Michelle D. Young, Ph.D., is the Dean of the Berkeley School of Education. An internationally recognized scholar of educational policy, leadership, and equity, her work has helped shape the field of Critical Policy Analysis (CPA) in education and deepen understanding of how power, politics, institutions, and leadership influence educational opportunity. Her scholarship examines how educational policies and leadership practices can either reproduce or challenge inequities and how educational systems can be transformed to better serve students, families, and communities.
Through influential publications, edited volumes, and collaborative scholarship, she has helped establish CPA as an important framework for understanding educational policy as a dynamic and contested process shaped by history, ideology, and competing social interests. Her work has expanded the field's capacity to examine the relationships among policy, power, race, gender, democracy, and educational justice. Young has also helped shape the field of educational leadership through a combination of influential scholarship, organizational leadership, and mentorship. Her research has informed leadership standards, accreditation systems, university preparation programs, and educational policies throughout the United States and internationally.
Over the course of her career, Young has led multiple research projects focused on leadership development, educational policies, and educational policy actors. She has co-authored or co-edited numerous books and published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. Her scholarship has received numerous honors, including the William J. Davis Award for most outstanding article; an Emerald Literati Award for Excellence; the AERA Division A Excellence in Research Lifetime Achievement Award in Organizational Leadership and Administration and the UCEA Edwin M. Bridges Award for Significant Contributions to Research on Educational Leadership Development.
Throughout her career, she has developed and sustained a reputation as an innovative, civic-minded, ethical leader with a strong commitment to diversity and social justice. Young has served in a variety of leadership positions in higher education, the nonprofit sector and for the U.S. government, including almost 20 years as executive director of the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA), an international consortium of research institutions with graduate programs in educational leadership, administration and policy. As Executive Director of UCEA, Young worked with universities, practitioners, and state and national leaders to improve the preparation and practice of school and school system leaders and to develop a dynamic base of knowledge on excellence in educational leadership; provided leadership for the development of the Professional Standards for Educational Leadership and the National Educational Leadership Preparation (NELP) standards, which guide the development and accreditation review of educational leadership preparation programs; and led both state-wide and institutional reviews of educational leadership development programs. Upon her retirement from UCEA, Young was granted Emeritus status.
Young has served on several boards, including policy boards (e.g., National Policy Board for Educational Administration); foundation boards (e.g., the Wallace Foundation); and state education reform boards (e.g., New York, Georgia, CAEP). She currently serves on the boards of WestEd, PACE, CADREI, and as a co-chair for the LEARN Coalition. She also co-founded and continues to co-direct the INSPIRE Leadership Collaborative, which focuses on the evaluation of educator preparation programs. Throughout her career, she has been deeply committed to mentoring emerging scholars and strengthening the research infrastructure that supports educational leadership and policy scholarship. She co-founded the Barbara Jackson Scholars Program and the William L Boyd Politics of Education Research Seminar, and stewarded the redesign and excellence of the UCEA-AERA Div A&L David L. Clark Graduate Student Research Seminar in Educational Leadership and Policy.
Young earned her Ph.D. in educational policy, planning and leadership from the University of Texas at Austin; her master of education in special education with an emphasis on learning disabilities and second language learners from the University of Texas at Austin; and her bachelor of arts in sociology and political science from Southwestern University.
