Broad Academy Reconnects its Alumni at AASA Reception

By Alyson Zepeda

	Tim Quinn (center) is managing director of alumni services for the Broad Center.

The Broad Foundation has produced some of the savvier new superintendents for the past decade so the AASA National Conference on Education seemed like a perfect venue for staging an alumni get-together.

That event took place on Friday night at the 2010 convention when about three dozen administrators, all trained in the Broad Center Superintendents Academy, gathered at the Wyndham Hotel. It provided a chance to greet old friends and make new connections.

Tim Quinn, managing director of alumni services for the Broad Center, said at the event, “We want to provide an opportunity for them to come together and renew relationships and commiserate with each other.” The prestige of the AASA conference makes it one of the biggest yearly draws for the Broad Center alumni, he added.

The program’s alumni and Broad staff members greeted each other like old friends, discussing their challenges and cheering each other over their professional victories. Many of the graduates from the academy have presented at AASA conferences in recent years, and some have presented over the past days of this year’s Phoenix-based conference.

Pat Green, superintendent of North Allegheny School District in Pittsburgh, graduated as part of the first Superintendents Academy cohort in 2002. “You can renew and refresh and take back from the AASA all of the richness that all the other organizations put in front of you,” she said.

Green added that the Broad Center alumni reception gave her yet another learning opportunity at the AASA conference.

The Broad Center draws candidates for the Superintendents Academy from diverse backgrounds, including education, military service and business management. All recruits share a considerable record of leadership and management skills. The idea is to find the best professionals anywhere and train them to understand the complexities of serving as a superintendent in an urban setting.

Quinn, who briefly welcomed the alumni attendees, said, “We don’t need to train them to be leaders; they are already leaders. We don’t need to train them to be executives; they are already executives.” He said the focus of the academy is to take their skills and train the participants in the ways of the most effective administrators and the most successful schools.

Randy Bynum, an assistant superintendent with Atlanta Public Schools said the reception was an opportunity to grow his support base. “It reconnects us and enables us to share our experiences.”

He added, “It’s a professional learning community because we share.”