Early Childhood Leadership Directions is a highly successful professional development program that prepares exemplary leaders in health, mental health, human services, and education. The Purpose of Early Childhood Leadership Directions is to shape a new generation of leaders to guide and enhance collaborative services and advance systems change for young children and their families. Our Vision is that all communities will have competent, confident, and articulate leaders to improve life outcomes for young children and their families.
Early Childhood Leadership Directions (ECLD) is an outreach program in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences in the College of Health and Human Sciences at Oregon State University.
ECLD) employs a proven program that was created and field tested with promising leaders in Oregon and California under a U.S. Department of Education grant in 2001-2005. In 2005-2008, ECLD continues with the support of Oregon's foundations and individual donors to prepare proficient leaders who work with young children and their families in rural areas throughout the state. ECLD addresses the need of direct service professionals to strengthen their leadership skills, advance their academic work, and thus advance to leadership positions in their agencies and communities. The ultimate impact of ECLD is achieved, as increased numbers of exemplary leaders are available to facilitate enhanced health, mental health, and education for young children and their families in rural Oregon communities.
ECLD facilitates Pathways to Excellence, a year-long immersion program that includes three 4-day leadership retreats, community applications, online networking, resource sharing, and ongoing mentoring to equip new leaders to foster social-emotional development, education, mental health, and health for children from birth to age eight and their families. Pathways begins by strengthening participants' personal and interpersonal leadership qualities and skills, progresses to build skills for leading high performing teams and relationship-based organizations and advance systems change, and then fosters skills required to mentor others, advocate for change, sustain organizations, and lead collaborative community, state, and national initiatives. Resources and strategies to advance the quality of early childhood and family services are shared and implemented through mentored initiatives. At the heart of ECLD are the application of leadership concepts and the implementation of leadership projects to improve child and family services in rural Oregon communities.
Participation requires an application and selection process. Slots are limited. Selected participants may choose from three registration options: continuing education, undergraduate, or graduate credit - all at drastically reduced rates compared to other professional development programs and college courses.
