Banking on a Humanist for Survival.

James O. McDowelle

Only 20 months ago, North Carolina A&T University hired Jim McDowelle for his humanistic approach to preparing future educational administrators.

Today the university is counting on its newest associate professor in education to lead it through a life-and-death struggle for the very survival of its program in school leadership. By this fall, the state's university system will announce which seven of the existing 12 master's programs will continue, and McDowelle will know whether his current campaign has succeeded ... and whether he and his colleagues still have jobs.

"There will be tension," McDowelle concedes about the competition mandated by recent state legislation that pits North Carolina A&T against the likes of North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina campuses at Chapel Hill, Greensboro, and Charlotte. "If you lose a program, you look bad."

McDowelle just assumed the yearlong chairmanship of the North Carolina Professors of Educational Leadership, a group with a direct stake in October's expected decision by the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina to authorize no more than seven master of school administration programs.

McDowelle's boss, Henry Cameron, who heads the educational leadership and policy program, believes he is the right person for the present challenge. "His preparation and practical experiences, research, and the humanistic approach he takes with students ... fit in well here."

McDowelle spent two years in the late 1980s as district superintendent in Morrisville, Pa. Earlier he was executive director for student services in Frederick County, Md., and a middle school principal in Albemarle County, Va.

Over the years, he has had a special affinity for special education, having started his career as a special education teacher in West Virginia in 1972. A few years ago, he served on the Maryland state superintendent's committee to revise state regulations for special education.

At North Carolina A&T, a historically black college in Greensboro, McDowelle directs a $499,000 project funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services. The project prepares minorities for leadership in special education, and students who complete the program will receive an advanced graduate degree.

McDowelle says he wrote the grant proposal out of concern over the disproportionate number of black youngsters in special education programs and the paucity of black leadership in the field.

"Special education is not seen by ambitious people as a pathway to the superintendency," he says. "They see curriculum development, personnel, and finance as more accessible to the superintendency."

Larry Coble, former superintendent of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, sees tremendous potential in McDowelle's project, which ties university studies with field experience. Coble believes McDowelle's public school background will ensure the project's viability, saying, "It takes some skill to manage because you have people working full-time and going to school part-time.

McDowelle, who came to North Carolina A&T after two years at Appalachian State, says he enjoys the opportunity afforded by higher education to work on approaches to school problems that seemed intractable during his days as a superintendent.

"The grass is always greener," he notes of his different role responsibilities. "Some weeks [as a superintendent],I literally had to be somewhere 50 hours a week. Here I have to be somewhere 9 to 12 hours a week."

McDowelle is keen on helping future public school leaders contemplate the moral and ethical considerations of the future decisions they likely will make on the job. Without imposing a particular view of morality, he challenges his graduate students, most of whom are teachers with a half dozen years or more in the classroom, to examine their own spiritual or moral bases before they advance in their careers. Once they reach the administrative ranks, he says, it maybe too late.

"When you're totally exhausted at night, you're not going to pull out Plato's Republic to ponder those issues."