Education Sciences (Certificate)

The Multidisciplinary Program in Education Sciences (MPES) is designed for PhD students who want to pursue a research career studying critical policy and practice issues in the field of education. The program provides a unified system of research mentoring and coursework for students from a diverse set of academic fields. Students acquire knowledge of related work in a group of core related disciplines and engage in education-related research informed by the resulting cross-disciplinary insights.

Participants, known as MPES Fellows, are chosen by the MPES Steering Committee from among doctoral students in good standing currently enrolled in one of six participating Graduate School programs. Participating programs are: Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences: Economics, Psychology, Sociology, Statistics; School of Education and Social Policy: Learning Sciences, Human Development and Social Policy. Applicants are chosen on the basis of the centrality of education to their programs of research and their scholarly promise.

Please note the certificate program is not accepting new students for 2025-26.

Who to Contact

Please contact the program coordinator, listed below, with questions about this certificate. Or, explore the MPES website for more information.

• Mackenzie Drummond
  mackenzie.drummond@northwestern.edu

The following requirements are in addition to, or further elaborate upon, those requirements outlined in The Graduate School Policy Guide.

Note, in many cases, students would complete some of these courses while meeting the typical requirements for their home program. Thus, although we have listed nine required courses, few students would need take nine additional courses.

Course Requirements

Methods (4 required courses)
Take one of the following general courses:

Take two of the following more specialized courses on quantitative methods:

Take one of the following qualitative methods courses:

Cognition and Student Learning
Take one of the following courses:

Human Development
Take one of the following courses:

Policy and Social Contexts of Learning
Take two of the following courses:

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Take one of the following courses: