The Magazine of Teachers College, Columbia University ON THE COVER Our cover image for this issue of TC Today is by the artist Peter Arkle.

If as Einstein said the mass of a system is the measure of its energy content, TC’s impact will only get bigger in the years ahead. We’re a college in perpetual motion ­— generating new ideas, sparking connections between people and disciplines, and galvanizing students to create their own TC Firsts. We express that potential through the equation E(ducation) = TC2 — representing the power of one graduate school of education to transform areas ranging from nutrition policy to English education to learning space itself, in New York City and around the world. PRESIDENT’S LETTER

BUILDING TC’S FUTURE

fter our year-long celebration diversity and its great value to society. To that end, Aof TC’s 125th anniversary, the College’s emerging Sexuality, Women, & Gender we’re focusing on the future Project is incorporating issues and concerns that and how the College will help relate to women and LGBTQ individuals into all change the world in the next areas of study. 125 years. By extending our International engagement is yet another mainstay tradition of connecting the dots of the TC legacy we plan to grow in the years ahead. across programs and disciplines, While many institutions work internationally, the between faculty and students, TC difference lies in our intense focus on capacity- and in our communities and building and helping nations and communities around the globe, we’re helping develop and retain their own expertise. For example, to create a smarter, healthier and the growing education sector in Brazil — now the more just world. world’s seventh-largest economy — presents myriad As you will read in this issue, we’re working on opportunities for TC faculty and students to work very diverse fronts. The Laurie M. Tisch Center with their Brazilian counterparts and through for Food, Education & Policy, for example, is Columbia’s Global Center in Rio de Janeiro. developing healthier communities in New York Back home along the newly christened Teachers City, while advancing nutrition education and The campaign focuses our energies as never before shaping policy at the local, state and federal levels. to support our talented students, reinvigorate our The Center builds on our legacy and galvanize ideas and collaborations that longstanding leadership in nutrition education and will help shape the 21st century. reflects the vision of TC Trustee Laurie Tisch that access to healthy food, College Way, we’re preparing our campus for the as well as to education and the arts, should not be future. We’re creating a suite of smart classrooms determined by zip code. and a library learning theater, renovating our TC’s model of university-assisted public schools leading-edge Neurocognition of Language Lab, and seeks to advance those same goals by bringing otherwise enhancing infrastructure in our historic the best of the College’s teaching, research buildings. In the virtual sphere, we’re exploring the and resources to a network of schools in our use and effectiveness of technology-based education, neighborhood, anchored by the Teachers College such as MOOCs, which can reach millions. Community School (TCCS). It has been wonderful To enable all this exciting work — and more — to see children at TCCS flourishing academically we recently launched our $300 million campaign and developmentally in the school’s supportive Where the Future Comes First: The Campaign for and enriched environment. Imagine the difference Teachers College. The campaign focuses our energies we could make if every university partnered with as never before to support our talented students, schools in their neighborhoods. reinvigorate our legacy and galvanize the ideas and Meanwhile, we’re preparing our future teachers collaborations that will help shape the 21st century. to expand the definition of literacy for a generation With the campaign as our foundation, we are ready that reads on their iPhones and taps messages in to lead. The TC future begins now. text-speak. Bidding adieu to the traditional five- paragraph essay, TC’s English Education faculty are fashioning new tools and strategies to help marginalized students recognize the personal susan fuhrman (ph.d. ’77) relevance and importance of literature and writing. Through research, education and action, we’re also renewing the TC legacy of according individuals

LOFI STUDIOSLOFI respect and dignity and recognizing the richness of

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 1 TC spring+summer/2014 Today The magazine of Teachers College is produced by the Office of Development [features] and External Affairs at Teachers College, Columbia University. Suzanne M. Murphy 14 Beyond the Campus 30 Diversity Hits vice president, development TC’s new learning environments the Books & external affairs blend the real and the virtual A new academic focus on (Ed.M., Organization women and LGBTQ individuals & Leadership, 1999; 15 Even the Classrooms M.A., 1996) 33 Are Smart A Place Where People James L. Gardner A high-tech campus makeover Can Be Themselves associate vice president, Dewey would love Diversity has long been a external affairs focus in the TC community Clorinda Valenti 17 The Lab of the Future editorial director, A new space for brain research external affairs 34 Planting the Seeds of Global Change 18 May We Recommend TC helps nations around the TC TODAY STAFF the Vegetables? world help themselves Joe Levine A new TC center guides editor 36 government policy on food Q & A: John Allegrante AVP for International Affairs Heather Donohue business operations & 20 A New Spin marketing initiatives on English 37 Helping China Educate manager, external affairs Its Minorities What students read matters Designed by the Department of TC’s lends less than how they read it Xiaodong Lin Development & External Affairs her expertise TC CONTRIBUTORS 37 On the Ground, paul acquaro Seemingly Everywhere linda colquhoun phoebe jiang Portia Williams and patricia lamiell Cheng Davis help TC urania mylonas connect around the globe kelsey rogalewicz scott rubin matthew vincent 38 Brazil Rising 24 Partnering with U hua-chu yen Growing involvement with the TC is working on multiple world’s fifth-largest nation TC Today Spring/Summer 2014 fronts to help public schools Volume 38, Number 1, Copyright 2014 by Teachers College, Columbia University 25 A School Where 39 Growing TC’s TC Today is published by Teachers Dreams Come True Global Legacy College, Columbia University. Inside the Teachers College The new international faculty Articles may be reprinted with the Community School advisory committee permission of the Office of External Affairs. Please send alumni class notes, 29 Replicating a Good Idea letters to the editor, address changes Universities and public schools Editor’s Note and other correspondence to: With this issue of TC Today, we TC Today 29 A Gala Debut for REACH introduce new sections focusing Office of External Affairs, on innovative faculty work, recent 525 W. 120th St., Box 306, JPMorgan Chase backs TC’s New York, NY 10027 work with schools in Harlem alumni in the field and profiles and viewpoints of current students. 212-678-3412

[email protected] PHOTOGRAPH BY HEATHER VAN UXEM LEWIS

www.tc.edu/tctoday MOURNING A TC STALWART Trustee James Benkard passed away in April (p56).

[departments]

5 @TC 44 Early Risers ALUMNI FOCUS Recent TC graduates are 6 News shaping numerous fields. 59 Doing What Mothers Do TC’s 125th Anniversary Gala; Meet seven working in Phyllis L. Kossoff advocated a new student scholarship higher education for her daughter and others program; a grant to prepare with cystic fibrosis STEM teachers; and more 48 Campaign Update Where the Future Comes First: 60 Top-Drawer Entrepreneur 10 TC’s Board The Campaign for Teachers Former psychology researcher The Next Generation College puts the focus on Lida Orzeck runs a values- Welcoming four new trustees support for students driven lingerie business

Our New Trustees Emeriti 61 The Art of Overcoming Honoring three stellar veterans Music inspired pianist and music educator Frances 13 Commentary Walker-Slocum Christopher Emdin on the late science educator 62 Helping a School Sreyashi Jhumki Basu (Ph.D. Find Its Voice ’06) Rashid Davis wins 50 Future Leaders presidential plaudits for leading 40 Unconventional Like her famous ancestor, a unique technology school Wisdom policy student Amanda Paradigm-changing work by Washington is trying to fix 63 What He Could Do TC faculty members more than schools for poor For His Country students of color Kennedy insider Stanley Salett 40 Andrew Gordon illuminates has fought for civil rights, school the brain-hand connection 51 Alumni News reform and an end to poverty Academic Festival 2014 42 Ryan Baker mines data about 64 The Last Word virtual learning environments 53 Class Notes

43 Jeanne Brooks-Gunn 55 Alumni Association on harsher mothering in tough times 56 In Memoriam

43 Education anthropologist Hervé Varenne is honored as a latter-day de Tocqueville Student Senate President and first-generation college graduate Bobby Cox reflects on his TC experience PHOTOGRAPH BY HEATHER VAN UXEM LEWIS Big Ideas, Dreams & Plans for the Future

THE TC FUND MAKES BIG THINGS HAPPEN. Thousands of alumni participate in the annual fund each year, ensuring that our faculty and students have the support they need to lead the way as innovators and pioneers in shaping the future of teaching and learning. The future starts with you. Make a gift to the TC Fund today and be a part of something big.

Please visit us online at www.tc.edu/GiveToTC or call Susan Scherman, Director of the TC Fund, at 212-678-8176 for more information. PHOTOGRAPH BY MATTHEW VINCENT @tc News 6 The making of TC’s 125th Anniversary Gala and a new student scholarship program

Special Report 10 Four new trustees join TC’s board as three who are stepping down are named Trustee Emeriti PHOTOGRAPH BY MATTHEW VINCENT @tc

IN NOVEMBER TC President Susan Fuhrman and A GALA EVENING Board Co-Chair Bill Rueckert honored and students are philanthropists who have transformed the beneficiaries the College. FOR TC...

“Welcome to our celebration of 125 years The evening’s highlight was, in Fuhrman’s on 125th Street. Tonight we turn the words, “a knockout Broadway-style” musical page to the next chapter in TC’s review that celebrated the College’s history of illustrious history, as we set the stage creating new fields and paid tribute tothe Gala’s for our sensational future.” five honorees: TC Trustee and pioneering school reformer James Comer; philanthropist and TC Speaking on November 12 to some 600 alumni, Board Vice Chair Laurie M. Tisch; Jeffrey Immelt, faculty, students and friends of TC at the legendary Chair and CEO of GE; and the wife-husband team Apollo Theater on 125th Street in Harlem, President of educator and TC alumna Susan Benedetto and Susan Fuhrman capped a yearlong celebration of singer Tony Bennett, who co-founded Exploring the the College’s founding and announced a $300 Arts, a nonprofit that strengthens the role of the arts million fundraising campaign that will bolster the in public high schools. College’s capacity to transform education and Lori Custodero, Associate Professor of Music learning throughout the 21st century. Education, provided creative direction for the show, Where the Future Comes First: The Campaign for which featured an original script by veteran Sesame Teachers College, the largest-ever campaign for a Workshop writer Scott Cameron (M.A. ’96). Food graduate school of education, was already halfway Network host Ellie Krieger (M.S. ’94) served as the toward its goal, including $1.4 million raised at the evening’s master of ceremonies, and distinguished Gala to benefit student scholarships and fellowships. guests toasted the honorees. Former New York Fuhrman also announced the Emanuel and Barbra Governor Mario Cuomo praised both Bennett and Streisand Scholarship Fund created through a Benedetto for creating a “new reality that supports bequest intention by the famed singer. (See page 48 the arts in public high-school education by giving

for more about the Campaign for TC.) students the chance to develop all their talent.” ALPER BARBARA BY PHOTOGRAPH ALPER BARBARA BY PHOTOGRAPH

