GAËTANE JEAN-MARIE, Ph.D.
September 28, 2015
Dean Search Committee
College of Education
University of Northern Iowa
Cedar Falls, IA, 50614
Dear COE Dean Search Committee:
I am honored to have been nominated and submit my application for the position of Dean of the
College of Education and Richard O. Jacobson Endowed Chair of Leadership in Education at the
University of Northern Iowa. As someone who cares deeply about professional pursuits and
commitments, I submit my materials with genuine interest in and enthusiasm for the position, the
College of Education, and the university.
In reflecting on the position, I believe the Dean plays an important role in creating a collective
culture that bridges departments and administrative units for the advancement of knowledge,
research, teaching, scholarship, and service activites. Further, innovation, interdisciplinary
collaboration, and impact are three important elements that will help the COE continue to move
forward in the 21st century. Through high quality teaching, preparing the next generation of
extraordinary health care professionals, educators and leaders, exceptional local and national
clinical professional service, and pioneering scholarship, the COE will be uniquely poised to
contribute to improving the educational and health care system across the state, nation, and
world, and inform policy and practice at all levels. I believe my experiences as an academic
leader, educator, research scholar, and in service leadership/community engagement make me a
suitable candidate for the Dean position.
I am presently a Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership, Evaluation,
and Organizational Development (ELEOD) at the University of Louisville. As chair, I follow
several guiding principles, i.e., to be 1) inclusive, 2) data-driven, 3) innovative, and 4) mindful of
how decisions impact teaching and research excellence. These principles have directed my
actions in strategic planning, aligning departmental priorities with those of the college and
university, advocating for departmental interests within the college and university, representing
the department to various internal and external constituencies, annual budget development,
securing alternative funding for the department (e.g., military initiatives, distance education etc.),
student recruitment, curriculum evaluation and development, encouraging high-impact
scholarship, and recruiting, evaluating and developing quality faculty and staff. In this letter, I
highlight core values and experiences that address my qualifications to serve as Dean of the
College of Education.
Cover Letter - Gaëtane Jean-Marie, Ph.D.
Educator and Research Scholar. My foundation as an academic leader is rooted in my role as
an educator and research scholar. As an educator for thirteen years, I have been a faculty
member in educational leadership currently at the University of Louisville (UofL) and formerly
at the University of Oklahoma (OU) and Florida International University (FIU). At these
institutions, I have been involved in preparing aspiring and in-service school leaders from
diverse contexts (i.e., urban, rural, & suburban) and teach courses (i.e., face-to-face, hybrid,
online, & internationally) in the areas of administration and organizational theory, visionary,
instructional & ethical leadership, qualitiative research, and supervision of building-level and
district level interns. Additionally, I chair and serve on doctoral dissertation committees, advise
master and specialist level students, and mentor students in their professional pursuits. As a
research scholar, my scholarship focuses on several lines of inquiry: leadership preparation and
development in the US and global context, urban school reform through educational
equity/social justice, and women and educational leadership in P-20 system. To date, I have over
80 publications, procured grants and contracts over $1.4 million dollars, have given over 60
conference presentations locally, nationally and internationally, and conducted numerous invited
presentations, and mentored/supported numerous graduate students’ publications/conferences.
My scholarship is also extended to my involvement with research centers in which currently I
serve as co-director of the Center for Educational Research, Policy, and Evaluation (CERPE) and
have served as senior research scientist of the Oklahoma Center for Education Policy (OCEP),
faculty fellow of the K-20 Center for Educational and Community Renewal, and research fellow
of the Center for Urban Education and Innovation.
Administrative and Management Experience. As an academic leader, I have almost six years
of experience leading organizations and working with others to realize innovative ideas. The
department I currently serve consists of 14 tenured/tenure-faculty, four full-time clinical faculty,
five full-time staff, 386 undergraduate and 409 graduate students (i.e., 249 master’s, 58
Education Specialist/Certificate, and 102 Ed.D./Ph.D.). Our enrollment continues to increase
through strategic enrollment management and contractual agreements to be responsive to our
local and global community offering face-to-face and fully online programs. My job
responsibilities are comprehensive and wide reaching. Specifically, I foster the scholarly
productivity and visibility of the department, promote the development of undergraduate and
graduate programs, guide the department’s accreditation activities and build interdisciplinary
collaborative partnerships both internally and externally, manage the fiscal planning of the
department with an over $4.7 million dollars budget, ensure that all annual reviews and tenure
and promotion decisions are conducted by protocol and at the highest standards of integrity,
advocate for the mission of the department and college, move the department forward as part of a
major metropolitan research university, and serve on the dean’s academic advisory council.
