CREO hosts 2025 Midwest Sociology of Education Conference at the University of Notre Dame
Director Catherine Riegle-Crumb and the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity at the University of Notre Dame hosted the 2025 Midwest Sociology of Education Conference on October 30, 2025 and October 31, 2025.
The conference brought together 58 faculty members and graduate students from various universities to discuss issues of educational access, school violence, family and teacher support, equity in academic course-taking and performance, and race/education policy.,
This year, special keynote guest speaker and Notre Dame Sociology Alum Elizabeth Covay-Minor shared her keynote address "Opportunities for Learning: Where Have We Been and Where Should We Go." Dr. Minor's keynote address was based on the recently edited volume of research by Dr. Maureen Hallinan. The collection was edited by Dr. Elizabeth Covay-Minor (National Louis University), Dr. Mark Berends (University of Notre Dame), and Dr. Barbara Schneider (Michigan State University).
The conference was created several decades ago by the late Maureen Hallinan, the founding director of the Institute for Educational Initiatives and the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity. Her vision was to gather Midwestern Universities to network, share, and discuss research in sociology of education. The conference took a roughly 10-year hiatus until 2014, when then CREO Director Mark Berends, then CREO Assistant Director Bill Carbonaro, and Professor Eric Grodsky of the University of Wisconsin-Madison reimagined the conference and restarted it on an annual basis. The conference is hosted at a different location each year. Among the universities to host the conference are the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Northwestern University, The Ohio State University, Purdue University, Indiana University - Bloomington, and the University of Iowa.
Universities represented at this year's conference included the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Michigan State University, Princeton University, the University of Chicago, Purdue University. National Louis University, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University of Illinois College of Medicine, the University of Georgia, Northwestern University, the University of Louisville, and the University of Pennsylvania.
