Message from the听2025 LSI SIG Chair
听
听On behalf of the LSI Executive Committee, welcome to the Fall 2025 newsletter issue听and thank you for being part of our SIG community! We look forward to seeing many of听you at the upcoming 2025 UCEA Annual Convention in Puerto Rico and learning from听one another鈥檚 scholarship around the theme 鈥淔ostering Leadership Resilience Through听Collaboration and Community.鈥� We hope you will join us for our annual LSI lunch听event on Friday, November 21 from 12:00-1:30pm, which is a great opportunity to听reconnect, build community, and make connections across scholarship and practice. We听recognize that collaboration and community are more important than ever in the face of听mounting political efforts to undermine equitable and socially just education, and that听leaders across higher education and PK-12 have an important role to play in challenging听unjust policies. To this end, we continue to prioritize our existing community-building听initiatives while considering new ways to collaborate, learn from, and support the work听of our higher ed and practitioner colleagues who are navigating heightened political听challenges.
In addition to our annual LSI lunch event at UCEA, we will continue to focus on building community across SIGs by听hosting a joint reception at 熊猫视频with the Educational Change, Systems Thinking, and Organizational Theory SIGs. We听also hope to engage SIGs that share our interests, values, and commitments to expand听our programming around current听issues and challenges relevant to equitable and socially just school improvement work across teaching, scholarship,听policy, and practice.
Our graduate student support network, led by the Researcher Development听Program (RDP) team of graduate students and听faculty advisors, continues to grow and provide impactful publication and presentation opportunities through a听year-long听mentorship model that matches faculty mentors with graduate student mentees. The RDP team has recently expanded听their graduate student support initiatives by hosting webinars on important topics related to scholarship development.听These initiatives, co-sponsored with the UCEA Graduate Student Council, serve as an important model highlighting the听importance and potential of collaboration across organizations.听
Another initiative that highlights the influential work of our SIG community is the LSI book series, which recently听moved publishers from IAP to Emerald. As the book series expands 鈥� with eight books published to date, one听forthcoming, and several more under review or development 鈥� we are also expanding our editorial board. We hope you听will engage with this growing body of scholarship, as it highlights the meaningful work being done within our SIG听community, and consider developing a proposal to continue to diversify the scope of this work.
As we move through this academic year, we remain committed to expanding the perspectives and scope of leadership for听school improvement, and welcome new and diverse voices to these efforts. If you have ideas or would like to be involved听in this work, we would love to hear from you! Please reach out to any of the officers, join us at our upcoming in-person听events, and bring colleagues and students who might be interested in this work as well.听Finally, I鈥檇 like to close with a note of thanks. Thank you to our members for your participation and support, which keep听these initiatives going. I would also like to thank the LSI Executive Committee for their hard work and dedication to听keeping our SIG community active, growing, and committed to improvement towards equity and social justice.
Alison Wilson, Ph.D.听
LSI Chair, 2025-2026
Assistant Professor
Educational Leadership and Policy听Studies听
University of Houston
aswilso6@cougarnet.uh.edu