In addition, drawing upon enrollment trends and mindful of the strengths and needs of the
department, I've prioritized recruitment, development, and retention of excellent faculty. We’ve
been successful in hiring senior faculty through national searches and converting three clinical
faculty positions to tenure track lines as we continue to strengthen our research culture while
engaging in excellent teaching and providing service at all levels. Further, I've also prioritized
support for tenure-track faculty (e.g., mentoring program, pre-and post-tenure meetings, speaker
series) and development funds for all faculty to supplement conference travel, association's
membership, and national leadership service etc. To date, through ongoing discussions at
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Cover Letter - Gaëtane Jean-Marie, Ph.D.
program area and department meetings, and fall & spring retreats, input from faculty and staff,
program leaders and use of data analytics have helped established our strategic goals to build
upon and strengthen our collaborative culture, and advocate for the department and the important
role it plays in the university’s research, outreach and education mission.
I have also had the opportunity to be involved with ongoing development initiatives. In this
regard, I have cultivated relationships with departmental alumni and friends, and talked with
potential donors about the transformational work taking place in the department. Building on
this, as part of efforts to ascertain the research and evaluation needs of local school districts,
community, civic and business community and highlight the depth of faculty expertise in the
ELEOD department, I enlisted the assistance of my College’s community engagement director
who was instrumental in arranging sixteen meetings with constituents throughout the Greater
Louisville Community (e.g., JCPS superintendent and board member, President of Urban
League, Chair of Business Leaders for Education, Policy Director in the Mayor’s Office of
Louisville Metro, Program Officer of CE&S Foundation, President of PNC Bank etc.). Above
all the other management and leadership responsibilities of a Dean, I see building community as
the most important in working with people and fostering partnerships. Relationships with
stakeholders inside the College of Education, across campus, and in the larger state, regional,
national and international community is one of my strengths as a leader because I subscribe to
the adage: people matter in organizations.
Other administrative experiences I’ve obtained are through my role as former program
coordinator at the University of Louisville (UofL) to help with leadership transition, University
of Oklahoma (OU), and Florida International University (FIU). In this role at these institutions,
I’ve performed a wide range of responsibilities such as administering master’s and doctoral
programs, planning course schedules, organizing monthly faculty meetings and annual retreat,
coordinating field-based practicum program, coordinating and resolving professional, personnel,
and academic matters related to accreditation, faculty and students, and addressing program
inquiries, completion of student learning outcomes and program reports for degree program.
Further, a major initiative I was involved in was developing partnerships with school districts to
engage in significant planning and delivery of leadership preparation programs suited to the
needs of schools and districts (e.g., Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Oklahoma City Public
Schools, Tulsa Public Schools, and Jefferson County Public Schools). I worked with several
districts to offer Executive Ed.D. cohorts that included students from rural, suburban and urban
districts. Through these collaborative efforts, the programs significantly increased student
enrollment, retained and graduated a high percentage of students, and helped to provide local
schools and districts with a steady stream of innovative and able leaders to serve in their schools
as district leaders, principals, assistant principals, coordinators, and curricular and instructional
specialists.
Prior to entering the professoriate, I served as a mid-level administrator for four years in the
Dean’s Office, School of Education (SOE) at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.
Specifically, I served as assistant director of Student Advising and Recruitment Center (SARC)
in which I provided support to prospective and current undergraduate and graduate students in
the three departments. Among my responsibilities, I was responsible for the collection and
preparation of data for statistical analysis of undergraduate and graduate enrollment. As a dual
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Cover Letter - Gaëtane Jean-Marie, Ph.D.
role, I was the assistant director of the Teaching Fellows programs, in which I worked closely
with pre-service teachers who were provided a scholarship to teach four years in one of North
Carolina's public schools or government schools following graduation from the university. The
culmination of my administrative experience involves working with undergraduate and graduate
students, and faculty and staff in various disciplines which have provided the opportunity to
learn and work closely with a broader group of professionals.
Fiscal Stewardship. The drive to be an effective steward of the College’s fiscal affairs is to
keep pace with being asked to do more with declining State support. This past academic year
the department received $1.2 million in new sponsored service grants and research contracts.
In conjunction with the University’s strategic scorecard goal of educating leaders to serve a
global community, my department established a contractual agreement with Panama to offer a
master’s degree in human resource development and with the U.S. Military Cadet Command,
Ft. Knox base to offer a B.S. degree in organizational leadership and learning and M.A. in
higher education administration with over 80 students enrolled. We have begun planning for
the next cadre with an anticipated enrollment of 300 to 400 students due to the expansion of
this initiative by the U.S. Army involving more cadets nationally. As State supports decline,
such entrepreneurial efforts have helped us as a department to be innovative in leveraging
resources (e.g., increasing departmental budget from $3.5 to $4.7 million dollars) to deliver
these programs and sustain current ones, attract and retain faculty, enhance capacity to provide
quality student learning and teaching experiences, and engage our internal and external
constituents. While my fiscal management experience has come during a time of budgetary
constraints, it has reinforced my belief that accountability and leveraging of resources is crucial
for long-term success. It has also helped me developed leadership skills, such as open and
transparent communication, consensus building, and setting and advancing strategic goals,
which I consider to be requisite skills in a Dean seeking to advance a college toward greater
national and international recognition for excellence in teaching, research and service.
