As the content in this report will attest, our SOE continues to soar. In May, we received full accreditation from the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. The CTC’s seven-year reaccreditation across all 11 of our credential programs affirms LMU SOE’s academic excellence and continuous commitment to ensuring that our candidates go through rigorous, high-quality programs designed to make an impact. Our reputation as a beacon of scholarship earned the SOE an endorsement of another kind, when the governing board of the Journal of Catholic Education announced that we will continue to host the premier peer-reviewed Catholic education journal through 2025.

Our achievements have earned national attention. In the 2020 edition of U.S. News & World Report’s Best Graduate Schools of Education, LMU SOE climbed to No. 57 — the third-highest ranked Jesuit institution nationally, and third among private, independent institutions in California. We are in the top 15% of the 392 graduate schools of education surveyed, and in the top 5% of the 1,500 schools, colleges and departments of education nationwide.

As proud as we are of this recognition, we continue to position our school for bigger and better things. In the spring, we merged two departments into a single Department of Teaching and Learning — a realignment that builds on the strengths of our faculty and staff to integrate curriculum, meet state and national standards and provide the best education for our students.

LMU also received a substantive change to its Carnegie Classification — a national framework for classifying colleges and universities — moving LMU from the Master’s Colleges and Universities category to the Doctoral University: High Research Activity (R2) category. LMU SOE played a major contributing role in this reclassification through the national reputation of the LMU SOE Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership for Social Justice, the SOE faculty and staff’s success in attracting external research funding and our unwavering commitment to research and scholarship.

Our success as a school stems from our values: the encouragement of lifelong learning and academic excellence, the education of the whole person and the promotion of service and social justice. True to our Jesuit and Marymount traditions, we are transforming educational systems through innovative, entrepreneurial and reform-oriented programs, initiatives and research, along with the magis-fueled work of our students, faculty, staff and alumni — all of whom work tirelessly to make a difference in the lives of all children, because they know that education is the way to a better, more just world.