Drawing upon traditional strengths in social foundations, educational leadership, higher education, and human resource development, EPOL College of Education at Illinois enables students and faculty to support and collaborate with each other in coordinated new synergies to address the most critical issues in Preschool-12 and postsecondary education. The department fosters an interdisciplinary unde
rstanding of educational policy and practice across traditional divides among philosophers, historians, social scientists, organizational theorists, policy analysts, and educational administrators. EPOL scholars engage in collaborative research and teaching efforts that take them across major concentrations within the department as well as into other departments within the College and larger University. The department is a strong leader in the College’s commitment to provide innovative programs to students irrespective of location. EPOL offers online, on campus, and off campus programs to students across the United States and the world. Without question, EPOL enables the College to study education and to train a new generation of researchers differently and better to address long-standing and new issues in educational policy and practice. As one of the largest departments in the college, EPOL has nationally prominent scholars who study the educational implications of the emergent knowledge-based global economy; the growing diversity of America’s schools and workplaces; ubiquitous learning; the cultural dimensions of global relations; the reform of educational organization and management structures; the transition of students from P-12 to postsecondary education systems; and the role of education in family life, corporate environments, and the workplace, among other topics. EPOL enables us to bring the theoretical frameworks, methodological tools, and substantive perspectives of traditional areas of strength in the social sciences and the humanities to bear on the most pressing issues in American P-12 and postsecondary education, as well as the study of education in changing global contexts.
