About the Department of Equity, Leadership Studies, and Instructional Technologies
Message from the Chair
Welcome to the Department of Equity, Leadership Studies, and Instructional Technologies (ELSIT) at San Francisco State University.
ELSIT brings together educators, leaders, designers, scholars, and practitioners who share a commitment to improving learning and expanding educational opportunity. Our programs approach that work from different perspectives, but they are connected by a common purpose: preparing people to understand educational challenges deeply and to create thoughtful, equitable, and effective responses.
At the center of our work is an ethic of care. We value the experiences, perspectives, and aspirations that each person brings to our learning community. We believe meaningful education requires dialogue, critical reflection, curiosity, and a willingness to learn with and from one another.
Our students put those commitments into practice in many different ways. Some are preparing to lead schools and educational organizations. Some are examining issues of equity and social justice and working for meaningful change in their communities. Others are designing learning experiences, integrating emerging technologies, and rethinking how people learn in schools, universities, workplaces, and other settings. Across these different pathways, our students connect research with practice and develop the knowledge, judgment, and skills needed to make a positive difference.
ELSIT is also a department that looks forward. Education is changing rapidly, influenced by new technologies, changing communities, evolving workplaces, and continuing questions about access, opportunity, and justice. We want our students not simply to respond to those changes, but to help shape what comes next.
As someone who has spent much of my career at San Francisco State as an educator, administrator, designer, and researcher, I value especially the opportunity to work with colleagues and students who bring different perspectives to these challenges. That diversity of experience and thought makes our department stronger.
Whether you are considering graduate study as a way to advance or redirect your career, returning to education as a working professional, or simply interested in the work we are doing, I invite you to explore our programs and get to know our community.
We would be glad to have you join us.
Brian J. Beatty, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair
Department of Equity, Leadership Studies, and Instructional Technologies
Values and Mission
Our fundamental belief is that all humans are valued and appreciated for their individuality. Accordingly, we offer learning opportunities that seek to enable all to reach their full potential. At the core of what we do is an ethic of care. This ethic infuses all of our work to build a community of learners, educators, and leaders, and to create equitable learning spaces, curricula, pedagogies, technologies, and scholarship.
ELSIT's programs seamlessly weave research and practice together so that students experience inclusive and applied learning that integrates equity and social justice with social, cultural, political, spiritual, economic, and environmental issues. This praxis imbues our teaching, learning, research, lifelong learning, scholarship, and technologies with equity and social justice to establish a foundation of knowledge grounded in democratic values.
In ELSIT we engage our students in meaningful dialogue that promotes introspection and critical reflection. We acknowledge that students and faculty bring with them lived experiences that inform all of our teaching and learning. Knowledge in our programs is thus not owned by any single entity, but is a collective construction of all.
ELSIT prepares professionals to critically examine inequities and work to challenge and eradicate them. Our students become teachers, administrators, facilitators, curriculum developers, trainers, advocates, activists, and ultimately, change agents. We are a part of the many communities that surround us. We thus work to build meaningful relationships sustained by program values so that our students become invested future leaders and active community members.