History and Mission

Northwestern University has always had a singular goal when it comes to continuing education: to provide diverse and academically excellent pathways through which adult learners can receive an exceptional education. For 75 years, the School of Continuing Studies, in its various incarnations, has sought to uphold that standard, the roots of which predate the foundation of University College in 1933.

While Northwestern began to offer evening courses in 1905, the first evening program was offered by the School of Commerce in 1908. The school catered to workers in the Chicago Loop. The advent of the eight-hour workday and the proliferation of jobs in Chicago fostered a generation of adults willing and eager to pursue an education in the evenings. The popularity of the classes at the School of Commerce led them to add more traditional liberal arts courses to their curriculum with professors borrowed from the Evanston campus.

By the 1920s, adult education was a hot topic amongst educational theorists, who attached the concept to social movements. Adult learners were often first-generation college students, many of them immigrants, seeking upward mobility within their professions. There was new demand for a higher level education that could improve specific skill sets within a profession, and people like Edward Thorndike believed that universities should adjust to satisfy that demand.

Northwestern President Walter Dill Scott agreed with Thorndike's vision for adult education, in that it should focus on individualism and empowering the student. In 1928, Scott and Raymond Kent, the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, launched 17 credit courses aimed for "those who learn by night." The response was tremendous, and enrollment consistently increased, even during the Depression.

In 1933, Scott founded University College, the original incarnation of what would become the School of Continuing Studies. University College encompassed the evening extensions of six schools: the College of Liberal Arts, the School of Education, the School of Speech, and the School of Music. Under Dean Samuel Stevens, University College awarded its first Bachelor of Philosophy, Bachelor of Science in Education, and Bachelor of Science in Speech degrees in 1937. The school was a success, with enrollment increasing from 1,216 in 1933 to 3,876 in 1936. In 1939, it became a charter member of the Association of University Evening Colleges.

A 1941 brochure for the school stated that "the hours between six and 10 in the evening are the hours of destiny," and students took that spirit to heart. Women greatly outnumbered men in the school's early years, mainly because so many students were elementary and secondary teachers. That proportion became even more lopsided during World War II.

Rollin Posey became the school's third dean in 1943, and he oversaw a tremendous post-war boom in enrollments, which escalated to more than 6,900 in 1947. He founded the first chapter of Alpha Sigma Lambda, an honor society for evening students. By 1947, University College was Chicago's primary source for continuing education. The school became pressed for space, and the lack of offices for professors in the downtown campus made it difficult to establish stronger relationships with students. In 1951, the school moved its main offices from the Ward Building to the sixth floor of Wieboldt Hall, where they still reside today.

In 1954, the University incorporated the school into the Northwestern University Evening Division (NUED), an entity that encompassed more of the school's evening programs. Daniel Lang served as dean, and he shifted the school's focus to a more traditional undergraduate education. He also expanded the evening program to include the Evanston campus, where the first night classes were held in 1957.

The school expanded its programming in the late 1970s to offer its first Master's Degree in English. It would later add a Master's Degree in Liberal Studies. In 1978, NUED became the Division of Continuing Education (DCE), and upon Don Collins' arrival as dean in 1983, a new format was established. He brought back the name University College to entail the undergraduate and graduate-level programs for credit. He divided the rest of the school into non-credit programs and special programs, which included the University's Summer Session.

The Institute for Learning in Retirement, a lifelong learning program for retirees, began in 1987. The program is now known as the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. On the other end of the spectrum, Northwestern's Summer Session first offered the College Preparatory Program for high school students in 1989.

The DCE became the School of Continuing Studies in 2000. Thomas F. Gibbons became the new dean in 2002 after founding DePaul University's Office of Continuing and Professional Education. Dean Gibbons has guided the school to a new era of growth, expanding professional development programs, graduate programs, corporate education programs, and a blended undergraduate degree program in Leadership and Organization Behavior.

Gibbons made it his priority to grow the school's programs and enrollments. In his first five years as dean, SCS increased program offerings by 64% and enrollments by 47%. Professional Development Programs jumped from six offerings in 2002 to 26 in 2008. Graduate offerings expanded from three degrees to eight in the same span of time, and a graduate certificate was recently introduced as well. SCS also boasts one of the University's distance learning programs, a Master of Science in Medical Informatics that can be completed online.

Just as it did 75 years ago, Northwestern University School of Continuing Studies seeks to empower working adults by providing nontraditional pathways to a superior education. With educational programming in emerging fields, multiple campus locations, new facilities in Wieboldt Hall and Chicago's Loop, and an exceptional faculty, the School of Continuing Studies is better poised than ever to deliver on its mission.