Jerome M. Ziegler, former dean of Cornell's College of Human Ecology, is applying a lifetime of acquired knowledge and skills related to education and passing them on to school principals in an innovative professional education program.

The Leadership Institute for School Principals, which Ziegler designed and leads, gives principals and other board of education personnel a fresh view on critical issues, new skills to enhance their roles as educational leaders and experience leading seminars and workshops in their schools. It is sponsored by the Education Division of the National Executive Service Corps, a nonprofit organization that taps the resources of retired executives for volunteer management consulting.

The 60-hour, 10-week institute, which already has served about 150 principals and 40 other personnel in New York City, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and Boston, is unique in that it uses no experts or lectures. "The participants and the readings are the experts," said Ziegler, professor emeritus in the Department of Human Service Studies at Cornell and a senior educational consultant for the National Executive Service Corps. The readings focus on educational philosophy, education theory, organization management and societal issues.

Participants take responsibility for exploring the issues and concepts of the readings and trying to fit them into their own professional experience. By breaking out into small groups periodically, participants talk through problems drawn from their experience or suggested by the readings and offer solutions to problems they may face on the job.

"The use of the seminar and workshop combined invites participants to think as hard as they can about difficult, complicated issues affecting the way they act and serve as educational leaders," said Ziegler, who teaches courses at Cornell on intergovernmental systems, professional ethics and public policy, and policy analysis and public administration.

"Principals walk out knowing how to better involve their teachers and how to give their staff, parents and community leaders more responsibility so they can effectively participate in programs such as site-based management," Ziegler said. "Through readings and discussions on these readings with colleagues, principals reflect on how to share their power and realize that in doing so, they are not losing power but strengthening their ability to lead schools." Topics for the Leadership Institute include: the nature of leadership; how educational leadership may differ from other forms; factors in the external and internal environments that affect schools; learning styles of children; how to improve the teaching/learning environment in each school; the process of empowerment; system and school restructuring; the issue of power; how race and ethnicity affect schools; managing vs. leading; handling stress in the system; and how to fuse a vision for the future with the daily nitty-gritty.

In addition, participants focus on the professional development needs of school staff, how to improve teacher performance and the teaching/learning environment, how better teacher performance may lead to improved student achievement, how families can be more involved, how to make site-based management truly effective, how to fully use community resources, how to better use students' energy and talents for individual achievement and improved schools, and how the administration might better serve the principals' missions. "Principals are embedded in one of the most hierarchical systems in the U.S.," said Ziegler, who hopes the institute will go national in the next few years and is also planning similar seminar/workshops for the central administrations of boards of education. "This program gives them training in democratic group processes and experience in how to lead a more democratic system that will ultimately improve how teachers teach and how students learn. It is also designed to give participants a model for professional development in their schools."

Ziegler, who was dean of the College of Human Ecology from 1978 to 1988, is an expert on urban education, higher education and intergovernmental relations. Before coming to Cornell, he was chair of the Department of Urban Affairs and Policy Analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York City; Commissioner of Higher Education for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; vice president and professor of social science at the State University of New York at Old Westbury; educational consultant to federal, state and local governments and many private agencies in the area of urban development; director of the Urban Coalition's Task Force on Educational Disparities; director of the Rodman Job Corps Center; president of the American Foundation for Continuing Education and one of the first Peace Corps trainers. In 1990, he helped launch the award-winning AIDS curriculum called "Talking with Kids About AIDS."

For more information on the The Leadership Institute for School Principals, contact Ziegler at (607) 255-7770 or fax at (607) 255-4071, or the National Executive Service Corps at (212) 529-6660 or fax at (212) 228-3958.