What our graduates say about the CAGS Program

"I have had a wonderful experience as a student in the CAGS program at Plymouth. Each course provided an opportunity to collaborate with other New Hampshire educators to have substantive discussions about educational issues related to my work. The intellectual stimulation, class of different ideas and natural networking among colleagues was the kind of experience I wanted when I applied to the program - and got as a student! Thank you, Plymouth."

Course Descriptions

EP 7010 Portfolio Development - 3 credits
The design and application of an alternative assessment approach. This multi-term course facilitates students' reflections over time on their professional growth while completing the Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies degree. After exploring current theory and practice concerning portfolios, students will use the approach to document progress in the degree. Electronic portfolios will be a key tool as students communicate and document their growth. The portfolio will be periodically reviewed by a graduate faculty member and students will receive individualized feedback. Students will meet as a group twice a year to interact with faculty members, outside speakers and each other. At the culmination of the advanced degree program, the portfolio will assist students in an oral defense of their graduate work.

EP 7020 Collaborative Leadership - 3 credits
In this course, students will explore major concepts related to developing partnerships and communities of learners. Course topics include the change process, forms of school and community governance, school culture, the concept of collaboration and agencies and organizations involved in community programs and initiatives. Special attention is focused on planning and implementing system-wide and building-level networks. Students will develop and evaluate a framework for collaboration and demonstrate systems thinking.

EP 7030 Transforming the Educational Agenda - 3 credits
This course focuses on the development of a self-renewing capability inherent in professionals and organizations. Students will discuss the notion of transformation in the context of knowledge base, self-reflection and the socio-professional processes in educational change. Students will explore the integration of “ecological perspectives” within a changing society and the demand for greater tolerance of human behavior in the context of learning. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the need to keep student learning and development as the central core of educational change.
Prerequisites: EP 7020 and EP 7040

EP 7040 Planning in Education and Human Services - 3 credits
The purpose of this course is to develop effective collaborative planners. This course presents the major stages in the process of developing a strategic plan, including forming a mission statement, crafting and implementing the plan, and evaluating plan performance. It provides a theoretical and practical overview of the skills, strategies, and resources required through each stage of the systemic planning process.

EP 7050 Qualitative Methodology and Applied Research - 3 credits
This course addresses qualitative research methodologies with a particular emphasis on constructing grounded theory. Candidates will engage in the process, design and critique of qualitative inquiry and research. Organizational and community issues will be explored and discovered through the analysis of patterns of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors within interpersonal and intercultural contexts. Descriptive analysis of initiating the inquiry, gathering and picturing the data, recording and analyzing data and evaluating the study.
(Prerequisite: EP 7020, EP 7030, and a course in research design)

EP 7060 Legal Issues in Policy Making - 3 credits
This course presents a discussion of ways institutions and their communities must deal with the legal and political environment in which they exist. Topics include current legal issues and how the stakeholders in society can use the law as a tool for Social change Institutions must advocate for positive change through the development of thoughtful legal policies and practices.
(Prerequisite: A course in school law).

EP 7070 Contemporary Social Trends - 3 credits
Contemporary social, economical, political, and educational issues are the core of the course. They are identified in a forum that provides opportunities for the students to research current methodology together to address problems that relate to the specific roles of the course participants in their work inside or outside of the educational field. Working collaboratively, course candidates explore short-range and long range problem-solving strategies directed toward increasing their awareness of community perception and expectations, techniques for facilitating institutional change, and responding to the nature and culture of internal and external political systems and environments as they apply to their work sites.

EP 7090 Critical Perspectives for Arts Advocacy - 3 credits
To be an advocate of the arts must mean in some degree to have given thought to the very nature of the arts and their function in human development and culture. This course attempts through reading, discussion, writing and forms of "doing art" to broadly circumscribe the nature of the arts and their function within the human experience. The readings will help facilitate seminar discussions designed to explore a variety of views about how the arts, once identified and defined within human experience and culture, contribute to human flourishing by opening up a more encompassing range of choices and possibilities. To be an advocate for the arts in this sense is to realize the intimate connections that the arts evoke, as well as to encourage the expansion of social vision through public forms of conduct and communication.

