Brock University
September 2002

Now that we are back in the swing of things for the Fall term, it's time once again to update you on what's happening with CASEA.  First, the 2002 Annual Conference was a great success.  Details can be found in the Committee Reports, located by clicking on the Reports link in the banner above. A huge note of thanks goes to all those who attended, who presented papers, and who chaired and facilitated the sessions.

We are now preparing for the 2003 conference, and we hope you will put CASEA 2003 on your agenda. The Call for Proposals has been sent out on the CASEA listserv and is posted on the CASEA website. You can find it by clicking on the Annual Conference link in the banner. David MacKinnon from Acadia University is serving as the Vice President of CASEA and Program Co-chair for the 2003 conference, with able assistance from Claire Lapointe from the University of Moncton as his Co-chair. We expect that the upcoming conference will once again be an outstanding success.

For the 2002 conference, the CASEA Seminar focused on the work of three senior scholars of policy development in Canada: Ben Levin from Manitoba, Hanne Mawhinney from Maryland, and Bob O'Reilly from Alberta, with discussion  provided by Alison Taylor from Alberta. The quality of the discourse during the seminar reminded me of how important it is for senior scholars to present their work at the conference. CASEA remains the only Canadian forum for scholarship in educational administration, and it is important for those of us who work in this area of research, and especially for new and emerging scholars, to hear the contributions of those who have delved deeply into issues and topics and who enrich the discourse with the wealth of their experience, understanding, and insights.

Some longstanding issues will be submitted for discussion on the listserv over the next few months. Expect to see something shortly in relation to membership in CASEA, membership fees, and financial commitments. If you are not a member of the CASEA listserv but would like to be part of the discussion, please contact Ruth Rees at r eesr@educ.queensu.ca and ask her to add your name to the list. If you are already a member of CASEA, your name will be posted immediately. If not, you will need to update your membership. You can do so by contacting Tim Howard at the CSSE office, csse@csse.ca.

Finally, several items of interest from the 2002 conference have been posted below. You will find some information about important people and events and a message from me as incoming president. Read on!

Coral Mitchell

1. The agenda of the 2002 Annual General Meeting and the 2002 Membership Statistics can be accessed through the link to the AGM. Minutes of the meeting, including the new executive, will be posted in the near future. In the meantime, you can find the names and contact information for the 2002-2003 executive by clicking on the Exec & Committees link in the banner at the top of the page.

 
2. Recipients of the Distinguished Service Award were Dr. Margaret Haughey from the University of Alberta and Cr. Clermont Barnabé from McGill University. Cr. Carol Harris from the University of Victoria presented the award to Dr. Haughey, and Dr. Matthew Meyers from St. Francis Xavier University presented the award to Dr. Barnabé, in absentia.

 
3. Dr. Marlene Atleo from the University of British Columbia won the T. B. Greenfield Dissertation Award for her dissertation. Her research advisor was Dr. Carolyn Shields.

 
4. Two Master's Awards were presented this year. Ms Amy Burns from the University of Calgary, advised by Dr. Tim Goddard, won the award for her thesis entitled Constituent Group Perceptions of Effective Female Leadership in an Urban Elementary School. Anish Sayani from the University of British Columbia, advised by Dr. Carolyn Shields, won the award for a project entitled Identity, Power, and Narrative in Curriculum and Educational Leadership.

 
5. Dr. Tim Goddard from the University of Calgary is the newly elected Vice President of CSSE. Congratulations, Tim!

Because neither of the Distinguished Service Award recipients were able to attend the annual dinner, Coral Mitchell, the incoming President of CASEA, chose to use the occasion to honour those members who continued to support CASEA by attending the conference and, in particular, who were in attendance at the dinner. Her address follows.
 

Although tonight is not a time for speeches, it is a time for honouring, so I want to take a few minutes to honour all of you who make up the CASEA community. Because I've been attending the annual conference for 10 years, I have a bit of history to reflect on, and I do believe that in that time we've come a long way. The path, however, has not been without its challenges. For me, the challenges came to a head about 4 years ago. That was the year when three different conversations came together to illuminate a problem and to suggest a way out.

The first conversation swirled around the question that Ben Levin reminded us of yesterday: Can CASEA survive as a distinct and separate entity? You've heard all those arguments before, so I won't repeat them here, but I vividly recall Carolyn Shields comment. She said something like this: "It seems to me were facing a point of choice. We can either disband completely or we can amalgamate with another association or we can rebuild."

The second conversation had to do with the nature, quality, and content of the conference sessions. This conversation culminated for me in Margaret Haughey's observation that a lot of people had quit attending CASEA because they were tired of hearing the same old thing over and over again. Nothing new or exciting seemed to be happening, and people were bored, so they moved on.

