North Park has served five generations of students and continues to grow in diversity, academic relevance, and Christian commitment. Our Chicago location is a great asset that reflects the School’s global reach and outlook.
After 125 years, we’ve learned how to streamline the process of helping qualified applicants seek admission to North Park and find affordable ways to attend. If you don’t see what you’re looking for on our website, please contact us directly!
North Park offers more than 40 graduate and undergraduate programs in liberal arts, sciences, and professional studies. Classes average 17 students. 84% of our faculty have terminal degrees. Academics here are rigorous and results-oriented.
North Park Theological Seminary prepares you to answer the call to service through theological study, spiritual development, and the formative experiences of living in a community with others on a similar life path.
The Office of Alumni Engagement fosters lifelong connections by engaging alumni with the university and one another in activities, programs, and services that support the university’s mission and alumni needs.
North Park proudly hosted its annual Service Day this month, uniting 230 students, faculty, and staff in a shared commitment to community engagement and social responsibility.
North Park proudly hosted its annual Service Day this month, uniting 230 students, faculty, and staff in a shared commitment to community engagement and social responsibility.
University Ministries (UMin) organized the event under the joint leadership of Ben Swihart, coordinator of global partnerships and community outreach, and third-year student Davianna Schuh. They began planning months ago, organizing lists of local volunteer sites, recruiting volunteers, and communicating with local aldermen and community groups.
“The groups we landed on took inspiration from the climate survey,” Schuh said, referring to the Culturally Engaging Campus Environments Survey conducted in spring 2023. “Across all demographic backgrounds, students wished they had more opportunities to give back to their communities.”
Many North Parkers are commuter students from nearby neighborhoods, so Swihart and Schuh chose organizations primarily on the North and West Sides. Volunteers could choose from sites such as Concordia Place, Nourishing Hope, and Sarah’s Circle, a women’s shelter with multiple locations on the North Side.
“Everyone has something they can feel excited about helping with,” Swihart said. Several students addressed their concern for the disadvantaged by aiding refugees and the homeless while the environmentally minded cleaned the Chicago River.
Swihart said he hopes this year’s event is the first of many and that North Park continues to build long-term relationships with its partner organizations.
“The idea is for them to get to know us, to say, ‘Oh, this North Parker came and built this shelving unit for us last year, or painted this room,’ and they trust us and what we do,” he said, adding he hopes the service also leads to internships and other opportunities for students.
Service is a core pillar of NPU’s mission, which is to foster a culture of empathy and civic responsibility that encourages the campus community to engage with local organizations, thus enhancing our students’ educational experiences and making a tangible impact on the neighborhoods we serve.
North Park’s Brandel Library has received a grant from the Illinois State Library to fund four faculty-led projects that will result in new Open Educational Resources.
North Park’s Brandel Library has received a grant from the Illinois State Library to fund four faculty-led projects that will result in new Open Educational Resources (OER) that will be available free of charge to North Park students with open access to the public through the internet.
The two-year, $142,000 grant, managed by the state library’s OER initiative, will be used to create an introductory anatomy lab manual, a statistics workbook, a text about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and a fundamentals of financial marketing book. All the resources will be created by North Park faculty—Dr. Al Kamienski, Dr. Marie-Elene Roberge, Dr. Peter St. Jean, Dr. Kurt Sheu, and Dr. Chrystal Ho Pao.
“This has been a long-term focus for us at Brandel,” said Evan Kuehn, assistant professor of information literacy and the head of teaching and learning services. “Open educational resources support the curriculum without the need for students to purchase expensive textbooks or other resources.”
Professors will spend this year creating and editing their resources with the support of Brandel Library staff, with two of the books going into circulation in the fall of 2025, and the other two in fall 2026. Kuehn said he thinks North Park, as a Hispanic Serving Institution, is especially well-positioned to author the DEI text.
The grant is part of $3 million set aside by the state to help lower the cost of educating Illinois college students. Matthew Ostercamp, director of Brandel Library, says the process of getting the grant was competitive, with only about half of all applicants receiving a grant.
