In honor and memory of IFSEL Director and friend, the Daniel B Sweeney Leading for SEL Scholarship supports administrators in K-12 schools in the US and Internationally to build school communities where empathy abounds and all people thrive.
This scholarship is open to administrators in K-12 schools, anywhere in the world.
Apply HereOur hearts are deeply saddened and we are in an aching state of shock that we have lost our cherished friend, devoted team member, and wise colleague, Dan Sweeney, to cancer on December 2, 2022. His tireless work as one of The Institute for Social and Emotional Learning's Directors was integral to our program's steadiness and humanity.
Over the past 12 years with IFSEL, Dan helped design and deliver countless IFSEL sessions for educators, tirelessly bringing his astute insights on the vital role social and emotional learning plays in bringing equity and inclusivity into community. Because of his work at Seattle Country Day School as teacher and administrator for those same 12 years, Dan kept the pulse on ways to implement real practice of SEL. He designed SEL and Advisory at SCDS where he led student and faculty group problem solving and held many key leadership positions, ending with Middle School Division Head and Director of Professional Growth K-8th Grade.
Dan wanted middle school students to experience the real lives of diverse people and places around the world. He led over one hundred trips including recently to Monterey, California’s Steinbeck country, for face-to-face connection with the needs of migrant workers; Dachau, Germany at the Concentration Camp Memorial Site, for a deep and empathic perspective of humankind's unspeakable history, or in Rwanda, partner-teaching with an all-girls school, making new friends, and delivering supplies.
We pledge to honor his legacy in our daily work and to continue to find ways for IFSEL to fulfill our mission for "empathy to abound so all people thrive."