The third conversation related to the purpose and future of the CASEA Greenfield Seminar that had been conceptualized, developed, and hosted by Derek Allison. As we talked about what else we could do with the seminar, Derek said something like this: "Let me clarify my intention. With this seminar, I do not intend to honour Thom Greenfield or to memorialize him. I do intend, however, to dig deeply into the content of his scholarship and to investigate, from as many different perspectives as possible, the nuances of his work and the contributions of that body of work to Canadian and international scholarship."

That was the moment when the penny dropped. The problem, as I saw it, was that, as an association, we had to some extent lost purpose and direction. From what I can gather from conversations with senior University of Saskatchewan faculty members, CASEA had in the past served career-building and networking functions, but as the Canadian network dwindled and globalization blossomed, people were looking elsewhere, primarily to AERA and other international associations, to build their careers and to develop their networks. I remember, for example, a colleague saying to me, "If I have something important to say, I certainly wouldn't choose CSSE as the place to say it."

In a competitive international context, CSSE and CASEA could not compete as career-building institutions. In their desire to advance their careers and to disseminate their scholarship, Canadian scholars were turning away. But the tragedy for me was that the movement away from a Canadian forum diluted Canadian scholarship because when we positioned our work as Canadian as AERA or UCEA, we either did not get on the program or we had no audience. Consequently, our work became more and more generic and decontextualized.

To compound the problem, many departments of educational administration were written out of existence in the movement toward integrated studies in Canadian universities. This movement further diluted the scholarship of educational administration because, when we tried to talk to the sociologists and philosophers in our newly constituted mega-departments, we were criticized for following what was considered to be an applied field of study rather than a real discipline. In that kind of environment, organizational and administrative topics dropped off the discourse agenda, and educational administration scholars grew silent.

So there we were: We had lost purpose, we were tedious and boring, and we were quickly losing voice. What were we to do?

At about that time, I remembered a book that I had read many years ago, written by George Ainsworth-Land and entitled Grow or Die. He postulated that stagnation is not an option for people or for institutions and that the choice we face is not between growth and non-growth but between growth and death. He argued that, if we choose not to grow, then we are de facto choosing to die. From that memory, it was a short leap to the recognition that, as Carolyn's comment had suggested, we needed to rebuild. As Derek's intentions had suggested, the rebuilding had to be based on intensive creation and intellectual exploration of Canadian scholarship in educational administrati on. As Margaret's observation had suggested, the rebuilding had to be renewing and revitalizing. It had to put into play fresh ideas, new perspectives, provocative questions, challenging insights, and exciting possibilities. Over the past 4 years, these three suggestions have informed Tim Goddard's and my work on the annual conference program.

The three suggestions remain as the challenges for CASEA today. Canada continues to be an intellectually interesting and stimulating context in which to study educational leadership. Our geography, our history, our traditions, and our culture offer limitless possibilities. Educational organizations in Canada continue to be complex, at times chaotic, and often confusing and senseless places, and our scholarship can offer at least some hope that we will come to at least a small measure of sense. Educational leaders at all institutional levels and in a wide variety of configurations continue to be dynamic, perplexing, at times frustrating people whose beliefs, practices, and motivations are well worth exploring. There are still many exciting and stimulating questions about educational administration in Canada with which to engage, and CASEA can stand as the forum where we ask the questions, consider the possibilities, and share the insights. This is important work, and each day we face the choice as to whether we will engage with the work and help it to flourish or turn away and allow it to whither.

As I reflect on the program for this year's conference and as I look around the room tonight, I am very optimistic. I believe that we have chosen for CASEA to grow. The program tells me that we have started to rebuild along scholarship lines. Many sessions have presented provocative ideas, exciting challenges, and new possibilities about some long-standing concerns such as the purposes of education, the voice of parents, the place of learning, and the work of leaders. Your presence in this room tells me that we are also starting to rebuild along people lines. For the first time in a long while, we have what I believe is a full cross-section of the CASEA community, from senior scholars to established scholars to mid-career scholars to new scholars to emerging scholars. What an exciting company! In your presence is both the substantive scholarship of accumulated knowledge and the promise and potential that comes with your continuing search for new information. For both your past accomplishments and your promised contributions on behalf of organizational and administrative literacy in Canadian education, I salute you. It has been my great pleasure to have found an academic home in CASEA, and it is my great honour to serve you and our association. As a community, may we always take the path that leads toward growth.

Salute.

Coral Mitchell, incoming President of CASEA