6 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY A GALA SALUTE TO VISIONARIES “Tonight, we celebrate an extraordinary group of visionary philanthropists whose generosity and leadership have transformed the College and set the STUDENTS AT THE GALA From left: stage for an even Clifton E. Shambry Jr., Amanda Washington, stronger TC.” Rita Sanchez Gonzalez, Kenneth Graves, Speaking at the Apollo Theater Charise Richards, Allen Wright in November, Board Co-Chair Bill Rueckert introduced TC’s 21st- Century Visionaries: Trustee Emeriti Dinny Morse, John Klingenstein (and wife Pat), and Abby O’Neill (represented by O’Neill Fellow TC Trustee E. John Rosenwald toasted the GE Kimberly Iwanski); Trustees E. John leader by quoting Vince Lombardi’s maxim that Rosenwald, Joyce Cowin (M.A. ’52), “the only place where success comes before [hard] Ruth Gottesman (M.A. ’52, Ed.D. ’68), work is in the dictionary,” adding that he believes Elliot Jaffe (represented by Jaffe Lombardi was thinking of Immelt — “one of the Peace Corps Fellow Tiffany Williams), world’s hardest working CEOs.” Psychology Camilla Smith (M.A. ’72), Sue Ann Professor Emeritus Edmund Gordon offered a Weinberg (M.E., M.A. ’82, Ed.D. ’97), toast to “my younger brother, Jimmy Comer, for Jack Hyland (Co-Chair) and Laurie rallying the whole village.” And TC Board Co- M. Tisch (Vice Chair); Professor Chair Jack Hyland called Tisch, who serves on the Emerita Ann Boehm; the Riady board of the New York Giants football team, “TC’s Family (represented by Riady Scholar giant,” whose passion is “New York City, the great Muhamad Iman Usman); the late city we live in.” TC Board Vice Chair Arthur Zankel In perhaps the evening’s most magical moment, (represented by TC Zankel Fellow Bennett sang an a capella rendition of “Imagination.” Christina Salgado); and all members When Fuhrman called for TC to become “an even of TC’s three leadership giving societies, more dynamic community,” the audience obliged by represented by Beverly Johnson (Ed.D. flooding the stage for a dance party that lasted into ’97), Elisa Gabelli Wilson (M.A., M.E. the late hours. ’97) and Vijayshree “Shonu” Pande (M.S. ’03). And of course — though he would never have said it himself — Bill Watch excerpts from the TC Gala at Rueckert and the Cleveland H. Dodge tc.edu/news/9260. Foundation. PHOTOGRAPH BY BARBARA ALPER BARBARA BY PHOTOGRAPH ALPER BARBARA BY PHOTOGRAPH

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 7 @tc A SCHOLARSHIP FOR THE AGES

TC has established a new 125th Anniversary Scholarship with Future Comes First: The Campaign for Teachers College. The funds raised through the College’s benefit gala at the Apollo campaign will seek to raise $110 million for scholarships and Theater in November. The new 125th Anniversary Scholarship fellowships so that, free of the burden of debt, TC’s talented Program totals $900,000. There will be 90 awards of $10,000 students can pursue careers that make a positive difference to current students. A first round of scholarships was granted in the world. for the 2013-14 academic year. “That evening at the Gala we sent the message loud and clear Continuing master’s and doctoral students are eligible to that TC students deserve our strong support to pursue their apply. Scholarship recipients are evaluated on academic merit, dreams,” President Susan Fuhrman wrote in an email to the satisfactory academic progress and financial need. TC community in January. “We raised $1.4 million for student Increasing financial support for students is the largest support at the gala, the majority of which we can distribute funding goal of TC’s $300 million campaign Where the through this new scholarship.”

A GRANT TO PREPARE STEM TEACHERS The National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools & Teaching (NCREST) at Teachers College has won a $12 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education for its STEM Early College Expansion Partnership. ED HEAD SPIRITUALITY AS The partnership provides high-quality professional development to teachers in FOR THE FED ANTIDEPRESSANT the STEM disciplines (science, Anand R. Marri, Associate Professor of A study by Lisa Miller, Professor of technology, engineering and Social Studies and Education, has been Psychology and Education, has found mathematics) who work with high-need named Vice President and Head of that people who accorded religion or students to boost their enrollment in Economic Education for the Federal spirituality importance in their lives had these subject areas and in early college Reserve Bank of New York. Marri now a thicker brain cortex than nonbelievers programs. Its purpose is to boost serves as the Fed’s highest-ranking who were at high risk for depression. enrollment of high-need and minority officer for education nationwide. Cortical thinning has been previously students in the STEM areas and in early In 2010, Marri led the development of linked with depression. college programs. “Understanding Fiscal Responsibility: A “The new study links this extremely The five-year grant, the largest-ever Curriculum for Teaching about the large protective benefit of spirituality or single federal grant to TC, is the Federal Budget, National Debt and religion to previous studies that College’s first award from the DOE’s Budget Deficit.” More recently he identified large expanses of cortical prestigious federal Investing in created The Cowin Financial Literacy thinning in specific regions of the brain Innovation competition. Project, a professional development in adult offspring of families at high risk NCREST will administer the grant program for teachers funded by TC for major depression,” said Miller, with TC faculty members Erica Walker, Trustee Joyce Cowin that is now Director of TC’s Spirituality Mind Ellen Meier and Christopher Emdin expanding nationwide. Body Institute. collaborating on the design of In his new role, for which he has taken In 2012, Miller found a 90 percent professional development for STEM a research leave from TC, Marri decrease in “major depression” in teachers in partner districts in oversees programs to improve public spiritually inclined adult children of Connecticut and Michigan. The project knowledge about the bank’s role and depressed parents. will serve as many as 22,000 students in monetary policy, provide professional 15 schools across the targeted districts. development to university faculty, and interest young people in economics and finance careers. He also directs the museum at the bank’s headquarters in New York City. PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT CADENA; TC FILE PHOTOS PHOTOGRAPHS BY HEATHER VAN UXEM LEWIS

8 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY EXTENDING A TRADITION Professor Emeritus Edmund W. Gordon (front, right) and his wife Susan Gordon were on hand for TC’s inaugural Gordon Lecture, delivered by Charles Payne (left, rear) and introduced by Ernest Morrell (right, rear).

NEW LECTURE SERIES HONORS EDMUND GORDON

At TC’s inaugural Edmund Gordon “WE ALL AGREE EXPLORING TC’S Lecture last fall, noted African- THAT POVERTY American historian Charles M. Payne LEGACY IN TESTING sought to puncture the stereotype of “the SHOULD BE “Testing Then and Now,” a conference in wounded Negro.” ADDRESSED. BUT early December hosted by TC’s “There’s a reduction going on,” said THAT HAS NOTHING Assessment and Evaluation Research Payne, the Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Initiative (AERI), traced the historical Service Professor in the University of TO DO WITH WHAT roots of educational assessment — a field Chicago’s School of Social Service SCHOOLS CAN OR launched at the College — and sought to Administration and former Chief CANNOT DO.” bridge the gap between the Education Officer for Chicago Public Charles M. Payne psychometricians who design tests and Schools. Even among well-intended — the policymakers and educators who activists for progress, “black people are Payne’s lecture, which honored implement them. reduced to their oppression.” Edmund Gordon, Richard March Hoe AERI Director Madhabi Chatterji, Payne said the “wounded-Negro” Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Associate Professor of Measurement, trope has been used by everyone from Education, was part of the Educating Evaluation & Education, called for abolitionists mobilizing slaves to tell Harlem project, a collaboration between greater understanding of the contexts in “horrible personal stories” to the College’s Program in History and which tests are administered and for the Depression-era communists portraying Education and the Institute for Urban use of tests for the purposes for which they blacks as oppressed workers rather and Minority Education, which Gordon were designed. “Validity, test use and than as protagonists “developed founded in 1973. The Project is also consequences are inseparable,” she said. enough” to be capable of Marxist supported by TC’s Center on History “Assessment has become the driver of “scientific analysis of society.” In the and Education. education,” said Edmund W. Gordon, 1970s, he said, the stereotype was Professor Emeritus and Chair of The perpetuated by the claim that African- Gordon Commission on the Future of American children were handicapped Assessment in Education, which co- by cultural factors and the purported To support the Edmund Gordon sponsored the event. “If we don’t get breakdown of the black family. Today it Lecture Fund with a gift of any assessment right, I suspect we won’t get lurks in arguments that poverty and amount, contact Kerry Dillon at education right.” related factors “overwhelm the capacity 212-678-3980 or [email protected] of schools” to deliver positive outcomes. PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT CADENA; TC FILE PHOTOS PHOTOGRAPHS BY HEATHER VAN UXEM LEWIS

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 9 @tc

TC’S BOARD THE NEXT GENERATION Teachers College is known for having a savvy, committed Board of Trustees That tradition continues with four new members

INVESTING IN of Goldman Sachs, for their work. Today she is regarded as one of the city’s leading supporters of public education. EDUCATION Why join TC’s board now? LISE EVANS “Having been on the boards of different schools, my goal Lise Evans (M.A. ’06) never taught now is to increase my impact by learning more about how after earning her TC degree in teachers are prepared and what they face working in the inner English education, but she credits city,” she says. the College for launching her career She’s particularly excited about the Teachers College as an education philanthropist. Community School and TC’s REACH (Raising Educational “I enrolled at TC when I was in my thirties, because I felt I Achievement Coalition of Harlem) project, through which TC would have taught had I not become a mother when I was so and Columbia provide comprehensive academic, social and young,” says Evans, who had two of her children while she health services to six public schools in Harlem. was in college. “I think the idea of bringing TC faculty and students into Indeed, though she worked as a fashion model in her teens these schools to lend their expertise and apply cutting-edge and stayed in the industry while raising her children, Evans ideas is absolutely brilliant,” she says. “I always cared deeply about education and social justice. Born hope other universities follow suit.” and raised in Norway, she believes strongly in that country’s commitment to universal education. In her early thirties, she made several trips to Africa to educate people there about THE INNOVATION HIV/AIDS prevention. As a journalism student at New York TUTOR University, she was dismayed by public schools with metal GEORGE CIGALE detectors and shocked at the inequities of the American school system. In 1980, at age 11, George Cigale took “Every child is owed the opportunity to learn,” she says. “It’s apart the Commodore VIC-20 computer so destructive not to invest in people’s futures.” he bought for $300 —“my life savings.” While at TC Evans did her student-teaching at The “Experimenting with tech­nology helped me develop a sense Children’s Storefront, an independent, tuition-free school in of how things worked and how the pieces of things fit together,” Harlem. She subsequently served on the school’s board for says Cigale, founder and CEO of Tutor.com. nine years and then joined the board of Turnaround for Cigale, who joined TC’s board last June, has made the most Children, a nonprofit that helps schools confront the of that talent. Arriving in the United States at age seven from challenges of poverty. The organization recently honored the Soviet Union by way of Israel, he didn’t speak a word of Evans and her husband, Michael, who is former Vice Chair English. He learned about tutoring by helping his parents TC FILE PHOTO; COURTESY OF GEORGE CIGALE COURTESY OF CAMILLA AND GEORGE SMITH; TC FILE PHOTO

