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 Ģ������ƵStories      July 3, 2025

By Matt Salerno

Heidi Von Dohlen was an educator and school principal for 27 years before becoming the director of the Principal Fellows program at Ģ������Ƶ.  During her time as an administrator, she worked to turn her school district into a place where students loved to learn, and teachers loved to teach. 

Whether that involved planting pollinator and medicinal gardens, installing trail cams for students to watch beavers that lived on school grounds, constructing outdoor classrooms, or painting a mural across the back wall of the school’s baseball field, Von Dohlen loved the opportunity to positively impact the culture of the school.

“Now I have the opportunity to influence how aspiring leaders will lead schools throughout the region and across the state,” Von Dohlen said.  She describes the program at Western as a diamond in the rough that can hold its own as one of the best programs in the state.  The Masters in School Administration teaches aspiring school administrators to learn about how to lean into their resources within their district while empowering teachers to be leaders in their own classrooms.  School leadership is important to student success, a definition that understands social, emotional, and physical wellbeing are interconnected to academic achievement.

Forging strong administrators is done not only through coursework and classroom instruction, but a steady stream of guest speakers working within the field who help keep instruction current and relevant to the ever-changing needs of schools.  Maggie King, a graduate from WCU’s Principal Fellows program and current principal of Waynesville Middle School, credits her internship as the most invaluable part of her education.  “One of the most beneficial components of my principal fellow journey was the year-long internship placement,” King said. “That allowed me to blend my assignments from the cohort with real-world experience in a school.”

In addition to being placed in internships as assistant principals, students also attend the University Council for Educational Administration, a national conference where administrators can present on how they’ve dealt with various problems of practice.  Students also have access to executive coaches.  These coaches are non-evaluative and are only there to support administrators in their journey towards bettering themselves.  The fact that these coaches will not affect a fellow’s grade or hiring prospects gives them a safe, relatively stress-free space to grow.

The NC Principal Fellows program was started by NC General Assembly in 1993 with the goal to better prepare effective school principals who can positively impact education throughout the state.  Research done on these programs has shown that Principal Fellow graduates are more likely to secure administrator positions than students in traditional Masters of School Administration programs.  Among first year assistant principals, Principal Fellows score much higher on evaluations than their counterparts especially pertaining to Instructional Leadership, Cultural Leadership, and External Development Leadership. 

Not only does the program provide aspiring administrators with a top-tier education, but tuition, textbooks, and conference travel are fully covered.

An accolade that Von Dohlen hears about the students in the program is, “‘the graduates from Western Carolina are ready to do the job.’  They're noting differences between our graduates and graduates from other programs.” 

Ģ������Ƶreceived funding to start the program in 2021 and allowed a cohort of 15 students.  Due to the success of the program, it recently received $300,000 in supplemental funding and expanded to serve 24 students. 

A total of 40 students will be enrolling in the MSA program this fall and under the guidance of Von Dohlen and the remarkable educational leadership faculty at WCU, they will gain the skills and knowledge to positively impact education around the state.