Overall enrollment in the NIU College of Education continues to climb.
The college’s 10-day headcount shows 2,474 students, 18 more than this time last year. The undergraduate population grew by 4.45%, rising 57 students for a total of 1,339.
Majors contributing significant numbers include Elementary Education (352), Kinesiology (231), Early Childhood Education (185) and Sport Management (181).
Growing programs at the graduate level include the Ed.D. in Higher Education with a specialization in Higher Education Administration (39), the Master of Arts in Teaching (56), the M.S.Ed. and Ph.D. in Instructional Technology (63 and 96, respectively), the M.S.Ed in Literacy Instruction-ESL/Bilingual (47), the M.S.Ed. in Educational Administration (53) and the M.S.Ed. in School Business Management (37).
“We have worked hard to make our programs accessible and to work with partners to meet their needs,” Dean Laurie Elish-Piper said, “and those efforts have contributed to our enrollment growth.”
David Walker, associate dean for Academic Affairs, called the numbers “really impressive given the context in the U.S. with higher education remaining stagnant or actually decreasing in some instances.”
“Undergraduate enrollments in the U.S. have been trending downward during the pandemic, so we’re really excited,” Walker said.
“We had a very successful fall recruitment in fall of ’21 that went into spring of ’22, and even into the summer with our orientation program that we implemented for students and their families to meet them where they’re at on nights and weekends.”
He credits outside-the-box thinking, such as the summer orientation as well as a series of in-person, online and hybrid events, in helping the college to boost its numbers.
The hard work came from department chairs, faculty, academic advisors and staff in the Office for Student Success “pulling together as a team,” he added.
For example, the PLEDGE (Partnering to Lead and Empower District-Grown Educators) program at Elgin Community College has boosted transfer numbers through offering the Elementary Education, Early Childhood Education and Special Education majors to place-bound students.
Meanwhile, Elish-Piper said, “we have also added an early childhood education cohort in Elgin through the Early Childhood Access Consortium for Equity.”
PLEDGE’s Licensed Educator Accelerated Pathway program is giving paraprofessionals in Elgin and Rockford a fast-track to the classroom with Special Education degree.
Several educators in those two districts also are on their way to becoming administrators through the college’s principal residency program.
Meanwhile, nearly two dozen 2+2 agreements signed since 2016 are paving more and more seamless transfer pathways into the College of Education.
“Innovation is one of the keys for us, not only teaching-and-learning, locale selection and partnership innovation but also curricular innovation,” Walker said. “Our faculty have been very innovative in creating new programs, new minors, new opportunities of teaching and learning and, again, taking certain programs out to students in their own communities.”
Like NIU, which this fall welcomed a freshman class boasting a record-setting average high school GPA of 3.4, the College of Education is also celebrating new faces with impressive academic credentials.
“We had another substantial class of Dean’s Achievement Scholars coming in – new freshman who were high-achievers in high school – and we had a pretty large freshman Honors class come in that I was thrilled to welcome at our wonderful Lorado Taft campus,” Walker said. “We’ve got a lot of students who do very well and who come to us as a first-choice destination.”