10 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY navigate a new culture and language and, as a teenager, by research and other collaborations. As a board member of NPR, working at The Princeton Review, which was then developing the University of California-Berkeley’s Bancroft Library and its test-prep business. “I learned that you can provide education the Leakey Foundation, which researches human evolution, in different ways, including by helping paying customers to Camilla Smith nudges these and other institutions toward a improve their test scores,” he says. similar sense of mission. She also belongs to the Friends of San Cigale paid for college by working as an SAT and LSAT tutor. Francisco Public Library, which has refurbished the library’s When the Internet subsequently took off, he recognized the branches and significantly boosted use. opportunity to “connect people who needed instructional help “It’s not the books,” she says of that achievement. “It’s the kids with people who could provide it to them.” Tutor.com has since using the Internet. That’s the first step.” delivered more than 10 million tutoring sessions online, using student feedback to constantly improve its methods. Now Cigale, who previously served on a technology advisory AN INDEPENDENT committee at TC, will help the College develop some of its own SCHOOL THINKER innovative ideas and inventions. NANCY SIMPKINS “This country needs creative minds to improve education at every level,” he says. “TC is filled with thoughtful, passionate No one was surprised when Nancy people at the top of their fields. I can add a perspective of what Simpkins joined TC’s board in December. pieces you need to put together — a new course, a website, a Simpkins’s father is Trustee Emeritus business model — to make something sustainable as a new John Klingenstein (see page 12), founder of TC’s Klingenstein business line or licensed product.” Center for Independent School Leadership. She has been a Ultimately, Cigale believes success in education still comes trustee at her children’s schools and at Miss Porter’s School, down to people. which she attended. “Dad wanted to make sure our schools did “It’s a false dichotomy to talk about online versus in-person their best for their students,” Simpkins says. learning,” he says. “The best approach is a thoughtful blend of But where her father approaches education as a supportive both, well executed by dedicated people.” outsider, Simpkins prefers a more direct role. For example, she’s a founding trustee of The Wild Center, a natural history museum near her vacation home in the Adirondacks. CREATING “One of the leading local citizens canoed over and asked me MENTORING if I’d be interested,” she says. “It’s been great to be in on the SPACES ground floor of shaping an institution.” The year after Simpkins graduated from college, she lived in CAMILLA SMITH a town in Oregon. One day she crossed the street to the high As editor of her high school newspaper, school and volunteered her services. Camilla Smith (M.A. ’72) was excused “When they got over their shock, they made me an assistant from taking English — except by her teacher for art, remedial reading and forestry,” she recalls. “The English teacher. school had 200 acres, and I spent a lot of mornings with boys “She said, ‘You’ll write an essay for me each week,’” recalls with chainsaws.” Smith, who joined TC’s board in December. Simpkins ultimately decided both that she lacked what it Smith, who has spent her life in teaching and editing takes to be a great teacher — “I didn’t have a clue about (including stints at Putnam and Teachers College Press), management and discipline” — and that she wanted to do treasures that response as an example of what’s currently something about the nation’s two-tiered education system. lacking in education: mentorship. “None of those kids ever cracked a book outside of school or “As digital natives, kids could go deep with their learning,” saw their parents reading,” she says. “I love the Klingenstein she says. “But museums, libraries and schools need to serve Center, and I’ve never met a graduate who didn’t feel it had as mentors.” improved her professional or educational life. But the vast To that end, Smith and her husband, George, have given majority of U.S. kids go to public schools, which are in an $8 million to turn the fourth floor of TC’s Gottesman Libraries appalling state. If you want to fix them, Teachers College is the into a learning theater for high-end workshops, interactive place to be.” TC FILE PHOTO; COURTESY OF GEORGE CIGALE COURTESY OF CAMILLA AND GEORGE SMITH; TC FILE PHOTO

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 11 @tc

Meet Our New Trustees Emeriti Together they possess 70 years’ experience on TC’s board

’ve seen the difference that an hen John Klingenstein y family and I have been American-style education can received a special Lifetime involved in education for “ make — a liberal arts education in Achievement Award from TC, “ many years, so Teachers Col- Iwhich people learn to listen, to respect WPearl Rock Kane, Director of the legeM was a natural fit for me,” saysAbby each other’s points of view and debate College’s Klingenstein Center for Inde- O’Neill, whose great-grandfather, John ideas on their merits,” says Antonia pendent School Leadership, praised D. Rockefeller — also a TC Trustee — Grumbach. him for his “gentle and self-effacing gave the College $500,000 in 1902 for its Grumbach, partner in the law firm Pat- demeanor, his kindness and generosity, endowment. terson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler, has and above all his respect for learning O’Neill, who joined the board in 2004, worked extensively with American edu- and those who lead it.” has continued this legacy of investing in cational institutions in the Middle East Klingenstein joined TC’s board in TC and its students. In 2013, she estab- and joined TC’s board in 1985. She has 1979 and served on its Academic Affairs, lished the Abby O’Neill Fellowships to served on its Audit, Compensation, Business and Finance, Compensation support students committed to teaching Development, Library, Student Affairs and Executive committees. During the in New York City and to remove financial and Executive committees, and was late 1970s, he established the Klingen- barriers to fulfilling that commitment. Co-Chair from 1997 to 2003. She has stein Center, the preeminent program of This spring TC recruited the second generously supported TC’s Annual Fund its kind, and later endowed it with the class of O’Neill Fellows, who will earn and the Antonia Grumbach Endowed largest gift in TC’s history. He also dual certification in areas of great need Scholarship Fund. funded the Klingenstein Family Chair for New York City schools, such as sci- While serving on the board, Grum- Professorship. ence/inclusive education, elementary bach envisioned that other nations would Board Co-Chair Jack Hyland has education/bilingual or TESOL. With her “leverage what TC can do in terms of described Klingenstein as “the closest husband, George, she also endowed the graduate education for educators — the thing we have to an all-around player,” George & Abby O’Neill Professorship of development of curriculum, the training adding that his “loyalty, common sense Economics and Education. of teachers, the teaching of pedagogy.” and faithful attendance are legendary.” O’Neill has spent more than 50 years That vision has become a reality in TC President Susan Fuhrman has said on the board of International House and recent years: “Susan Fuhrman has tried that Klingenstein “set the standard for traveled to Poland, the Czech Republic to work at the government or private what it means to take an active and and Hungary to help those nations build level to address real societal problems caring role in the life of an institution.” civic institutions following the collapse and reach the greatest number of people.” of the Soviet Union. Of the challenge of building a democratic society, she has said, “education is the secret to it all.” TC FILE PHOTOS PHOTOGRAPH BY SAMANTHA ISOM

12 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY “You Can’t Teach that Kind of Magic” Remembering science educator Jhumki Basu (Ph.D. ’06) By Christopher Emdin

Sreyashi Jhumki Basu was a New York University a very special approach and mindset. professor of science education who died of breast cancer in People often say that someone they lose was amazing, 2008 at the age of 31. Last year, she posthumously received TC’s but with Jhumki it was really true. There are pictures of Early Career Award. Mission to Teach: The Life and Legacy her coming back from chemo to teach her classes. In the of a Revolutionary Educator (2013), written by her father, very last email I received from her, she asked me to review Dipak Basu, tells the story of an impassioned young woman a grant she was applying for. That was two days before she who created math and science programs for under-privileged died. She fought till the last second, and she never once teenage girls; developed a physics curriculum for high schools thought the cancer would defeat her. in South Africa; helped found a school based on the theme of Her biggest accomplishment was the lives she touched. democracy and leadership; and won a research fellowship The ninth graders she wrote about in her dissertation are to help new science teachers interpret and enact democratic now in college. They’re science majors, poets, thinkers. She science pedagogy. Her parents have since created the Jhumki flew them across the country to her wedding in California Basu Foundation to promote equity in science — kids from Brooklyn who would never education. have seen that part of the country, or I can’t talk about Jhumki as a science experienced Indian culture, or glimpsed the educator without first talking about her as a world of a scientist. friend and a person. In 2007, not long after I started teaching She was the most kind, insightful, creative, at TC, I called Jhumki and told her I was yet at the same time most buck-against-the thinking about leaving, because my own norm kind of person I’ve ever met. sister had been diagnosed with colon cancer. She had such immense passion for what I didn’t know anyone here, and I was feeling she was doing. She was the first person the pressure of being at an Ivy League I’d ever seen bring a motley crew of institution. I was thinking that maybe students to present at a science education academia wasn’t worth it — that I’d just go conference. And she was the first person I up to Buffalo and hang with my sister. That’s ever saw who, midway through making a when Jhumki told me she had breast cancer scientific presentation, was moved to tears and talked me into staying. I’ll never forget by her material. that act of selflessness. She said, “You’ll As science educators we were kindred “HER BIGGEST make it here.” She told me that cancer is not spirits. I came to TC just as Jhumki was ACCOMPLISHMENT a death sentence. leaving, but we became instant friends. We In the end, I lost them both — Jhumki and attended each other’s research meetings. We WAS THE LIVES my sister. But Jhumki gave me my career. talked about our careers. We laughed about SHE TOUCHED.” The book about Jhumki gives you a the similarities in our work. We were both — Chris Emdin wonderful sense of all the different layers firm believers in urban science education; of her life. But it’s also a beautiful book for we were both conceptual physicists and former physics readers who want to know what makes someone like that educators. We had both helped to found the schools where tick. Still, there are things about a person you can’t really we taught. grasp from reading a book. You can’t teach that kind of When Jhumki passed away, part of what was so painful magic. You can only retrace the constellation of experiences to me was that she wouldn’t get to see our vision for urban to see how they gave birth to that kind of a soul. science education come to fruition. We both wanted to Sometimes at the end of the day I walk past the plaque showcase youth culture in the sciences; to connect science in the TC lobby that has the names of all the Distinguished to the larger realm of engineering, technology and math Alumni Award winners. I see her in ways that come to life; and to empower young people name on it. And I think about how from the inner city to walk the university campus as if they proud I am to have known her. owned it. We both felt that science education could give a voice to the voiceless — to the kids from Brooklyn who have Christopher Emdin is Associate been told they’re not smart, they’re not going to college Professor of Science Education. — and we wanted to create a cadre of new teachers who understand that teaching science in urban settings requires TC FILE PHOTOS PHOTOGRAPH BY SAMANTHA ISOM

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 13 BEYOND THE CAMPUS

IS THE CLASSROOM DEAD? Will college campuses be replaced by MOOCs (massive online open courses) and other virtual platforms? That was the question put to speakers at “More Clicks, Fewer Bricks,” a debate held at Columbia University this spring. The answer, most agree, is: Probably not any time soon. But at TC, the view is that learning spaces — from smart classrooms to brain research labs to innovative library spaces to online courses — must blend the real and the virtual through technology that enables people to collaborate, build knowledge and tap all relevant sources of information. Through Where the Future Comes First: The Campaign for Teachers College, this vision of the 21st century campus is becoming a reality.

