BCSL Team

Jon Eckert, Ed.D. is professor of Educational Leadership and the Lynda and Robert Copple Endowed Chair for Christians in School Leadership. Dr. Eckert provides academic leadership for the Baylor Center for School Leadership, serving as executive director, and is the program director of Baylor’s MA in School Leadership in the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership.

Dr. Eckert came to Baylor in 2019 with more than two decades of experience in education. He provides academic leadership for the Center and is program director for Baylor’s MA in School Leadership. He began his career as a teacher and coach of intermediate and middle school students outside of Chicago and Nashville for 12 years. After completing his doctorate at Vanderbilt University in 2008, he was selected as a Teaching Ambassador Fellow at the U.S. Department of Education, where he worked in both the Bush and Obama administrations on teaching quality issues. For ten years, he prepared teachers at Wheaton College.

Dr. Bill Sterrett serves as Department Chair and Professor of Educational Leadership at Baylor University, where he holds the Fred & Edith Hale Endowed Chair for School Leadership. He received the Milken National Educator award as a Title I school principal in Charlottesville (VA), and has since helped present the award to educators in Virginia, North Carolina, and in schools throughout Texas.

As an affiliated faculty member in the BCSL, Sterrett works to support school leaders through professional development and collaborative grant work. He led the U.S. State Department-sponsored IDEA-SPORT grant to support women's leadership through sports through on-the-ground sports and leadership workshops in Pakistan and through virtual professional learning communities. Sterrett also supports efforts such as the Thriving Learning Communities grant work in Mississippi and the BCSL Research Award initiative.

Mr. Ellefsen manages the BCSL’s Christian Leadership Transformation Project, a program designed to equip Christian educators across the country by gathering networks of school teams around problems of practice to catalyze school improvement and student flourishing.

Ellefsen has served in education for more than two decades as a teacher, coach, consultant, Dean of Academics at Boston Trinity Academy, Principal at Chicago Christian High School, and Grievance Chairman for the American Federation of Teachers. Most recently, he served at Valley Christian High School in San Jose, CA. He currently serves as Senior Fellow for both the Center for the Advancement of Christian Education and Cardus. He also hosts the Digical Education, a podcast providing engaging conversations with some of the most innovative education leaders, and a leading collaborator and author of the Mindshift project.

Ellefsen is a graduate of Wheaton College, with a BA in Social Science and Illinois teacher accreditation, an MEd in Administration and Leadership from Benedictine University with Illinois administrative credential, and attended Boston University to further his studies in Educational Policy and Organizational Leadership.

Sahira Kodra serves as the Program Manager for the School of Education’s Baylor Center for School Leadership (BCSL). Ms. Kodra works closely with the BCSL team to support the department’s mission. Through her role she engages in the thriving community of Christian leadership in schools and districts. She provides administrative coordination within the Center through related event planning, program support, meetings, and budgets.

She joined Baylor University in the summer of 2023 from a position in Leander Independent School District, where she previously worked as a classroom teacher. 

Ms. Kodra received her BSEd in Elementary Education with a Gifted and Talented Concentration from Baylor University in the spring of 2020. As an undergrad she worked as a School of Education student worker and is blessed to be back at Baylor as a staff member.

Serves as the project manager of a collaborative research study to improve student mental health and drug use prevention in middle and high schools. Substance abuse and misuse is a growing challenge among adolescents, and the project's aim is to support thriving school communities by having education researchers and school practitioners working together to develop contextualized interventions, curriculum, and measurable outcomes for students. Through a grant with the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Baylor Center for School Leadership is leading this three-year project in partnership with the William Magee Institute at the University of Mississippi, the National Center for School-University Partnerships, and more than 30 educators from at least six school districts in the state of Mississippi.