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Graduate Students Awarded Dissertation Fellowships

May 14, 2026
Adnrew Stein and Corey Winchester
Andrew Stein (l) and Corey Winchester have received NAEd/Spencer Fellowships.

Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy graduate students Andrew Stein and Corey Winchester have received highly competitive NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowships to support their research and career development. The School of Education and Social Policy has had at least one winner in five of the last six years.

Stein, who is pursuing a doctorate in human development and social policy, studies the relationship between education and political change in the United States. He focuses on how schools and learning spaces can shape social movements, and on how ideas about rights and equality inform what happens in schools.

Before coming to Northwestern, Stein served as 11th and 12th grade dean and history and American studies instructor at the Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn, N.Y. There he designed and led intensive trips to the U.S. South for high school students' place-based learning of the Civil Rights Movement.

Stein participated in the National Endowment for the Humanities summer teacher institute on the grassroots Civil Rights Movement. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in history from Yale University, where he studied the key ideas and thinkers of the African Diaspora.

Winchester, who earned his bachelor's and master's at the School of Education and Social Policy, is an award-winning teacher, coach, mentor and consultant who going for his third Northwestern degree—a doctorate in learning sciences. He explores how young people develop their identities, leadership skills, and desire to make the world more just and how adults can better support that growth. He also designs spaces where students and educators learn together.

Winchester was recognized as an Excellent Early Career Educator by the Illinois State Board of Education in 2013, a distinguished alumnus of Loyola University Chicago's School of Education in 2016 and received the Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2019. He was honored as Illinois History Teacher of the Year by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in 2020.

In July, he’ll be serving as a master teacher at The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History's Teacher Symposium at Gettysburg College.

Read more about their research projects.