Skip to main content

About

Northwestern University's School of Education and Social Policy

Learning and Leading with Purpose

Our students, faculty, and community are committed to improving lives and transforming society.
 
At Northwestern’s School of Education and Social Policy (SESP), we’re not a typical education school or policy school; we’re both. SESP students, faculty, and alumni are catalysts of broad and meaningful change for individuals and systems alike – a force for good in the world.
 

The Power of Learning

We are skilled thinkers and skilled doers. Our deep, complex, and multifaceted work and research lead to life-changing discoveries with real impact. And our unique environment – our place, next to a Great Lake – provides an essential pedagogical partner. Here, we consider our rights and responsibilities, the individual and the collective, and what it means to engage in civics and our community.

SESP brings together a wide range of disciplines – psychology, economics, computer science, the law, and more – along with many modes of inquiry, to study everything from tiny infants to massive organizations. Our pathbreaking faculty help guide the next generation of leaders, and, together with students, staff, and alumni, shape the practice and the implementation of innovation across the nation and the world.

Land Acknowledgment

Northwestern is a community of learners situated within a network of historical and contemporary relationships with Native American tribes, communities, parents, students, and alumni. It is also in close proximity to an urban Native American community in Chicago and near several tribes in the Midwest. The Northwestern campus sits on the traditional homelands of the people of the Council of Three Fires, the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa as well as the Menominee, Miami and Ho-Chunk nations. It was also a site of trade, travel, gathering and healing for more than a dozen other Native tribes and is still home to over 100,000 tribal members in the state of Illinois.

It is within Northwestern’s responsibility as an academic institution to disseminate knowledge about Native peoples and the institution’s history with them. Consistent with the University’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, Northwestern works towards building relationships with Native American communities through academic pursuits, partnerships, historical recognitions, community service and enrollment efforts.