Center For Ethical Leadership & Service

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Founded in 2013, the interdisciplinary Center for Ethical Leadership and Service (CELS) is grounded in NCS’s Episcopal tradition and core values of excellence, service, courage, and conscience. In our increasingly interconnected and complex world, CELS (pronounced “sells”) supports students as they explore and develop empathy, personal identity, a global outlook, and a keen ability to connect with people across differences.   

CELS houses the Offices of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI); Community Service; and Global Programs, offering students the opportunity to build an understanding of themselves and their relationships to their own community and communities around the world. We leverage, among others, intercultural understanding, empathy for others grounded in self-empathy, and service-learning frameworks in our programming.

Like nesting dolls, these concepts develop and reinforce what identity and service to first their community and then the broader world mean to each student. Throughout her time at NCS, each student is building her own definition of leadership as she, with appropriate support from her peers and educators, figures out how she wants to show up in the world and what will guide her thinking and actions — even when no one else is looking.

CELS ultimately helps students prepare to take on their life’s work as ethical leaders, recognizing their profound responsibility to make positive contributions to the world in their own unique ways.