National Awards Presented to Outstanding Head Start Directors
by Georgean Brown-Roth, Alison Rosen, and Kathy Shaw

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The three Head Start directors featured on the facing page are winners of a prestigious natoinal award for Head Start management excellence. The directors-all graduates of the Head Start-Johnson & Johnson Management Fellows Program at the Anderson Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles-were each recognized for their implementation of Management Improvement Projects (MIP's) which they developed while in attendance at the UCLA program.

The design of an MIP is a major requirement of the Head Start-Johnson & Johnson Management Fellows Program, which began in 1991 as a partnership between Head Start, Johnson & Johnson, and UCLA. The mission of the program is to strengthen the management skills of Head Start directors by:

Providing them with an opportunity to receive high quality management education;

Enhancing their ability to advance the objectives of the Head Start program;

Helping them develop strategies that can be quickly implemented in other Head Start programs; and

Establishing a network of Head Start Fellows who will be able to assist in the management education of other Head Start directors nationwide.

Head Start managers who have been directors for at least three years may compete attend the Management Fellows Program. The final decisions on who will be chosen to enter the program are made by the Program Advisory Board, which tries to assure that each class of Fellows is representative of the Head Start program nationwide to terms of demographic factors. Approximately 280 Directors have attended the training.

Directors who are chose for the program recive two weeks for intensive, innovative management training during the summer at UCLA's Anderson Graduate School of Mangement. The training includes lectures, group discussions, and workshops. The curriculum focuses on applying management concepts relevant to Head Start needs and interests, and covers subjects such as human resource management, planning, organization design systems, operations, and marketing. During the class, several case studies of actual Head Start organizations are prepared to enahnce the learning experience and to illustrate jkey concetps.

After designing the MIP, and successfullly implementing it once they have returned to their local programs, directors cna apply to recieve one of the annual awards for management excellence. AN independent committee from the Anderson Graduate School selects award recipients based on an evaluation of each applicant's project (MIP) to improve his or her local Head Start program.

Criteria for the evaluation include a project's creativity and originality, effective implemntation, and potential for replication at other Head Start centers. Winners are announced at the National Head Start Associatoin's Annual Training COnference. Each winner receivecs a cash award that is made possible through Johnson & Johnson. In addition, award winners have their names engraved on a plaque which is displayed at the Head Start Bureau office in Washington, DC.

Applications for the Head Start-Johnson & Johnson Management Fellows Program will be sent to all Head Start programs before the end of December.

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