“The cost of textbooks has long been a barrier,” Ostercamp said. “Doing projects like this removes that barrier and develops resources that are both rigorous and easily available.”
Forbes Advisor recently ranked North Park University as one of Illinois’s top ten online colleges for 2024 for its School of Professional Studies (SPS) undergraduate programs.
Forbes Advisor recently ranked North Park University as one of Illinois’s top ten online colleges for 2024 for its School of Professional Studies (SPS) undergraduate programs. It noted SPS’ Credit for Prior Learning and generous scholarships as reasons for its selection. Forbes Advisor is dedicated to providing unbiased information; its ranking methodologies use National Center for Education Statistics data.
North Park’s 99th annual Homecoming schedule is filled with events designed to allow students, alumni, faculty and staff, and neighbors to celebrate together.
North Park’s 99th annual Homecoming schedule is filled with events designed to allow students, alumni, faculty and staff, and neighbors to celebrate together. “In the planning process, we asked ourselves, ‘Who is Homecoming for?’ and created programming inclusive of all North Park community members,” said Jasanna Tayler, alumni engagement manager.
The 2024 festivities kick off Thursday, October 10, and include a tour of North Park’s architecture, an alumni art exhibition, a music showcase, an alumni award ceremony, and a handful of sporting events. The weekend’s highlight is the Homecoming Festival on Saturday, one of the events intended to integrate Vikings of all ages and backgrounds. The festival will feature yard games, face-painting, mini-golf and food from local favorites Tre Kronor and Los Asadores Mexican Grill.
Tickets are $40 when purchased online between now and September 30, with tickets purchased onsite costing $50. Children under 18 are admitted free with a ticket holding adult. All Homecoming passes include a free sweatshirt designed by Emerson Cobbley BA ’24.
To register and for a complete schedule of events, click here.
The Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) will partner with the Firehouse Community Arts Center of Chicago to empower youth and young adults in Chicago’s Black churches.
With the support of a $1.125M grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc., North Park’s Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) this fall will partner with the Firehouse Community Arts Center of Chicago, led by Rev. Phil Jackson, to empower youth and young adults in Chicago’s Black churches.
The five-year project, Elevating Church Outreach (ECHO) for the Next Generation Black Church, aims to harness the creative energy of youth and young adults to create programs that encourage churches to be more involved in their communities.
North Park’s CCE will use the funds, in part, to offer mini-grants that support 20 youth-led, church-based social impact projects addressing anything from food insecurity to gang violence to youth homelessness, according to Rich Kohng, assistant vice president for civic engagement.
“In concert with our partners, our goal is to elevate youth voices within the church context,” Kohng said. “With the Firehouse as local convener and model, we hope the project will offer more avenues and resources so the local youth can dream of ways their churches can further impact their communities. This grant allows them to envision how they can do that.”
North Park University faculty and staff involved in the project include project evaluator Dr. Amy Governale, co-evaluator Dr. Michelle Dodson, and faculty advisor Dr. Dan White-Hodge.
A group of local pastors and faith leaders who have built and sustained social impact programs across the city will serve as coaches for the youth and young adult teams.
“They’ll be there to help the groups talk about messaging, how to allocate funds, make a budget, and organize volunteers,” Kohng said.
The main goal of the ECHO initiative is to see youth and young adults thrive as leaders in the church, which in turn can stimulate new energy in local congregations while leading to increased community appreciation of their importance and relevance.
Kohng said, “It’s about building on the legacy of local congregations as significant agents of change and transformation in their communities.”
North Park’s University Ministries has received two separate grants to create student internships in local churches and expand its Sankofa program, which promotes racial reconciliation.
North Park’s University Ministries (UMin) has received two separate grants to create student internships in local churches and expand its Sankofa program, which promotes racial reconciliation.
The $50,000 grant from the Educating Character Initiative of the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University will create a credit-bearing course related to North Park’s Sankofa trip. During this annual sojourn, students, faculty, and staff travel to different parts of the U.S. to learn about various aspects of the country’s often contentious history of race relations.
Tony Zamble, director of UMin, said the grant will help create an interdisciplinary course combining philosophy and psychology to teach compassion.
