The ed leaders our students deserve are at risk without UNL’s Educational Administration Department

Love Library at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is shown in the spring. (Aaron Sanderford/Nebraska Examiner)

Five years ago, on the second floor of Teachers College Hall at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, my wife and I took turns rocking our 1-year-old son while we pored over our laptops. My doctoral studies in the Department of Educational Administration were in full swing.

Amid the chaos of dissertation drafts and grant proposals, Educational Administration faculty didn’t just teach — they became family. Without them, I wouldn’t have had the support to graduate and become a professor of educational leadership at North Dakota State University.

Yet Nebraska’s Educational Administration department — the only Ph.D.-granting educational leadership program in the state — faces dire c