Ideas In Practice

This is where the Education Team thinks in the open. Ideas in Practice shares our annual inquiry, the NU Ideas podcast, project stories, and short reflections on what we are learning through our work. Part portfolio and part field notes, it offers a closer look at how we design, experiment, collaborate, and revise—and invites students, faculty, staff, and community partners to follow the work or find a point of connection.

This Year's Inquiry: Imagining Towards...

Ed Team Theme

This year, the OCE Education Team has taken as its theme "Imagining Towards..." We'll be exploring how imagination imbues all kinds of deep and seemingly neutral structures, and thinking through concepts like safety, liberation, possibility, policy, desire, and courage. We're especially interested in how universities rehearse particular futures through governance, technology, labor structures, and culture, and exploring, along with you, how we might design conditions that make more generative, sustainable, and humane futures possible.

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NU Ideas

Conversations from across campus and Chicago on learning, collaboration, and change.

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Imagery of Marsha P. Johnson in a vintage outfit with pearls and a floral headdress smiles, surrounded by vibrant flowers and green leaves on a beige background.

Past Themes

An archive of previous annual inquiries, with theme overviews, selected programs, resources, and project documentation.

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