“Our argument is that character is social, so you can’t have people of character who don’t care about the suffering of those around them,” Zamble said. “Sankofa helps develop compassion, empathy, and a keen sense of justice.”
A separate $40,000 grant from the Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE) will help pay the salaries of 16 students who will intern at local churches over two years. Beginning this fall, UMin will deploy four music-oriented and four service-centered interns to local churches each year.
“Students are a little bit jaded by the church, especially those who didn’t necessarily grow up in it,” Zamble said. “We want them to see the real church in action and how they address justice and helping the poor.”
North Park University’s Center for Civic Engagement partnered with a local community organization to prove their efforts to lessen neighborhood violence have been successful.
North Park University’s Center for Civic Engagement partnered with a local community organization to prove their efforts to lessen neighborhood violence have significantly reduced crime.
Founded in 2003, the Firehouse Community Arts Center in North Lawndale engages local children and teens in various art programs to prevent them from joining gangs or participating in criminal activity.
North Park’s Assistant Professor of Psychology Amy Governale, along with two student workers, concluded crime had dropped 73.7% since 2020 after parsing four years’ worth of crime statistics. Using data from 2021 to now, they tracked three two-mile-wide areas in the North Lawndale neighborhood, examining the number of police responses and encounters, 911 calls, and ShotSpotter alerts.
One especially effective way to track the program’s success is to compare North Lawndale to other neighborhoods where crime has also fallen. When Governale and her group did so, they discovered the decrease—specifically in homicides, fatal shootings, and aggravated batteries—in North Lawndale has been so dramatic that parts of the neighborhood are no longer considered high-crime areas.
For instance, homicides were down 30% in the area the Firehouse Community Arts Center serves compared to a decrease of 14.6% in the rest of Chicago. Violence and gang-related 911 calls in the area decreased by 35% over the same three-year period, and non-fatal shootings declined by 80%.
“There’s a sense of awareness that the people who used to create terror on our streets are not doing that as much because they’re with us, learning to cook and creating art,” Firehouse founder Rev. Phil Jackson told WGN-9 TV recently.
Governale is excited about how North Park can engage with other institutions to provide similar services. She said her two student workers, Jayla Sotelo and Nora Nunez, have become highly proficient in parsing and analyzing data.
“They’re extremely well-trained in crime analysis, and for us to go to places and offer this skill to community groups, people are extremely impressed,” Governale said. “It’s something they can take with them after college and use to help non-profits.”
Now, the Firehouse is widening its reach by collaborating with local corporations and sports teams, such as the nearby Chicago Bulls and Blackhawks, to assist in job placement for teens it mentors.
For more information about the Firehouse Community Arts Center’s work, go to thefcac.org.
Former North Park University School of Education Dean Rebecca Nelson was unanimously approved as co-interim superintendent for Community High School District 128.
Former North Park University School of Education Dean Rebecca Nelson was unanimously approved as co-interim superintendent for Community High School District 128, which comprises Libertyville High School and Vernon Hills High School. Nelson was dean from 2008–21, a position from which she retired. She serves as co-superintendent alongside Raymond Lechner, with whom she has successfully worked as a team on several interim assignments, most recently at Hinsdale Township High School District 86. Read more at the Daily Herald.
This fall, North Park University (NPU) will begin its ESL Teaching Cares program to provide childcare and English classes to refugees who have recently arrived in the Albany Park area.
This fall, North Park University (NPU) will begin its ESL Teaching Cares program to provide childcare and English classes to refugees who have recently arrived in the Albany Park area.
NPU’s Community Outreach & Global Partnerships team within University Ministries developed this program alongside the South-East Asia Center and the City of Chicago’s Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
ESL Teaching Cares will provide its services primarily to refugees living in the former U.S. Marine Corps facility on Foster Avenue, which the City of Chicago purchased for $1.5 million last fall to convert into a migrant shelter.
NPU students will serve as childcare providers or English tutors under the leadership of Ben Swihart, coordinator of Community Outreach and Global Partnerships, and NPU student intern Davianna Schuh.