14 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY HANDS-ON LEARNING, 2.0 In HM 438, instructors and students build knowledge together.

EVEN THE CLASSROOMS ARE SMART TC’s high-tech campus makeover aims to realize Dewey’s century-old vision of teaching By ROBIN EILEEN BERNSTEIN

ith its heavy oak doors and window would later be posted on the open-source W casements, 16-foot ceilings and varnished learning platform Moodle. wood floors, Teachers College’s Horace Mann Hall “A technology-rich classroom provides new conjures visions of bearded men in monocles and tools for creating learning environments,” says stiff collars lecturing to rows of obedient listeners. Meier, who co-directs the Center and coordinates But not HM 438. One chilly evening last fall, the College’s Educational Technology Specialist students in Ellen Meier’s class on Technology and Program. “Using it involves rethinking traditional School Change clustered teaching and learning, around conference tables but it’s exciting to create of gleaming white board, “YOU HAVE an environment where watching a video on TO VISUALIZE students explore ideas monitors on all four walls and construct under- about an Internet app that INFORMATION IN standings. We know that enables real-time sharing kind of active learning is of content from any smart NEW WAYS.”— Tom Chandler most effective.” device. Then they divided Janine Bowes, an into teams to develop technology-driven plans to Australian school leader earning a master’s in help hypothetical schools create more dynamic, Instructional Technology & Media, agrees. “This collaborative learning environments. room enables students to teach and lead After a digital stopwatch on the monitors discussions, but the instructor must design that ticked to a halt, the teams wirelessly projected kind of learning. The technology won’t magically their presentations from laptops onto the wall do it for you.” screens. Kenny Graves, a professional development associate from TC’s Center for A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR LEARNING Technology and School Change, videotaped TC’s campaign Where the Future Comes First calls each presentation and displayed students’ for the creation of more smart classrooms in the digitally organized comments on a chart that coming years. Because these additional spaces will PHOTOGRAPH BY TIM SOTER

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 15 BEYOND THE CAMPUS

be tailored to more specific uses, each room will helps aspiring social studies teachers incorporate offer variations on the features of the prototype global energy sustainability issues into their in HM 438 — but the intended result is every bit teaching. as dramatic. “To understand the scale of these problems and “We have some of the leading minds in learning the solutions needed, you have to visualize technology, so we must offer cutting-edge information in new ways,” he says. facilities,” says Harvey Spector, TC’s Vice Chandler requires his students to take pictures President for Finance and Administration, who of environmentally troubled local areas, such as tapped New York City-based SHoP Architects to the Superfund sites at Newtown Creek and the design HM 438. “The smart classrooms are Gowanus Canal. In class, they further document central to our efforts to lead a revolution in what they’ve seen with Google Earth, which, teaching and learning.” through satellite and aerial photography The essence of the revolution, says TC alumnus captures details as small as specific streets and Matthew Pittinsky, founder of Blackboard and houses, and with real-time data on public health, CEO of Parchment, is “the fact that we are weather and traffic. interconnected through IP, through networks that “After Hurricane Sandy, they could really see break down barriers of time and space.” the extent to which water contaminated by mil- HM 438 makes those connections happen. The lions of gallons of toxic spillage flowed onto room boasts two pro- people’s property and jectors, two PCs, four caused them direct cameras for video­ TC’S SMART physical harm,” he says. conferencing and four Through census infor- SMART FUNDER wall displays, two of CLASSROOMS ARE mation and by using “I believe in the which are touchscreen CENTRAL TO Google Earth to show power of and use SMART Note- geographic concentra- education,” says book software. The A REVOLUTION tions of people the Amity P. Buxton walls are movable slid- census doesn’t name, (M.A. ’52, Ph.D. ing white board, and IN TEACHING the students can further ’62), whose the 11 tables, on cast- spotlight the socio­ generous gift is ers for easy reconfigu- AND LEARNING. economic implications funding a smart ration, can be flipped of disasters. classroom at TC. up for presentations. “Ultimately, this technology is all about the “My trust in The room’s hardware and cables are hidden democratization of information,” Chandler says. Teachers College is behind a shell within the original walls. “Students create their own visual interpretations based on the fact “Technology changes rapidly,” says Spector, “but of the world. It’s a profoundly powerful learning that it continues to the architects’ plug-and-play design lets us experience, and it dramatically changes their develop its training quickly adapt to potential new applications pedagogical practices, as well.” of excellent without gutting the room.” teachers to With its wireless connectivity HM 438 often NOT JUST FOR TECHIES educate diverse displays a live Twitter feed on one screen, a The subjects Meier and Chandler teach directly populations,” says PowerPoint on another and handwritten relate to technology. But can a smart classroom Buxton, who taught instructions on a white board. Presenters can help faculty and students in English education or for 22 years in participate, virtually, from anywhere. anthropology or languages? diverse urban “One student in my class last summer had to “English or language teachers who think about districts. She also leave early to teach in Taiwan,” recalls Adjunct using technology as a way to help build student has supported the Assistant Professor Tom Chandler (Ph.D. ’09), knowledge will probably find creative uses for TC Peace Corps Associate Research Scientist at the National these tools,” says Meier. “It’s really not about the Fellows Fund, the Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia’s technology, per se, but rather how the technology TC Fund and the Earth Institute. “He did his final presentation helps support learning goals.” Amity Buxton via Skype and using Google Earth. Our screens Not long ago, Chandler saw students in his TC Scholarship Fund. and sound are so high-quality, it felt like he was class messing with their cell phones while he was in the room.” talking. “I thought they were texting friends,” he Chandler, who helped create TC’s landmark says. “But they were actually taking notes on their 2007 curriculum about Hurricane Katrina and its screens. So the question isn’t: ‘Why should I use aftermath, is an expert on the role of geography this stuff,’ but rather: ‘How am I going to use it?’ in disasters. Maps are key in his TC course, which Because our students are already there.” TC FILE PHOTO COURTESY OF REEM KHAMIS-DAKWAR

16 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY MAKING WAVES THE LAB OF THE FUTURE Kids are unpredictable In a new space for brain research, subjects. Nadey , 8, Dakwar a world of expertise participates in a By JOE LEVINE practice run.

n Karen Froud’s Neurocognition of Language lab in Thorndike in producing complex sounds, the condition is widely Hall even blue-eyed, black Madagascar lemurs have a voice. considered one of motor coordination. However in linguistic IRecordings of their raucous burble are a frequent reminder analyses, the speech of adult stroke patients with apraxia lacks that brain research demands a meeting of diverse minds. evidence of co-articulation, the capacity to physically shape “TC is unique in providing the opportunity to collaborate with and continuously sequence upcoming sounds while speaking. so many different people, to study such a range of phenomena Co-articulation, in turn, depends on under-specification — and behaviors, and to think about it all in the framework of what’s the brain’s ability to screen out unimportant speech sounds actually going on in society,” says Froud, Associate Professor of and attend to those most relevant. So perhaps children with Neuroscience & Education and Speech & Language Pathology. apraxia don’t underspecify, Froud and Khamis-Dakwar reason. Froud and her students helped Apraxia must then partly relate to renovate the lab last summer to problems in the brain’s sound better support such work. “When “WHEN YOU COME HERE, processing systems or sub-systems. you come here, you become part YOU BECOME PART Hence the failure of traditional speech pathologist, part physicist, speech therapy, focusing on part electrical engineer,” says Ph.D. SPEECH PATHOLOGIST, movements of the tongue and student and lab manager Trey Avery. palate, to help children with the The reconfigured space gives PART PHYSICIST, PART disorder. Froud room to expand research and ELECTRICAL ENGINEER.” Funded by the Childhood work toward launching a new Ph.D. Apraxia of Speech Association of — Trey Avery program in Neuroscience & North America, the two researchers Education. A second 128-channel have since brought children to TC electroencephalography (EEG) system — the lab’s primary tool to listen as they wear electrodes that record their brains’ to pinpoint the brain’s real-time responses to specific stimuli responses to contrasts among various sounds. Spikes on a read- — permits uninterrupted data collection. out graph indicate when a child recognizes differences in “This is our concept of a classroom of the future, combining speech sounds as distinctive and meaningful. The work lab with teaching space,” Froud says. The resulting student requires patience and tight control of noise and light to ensure apprenticeship is unique in a hierarchical and narrowly that brain activity recorded during EEG monitoring is in fact structured field. “I’m surrounded by people from around the triggered by the stimulus being tested. The payoff is the chance world with expertise in education, the clinic, the policymaking to improve lives now. arena. They ask: ‘How do children learn to read?’ ‘How does “We’ve found that kids with apraxia do indeed specify poverty affect education?’ ‘How does what we do in a speech/ differently than other children, though the logic of when and language clinic change the way children talk or perceive sound?’ why is not yet clear,” says Khamis-Dakwar, who teaches at We try to bring these huge questions, which can inform clinical Adelphi University. “A condition thought to be very complex interventions for populations in need, down to an actual could hinge on something relatively simple. Although that may experimental manipulation.” not make it any simpler to remediate.” The lemur recordings, for example, figure in research by Froud takes the long view. “A wise man told me, ‘If you do Froud and former student Reem Khamis-Dakwar on a speech research, you should end up with more questions than answers.’ disorder called apraxia. Manifesting primarily as a difficulty By that measure, we’re doing it right.” TC FILE PHOTO COURTESY OF REEM KHAMIS-DAKWAR

