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Office of Community Education Partnerships

About Us

The Office of Community Education Partnerships (OCEP) creates initiatives and partnerships that positively impact our home communities of Evanston and Chicago and can be shared and scaled far beyond.

OCEP, which bridges the research, practice, and service missions of the School of Education and Social Policy and Northwestern University, partners with faculty, students, colleges, departments, and centers from across the university. OCEP also supports Northwestern's Office of Neighborhood and Community Relations.

Learn About Our Programs & Partnerships

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Scholarship

OCEP promotes and leverages SESP's scholarly expertise and resources to advance research, develop programs, and engage in teaching and service-related activities that help to understand and improve learning, public policy, and well-being in our home communities of Evanston and Chicago, and beyond.

A person looking at a tube type sampler in lab

Infrastructure and Capacity Building

OCEP provides infrastructure and builds capacity for researchers, practitioners, students, and diverse community stakeholders to work together. Providing institutional support for cooperation, coordination, and collaboration among these stakeholders allows us to build, share, and maximize human and financial resources; be more efficient and effective in our work; more easily identify new opportunities for engagement; and therefore, amplifies impact and makes our efforts more sustainable and scalable.

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Community Partnerships

Improving learning and human development requires new ways of working together in and across communities. Thus, OCEP is committed to developing community partnerships that are based on collaboration and mutual respect; common vision and goals; community needs and priorities; and the valuing and sharing of resources and expertise and seeks to document and share models and promising practices for university-community partnerships.

Dr. Nichole Pinkard's Northwestern Direction

Her path went from doctoral studies to creating Digital Youth Divas, a program to help young women explore technology and develop digital literacy.

Contact Us

Office of Community Education Partnerships
School of Education and Social Policy

640 Colfax St.
Evanston, IL 60208
Northwestern University

ocep@northwestern.edu

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