Students and faculty in the online Ed.D. program will meet at the Vanderbilt University campus in Nashville, Tennessee, three times throughout the program for an on-campus convening. These meetings provide an opportunity for Ed.D. students to engage in collaborative projects to develop critical leadership skills over the course of a few days. The on-campus convenings will challenge students to demonstrate mastery of subject matter and skills, integrate knowledge and skills across topics and subjects, and apply what they have learned to professional practice and related analytic challenges. Drawing on the three pillars of the Ed.D. curriculum — leadership and organizational development, data and analytics, and learning and design — the campus convenings will establish networks of professionals who can solve shared problems of practice in creative and innovative ways.

Campus Convening I will allow faculty and classmates to network with each other while building on first-year course work. During this convening, students will also develop the applied inquiry skills needed to undertake their capstone projects. Campus Convening II (Pre-Capstone) will serve as the first official component of students’ onramp to capstone where students will be provided instruction and expectations for their capstone projects. And finally, the Campus Convening III will provide an opportunity for students to present their capstone projects to faculty, practitioners, and classmates.