“The ESL Teaching Cares program overall promotes the care and advancement of underserved populations in our community, working alongside organizations that have been doing this work for decades,” Schuh said. “Opportunities like this have been proven to increase graduation rates, diversify students’ perspectives, and increase professional credentials for North Park students.”
NPU previously provided resources to immigrant families by hosting a food and clothing drive last December. More than 60 volunteers—North Parkers and representatives from the North Park Community Association, Alderman Samantha Nugent’s office, Aramark, and other community groups—collected and distributed clothing, blankets, and supplies to 225 families.
The seemingly divergent worlds of Matt Flesch BA ’96 and Nancy Faust BA ’69 came together four years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to their mutual connection to the Chicago White Sox.
The seemingly divergent worlds of Matt Flesch BA ’96 and Nancy Faust BA ’69 came together four years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to their mutual connection to the Chicago White Sox.
Faust—the team’s long-term organist and Major League Baseball’s first female organist—met Flesch, a lifelong fan of the South Siders, when he started a project to distract him from the boredom of home confinement. A massive Sox fan, Flesch—who works in marketing for Amgen, a biopharmaceuticals maker—was making a now completed documentary about the Sox’s home stadium called “Last Comiskey.”
He posted a request for archival Comiskey videos on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) and was shocked and delighted to receive a response from Faust, the organist at Comiskey for more than 40 years.
“Nancy Faust is a legend to Sox fans,” Flesch said. “So, I was so elated when she reached out; it was a bonus to find out she was so nice.”
A native of Edgebrook, Illinois, Faust went to North Park because “music was the only thing I knew, and North Park was the place for music.” But she soon noticed that her fellow students could read music and knew all the classics when she had only a natural ear. Eventually, someone pulled Faust aside and told her that her ability to play any song by ear wasn’t enough to continue as a music major. Taking his advice, she switched to elementary education. Spoiler alert: she never taught.
Instead, she continued to pursue her true love by forming a musical trio, performing at parties and events. Ironically, it was her knack for playing just about any song by ear that grabbed the attention of the Sox general manager—who was attending one of her gigs—that sealed her fate. He gave her his card, and she followed up. The rest is history.
It was a match made in baseball heaven, with flash-fingered Faust able to react instantly—whether it was the moon coming up over the scoreboard or a black cat running onto the field—and pound out the appropriate tune. Perhaps her biggest claim to fame is popularizing “Na Na Na Na Hey-ey Goodbye” when an opposing player strikes out.
“I had a dream job, and they took good care of me,” Faust said of the Sox.
So, when she saw Flesch’s post about the documentary, she was eager to help, putting him in touch with many former players and managers, including Jack McDowell and Ozzie Guillen. Thanks to the boredom of COVID-19, plenty of people were happy to unspool their memories during Zoom interviews.
Flesch taught himself video editing and, with the help of his brother, Mike, spliced together a series of videos that premiered on YouTube in March 2023. The series received local media coverage, and Faust and Flesch attended its premiere, including a game at the Sox’s current home, Guaranteed Rate Field.
Now, Flesch is hard at work on a series about the old Chicago Stadium, the legendary home of the championship Chicago Bulls and Blackhawks, for release sometime next year. Faust, incidentally, also played the organ there.
Thanks to their many connections, including North Park, Faust and Flesch now consider themselves good friends. Flesch’s family has visited Faust and her husband at their home in Mundelein, Illinois, where Faust raises donkeys. Incidentally, the hobby started when Faust stepped in to adopt a donkey that, shockingly, went unclaimed at a White Sox giveaway.
“That’s what I love about North Park; you meet alumni everywhere,” Flesch said.
“I tell so many people how North Park was the perfect school for me. I got to do so many different things, from playing baseball to being sports editor for the newspaper, where I got to interview [then Seattle Seahawks Coach] Mike Holmgren a week before they played in the Super Bowl. North Park was just a very well-rounded experience for me.”
Oh, and in case you’re wondering who covered for the inimitable Faust on her sick days? Pretty much no one; over the course of her career, which ended in 2010, she only missed six home games following the birth of her son, Eric.
Author Kennedy MurphyPosted on Categories Stories
