The Oh-Nine-Three

It’s not an area code or any kind of hip, pop culture reference. It’s the future of education in Connecticut. And it’s all SHU, through and through.

From the Fall 2021 issue of Sacred Heart University Magazine

For a long time there were only a couple of schools in Connecticut offering the 093,” Alison Villanueva says. She’s speaking of the certification required by the State of Connecticut to become a schools superintendent. “And as you might expect, their focus was on the nuts and bolts of educational management and leadership.

“This program,” she says, now referring to Sacred Heart’s 093 program, which launched in 2018, “goes way beyond the nuts and bolts. It’s very real. Very practical. Very hands-on. So much so that, honestly, from my first day on the job I was drawing on my experiences—not just the ideas, but actual experiences—from my time there.”

Villanueva is superintendent of schools for the Watertown school district. She’s one of three current school superintendents in the state who have graduated from SHU’s 093 program. At a glance, three may not seem that impressive a number, but bear in mind that the program has only been around for three years, that not every candidate is looking to make the move directly into superintendency, that the state itself only has about 120 school districts, that only a handful of them are seeking a schools superintendent at any moment in time and that, so far, with only 48 graduates in total, someone from each of the three cohorts has gone on to fill a superintendent’s role. Then you begin to realize that SHU’s 093 program isn’t just leading candidates along a path to certification—it’s blazing an entirely new trail.

“The mission of public education is to bring about student learning for all students,” says Program Director David Title, with heavy emphasis on the penultimate word in that sentence. “It’s why teachers become teachers in the first place.”

It’s also fundamental to the mission of the University. “Central to our curriculum are the themes of access and opportunity, of social justice and of social and emotional health,” says Michael Alfano, dean of the Farrington College of Education. “You cannot have equity in education without them.”

In short, budgeting and personnel management, Villanueva’s “nuts and bolts,” are but a tiny aspect of the role a superintendent needs to assume in a healthy district. There needs to be social and emotional awareness in learning, embraced and exercised at every level and in every classroom. And for that more complete approach to education to pervade, it must be cultivated from the top down.

Furthermore, it needs to be organic, needs to have context, which is why SHU’s program is so tactile, keeping each cohort to a manageable number and ensuring significant and meaningful interaction between candidates and instructors, mentees and their mentors.

Ken Saranich, now in his second year as superintendent of schools in Shelton, says that intimacy was key to his decision to apply for the program in the first place and has proven key to his success in the role now. “The personal touch matters,” he says. “Doing the job well is one thing. Doing it with meaning is something different altogether. Knowing that the job and its responsibilities matter to you matters to the people you serve.”