Higher Education

A Degree for This Moment

The Executive EdD in Higher Education Leadership prepares leaders to thrive amid shifting challenges

BU Wheelock’s new Executive Doctor of Education (EdD) in Higher Education Leadership has been in the works for several years, and program director Sherri Hughes says it feels like the program—whose inaugural cohort of students began in September 2025—is launching at exactly the right time.

“As we watched higher ed get struck by another round of change that we really hadn’t anticipated, we said the good news is we’re creating a program that will help leaders be better prepared for this kind of stuff,” Hughes says.

Designed for mid-career professionals with 7 to 10 years of higher education leadership experience, the four-elective EdD is a two-year, fully online, cohort-based program with optional in-person experiences, including two optional summer residencies (which can be taken either virtually or in person). The degree culminates with a capstone project in which students demonstrate their learning on a higher education problem of practice. Hughes says the degree was designed to be “a program for practitioners, by practitioners.”

Everyone who teaches in the program has been “boots on the ground” in higher ed leadership, Hughes says. “Several of us have been deans, provosts, directors in student affairs and in policy areas,” she says. “We’ve sat at the table and dealt with budget cuts. We’ve had to figure out which programs we were going to keep and which ones needed to go, and we’ve been there when a student has committed suicide. It’s a group of folks who are really committed to translating that knowledge and cultivating that experience for our students.”