more practical we could make it for the practitioner — here are the exact issues you’re gonna deal with. So for example, the tasks that people are faced with whether it’s a discussion or whether it’s in the form of a written quiz, tests, what have you, or any assignments that they’re doing that way are based on oftentimes scenarios. Here’s the situation. You are responsible for this district this size, here’s the context; here’s the problem, what would be your approach to it and you try to do those things, so that it’s germane to the material that you’re dealing with at that time,” Uzat said.
The material for the socio-cultural course was created entirely from scratch.
Daniel said Uzat is the instructor for the certification program.
“At the time we hired Dr. Uzat, we were looking particularly for someone who had had broad experience in ed leadership and at an executive level. He brought that to us from his previous work. I think that enriches our program further. All of our faculty and leadership have been administrators in schools and school districts,” Daniel said.
“When he talks about, politically what’s it like to balance stakeholder interest, you know, politicians, the media — all these different elements. He’s actually had to live that life. He’s had to wring his hands over that one meeting that’s coming up at one time or another when he knew that the tensions were going high and people were not going to be real happy with whatever decision was being announced. … He’s our person right now and we’re happy to have him in that important role,” Daniel added.
Uzat said he worked directly for the superintendent/CEO in Canada in the River East Transcona School Division. He was there for about three years.
“It was at a time at which the district was going through a government mandated consolidation with another suburban school district. River East by itself is already the second largest school district in Winnipeg with a population of about 700,000 people. This made us larger, and was adding on to I think about 18 schools that were added to that. … As matter of fact, they were configured differently as well, because there had been some government mandates that different school districts had approached differently so … even the grade levels were not the same. Right, like one part had a nine to 12 kind of more traditional high school setting. The other one had tended twelves. One had more traditional junior high 7 to 9. The other one had from grade six to eight for their middle schools. One was also in a community where the schools were, by nature smaller. So … the schools themselves were like little closer knit communities and the other one was a little bit bigger; a little bit. More corporate. It was very interesting because it was harmonization of contracts between different employee groups. There were … initiatives that were going on; technology initiatives, like for instance, library automation, that was taking place that now you were rolling out beyond that, and both of those school districts have very different approaches of how they were going to do that. So even reorganizing its district cabinet. That had to take place; going from two superintendents to one superintendent. … Going from 18 trustees between the two of them to nine. So there were a lot of issues that I was able to be part of, including a five-year strategic plan for the district and … also for how technology was going to be rolled out,” Uzat said.
He added that the aim was to save money.
“That happened around that happened around 2000 and here we are in 2023 and there’s rumblings about doing it again,” Uzat said.
Uzat earned a bachelor’s degree in education with a double major in English and history from the University of Manitoba and his master’s and PhD in educational administration from the University of Southern Mississippi.
He knows Daniel a little bit from there.
“I know the quality of the work that he does and the quality of his leadership and so that made it an easy choice that way,” Uzat said.
Coming to UTPB, Uzat said he learned that there is a strong desire to serve Odessa, Midland and the Permian Basin.
“I think we’ve got some things that are part of this program, and also beyond what we’re thinking about for next steps for an outreach that I think we’re well positioned to serve that role here. There are a lot of great people to work with. West Texas people are a singular type. I very much have enjoyed working with them,” Uzat said.
