CLU expands Central Coast program

(SANTA MARIA, Calif. – May 16, 2014) California Lutheran University is expanding its Educational Leadership Program on the Central Coast.

A move to the Souza Center in Santa Maria in June will provide additional space so that CLU can offer a professional administrative services clear credential program for newly hired administrators. The university will continue to offer an accelerated one-year program that enables students to earn a master’s degree in educational leadership and a preliminary administrative services credential while working full-time.

The Thousand Oaks-based university launched the Central Coast program in 2012.

Students in the integrated master’s degree/preliminary credential program take classes on selected weekends and online during four 11-week terms. Administrators can earn their clear credential through a combination of individualized coaching, online coursework and monthly Saturday morning classes in the new one-year program.

The CLU Graduate School of Education works with Central Coast school districts to provide students with field experience. Assignments require students to identify and research solutions for real challenges faced by districts. The programs focus on implementing creative solutions to the problems administrators encounter daily.

Faculty with experience in the field and local school administrators serve as coaches. Moving through the program with a cohort, students also benefit from relationships with fellow working professionals.

The program prepares students to serve as assistant principals, principals, directors, assistant superintendents and superintendents as well as in leadership positions in teaching, higher education and nonprofit administration.

Victoria L. Kelly, who holds a doctorate in educational leadership from the University of California, Santa Barbara/Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo Joint Doctoral Program, is the program director. She has extensive experience working with local districts and researching ways administrators can improve academic acheivement.

The university also offers graduate and Bachelor’s Degree for Professionals programs at centers in Oxnard and Woodland Hills and at its Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary campus in Berkeley. This summer, CLU will open a new center in Westlake Village to house a business incubator, the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting, graduate programs in entrepreneurship and economics, and a Community Counseling Center.

Applications are currently being accepted for the Santa Maria program. For more information, visit callutheran.edu/education or contact Andrea Kendrick at kendrick@callutheran.edu or 805-493-3124.