About Author

John Corona, Ed.D., began his teaching career at the age of 25 after being honorably discharged from the U.S. Air Force. He completed his school district application while employed at the Chicago Department of Urban Planning and Development. Reflecting on his experiences, Corona views his time as a substitute teacher as a series of transactional experiences aimed at achieving transformational leadership goals. As a father, he sees his role in education as part of an identification process. Recently, he was promoted to grandfather. Holding credentials in Social Sciences, Corona stands among thousands of esteemed educational leaders and administrators who are committed to building literate democracies through their educational philosophies.

In 2003, Corona enrolled as a graduate-at-large in his first graduate course in history at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), where he began researching the Chicano experience in Chicago. The motivation for this research was significantly different from that of his dissertation research that followed. During the course, History Professor Hosmer instructed his class, which was composed of advanced researchers and writers, to “select a topic that you are passionate about.” A male student next to me shared his topic—the Northwest Ordinance of 1787—and I knew I was in the right environment. The orange, hardcover, seminal work of Louise Ano Nuevo Kerr on Chicanos in Chicago served as a valuable resource for my research during this time.

As mentioned earlier, the approach to selecting a research topic changed when I enrolled as a doctoral student at Grand Canyon University in 2017. This time, the process was more scientific and began with search engines to locate journal articles, and locating gaps in the peer-reviewed empirical research articles. The goal was to identify areas of tension in these gaps, propose resolutions to ease that tension, and, most importantly, ensure strict alignment throughout the research. The dissertation phase officially started in 2020 and continued until 2023, focusing on a social science topic related to higher educational leadership, with the intention of uncovering groundbreaking findings and making meaningful recommendations.  

Literature includes reliable sources and, most importantly, fulfills a clear need. The higher education experience in the U.S. can be referenced by early childhood (PreK–2), elementary, and secondary teachers, as well as college professors and administrators. Additionally, the business sector can gain valuable insights from the study of urbanization in Chicago. And administrators, too! Outside of education, the business aggregate can gain an intuition from the Chicago urbanization scope.