Building on this, the administrative structure in UofL’s College of Education and Human
Development includes a Dean’s Advisory Council, which consists of the Dean, Associate and
Assistant Deans, and Department Chairs. This advisory council meets monthly to discuss
various aspects of college affairs and challenges facing the college, including the college
budget and strategic allocation of resources. Several issues are addressed by the Dean’s
Advisory Council and more recent ongoing discussions is the exploration of UofL transitioning
to a Performance-Centered Management budget model. Budget cuts and new university
formula funding have presented the opportunity for the college’s leadership to reexamine
program, department and college priorities and realign these with strategic university priorities
and a new fiscal reality. This process is fully engaging the college’s shared governance
structure to undertake the difficult task of downsizing or eliminating certain programs and
reconfiguring others. I believe periodic self- reflection and assessment of institutional priorities
at all levels are important means of achieving greater efficiency within a college. This
heightened self-awareness through ongoing assessment has made my college and department
more innovative and nimble in pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities. I believe that my
experience in the leadership structure of a college that values transparency and has
implemented meaningful mechanisms of shared governance has equipped me for a position of
greater administrative responsibilities.
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Cover Letter - Gaëtane Jean-Marie, Ph.D.
Interdisciplinary and Collaborative Efforts. The ability to effectively interact with individuals
from diverse discipline and program areas to achieve common goals is essential for leadership of
a college with multiple missions. At my current institution, my college includes teacher
education and educational leadership, and human development departments (i.e., counseling,
educational psychology and health and sport science). Furthermore, my department includes both
initial and advanced educator preparation (career and technical education track in OLL and Ed.S.
and Ed.D. track educational administration and leadership), and human development (i.e.,
organizational leadership and learning, higher education administration, and program
evaluation). I served on curriculum, climate, faculty senate, workload taskforce committees etc.
for my prior colleges and my affiliations in these settings have allowed me to become familiar
with issues and challenges, and participate in discussion and implementation of strategic
responses to these issues. My previous academic service has also been in colleges with similar
missions to that of University of Northern Iowa. For example, While at OU, I served as faculty
representative on Committee A, an elected position voted by tenure-track and tenured faculty to
provide input into intra-departmental governance issues for educational studies, adult & higher
education administration, and educational administration, curriculum & supervision. In this role,
I prepared and transmitted to the department chair formal recommendations pertaining to annual
faculty evaluations, budget requests/allocations, increases in salaries of faculty, faculty awards,
hiring of new faculty or retention of vacated faculty positions, and tenure and promotion matters.
I also provided annual written evaluation and guidance, jointly with the department chair to all
tenured, tenure-track and clinical faculty.
In addition to the work I have done within my home departments and colleges, my professional
activities have involved close collaborations with faculty colleagues from across the university,
nationally and internationally. While at the University of Oklahoma, grant proposals and
research publications included collaborations with scholars from the College of Arts and
Sciences, College of Medicine, and departments within my College. Likewise, here at the
University of Louisville, I have established productive working relationships with faculty from
the School of Medicine and School of Public Health and across departments in CEHD. As codirector of CERPE, I work with an interdisciplinary faculty group who is helping to envision the
contribution the Center can make to inform research, policy, and practice with current and new
research projects underway, and discussions on how to organize & structure CERPE. Also for
almost four years, I have been involved in an international collaborative network for educational
leadership capacity building in the North Department, Haiti with scholars in Canada, Tulsa Ok,
and Miami, Fl. I am also former faculty researcher for the FIPSE research grant on the Carnegie
Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED), and the University Council of Educational
Administration (UCEA)/Wallace Foundation’s Leveraging Program Development in Universitybased Educational Leadership Preparation. These examples of my research collaboration
provide evidence of my effectiveness in reaching across traditional disciplinary, departmental
and college boundaries to work with faculty in addressing important problems and achieving
common goals.