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 17 MENU FOR CHANGE

May We Recommend the

Ve geA new tTC center a funded b by Laurie l M. Tisch e guides s? government policy on food By NANETTE MAXIM

s the battle heats up over the renewal of the federal working with initiatives like Grow to Learn NYC, the city pro- Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act, the gram that provides mini-grants to schools and maintains a Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education & Pol- registry of school gardens, to identify the most successful gar- icy at Teachers College is playing a major role on dens and the factors that make them effective. Capitol Hill as New York City’s advocate for the legislation, which “A lot of public funding is going into school gardens, so Kate’s aensures food access for low-income children and families. research has huge policy implications,” says Koch. In fact, the Established last year within TC’s Program in Nutrition through nation’s future depends on work like Gardner’s. a gift from the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, the Center is “This is the generation of children who face the very real emerging as an important player on city, possibility of having shorter lifespans state and federal food and nutrition policy. than their parents,” says Isobel Con- The new Center works on multiple fronts to tento, TC’s Mary Swartz Rose Professor increase demand for healthful foods, com- of Nutrition and Education, who coor- bat the overabundance of unhealthful ones dinates the College’s Program in and promote a sustainable food system. Nutrition and is Director of the Tisch The WIC reauthorization effort exempli- Center. “One-third are expected to fies the Center’s collaborative approach, develop diabetes, with consequences involving government and community part- that will include workplace absenteeism, ners — along with TC alumni in the field. poor vision and difficulty in walking. So The Center is working with the nonprofit it’s critically important that we develop City Harvest, whose Director of Policy and and evaluate education and policy Government Relations is Kate McKenzie approaches to shape more positive (M.S. ’02), and the office of U.S. Senator outcomes.” Kirsten Gillibrand, where Lauren Au (M.S. Advertising by soft drink and pack- ’10) is a key aide. food fighters Representing a aged food manufacturers, urban “Our ultimate aim is to change the century-plus of nutrition leadership development that has created “food des- behaviors most connected with health at TC are (clockwise from left) Isobel erts” where few stores sell fresh produce, problems,” says Tisch Center Executive Contento, Pamela Koch, Joan and the elimination of meaningful phys- Director Pamela Koch. “We emphasize edu- Gussow and Mary Swartz Rose ical education from many schools are cation to build demand for healthful, afford- also factors, increasing the need for a able and ecologically sustainable food, and we emphasize policy comprehensive approach. change to create environments where healthy choices are made “We’re trying to build a national model for health-promoting easy. When education and access work synergistically, people schools,” says Koch. embrace healthful eating.” The Center’s Kathleen Porter (Ph.D. ’13) has conducted a first-ever study of the scope and reach of nutrition education how does your garden grow? programs that are provided by a range of government, univer- sity and nonprofits to New York City public elementary schools. Nutrition education programs abound these days, but which Porter found that only 39 percent of public elementary schools ones are really making a difference? To find out, Kate Gardner, in the three boroughs studied had such programs and virtually the Center’s first doctoral fellow in nutrition education, is none were reaching high-need schools. She also looked at a CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: TC FILE PHOTO; PHOTOGRAPH BY ALICE PROUJANSKY; TC FILE PHOTO TC FILE PHOTO

18 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY she’s all about access Kitchen Cabinet When philanthropist Laurie TC’s century-plus of influencing M. Tisch, Vice Chair of TC’s Board of Trustees, founded nutrition education and policy the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund in 2007, TC has led the fight for better nutrition since her vision was that access to 1909, when a young faculty member named Mary education, the arts, services and, of course, Swartz Rose taught the world’s first courses in healthy food, “should not be determined by zip nutrition education. During the 1970s Joan Dye code.” The Illumination Fund consistently Gussow, now Professor Emerita, introduced the champions innovative approaches to address all world to the notion of locally sustainable food of these issues and to illuminate strategies that systems, influencing current prominent food can transform the urban landscape. writers such as Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman. Isobel Contento, the Mary Swartz Rose Professor of Nutrition Education and author of the first-ever nutrition education textbook, has subset of effective nutrition education programs “to discover focused the field on overcoming motivational and what schools were doing to get the programs and make them environmental barriers to healthful eating. She work, and then how they were making them stay.” also is at the forefront of an effort to create Porter’s research, released this spring, “could be a model national standards for nutrition education. that’s used in the rest of the country,” Koch says. TC’s Program in Nutrition has produced high- profile leaders in the field, including Christina measuring impact, influencing policy Economos (M.S. ’91), The New Balance Chair in Childhood Nutrition at Tufts University and “Prevention is important, and food is the best medicine,” says Director of the nonprofit ChildObesity180; former Heewon Lee (Ph.D. ’09), Adjunct Assistant Professor of Nutri- TC faculty member Toni Liquori (Ed.D. ’96), now tion Education, who manages and analyzes all of the data Executive Director of School Food FOCUS; and generated by research studies at the Center and the Program Ellie Krieger (M.A. ’95), The New York Times in Nutrition. bestselling author and host of Food Network’s In one project, Contento and Koch are assessing the added “Healthy Appetite.” impact of “wellness policy” in 20 New York City schools that “We can’t change the world all by ourselves,” also offer a classroom nutrition program developed by TC. The Contento says, “but we’re definitely spreading policy included making foods and snacks brought from home seeds of change.” more healthful and having 10-minute dance breaks twice a day. Children in the study, which was funded by the U.S. Depart- ment of Agriculture, have been evaluated before and after the intervention for changes in height, weight and body fat; eating behaviors; levels of physical activity; and improvements in knowledge of healthful nutrition and fitness practices. Preliminary results of the USDA-funded study found “most of the behaviors were predicted by whether [the children] per- ceived them as habits,” Lee says. “The more regular the habit — whether that was eating well or eating junk food — the more they were apt to stick with it.” Among the positive outcomes were reduced recreational time devoted to TV and video games M. Tisch Illumination Fund’s Healthy Food & Community and (for some participants) drinking fewer sugary beverages. Change Initiative, including City Harvest, Local Initiatives On the community front, TC served as the evaluators for the Support Corporation and Wholesome Wave. New York City Food and Fitness Partnership, funded by the “Suddenly a lot of food policy groups have emerged,” says W. K. Kellogg Foundation program, which works with resi- Contento, adding that what sets the Tisch Center apart is that dents and community organizations in areas such as central where “the other programs focus primarily on increasing access Brooklyn to create more healthful food outlets and spaces for to healthful food, we’re linking food access and education.” physical activity. Koch agrees. “We’re good at and are known for developing And now, reflecting its raison d’être to unite the many orga- innovative educational programs that help children understand nizations working on food issues, the Center is broadening its the food system and their place within it. And now we’re lay- impact by serving as a resource for other grantees of the Laurie ering on policy. We won’t lose that core.” CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: TC FILE PHOTO; PHOTOGRAPH BY ALICE PROUJANSKY; TC FILE PHOTO TC FILE PHOTO

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 19 Illustration by OLIVER MUNDAY

20 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY REDEFINING LITERACY A NEW SPIN ON ENGLISH A new philosophy of teaching holds that what young people read may matter less than how they read it By JONATHAN SAPERS

t’s funny how Odysseus says things that don’t really “Why do we insist on teaching the novels, poems happen. Should he man up and tell what really hap- and plays of people who have long since perished and Ipens? No way, because he is the hero Odysseus… I who may have held world views that implicitly am a hero that never backs down from anything. Why demeaned the students now asked to read and cher- tell the truth and get all my credentials washed away ish them?” asked Ernest Morrell, Professor of cause I wimped out one time? My image will be erased English Education and Director of TC’s Institute for from society and people will stop chanting my name. Do Urban and Minority Education (IUME), in his 2012 you know how it feels when the crowd stops chanting inaugural speech as President-Elect of the National your name? It’s depressing, man. Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). “Should English teaching change as the population of stu- For Adele Bruni (M.A. ’07), the above brief “commen- dents changes and as communications technologies tary” by a ninth-grader who had previously declared make life utterly unrecognizable to the worlds of he hated English represented a major victory. many canonized authors? What in English is sacred “Anything they perceive to be hard to read, they’ll and untouchable?” discard,” Bruni, a TC doctoral student teaching at Morrell, who extols his favorite novel, Hemingway’s New York City’s Lab School for Collaborative Studies, For Whom the Bell Tolls, even as he counsels encour- says of her students. “It’s difficult for them to sustain aging economically disadvantaged students of color to attention on a text because they’re so used to scroll- write what they know, urged his colleagues to “simul- ing through screens.” taneously champion and transform the discipline.” Engaging hearts as well as minds is the central “I once received a reprimand during a job interview enterprise of English teachers. Students, who nowa- that continues to inform my thinking and practice,” days reflect an ever-wider range of cultures, he says. “The interviewer kindly reminded me, ‘You backgrounds and orientations, must care deeply don’t teach English, you teach students English.’” about reading or the battle is lost before it has begun Fulfilling that dictum means recognizing that what — particularly when the choice is between long-dead, students read may be less important than how they white male authors or entertainment available at the read it. tap of a screen. “Whether they’re reading the weather, a friend’s This challenge is prompting a reexamination of the gestures or a novel, part of the work of my classes is field’s basic assumptions. to create knowledge, sensitivities and a repertoire of

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 21 s o n n e t 54 Mexican American?” says Assistant Professor for 54 English Education Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, a former O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem New York City high school teacher. By that sweet ornament which truth doth give! The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem Sealey-Ruiz has taught pairings that range from For that sweet odour which doth in it live. The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye James Baldwin (If Beale Street Could Talk) with Ger- As the perfumed tincture of the roses, Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly trude Stein (Three Sisters) — both gay expatriates When summer’s breath their masked buds discloses: who lived in Paris — to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 54, But, for their virtue only is their show, They live unwoo’d, and unrespected fade; with its discussion of the “perfumed tinctures of Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so; Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made: CHAMPIONING roses,” and Tupac Shakur’s “The Rose that Grew And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, from Concrete.” When that shall vade, by verse distils your truth. AND TRANSFORMING “Books with a variety of characters and viewpoints THE DISCIPLINE open up a different conversation about the beauty of Morrell believes human complexity,” Sealey-Ruiz says. “If students see technology can themselves in a book — if their experiences are offered empower young in a classroom — they engage very differently.” readers. To say something meaningful about what they’ve read, students need to view writing as a medium suited to their own voices. Traditional “lit-crit” forms, strategies to read and write the world,” says Ruth such as the five-paragraph essay, may turn them off. Vinz, TC’s Enid and Lester Morse Professor in “It’s the students who are already most alienated Teacher Education. from academic life who are hurt the most,” says TC In her award-winning book Composing a Teaching Distinguished Senior Lecturer Sheridan Blau. Life, Vinz confesses that in her first year of teaching “They already think their voices and way of thinking she “talked about literature in classrooms” while have nothing to do with school, and now because “students mostly watched.” Unhappy with the results, we say ‘Fill this formula,’ writing becomes a mean- she recalled her own childhood initiation into liter- ingless activity.” ature after her father’s death in World War II: “My Blau, a past president of NCTE who is Coordi- grandmother, attempting to fill the space, shared nator of TC’s English Education/Teaching of with me the literature that she loved” — Mark Twain, English Program, devised the commentary format the Brothers Grimm, The Arabian Nights, Basho, that Adele Bruni uses with her students. These Lao Tzu — “and I constructed a world of experience written responses may initially be as and imagining far beyond, where I lived and located simple as “I hate this poem” or “I don’t myself within the spirit of the grandmother who led  IF STUDENTS SEE understand,” but can become the basis me into a life with literature.” THEMSELVES IN A for an ongoing discussion of texts being Vinz has since sought to tap the power of young BOOK — IF THEIR studied. Less sophisticated writers will people’s “literacies,” which she defines as the mean- read the contributions of more sophisti- ings they make of “any text in dialogue with others, EXPERIENCES cated writers and begin to participate based on their prior experiences and developing ARE OFFERED IN more extensively in what becomes truly understandings of spatial, temporal, societal and A CLASSROOM — academic writing. cultural contexts.” Over the past 20 years, she has THEY ENGAGE VERY “Writing about their reading in order mainstreamed this approach into the preparation to contribute to classroom discussion of DIFFERENTLY.” of thousands of TC pre-service teachers and the literature makes the literature and the New York City schools where they hone their craft, — Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz writing more socially real and engaging become full-time teachers and mentor subsequent for students,” Blau says. pre-service students and graduates. “If you’re going to share your work, you take it a Other faculty members in English Education sim- little more seriously because you are speaking not ilarly prod their pre-service students to draw on only for yourself but also to, and with, others,” young people’s experiences and backgrounds. agrees Vinz, who with former student Erick “If I’m teaching Arthur Miller and the theme is the Gordon founded TC’s Student Press Initiative. The American Dream, why not also look at the American program has worked in New York City classrooms Dream through the eyes of Sandra Cisneros, who’s to produce printed anthologies of student work, TC FILE PHOTOS PHOTOGRAPH BY SAMANTHA ISOM; COURTESY OF SHERIDAN BLAU

