The School of Education and Social Policy will no longer offer its secondary teaching major for incoming and future students beginning with the 2016-17 academic year.

The decision was made during the last academic year, largely due to low enrollment as well as low projected enrollment for the major, said Brad Wadle, master of science in education program coordinator.

“It won’t have any impact on students who are already in the major — it would be a phasing out of new people coming in,” Wadle said.

However, he said undergraduate students will still be able to become certified as secondary teachers by taking the classes necessary to receive a teaching certificate with the master of science education program.

Wadle said many of the students currently working toward a secondary teaching certificate are not in SESP.

“A number of people who are undergraduate students getting secondary teaching certificates from Northwestern are actually Weinberg majors who take classes within SESP,” Wadle said.

SESP senior Qunsia Daniel said she believes this decision is less about the administration taking something away from students and more about the lack of students willing to commit to the major.

“(Teaching) is highly undervalued and looked down upon as a career, to be quite frank,” Daniel said. “Teaching is one of main career fields where the public is so privy to how things are supposed to go. Everyone has an opinion on education, on how it should be structured, on how the bureaucracy should support it … which puts a lot of pressure on the teachers to perform.”

SESP freshman Adam Lemke-Bell Daniel questioned the negative perception of pursuing a career in education and the difficulties with becoming a teacher in America.

“I really don’t know why there is a stigma going into teaching,” Lemke-Bell said. “We need teachers, and it is a very honorable profession.”

For students already at Northwestern, the change does little to impact their educational path. Still, both Lemke-Bell and Daniel spoke to the genuine intentions of SESP teaching majors.

“When you become a teacher, you don’t do it for the money,” Lemke-Bell said. “You do it because it’s something you’re really passionate about and because you really want to make a difference in somebody’s life.”

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