Further, throughout my educational career I have had the privilege of being involved on the state
and national stage in standards, accreditation, and policy work with groups such as CAEP
(formerly NCATE) as a board of program reviewer for educational leadership programs. This
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endeavor increased my knowledge about assessments and accreditation through program reviews
I conducted of institutions’ leadership preparation programs across the U.S. As a member of
BoPR, I received training provided by NCATE and Specialized Professional Association
(SPA’s), participated in program reviews annually, and worked collaboratively to complete
assigned reviews. Most recently, I was invited by CAEP to serve on a work group on the
implementation of CAEP’s Standards for Advanced Programs. Our task is to address challenges
and provide CAEP with the guidance needed to ensure a rigorous and fair review process. Prior
to that while at UNCG, I assisted with providing leadership to the NCATE Program Review
Committee for initial and advanced preparation programs in the Departments of Curriculum &
Instruction, Special Education, and Educational Leadership. I was also appointed to the
Administrative Processes Committee for UNCG’s Self-Study Report supported by the regional
accreditation body, Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and
Schools (SACS). These experiences broaden my knowledge about accreditation at the national,
institutional, college, and program level and I continue to build on my accreditation experiences
to be knowledgeable about other accrediting agencies (e.g., CACREP, CAAHEP, APA,
COSMA, NASM etc.) to support programs in my College. Over the years, my involvements in
accreditation and assessments have expanded and foreground my perspectives on how to engage
faculty about continuous improvement (i.e., identifying what we’re excellent in and what we
need to make improvements on).
Commitment to Diversity and Community Engagement. I embrace diversity in my personal
and professional life. As an immigrant of Haiti with French and Creole linguistic origin who has
lived in the U.S. for almost 40 years, I build relationship with diverse racial and ethnic
individuals which has enriched my life experience. Further professionally, diversity and
community engagement are evident in my teaching, research and service (.e.g., please see CV).
The foundation of my leadership experience is collaborative relationships and building inclusive
community with a commitment to diversity and I lead by modeling to respond to the changing
demographic of our society.
In my administrative role as department chair, we sought to increase recruitment and retention
of graduate students and faculty from underrepresented groups while being attentive to all
groups. Among other initiatives, we have worked in conjunction with the School of
Interdisciplinary and Graduate School to provide underrepresented students’ fellowships to
pursue their graduate education and offer networking/social events to create a supportive
culture for students. Our full-time graduate student assistants are increasingly becoming diverse
through our recruitment efforts. Over the past two years, my department has had an increased
presence of full-time faculty of color (27%) and is the most diverse in my College (1 Indian, 2
Asian, and 3 African-American/Black). These efforts signify our desire to foster an equitable
and inclusive educational environment within the department.
Other evidence of diversity is through my community engagement within and beyond the
university. I was appointed to the Commission on Diversity, and Racial Equality (CODRE)
which directly reports to the university’s president, served on a panel to discuss recruitment and
retention of faculty of color at UofL sponsored by the Academic Leadership Series for
Department Chairs, conducted speaking engagements at the Diversity Series Lunch & Learn
Seminars sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at the Health Sciences Center, was
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Cover Letter - Gaëtane Jean-Marie, Ph.D.
keynote speaker for the School of Dentistry students’ Book in Commons event on cultural
intelligence and competence, and conducted workshops on mentoring for the Provost’s Staff
Leadership Academy sponsored by the Human Resource Office and School of Medicine.
Currently, I am assisting the Vice Provost for Diversity and International Affairs in developing
an academic leadership program to create a pipeline for aspiring faculty of color to move into
administrative roles at the university. I am the former president of the AERA-SIG Leadership
for Social Justice and am also actively involved in national service that includes for examples:
editor of the Journal of School Leadership, serve on the editorial boards of the Journal of
Educational Administration and Journal of Research on Leadership Education, Advisory Board
Member, UCEA’s Center for Educational Leadership and Social Justice at Duquesne University,
and Board Member, Nystrand Center of Excellence in Education
In summary, I have a track record of innovative thinking and planning, effective leadership and
administration, personnel and fiscal management, knowledge and experience with accreditation
and assessment, and a commitment to diversity and collegiality. I also have experience in
building a strong research culture and learning environment for students that stresses academic
quality, and facilitate engaging and global learning perspectives. I have effective communication
and interpersonal skills to represent COE externally and advocate for departments at the college
and university level. I’ve received awards throughout my professional career and most recently
am being recognized for the Tower Award which recognizes women leaders in the Greater
Louisville Community. Focused and energetic, I delight in being in and around educational
settings as an academic leader, researcher, observer, facilitator, mentor, and educator. As I think
about this position and my vision going forward, I have reflected on how I can take the best of
what I’ve accomplished in my experiences, and advocate for all COE’s departments and share
practices university wide.
As the committee reviews my qualifications, I hope you will see someone who has successfully
embraced challenges, aspired for excellence, values inclusion, and is enthusiastic about new
ideas. It would be an exciting and gratifying opportunity for me to discuss with the committee
my application to serve as the next Dean of the College of Education and Richard O. Jacobson
Endowed Chair of Leadership in Education at the University of Northern Iowa. Enclosed are my
curriculum vitae, list of references, and educational and administrative philosophy. If I may
provide additional information to facilitate your review, please contact me via email
or by phone,
Thank you in advance for
your consideration, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Gaëtane Jean-Marie
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