22 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY REDEFINING LITERACY

WHAT IN ENGLISH IS SACRED AND UNTOUCHABLE?

including a compendium of memoir pieces by stu- dents in New York’s six schools for recent immigrants, oral histories by Muslim youth and personal histories by incarcerated young men. “You learn more about your work as you and others talk about it. And when we talk about it the way we talk about Macbeth, you start to see yourself as a writer.” As students write, they also become motivated to The Rose that Grew from Concrete learn what they need to know — a self-directed Did u hear about the rose that grew approach dating back to the Renaissance essayist Montaigne that arguably is now finding its apothe- from a crack osis in the Internet. in the concrete “Adults used to be the guardians of access to infor- Proving nature’s laws wrong mation,” Ernest Morrell says. “Now young people it learned 2 walk can choose what they’re edified by.” without having feet Technology enables teachers and students alike Funny it seems but by keeping to change traditional English classes from within, its dreams Morrell says. “A lot of English is what you produce. it learned 2 breathe fresh air Multi-modality is also becoming part of the class- Long live the rose that room, so we’re looking at images mixed with text, grew from concrete cultural studies, magazine covers and film.” when no one else even cared! For example, IUME recently served as the Harlem site for Beyond the Bricks, a project funded — Tupac Shakur by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation through which African-American male high school students video- taped images of black men that counter stereotypical portrayals in film, television and the media. “And with technology, work doesn’t have to remain in the classroom,” Morrell adds. “Now students share briefs based on research papers with City Council members and the mayor.” The lesson learned: writing — and communication of any kind — can have an impact in the real world. “We all know the power of being an educator, whether in breaking down racism or encouraging ENGAGING HEARTS students to come out in class,” master’s student AS WELL AS MINDS Miriam Goldberg said one wintry evening in Vinz, Blau (at left), Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz’s course, Teaching English in Morrell and Sealey-Ruiz (opposite page) believe Diverse Social-Cultural Contexts. that if students don’t Nearby, another master’s student, David Baksh, care deeply about what nodded in agreement and quoted Tupac Shakur: they’re reading, the “‘I’m not saying I’m going to change the world. But battle for true literacy is I guarantee I will spark the brain that will change lost before it has begun. the world.’” TC FILE PHOTOS PHOTOGRAPH BY SAMANTHA ISOM; COURTESY OF SHERIDAN BLAU

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 23 Teachers College launched its Office of School & Community Partnerships in 2007 to achieve better education outcomes in high- need public schools. Since then, the College has created a network of six Harlem schools that draws on the resources of TC and Columbia University to provide comprehensive academic, social and health services to help students reach their full potential in school as well as in life. Today, TC’s network of Harlem schools is anchored by the Teachers College Community School, where students are thriving and succeeding academically. It all adds up to a compelling case for why more universities nationwide should be... PARTNERING WITH24 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY U TC PARTNERSHIPS

TEAM EFFORT ABOVE: The TCCS ribbon-cutting in fall 2012. LEFT: NASA’s Astronaut Mike greets young admirers in January.

A SCHOOL WHERE DREAMS COME TRUE Teachers College Community School is showing its students what’s possible — and the nation, too By PATRICIA LAMIELL

ssembly at the Teachers College fundraising (see page 28 for founding donors) Community School in Harlem one chilly and search for the right leadership sometimes AFriday afternoon in January was out of seemed as ambitious as putting human beings this world. “Astronaut Mike” — two-time in space, but the results have been stellar. NASA spacewalker Michael Massimino, “TCCS meets our moral obligation to pro- whose experiences inspired the movie Gravity vide the best possible education for children — dazzled star-struck TCCS students with in the community where we live and work, but photos of the cosmos and tales of floating it’s also a place where we can show how the outside the spacecraft in a 280-pound suit cutting-edge knowledge that we have here can while repairing the Hubble Space Telescope. be infused into regular public education,” says “If there’s something you want to do, you’ve Nancy Streim, TC’s Associate Vice President got to stick with it and keep trying,” Mas- for School and Community Partnerships. simino told students. “You may have to work a Located in a restored red-brick building on lot, but dreams do come true.” Morningside Avenue near 126th Street, TCCS TCCS just might be the launching pad for reflects the input of TC faculty in math, science those dreams. Opened in 2011 by the College music, psychology, nutrition, reading and writ- and the New York City Department of Educa- ing, physical education and art. TC students tion, the school, which will ultimately serve serve as specialty and pre-service teachers, grades pre-K–8, fulfills a promise made by TC after-school instructors, classroom assistants President Susan Fuhrman to create and help and psychological counseling and literacy run a public school for the College’s surround- interns. Columbia engineering students teach ing community. The subsequent negotiations science classes. Four of the seven full-time with the city, meetings with the local commu- teachers are TC graduates, and Principal nity board, collaboration with Columbia, Jeanene Worrell-Breeden, a veteran New York PHOTOGRAPHS BY HEATHER VAN UXEM LEWIS

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 25 BOOKS AND COMPANY At TCCS, the library is the place to be.

City school administrator who is now a TC Cahn Fellow, is a boy as Jacqueline Zuckerberg, another TC master’s degree widely credited with creating an inclusive culture for the school’s student in nutrition, distributes little paper cups of vegetables 166 lottery-picked students and active parent community. and pesto. Nevertheless, he gingerly tastes a tiny piece of each, “We have children of recent immigrants, children whose par- before shaking his head and making a face. Zuckerberg awards ents work at the Post Office, and children of Columbia him an “I Tried It!” sticker for his shirt. professors,” says Worrell-Breeden. “It’s racially diverse, lan- “The important thing is to make sure kids get to prepare guage-diverse, and all must live in Upper Harlem to go to this healthy food,” says Zuckerberg, whose TC professors, Isobel school. It’s a microcosm of the new Harlem.” Contento and Pamela Koch, designed the TCCS nutrition cur- riculum. “The research shows that unless they get hands-on IT STARTS WITH FOOD experience, they’re not going to behave differently when it “Class, what have we been studying in nutrition?” comes to what they eat.” In the school’s basement cafeteria, the kindergarten cooking Call-and-response is also the motif in second grade music class co-taught by Jack Taliercio, a master’s degree student class, where Tim Sullivan, a jazz musician and Ed.M. stu- and instructor in TC’s Program in Nutrition, sounds like a dent in TC’s Music and Music Education program, explores call-and-response at a Baptist church. the difference between loud and soft. The children sit in a “Roots,” sing the 24 children seated at long tables. circle while Sullivan, accompanied on an upright piano by “So what will we be cooking today?” Christian Nourijanian, a master’s degree student in the “Roots!” same program, asks in song for each child’s name. “Can someone tell me the names of some roots?” “Max, Max, Max, Max, Maxwell!” the children shout as Max “Potatoes!” says one boy. The children have been growing Myers leaps up and dances in front of his chair. Sullivan con- potatoes in science class. tinues around the circle until each child has jumped, squatted, “Beets!” says a girl. laughed and spun to Nourijanian’s jazz riffs. Next, he pulls a “That’s right, potatoes and beets are roots. How about brightly painted pair of conga drums and a tambourine down carrots?” from a high shelf. “Yes!” “Which of these instruments do you think is the loudest?” he “How about turnips?” asks. He tasks Anna Bomwell with playing the congas and The children fall silent. Meagan Scott with playing the tambourine. The class declares “Turnips are roots, too! And today, we will be making kale the tambourine louder — which is correct, Sullivan explains, and basil pesto over roasted root vegetables.” because the head of the tambourine is tighter and smaller, per- Armed with plastic chef’s knives, the children begin sawing mitting a much brighter and more resonant sound than the roasted vegetables into half-inch cubes. long, deep, cylindrical conga drums. “I don’t like roasted carrots. I don’t like beets, either,” declares TCCS is distinguished by its emphasis on “a developmental PHOTOGRAPH BY HEATHER VAN UXEM LEWIS PHOTOGRAPHS BY MATTHEW VINCENT(LEFT), HEATHER VAN UXEM LEWIS(RIGHT)

26 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY TC PARTNERSHIPS

FIELD TRIP In 2013, then- NYC Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott paid a call.

