Northwestern University is committed to supporting our underrepresented students, faculty, and staff members. We make this promise with the acknowledgment that, in many ways, our work has only just begun, and that some commitments will take much longer to fulfill. However, our dedication to systemic cultural change remains resolute.
The ability to move our university forward requires significant philanthropic investments. Since We Will. The Campaign for Northwestern launched in 2011, more than $96.5 million has been raised to support these initiatives, but additional gifts are necessary. We invite our most generous supporters to join us in seizing the momentum of change to realize a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive Northwestern. We are committed to all types of diversity, and the following funding opportunities are just a sample of ways donors can help us make an impact in this area.
Make a Gift >>
DIVERSIFICATION OF OUR COMMUNITY
FACULTY RECRUITMENT
Provost’s Opportunity Rotating Chairs
An investment in Provost’s Opportunity Rotating Chairs will provide the provost with resources to enable deans to recruit individuals whose backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences are underrepresented within our faculty. These professorships, or chairs, will rotate throughout departments across the University, giving schools the opportunity to hire an exceptional scholar even when they do not have an open faculty line available. To make a gift to this area, please contact Julie Allen at 847-467-1632 or julie-allen@northwestern.edu.
SCHOLARSHIPS AND FELLOWSHIPS
Undergraduate Promise Scholarships
Northwestern has established Promise Scholarships to help enroll and support underrepresented students. Establishing more Promise Scholarships is a top University priority, and philanthropic gifts to this area will help ensure the continued availability of these funds for many years to come.
The Graduate School Fellowships
As we work to diversify our campus and all of academia, augmented fellowship funding helps attract and support the most sought-after graduate students, including those from traditionally underrepresented communities. To make a gift to this area, please contact Kelly Colpoys at 847-467-4317 or kelly.colpoys@northwestern.edu.
Professional School Scholarships
Among the world’s leading schools of business, law, and medicine, competition for top students is greater than ever. Scholarships are essential for Northwestern’s preeminent professional schools—the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, and Feinberg School of Medicine—to enroll the most promising applicants and foster an inclusive academic community.
- Kellogg Diversity Scholarship—To make a gift to this area, please contact David Sack at david.sack@kellogg.northwestern.edu
- Northwestern Pritzker Law Harold Washington Scholarship
- Daniel Hale Williams Society of the Feinberg School of Medicine Scholarship
- The Diversity in Medicine Scholarship
- Feinberg Emma Reynolds, MD Scholarship
TEACHING AND RESEARCH
African American Studies
The Department of African American Studies was established in 1972 as part of Northwestern’s commitment to increase attention to Black history and literature in the curriculum following the Bursar’s Office takeover in 1968. Today, it benefits hundreds of undergraduate students. Through teaching and research, the department provides opportunities to explore the richness and diversity of the Black experience in a meaningful and coherent way. This field brings together perspectives from different disciplines to gain a deeper understanding of Black life, especially in the United States.
Center for Health Equity Transformation
The Center for Health Equity Transformation (CHET) at Feinberg fosters innovative partnerships across disciplines and communities in education and training, research, and health care delivery. The center is committed to giving voice and opportunity to historically marginalized and underserved people, with the understanding that we must eradicate systemic racism and institutional barriers to advance health equity. CHET’s capacity for cross-sectoral partnerships informs policymaking and lifts health for all by advancing evidence-based health equity programs, policies, and initiatives.
Center for Native American and Indigenous Research
The Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR) is Northwestern’s primary institutional space dedicated to advancing scholarship, education, and artistic and cultural practices related to Native American and Indigenous histories and lifeways. The center is committed to developing and promoting reciprocal and sovereignty-affirming relationships and partnerships with Native American and Indigenous communities. Additional support will advance the center’s mission and strengthen its impact.
The Fund for the Archivist for the Black Experience at the University Archives
In 2017, Charla Wilson was hired as the inaugural Archivist for the Black Experience for the University Archives. The Northwestern Libraries developed this position in partnership the Northwestern University Black Alumni Association to expand and improve Northwestern Libraries’ and Archives’ stewardship of collections relating to the Black experience. This role has been instrumental in documenting the history of Black students, faculty, staff, alumni, and organizations at Northwestern. Gifts to the Fund for the Archivist for the Black Experience will support the Archivist’s outreach, acquisition, documentation, and preservation of materials in all formats related to the history of Black students, faculty, and staff.
Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing
The Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing (ISGMH) is a University-wide institute dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing of sexual and gender minority (SGM) individuals and communities through research, community engagement, and training. SGM includes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and gender non-conforming people—anyone whose sexual or gender identity does not conform to social majority categories of sexual orientation and gender. Acquiring health equity across the lifespan is a challenge for the SGM community, and the institute is leading the charge to ensure that everyone’s health matters. ISGMH seeks to make a national impact in improving LGBTQ health.
Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy
The mission of the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy (CSDD) is to stimulate research, dialogue, and civic engagement about the relationship between diversity and democratic politics. The center conducts nationwide surveys to assess racial attitudes as well as issues surrounding gender, class, religion, ability, and sexual orientation. To expand and enhance the center’s important work, additional support is needed.
Social Justice Graduate Specialization
Graduate students specializing in social justice at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications tell stories of people who are disenfranchised, vulnerable, or oppressed and shine a light on injustice and inequality. Guided by a core group of faculty members, students gain real-world reporting experience, network with professional journalists, and see their work published in our partner media outlets through this specialization.
Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies
Established in 1954, the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University is the largest distinct Africana collection in existence, with subject matter spanning history and culture, science, technology, religion, and more. Supported by five staff members, the Herskovits Library serves the entire University community as well as the wider community of Africanist scholars across the US and world.
STUDENT EXPERIENCE
BRIDGE PROGRAMS
Arch Scholars
Arch Scholars at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences is a suite of summer and early academic career bridge programs designed to welcome, engage, and support students who attended high schools with little or no AP/IB offerings, or who are among the first in their families to attend college. Some students become Arch Scholars in the summer before their first year by participating in a five-week session focused on helping them thrive in the sciences, humanities, or social sciences. Other students join Arch during their first year or the following summer to ready themselves for independent research, often in their major.
Melville and Jane Hodge EXCEL Scholars
The Melville and Jane Hodge EXCEL Scholars program is a five-week academic summer experience for engineers before their first year at the McCormick School of Engineering. Its mission is to provide an environment that fosters a cultural community of support while reinforcing excellence in academics. Participants in the program form a close support network, and many assume leadership roles among the engineering student organizations, such as the National Society of Black Engineers and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers.
MENTORING
Leadership Development and Community Engagement
Through partnerships on campus and in the community, students engage in intentional action to dismantle unjust systems of power, privilege, and oppression toward the commitment to a more just, equitable, and sustainable world. For example, through a partnership with the longstanding Books & Breakfast program—which offers a nutritious breakfast and homework help to kindergarten through fifth-grade students at Evanston’s Dewey, Lincolnwood, and Kingsley elementary schools—Northwestern students can apply their global learning locally while exploring issues of education equity, community development dynamics, and socioeconomic issues in surrounding neighborhoods.
Kellogg Diversity Program
Kellogg shares an unshakable commitment to creating and maintaining a diverse and inclusive environment. This comprehensive diversity program will support an ecosystem that encourages and upholds distinct voices and varying perspectives from every background and society. It also prepares students to wisely lead global organizations and influence how complex problems are solved. This critical training work will impact all Kellogg faculty and students.
Underrepresented in Medicine Pre-Professional Program
The Underrepresented in Medicine Pre-Professional Fund supports academic and pre-professional activities related to the study and practice of medicine, for students who are generally considered underrepresented in the medical profession, as determined in good faith by the provost. Funding supports career opportunities, including externships with medical professionals, testing preparation, and enhanced advising.
COMMUNITY BUILDING AND EDUCATION
B100 Fund
This fund honors the more than 100 student activists who peacefully occupied the Bursar’s Office in 1968 to protest the Black student experience. Gifts to this fund support the care and enhancement of the Black House, the center of Black student life at Northwestern, as well as related programming and activities to support the multifaceted student experience.
Social Justice Education
Social Justice Education (SJE) is a program within Student Affairs that creates co-curricular educational opportunities in partnership with our student community that foster self-exploration, facilitate conversations across difference, and support actions that create social change on campus. For example, Sustained Dialogue is a dialogue to action program in which students come together in student-led groups to talk about their experiences at Northwestern, specifically in terms of the identities they hold, with the goal of creating an action that makes Northwestern a more inclusive community.
COMMUNITY ADVOCACY
Teach for Chicago Journalism
The Teach for Chicago Journalism initiative at Medill constitutes a reimagining of the Medill Media Teens program, with a focus on training for both students and teachers. With teachers, we would lead and organize a deep immersion summer program for Chicago’s journalism teachers, and those interested in creating programs. At the same time, we would work with pupils of those same Chicago journalism teachers to develop their writing and multimedia skills. This is a holistic approach to addressing the void of journalism education in Chicago.
Northwestern Academy for Chicago Public Schools
Northwestern Academy serves high school students from Chicago Public Schools (CPS) who come from households of limited financial means and who do not attend one of the CPS selective-enrollment schools. The academy’s goal is to increase access and successful matriculation of underrepresented CPS students to top-tier colleges and universities by providing personal enrichment, leadership development, college advising, and cultural and civic engagement.
Northwestern Academy–Evanston
Formerly Project Excite, Northwestern Academy–Evanston prepares Evanston Township High School students from households of limited financial means to successfully apply to, matriculate, and graduate from selective colleges and universities. The program offers personal enrichment, leadership development, college advising, and cultural and civic engagement.
Make a Gift >>