Teaching and Learning blog

With the help of her professor, Katie grew from an aspiring leader to one of Chicago’s most respected school administrators.

What traits come to mind when you think of the attributes of an excellent school administrator? You might say being affable, able to connect with students and teachers, and maybe even fun. When asking what sets assistant principal Katie Magnuson apart from her peers, we certainly didn’t expect to spend time talking about leadership through the use of data, but that’s exactly what happened. University of Illinois at Chicago professor Shelby Cosner has played no small part in Magnuson’s steady rise to becoming one of Chicago’s most respected school administrators.

Katie, who now works at Skinner North Classical School, was part of Professor Cosner’s cohort-based program at UIC. As members of the cohort, aspiring school leaders spend several years learning the fundamentals of educational leadership by way of not just classroom learning, but also a rigorous resident principal program at a struggling school. During their year-long residency they also work closely with a UIC leadership coach.

“Katie was able to use her incredibly strong data skills to make sense of large student learning and instructional data sets, and help her school leadership team draw conclusions about the strengths and growth areas at her school. It’s not an easy thing to do.”

Katie has a special way of getting people to work with and for her. She is patient, reflective, and persistent all at the same time.

— Beverly LaCoste, School Leadership Coach, UIC

Professor Cosner credits Katie’s work ethic and passion as driving factors that have led to her success, although it’s evident that Cosner herself is behind more of it than she admits. Each year, she helps her students realize that being a data-driven leader involves much more than coming into a school, seeing low math scores, and then trying random strategies to improve them. To really get to the heart of improving learning outcomes, one needs to take a long-game approach and must go where the data leads.

Professor Cosner helps her students grasp this by assigning real-world exercises that have a “heavy lift” component. For Katie, this meant building a school leadership team that would help guide this work and then leading the design and implementation of a data system that would find instructional problems that undermined student success. They then studies those instructional practices to determine whether they limited student learning.

“You can’t learn to swim by standing on the side of the pool,” Professor Cosner quips.

This project-based strategy has proven effective, and had a profound impact on Katie.

“It is rare to have a college professor who uses such strong educational pedagogical strategies, but that is Shelby Cosner,” Katie tells us. “She’s a dynamic and talented educator and professor. She engages students on a level that allows for deep understanding of content and connects learning to real life. Her classes pushed my thinking on leadership and made me strive to be my best. The work I did in her classes still guides my thinking, leadership, and understanding of trust.”

So, it seems, the secret to school improvement is in the data. But what of passion? In the case of both Katie and Professor Cosner, there’s more than enough of that to go around.

“Principalship is greatest job on the planet,” says Cosner, who served as a principal for years prior to becoming a professor at UIC. “It’s the most exciting job I’ve ever had in my life. I speak from my heart when I say that.”

If she’s able to impart that passion into more up-and-coming school leaders like Katie, the future of Chicago’s schools is in good hands.

Jai Shekhawat stood out from the other MBA students in Howard Tullman’s class at Kellogg School of Management 22 years ago. He sat in the back row, never raised his voice, and kept a low profile. Rather than talk about his aspirations or accomplishments, he came to class prepared, and it quickly became evident that he was putting in the work behind the scenes to make big things happen.

“Jai is just as kind and self-effacing today as he was then,” Howard confides.

So how has Jai changed? Far from sitting in the back row today, he has successfully founded and sold a business for $1 billion, and is considered one of Chicago’s most successful entrepreneurs. In 2012, Jai was named Ernst & Young’s 2012 Midwest “Entrepreneur of the Year”, and has been recognized as an innovator in the Vendor Management Software (VMS) space.

In 1999, Jai took what he had learned from Howard and others and channeled it into a project that addressed a problem he was deeply familiar with. He started Fieldglass, a company that offers the world’s most widely used Cloud platform for the procurement of contract labor and services.

Over the past two decades, Jai and Howard have kept in touch and maintained a student/mentor relationship that has blossomed into a friendship. Howard credits Chicago’s unique business culture in part for helping to make Jai a success.

I know of few people with more enthusiasm, and being in his class gave me the confidence to eventually find my own path as an entrepreneur.

— Jai Shekhawat

“Chicago is different,” says Howard. “People here are loyal in a way that perhaps you don’t see on the coasts — we’re in it for the long haul. Loyalty is a competitive midwestern advantage, and we also have an economy that is good for entrepreneurs who have diverse interests.”

Chicago can’t take all the credit, though. Howard taught Jai early on that it takes five things to be successful as an entrepreneur: passion, preparation, perspiration, perseverance, and principles. These “5 Ps” are instilled in many of the young, hopeful entrepreneurs that come to Howard’s prestigious startup incubation program, 1871 Chicago. And Jai gives credit where it’s due.

“Back then and right up to today, I thought of Howard as half teacher and half preacher. He’s always spreading the gospel and excitement of innovation and entrepreneurship. I know of few people with more enthusiasm, and being in his class gave me the confidence to eventually find my own path as an entrepreneur.”

Always the teacher, Howard deflects with more praise of Jai’s work ethic.

“Of course everybody wants to be the next Jobs, but with Jai, we sensed that he had the determination to be really successful. Perhaps more important than talent or anything else is the ability to keep your head down and stay focused. Half the battle is keeping your butt in the chair. Jai’s got that.”

What does one do after selling a company for $1 billion? In Jai’s case, he’s staying active in the city’s entrepreneurial scene with Howard at 1871, but he’s also focused on making Chicago the best city it can be by way of social activism and community service. He is heavily involved with an inner city academic program called MetroSquash, which helps to teach underprivileged urban youth how to play the unlikely game of squash while devoting an equal amount of time to academics. In doing so, MetroSquash mentors teach them dedication and discipline,two traits that Jai discovered are crucial to making it in his much-loved city.