EP 7100 School Labor Relations, Negotiations and Personnel Management - 2 credits
Focus on policies and procedures affecting personnel management in the schools. Discussion of staffing, program and personnel evaluations, office procedures and record keeping, decision making and negotiations. Emphasis on collective bargaining statutes, case law, grievance processing, mediation, employee relations boards, union security provisions, scope of bargaining and the administration of the negotiated contract.

EP 7110 Arts and Learning - 3 credits
This course is designed to provide candidates with the arts leadership skills necessary for designing, implementing, assessing and sustaining arts integration models in diverse school settings. The course will focus on the multiple roles of the arts as mediation tools offering languages for learning and methods for instructions. This course will provide candidates with theoretical and applied knowledge of comprehensive interdisciplinary multi-arts integration supporting learning in, with and through the arts. Candidates will be introduced to the research based Integrated Instructional Model, which incorporates the components of Community, Problem Based Learning and Arts Integration. Candidates will explore the use of the arts and artistic methods through hands-on activities modeling arts-infused learning and instruction. Candidates will apply individual and group understandings to considerations of site-specific school change and sustained systemic professional development.

EP 7130 Shaping Policies and Practice s in Arts Education - 3 credits
This course is designed to provide candidates with the arts leadership skills necessary to effect and sustain changes in current educational settings toward a greater emphasis on improving the quality of arts education. Candidates will explore major concepts related to shaping policies and practices in arts education, while examining current educational systems with an eye toward systemic change. Connections will be made to the importance of sustaining and developing curriculum, sustaining arts advocacy projects and programs and transforming educational systems to embrace learning with, about, in and through the arts.

EP 7200 School Buildings and Transportation - 3 credits
The role of the school administrator in planning school construction projects, maintaining school facilities and overseeing the transportation of students is the focus of the course. Also emphasizes the relationship of facilities and transportation to the program needs of the students while complying with state and federal regulations.

EP 7300 The Superintendency and School District Leadership - 3 credits
In-depth studies of essential knowledge bases and best practice skills required to effectively execute the responsibilities of the district level administration, including the roles of the public school superintendent and assistant superintendent. Attention will be given to balancing three sometimes conflicting roles: instructional, managerial, and political, in an era of standards-based accountability.
Prerequisites: 6 credits of the CAGS core courses.

EP 7560 Special Topics in Educational Leadership - 1-4 credits
An in-depth study of a particular topic, contemporary issue or concern. The course will be taught by a specialist in the field or guest speakers who will meaningfully address the topic. Since topics vary, the course may be repeated with the permission of the instructor.

EP 7800 Educational Leadership Practicum - 3-6 credits
A collaborative supervised field experience in one of several cooperating institutions or agencies. The purpose is to gain meaningful work experience as an administrator through applying knowledge learned in coursework to on-the-job situations.

EP 7810 Arts, Leadership and Learning Practicum - 3-6 credits
A collaborative supervised field experience in one of several cooperating institutions or agencies. The purpose is to gain meaningful work experience (leadership in the arts) through applying knowledge learned in coursework to on-the-job situations.

EP 7820 Externship - 1-6 credits
This externship is designed to provide opportunities for advanced level graduate candidates to study/research topics of interest at locations outside the University, often abroad. These externship placements provide candidates with an opportunity to gain new perspectives, sample different career paths and network with leaders in education and related fields. Candidates are required to spend a minimum of 40 hours per credit hours in the externship placement and develop and present their research project.

EP 7910 Independent Study - 1-4 credits
Enrichment of the background of students in a particular field of study through the pursuit of a special topic pertinent to their interests and abilities through research. Consent of the faculty supervisor, department chair and Associate Vice President is required.