When the University of Georgia's Department of Educational Leadership was formed from the merger of two earlier departments, the new entity developed an innovative doctoral program in educational leadership that incorporated principles of problem-based and student-based learning. The program was designed to promote the values, knowledge, and skills that educational leaders need to renew and improve schools and school districts. The initial group of students in the program were 10 experienced educational leaders who began course work in Fall, 1993. A faculty planning team agreed on certain presuppositions for the core 20-hour sequence of Professional Development Seminars. These seminars engaged students in problem finding, problem analysis, and solution finding as ways to renew and improve educational organizations. The instructional design assumed that students would be responsible for organizing and sequencing instruction about content from instructors, data collected from the host school district, and deliberations among themselves. A qualitative framework for evaluation of the seminars was used. Issues that emerged included the importance of building trust, taking risks, negotiating new roles, and expectations about resources (sources of knowing and validating knowing). An appendix is a 10-page introduction from a comprehensive study of the Clarke County School District (Georgia) written by the 1993-94 doctoral student team. Contains four references. (JB)