WINNING SMILE Trinity Faulkner (left) and fellow TCCS student N’Deye M’Baye were semifinalists in a nationwide art contest celebrating the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

view of what music communities look like,” says Lori Custo- only skills but respect for other cultures. dero, Associate Professor of Music and Music Education, “A lot of people are hesitant to use as much Spanish in the who designed the school’s music curriculum. “In pre-K, we classroom as I do, but my goals are exposure to the language, might do activities that have less structure and more freedom appreciation of being bilingual, and respecting people who are to honor their desire for exploration. In kindergarten, there’s different from us and realizing that there’s a lot we can learn more interest in patterns and form, while in first grade, in difference.” they’re starting to decode the internal literacies of our com- At the same time, Cox looks for ways to inculcate strong work munity and music’s symbolic nature.” habits in his students and encourage them to view themselves as scholars. Hence the carpe- WORDS AND ACTIONS tas, which he requires the “Hola, ¡Bienvenidos a todos!” Bobby Cox, “AT TCCS, THE COLLEGE children to carry to and from TC psychology student and certified their cubbies every day. “I Spanish teacher, welcomes second-grad- CAN PRACTICE IN A could keep them in the class- ers to his fifth-floor classroom. Today’s WAY WE WERE NEVER room,” he says of the folders, focus is on words for family members: “but when the kids have to abuelo, abuela, madre, padre, tío, tía, ABLE TO DO IN PUBLIC keep them current and review primo, prima. Cox asks the kids to say them with me, they take more the names of their primos and primas SCHOOLS BEFORE.” responsibility.” (male and female cousins) in Spanish and — Marla Brassard, Attention to such details is then draw an árbol familiar (family tree), TC Professor of Psychology and Education part of a broader school cul- with the oldest people at the top. ture that reflects extensive “We know that we use portfolio grad- input from TC. ing in here,” Cox tells the children. “That means your “At TCCS, the College can practice in a way we were never carpeta [folder] is like a portfolio. Imagine that this family able to do in public schools before,” says Marla Brassard, TC tree is going into your carpeta. I want you to act as if this Professor of Psychology and Education. “We can run psycho- work, this árbol familiar, is going out in the hallway. So don’t educational groups, we can do comprehensive assessments, hurry up through it, don’t do it sloppily. Write in your best we can consult with teachers, we can individually counsel handwriting; think about the quality.” kids. It’s a game-changer for everyone involved.” Cox cites TC’s emphasis on task-based teaching — an approach to second-language acquisition that improves lan- LEARNING FOR THEMSELVES guage retention by compelling students to solve specific The dismissal bell has long since rung, but a dozen children, problems in a real-world context ­— as a way to increase not age five to seven, sit hunched over counters in the science PHOTOGRAPH BY HEATHER VAN UXEM LEWIS PHOTOGRAPHS BY MATTHEW VINCENT(LEFT), HEATHER VAN UXEM LEWIS(RIGHT)

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 27 SEEING EYE TO EYE Jeanene Worrell- Breeden, TCCS Principal (left), and Nancy Streim, TC’s Associate Vice President for School and Community Partnerships.

and art room. Wearing hand-decorated lab jackets, they’re husband Sam Sia, who teaches biomedical engineering at experimenting to see whether pulverized iron-fortified cereal, Columbia, helped bring Astronaut Mike to TCCS. mixed with a little water and placed in a baggie, can be dragged across the table by magnet. (It can, but slowly.) LAST BELL “Scientists ask questions,” Charlotte Vinson, a TC master’s Late on Friday afternoon, the school is quiet. In her spacious, student in science education, tells the students. “Then they high-ceilinged office just off the lobby, Principal Worrell- work until they find the answers.” Breeden, sitting for the first time all day, recalls initially won- With American students falling behind other countries in dering how serious TC was about partnering with the school’s science, the onus is on elementary schools to engage kids in teachers, administration and parents. the subject as early as possible. “On the one hand, I worried they might simply take over,” she “Elementary school teachers typically aren’t required by says. “And on the other, I wondered whether they would be a states to specialize in a science, so most lack both general presence at all.” knowledge of science and the ability to develop and execute Instead, she says, TC has provided her with unprecedented science lesson plans,” says Felicia Mensah, TC Associate resources, support and help when she’s needed it and other- Professor of Science Education. wise has gotten out of the way. At TCCS, under Mensah’s guidance, teachers learn “Every college that has a teacher prep program should hands-on classroom activities that walk the walk, talk the talk and pro- both engage and impart science vide a place to espouse the best knowledge and content. They can TCCS “IS A MICROCOSM practices you’re teaching your stu- draw on a database of science web- OF THE NEW HARLEM.” dents,” she says. “No other New sites with interactive simulations York City public school does this. — Jeanene Worrell-Breeden, TCCS Principal and digital games that illustrate key We’re pioneers.” scientific principles. Mensah also encourages the teachers to work with one another and with parents as well. Backing the Dream “The teachers and staff aren’t afraid to try something new,” Teachers College Community School was launched with says Christine Kovich, whose daughter is in kindergarten generous support from Enid and Lester S. Morse Jr., at TCCS. “And parents are highly involved.” E. John Rosenwald Jr. and Laurie M. Tisch. Kovich is Executive Director of HYPOTHEkids, the To support TCCS, please contact Scott Rubin at school’s hands-on science program, which she co-founded 212 678-3722 or [email protected] with current TC doctoral student Erika Gillette. She and PHOTOGRAPH BY HEATHER VAN UXEM LEWIS PHOTOGRAPHS BY HEATHER VAN UXEM LEWIS

28 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY TC PARTNERSHIPS

The Heritage School A Gala Debut for REACH TC’s 125th Anniversary Gala BEATRIZ RENDÓN of Arizona State University and DAVID ANDREWS of Johns Hopkins celebration was the official coming-out party orf REACH (Raising Educational Achievement Coalition of Harlem), the new name for the College’s partnership with six local pre-K–12 Harlem public REPLICATING A GOOD IDEA schools. REACH (tc.edu/REACH) is supported in part by a $1 million grant University-public school partnerships A panel of experts at the conference from the JPMorgan Chase Foundation. remain rare, but the concept drew a broadened the notion of “lab school” “We take great pride in our history of strong showing of educators to TC in beyond the traditional on-campus learn- supporting organizations and programs early April to learn more. ing site for faculty children and discussed that strengthen the communities we “If we have a school that needs help in challenges and sucesses of their universi- serve,” Gayle Jennings-O’Byrne, Vice our neighborhood, and we have a solution, ty-assisted schools. The panel was President of Global Philanthropy for then we, as educators, truly have a moral moderated by James Gardner, TC’s Ass- JPMorgan Chase, wrote to President obligation to do what we can to improve sociate Vice President for External Affairs, Susan Fuhrman to announce the grant. the situation,” President Susan Fuhrman and featured Nancy Streim, TC’s Associ- “We commend the important work said in her keynote ate Vice President of your organization and are glad to speech to the “IF A SCHOOL NEEDS HELP for School and support its efforts.” annual meeting of IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD, Community Part- Last fall, a JPMorgan Chase ad the International nerships; David W. appearing onstage during TC’s Gala Association of Lab WE HAVE A MORAL Andrews, Dean of celebrated “our shared commitment Schools. She OBLIGATION TO DO WHAT the Johns Hopkins to improving educational outcomes described TC’s WE CAN TO IMPROVE THE School of Educa- for children” and congratulated TC on experience part- tion (who was “125 years of excellence in education.” A nering with its SITUATION.” — Susan Fuhrman representing the promotion of the REACH partnership REACH (Raising Henderson/Hop- will appear in June on JPMorgan Chase Educational Achievement Coalition of kins Partnership School in Baltimore, ATM machines. Harlem) public schools and founding the co-founded and co-managed by The REACH is administered by TC’s Teachers College Community School Johns Hopkins University); and Beatriz Office of School and Community (TCCS). Conference attendees also Rendón, Associate Vice President of Edu- Partnerships. Schools currently part toured TCCS during the school day. cational Outreach and Student Services of the network are Margaret Douglas “If every university with a graduate at Arizona State University (representing School, Harriet Tubman School, school of education and other profes- ASU Preparatory Academy, a group of Heritage High School (founded by sional schools were to partner with their public charter schools that was created by TC faculty member Judith Burton, local school districts, we would generate the university). with funding from Trustee Joyce a rising tide of education excellence and Cowin), Frederick Douglass Academy opportunity that would lift all boats,” Watch excerpts from the II, Columbia Secondary School and Fuhrman said. conference at bit.ly/1j0KU92 Teachers College Community School. PHOTOGRAPH BY HEATHER VAN UXEM LEWIS PHOTOGRAPHS BY HEATHER VAN UXEM LEWIS

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 29 DIVERSITY HITS THE BOOKS Course content at TC is changing in response to female and LGBTQ students who ask, ‘Where’s the stuff about me?’

S AN UNDERGRADUATE WOMEN’S STUDIES transition to motherhood as a develop- major, Marie Hansen realized that courses in mental phase like adolescence and other other departments mostly ignored women. periods of major physical change. Her “To learn about women’s psychological course is part of a broader initiative, development, you had to look in women’s The Sexuality, Women, & Gender Proj- studies,” recalls Hansen, now a TC Counseling ect (SWG), which she and two other and Clinical Psychology master’s student. psychology faculty members, Assistant “Women’s studies is interdisciplinary, so it Professor Melanie Brewster and Lec- didn’t go as deep as a psychology course turer Riddhi Sandil, created in fall 2012. taught by a psychologist.” “In psychology you usually learn about Last fall, Hansen took The Mother- mothers only insofar as they affect Child Matrix, taught by Aurelie children’s clinical outcomes, but Aurelie Athan, director of TC’s Maternal flips that paradigm,” Hansen says. “We Psychology Laboratory. Athan is a read articles, mostly from the nursing leader in the fledgling field of field. We interviewed mothers. It was “matrescence,” which views the exciting, because growing up you see a A30 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY THE COLLEGE IS ON TRACK FOR A 2015 LAUNCH OF A CERTIFICATE PROGRAM IN UNDERSTANDING SEXUALITY, WOMEN AND GENDER.

“It is particularly heartening that the SWG Project is giving gender and sexuality issues a strong academic focus,” says Janice Robinson, Vice President for Diversity and Community Affairs. Still, as Sandil puts it, there remained a sense that TC, like most other institutions of higher learning, was “without a sexuality and gender focus,” with the result that “the marginalization of sexual minorities and women had sort of gone by the wayside.” “There were courses in the 1980s that incorporated women as a focus, but as elsewhere, they’ve gone dormant, perhaps reflecting a desire by women not to be thought of as special anymore,” DIVERSITY By says Athan, who coordinates the SIDDHARTHA MITTER College’s Clinical Psychology program. & JOE LEVINE “And you might say, well, that’s appropriate, because women are now very present in the work force and as HITS THE BOOKS students, but I would argue that the conversation isn’t over — that it’s just beginning. We have all these young women now coming into our psychology classes [80 percent of students in the M.A. program are female]. They’re raising their hands and saying: ‘Where’s lot of images that don’t reflect what it gender and sexuality. In 2010, the year the stuff about me?’ And we can’t feels like to be female. TC is creating a that saw the end of the military’s accommodate the demand.” counter-narrative.” “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and the In 2012, backed by a TC Provost’s The class also illustrated the real- first wave of state-level decisions Investment Fund Grant, Athan, Brewster world impact of consigning work about to legalize same-sex marriage, TC’s and Sandil began working, in Sandil’s women to the women’s studies corner. Office of the Provost convened a words, “to irrigate the disciplines” at TC “Eighty-three percent of women become working group of faculty, students and by combing through the course cata- mothers,” Hansen says. “Motherhood is staff to examine LGBTQ issues (the logue and meeting with department a radical shift in identity. Everyone acronym stands for lesbian, gay, bisex- heads and other faculty members to dis- knows about the baby blues, yet DSM-5 ual, transgender and queer or ques- cuss ways of integrating an LGBTQ, [the diagnostic manual for practicing tioning) that affect recruitment, women and gender focus into a range of psychologists and psychiatrists] has no diversity and College life. offerings. TC is currently on target for a distinguished diagnosis for post­ In addition, TC’s Office of the Vice 2015 launch of a certificate program in partum depression.” President for Diversity and Community the understanding of sexuality, women The SWG Project builds on past Affairs has long been out front on these and gender, drawing on course offerings efforts at TC to focus on issues of issues (see page 33). across multiple departments.

