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Academic excellence
There are many things to consider when searching for the college that’s the right fit for you. Among them is academic quality. What kind of an education will you receive? How will you be challenged? What is the school’s academic reputation among the experts and its peers?
Northwestern College is consistently cited by college guides for the educational experience it provides:
- U.S. News & World Report ranks Northwestern in the top 10 of Midwestern comprehensive colleges.
- Northwestern is included in Peterson’s Competitive Colleges as one of 440 colleges in the nation that “routinely attract and admit an above-average share of the nation’s high-achieving students.”
- Fifteen Northwestern academic programs are listed among the “quality departments at quality colleges” in Rugg’s Recommendations on the Colleges.
- The Princeton Review includes Northwestern among 161 institutions selected for its 2008 “Best in the Midwest” designation, based on the opinions of current students. Colleges and universities recognized, says the Review, “stand out as academically excellent institutions of higher learning.”
Northwestern and its programs in athletic training, business, education and social work are all nationally accredited. And in the national Student Satisfaction Inventory, students at Northwestern ranked instructional effectiveness higher than the national averages for students at other private or Christian colleges. These third-party sources confirm the impact of the mentoring relationships with faculty, the liberal arts curriculum, and the supportive community found at Northwestern. If you need more evidence of academic quality, consider the following:
- Northwestern professors have been named Iowa's Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching two of the last three years . Jeff Barker, theatre, was honored in 2006, and Piet Koene, Spanish, was recognized in 2004. Administered by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, the awards program honors professors who are excellent teachers and have a positive influence on students.
- Dr. Ralph Davis, a Northwestern biology professor and leading expert on roundworm neurobiology, received a four-year $570,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health. The grant is funding research he is conducting with students that could help combat parasites in developing countries.
- Northwestern’s full-time faculty—77 percent of whom hold a doctorate or the highest degree possible in their field—have earned degrees from schools that include Cornell, Duke, Notre Dame, Princeton, UCLA, the University of Chicago, the University of Iowa and Vanderbilt.
- Northwestern’s Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) team has competed at the national level annually since it was formed in 2000-01. The team finished among the top 40 in the nation in 2005 and made it to the final 16 in 2002.
- Recent Northwestern College graduates are working at Boeing, Christianity Today, Microsoft and United Defense and enrolled in graduate programs at Boston College, MIT, Notre Dame, the University of Massachusetts and Vanderbilt.
- Mick Snieder ’06 was named one of the nation’s top college students by USA Today in 2005. Snieder, a political science and economics major who serves on Orange City’s City Council, was an honorable mention winner in USA Today’s All-USA College Academic Team Competition. He was among 84 students recognized out of 602 nominees.
- Daniel Berntson, a 2006 Northwestern College alumnus from rural Paullina, Iowa, was named one of two recipients of American Graduate Fellowships, which provide winners up to $50,000 a year for two years of doctoral study at one of 23 top-tier private research universities. The competition, a new initiative by the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC), is designed to promote doctoral study in the humanities.
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 Academics |
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