Melva M. Owens.

A Chance to Share Her Leadership Secrets

An editorial in The Wichita Eagle about a year ago called Melva Owens "simply one of the best educational leaders in the state."

So why is Owens back in a classroom occupying a faculty office on a university campus and not in the middle of a seventh year as superintendent of the Derby Unified School District, the 12th largest in Kansas?

As she gently puts it: "My mother always said to leave the party when you're still having a good time."

Owens took up new duties last fall as a distinguished professor of educational leadership at Wichita State University, where she will teach graduate-level classes on school law, finance, facilities, and power and politics. But what really appeals to her is the opportunity to train cadres of future principals and superintendents in a new doctoral program that emphasizes field-based inquiry, something she in turn calls "realistic learning."

Owens will be working with a cohort of 15 graduate students over a three-year period on problem-solving activities at several area school districts. She convenes weekly meetings that serve as think tank sessions.

Jim Carroll, the college of education dean at Wichita State, says Owens was eminently qualified to fill the new, non-tenured post. "She's quiet and persistent with a continuous improvement vision. She's not noisy about trying the latest fad," he says. "She has a consistent set of values of this is what it takes to improve schools and the world kids live in."

Owens' capacity to markedly improve programs and services offered to students was shortchanged in Derby by the community's refusal on two occasions to approve higher property tax support for the schools. Observers said this frustration contributed to her decision to shift career gears, though Owens herself minimizes it as a factor.

"One never gets comfortable in a superintendency, but I felt like I had done what I could do. ... I needed to challenge myself, to find out how to do things better," she says.

Her career has been full of risk taking and distinction. When she applied for Derby's superintendency in 1989, she never had worked in a central office, having spent three years as a junior high principal in Wichita and two years as Derby's senior high principal. Once appointed, she was just the second woman in Kansas to gain that rank among 304 local districts. Owens was the first woman to be elected president of the Kansas Association of Secondary School Principals and to be named Kansas Principal of the Year.

Theresa Hearn, who formerly worked as Derby's public relations director, says her boss was widely admired for her participatory style of management. She ensured those closest to an issue had significant opportunities for discourse.

"Anyone who knew her in Derby was amazed at how much time she had for the individual, even opponents like the anti-tax people," says Hearn. "They would say very positive things about her, that their statement was against taxes, not against her or the school district."

Owens did lead the 6,300-student Derby district to a successful $20 million capital bond campaign, its first in 30 years, after two failed votes. She says she accomplished that through a targeted approach--guaranteeing specific benefits to all 13 school sites.

"The piece of wisdom she brought to the successful bond issue was that every building will get something," says Hearn.

Owens, whose father spent more than a decade on a school board in central Oklahoma and whose mother was a teacher, has not foreclosed the idea of someday returning to run such campaigns again as a superintendent. For the time being, though, she relishes the chance to help those who will follow her soon to the top school leadership roles and to absorb the impact of her own accomplishments, which sometimes come from unexpected corners.

Recently, Owens noted, a high school senior in Derby called her to announce the $40,000 college scholarship she had won. "She asked me, 'Can you come to my reception?' I was thrilled."