Institute for Catholic Educational Leadership (ICEL)

Founded in 1976, the Institute for Catholic Educational Leadership is recognized nationally as a prototype of collaboration and cooperation between Church schools and Catholic universities. The Institute provides outreach to the Catholic school community by providing consultation, conferences, workshops, an ERIC-like website for Catholic schools, publications, and research forums. Today, because of the expanded need for its services, the Institute focuses on services to schools and provides the community component to the Catholic Educational Leadership Program (CEL). It ensures that degree students study, pray, and form community together.

Relative to the Catholic School Leadership Program, ICEL's aims are threefold: to promote a scholarly educational environment for Catholic school personnel, to build a sense of community among the students and faculty, and to prepare a corps of highly competent, dedicated, and ethical educators for Catholic schools. The Institute attempts to recruit a geographical mix of students - male and female, religious, clergy, and lay - from Catholic elementary and secondary schools, colleges and universities, diocesan offices, and religious community leadership. The Institute enables them to work together to meet the aims of the program and to make the degree "one with a difference."

ICEL's service constitutes a visionary outreach to the Catholic school community, exercising leadership in the arena of ideas and intellectual achievement. ICEL provides a model of Catholic scholarship for schools and their personnel in the field. The Institute sponsors conferences, workshops and seminars for all levels of Catholic school personnel; it publishes proceedings, summary statements, and undertakes strategic planning and instructional designing at the invitation of Catholic schools.