Underfunded, Misunderstood, and Underappreciated: A First-Person History of Faculty Life Inside an Urban Public University

Public colleges and universities are neither funded equitably nor perceived as being equal. This is especially true for those institutions serving urban populations, where the student bodies are understandably comprised of part-time, non-traditional, older, and first-generation students. In colleges of education, specifically, these graduate students are often full-time public-school teachers and administrators. This case study looks deep inside an urban public university offering readers intimate, first-person life histories of two faculty members as authors. The University of New Orleans was created as the first integrated university to serve the city of New Orleans in 1958. Using the Department of Educational Leadership as the primary unit of analysis, the research describes the transition from a “Whites only” master’s and doctoral program toward becoming a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive graduate leadership program – reflective of the surrounding school districts – during the decade of the 1990s.