Greetings LTEL Members!

I have served as the newsletter editor and co-editor,  secretary, and member-at-large of LTEL, and I am both honored and excited to be elected as chair of the LTEL SIG beginning Spring/Summer 2025. I am the past-chair and former secretary of the Improvement Science SIG, and a current Executive Committee member for the University Council of Educational Administration.  You can learn more about me and the executive committee in our bios in the section on Who We Are.

I want to thank our LTEL leadership team for their ongoing contributions to the SIG. It truly is a collaborative group!  I especially want to thank Shelby Cosner for her leadership of the SIG over the last few years as she transitions into the Past-Chair role. If you have any message to send out on the list serv, please reach out to our newly elected secretary, Frank Perrone. Tim Drake and Jennifer Clayton, as our program co-chairs, are hard at work on the AERA LTEL SIG program, and we appreciate their service completing the important task of recruiting and assigning reviewers and creating sessions for AERA 2026. A special thanks to Nahed Abdelrahman for her ongoing leadership with the LTEL newsletter and Summer Pannell for joining her. Nahed will be ending her term after this year, so reach out if you are interested in joining Summer as a co-editor next year. Daniel Reyes-Guerra, Treasurer, supports our SIG in many ways, including tracking our finances and building membership. Lastly, we have two new members-at-large, Katie Cunningham and Kristen Huggins, and one returning member-at-large, Meagan Richard, who will help lead the elections, awards process, and support SIG programming. If you are interested in getting involved in the SIG leadership, we have two elections this fall, and the terms begin in Spring 2026:

·Treasurer (2 years)

·Member-at-Large (2 years

LTEL Visioning: Under Shelby’s leadership, we did some visioning and strategic planning and established the following goals that has informed and will inform our work over my next three years as chair.

Goal #1: Build more/deeper connections among LTEL members.

Every year there are opportunities to come together at UCEA and AERA. Join our listserv to stay in the loop.

Goal #2: Create a community of practice/learning experiences between individuals/leadership preparation/development programs in our LTEL SIG.

In the spring on 2025, John Critelli held a wonderful workshop on AI. He plans to return this fall with Meagan Richard as we focus on technology and leadership preparation. We will also continue to focus on leading justly in unjust times, launched in spring 2024 with a webinar and resource sharing session and followed up on with a panel of Denver educators at our business meeting in spring 2025.

Goal #3: Recognize and disseminate findings about robust preparation programs/program quality within LTEL and engage recognized programs to support program improvement in other LTEL institutions.

I want to draw your attention to research/resources of interest to LTEL members. 

Research: Please be sure to check out the special issue of Education Sciences: Strengthening Educational Leadership Preparation and Development edited by three LTEL EC members.

Podcasts:  UCEA has a podcast series “In the Lead” focused on leadership preparation. You can access this series at: https://www.ucea.org/ucea_podcast.php

Leadership Framework and Learning Resources: There is a recently launched national technical assistance center called Lead IDEA that is focused on supporting the preparation and development of birth to 5 and PK-12 leaders who can effectively support children with disabilities. You can learn about the Lead IDEA work and resources at the center’s website:  https://lead-idea.org/

Goal 4: Grow individual memberships and expand base to more institutions.

Related to Goal #4, I am encouraging everyone in our SIG to consider connecting your colleagues and students to our SIG. Be sure to tell your colleagues about our SIG and our work and invite them to join.  They can learn more about our SIG at our website:  https://www.aera.net/SIG129/LTEL-SIG-129.

Goal #5: Promote member work and the work and impact of the LTEL SIG.

We are continuing to plan for strategies that will be enacted related to each of our goals, and we will use the LTEL listserv and newsletters to provide updates. If you are interested in collaborating with us as we devise and enact strategies, can you please contact me at erin.anderson249@du.edu.

Sending my best wishes to everyone for the start of the 2025-26 academic year! I hope to see you at UCEA in Puerto Rico!

Erin

Dr. Erin Anderson
Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies

Morgridge College of Education, University of Denver