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 31 ACADEMIC DIVERSITY

TC HAS DEVELOPED NEW YORK STATE’S FIRST GRADUATE-LEVEL COURSE ON TRANSGENDER ISSUES.

AURELIE ATHAN “We can’t accommodate the demand”

RIDDHI SANDIL TC must “irrigate the disciplines” MELANIE BREWSTER Faculty mentors are key

Partners in the growing SWG net- person or a transgender person,” says course has featured a guest appearance work include Laura Azzarito, Associate Matt Robinson, a current Counseling and by Charles Silverstein, author of The Joy Professor of Physical Culture and Edu- Clinical Psychology doctoral student. of Gay Sex and a leader of the successful cation, who is interested in studying Robinson recalls a recent TC class in effort to remove homosexuality from the women in sports, and Sandra Schmidt, which “we examined various identities DSM, and a screening of the soon-to-be- Assistant Professor of Social Studies and how they relate to our work in coun- released documentary Pier Kids: The Education, who teaches about queer seling. We talked about our race, religion, Life, about homeless LGBTQ youth spaces and geographies. Enrollment culture, ethnicity, and we had to dis- living near New York City’s Christopher Services Associate Dean Thomas Rock, cuss each. And then at the end of the Street Piers. Marie Miville, Chair of the Counseling course, we were told we could pick “These are issues that not only future and Clinical Psychology Department, from ‘other identities,’ which included psychologists but also pre-service and Gregory Payton, a Lecturer in the gender and sexual orientation. So, yes, teachers need to know about in order to Department of Counseling & Clinical those identities were included, but it’s work with kids and their parents,” Psychology, serve on SWG’s executive also an example of how other margin- Brewster says. advisory board. alized identities are more prioritized.” Alysa Turkowitz (M.A. ’01, Ed.D. ’12), If women are again sounding a call More recently, that picture is chang- Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Psy- to be represented as an academic ing. In 2013, Melanie Brewster, who chology & Education program, says that focus, LGBTQ students are perhaps serves as faculty adviser to the student most LGBTQ students remain “hyper- finding their voice for the first time. group Queer TC, began teaching a sensitive in the classroom — their anten- “I’ve never been discriminated against course she calls LGBT(Q) Issues in Psy- nae are up to determine ‘is this a safe at TC, and the environment has always chology and Education, the first such space?’” Even something as seemingly felt accepting, but certain identities aren’t permanent course at the College. Nearly innocuous as a verbal math problem that always as celebrated — as though there 80 students signed up, forcing Brewster includes the phrase “a husband and wife” isn’t as much interest in hearing from a gay to cap enrollment at 55 this spring. The can be a major cue. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: COURTESY OF AURELIE ATHAN; COURTESYRIDDHI OF SANDIL; COURTESY OF MELANIE BREWSTER COURTESY OF THE FAMILY OF TYLER CLEMENTI

32 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY ACADEMIC DIVERSITY

Making TC a Place Where People Can Be Themselves

“WE’VE GOT SUCH A SHIFT HAPPENING IN SOCIETY IN BELIEFS AND PERSPECTIVES ON LGBTQ ISSUES,” SAYS THOMAS P. ROCK, ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR ENROLLMENT SERVICES. “TC IS PLACING SO MANY PEOPLE IN K–12 AND BEYOND WHO CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE.” The death of Rock’s office has been working with the Point Foundation, Tyler Clementi raised awareness which offers funding and mentorship to promising GBTQL of LGBTQ issues. students, to increase the College’s visibility and recruit scholarship recipients. TC also has taken part in events mother, Jane Clementi, spoke last fall at the TC forum such as the Human Rights Campaign’s 2013 leadership “From Bullying to the Defense of Marriage Act: A Journey summit for historically black colleges and universities, toward Full LGBTQ Equality,” hosted by TC’s Office of which works to develop current and future LGBTQ leaders the Vice President for Diversity and Community Affairs. at these institutions. The Office is a vital force at the Collegeor f change on A new LGBTQ Scholarship has been created through gender and sexuality issues, incorporating sessions a collaboration between TC and the Tyler Clementi on microaggressions into TC’s faculty and employee Foundation. The TC-funded scholarship will be awarded orientation and conducting training for faculty and staff to two students at the College who are committed to who designate their offices as safe zones for LGBTQ research and practice in LGBTQ issues. Clementi was persons. the young Rutgers student who committed suicide after “The safe zones create an opportunity for people to be his roommate secretly videotaped him kissing another themselves,” says Janice Robinson, Vice President for man and posted the clip on the Internet. Clementi’s Diversity and Community Affairs.

“Someone who doesn’t fit into that a TC course on the transgender seems clear that a process has started heterosexist dynamic feels excluded, experience that may be one of the few that will not be stopped or reversed — and they may shut down from engaging such standing offerings at the graduate and that the conversation is striking a in classroom dynamics,” says Turkowitz, school level. “And emotional safety is an tone that makes everyone feel included. who wrote her TC dissertation on the even bigger issue.” “We’re prioritizing and centralizing LGB experience in graduate school. In her course, which she describes as these issues now in a way that wasn’t “Because another question for LGB “a 101 introduction to transgender happening in the past,” says Brewster. students in almost any classroom experiences,” Turkowitz begins by clar- “Even just having faculty like me who discussion is, ‘Should I come out here, ifying what “transgender” actually are available to do mentoring work is a and if I do, what will happen?’ Some feel means (the term does not, for example, big step, because students are hungry a responsibility to teach about LGB refer to sexual orientation, but rather to have people they can pop in on and perspectives, and they’ll come out in to a sense that one’s gender identity talk to.” every scenario. But others will make does not conform to one’s sex assigned Davidella Floyd, a doctoral student that decision case by case, and some at birth). She brings in a range of guest who leads Queer TC and serves on the believe that being gay has nothing to do speakers, including transgender indi- Provost’s working group, agrees. with what goes on in the classroom.” viduals, lawyers and advocates; covers “It comes down to building the tent big If conflict and stress exist for LGB the mental health field’s view of trans- enough: feminist issues, women’s issues, students, it is even greater for those who gender people (in 2012, the American LGBTQ issues, issues of masculinity,” are transgender. Psychological Association ceased cat- says Floyd, “And what I love is that “TC is a relatively safe institution, but egorizing transgender identity as a there’s room in the agenda for the focus for transgender students everywhere, mental disorder); and deals with legal to shift, for it to grow and be transformed there is always a fear of possible and education concerns. based on the big issues on the horizon violence and retaliation,” says Turkowitz, The work of the Sexuality, Women, & that need to be addressed. That’s a who two years ago was invited to teach Gender Project is just beginning. Still, it great position to be in.” CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: COURTESY OF AURELIE ATHAN; COURTESYRIDDHI OF SANDIL; COURTESY OF MELANIE BREWSTER COURTESY OF THE FAMILY OF TYLER CLEMENTI

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 33 Illustration by Ben Wiseman SEEDING GLOBAL CHANGE

For more than a century, TC has been a leader in helping nations around the world transform their education systems. Now, through a renewed effort that draws on its expertise across all departments, the College is… PLANTING the SEEDS of GLOBAL CHANGE SEEDING GLOBAL CHANGE

What do you see as role, and having conferred your overall mission in with many of the directors of your new role? the centers, it’s crystal clear to me that every country in The history of Teachers which Columbia has a College is to be engaged presence wants to focus on globally and to learn from education, especially early the rest of the world. childhood education and the Under the leadership of development of more and my predecessor, Tom better capacities in higher Corcoran, the College education. There’s also a achieved sensational new growing interest in heights in helping other responding to the need for nations with teacher education among urban preparation and professional populations, particularly development, especially in those living in poverty. countries such as Jordan, That’s why TC can be such a where we’ve worked closely critical ally in the work of the with Columbia University’s Columbia Global Centers. So Global Centers to implement the question for me is: How the Queen Rania Teacher can we maximize the Academy. benefits of education My role and, I believe, my worldwide and what should mandate, is to extend and TC’s role be? build on that track record by catalyzing new efforts in How do we identify the health, psychology and nations that can John Allegrante leadership — and specifically benefit most from TC’s to help other countries that help? TC’s new Associate wish to build local capacity in these areas, so that their The relevant stakeholders Vice President for best talent doesn’t end up for us are politically stable, studying and working low- and middle-resource elsewhere. countries. We will not limit International Affairs our work to those countries, Beyond expanding to but those are the places John Allegrante, Professor of Health those additional where we have the greatest Education and former Deputy Provost, has domains, how will TC opportunity to bring added served as the College’s Fulbright Adviser and work differently value and make a lasting Fulbright Scholar Program Campus than before? impact. Representative for the last three years and is the past recipient of two Fulbright We need to be strategic and What are TC’s specific thoughtful not only about priorities for global scholarships. He is a globally elected board what TC faculty are doing engagement? member of the International Union for Health globally, but also about how Promotion and Education. He also has served TC as an institution can Our major priority should be as an international scholar for the Open improve education and to help other nations build Society Foundations. education-related work local capacity by providing around the world. I would them with the technical like to see TC be deeply assistance they need. To that engaged but with more end, I have a number of alignment with each of specific goals for this coming Columbia’s eight Global year, all aimed at stimulating Centers. Having traveled to more international work by several of the Global Centers our faculty. in my first months in this PHOTOGRAPH BY RYAN BRENIZER COURTESY OF XIADONG LIN; TC FILE PHOTO; COURTESY OF CHENG DAVIS

36 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY Perhaps most important is What aspects of the creation of a Global your own work are Helping China Educate Innovation Fund, modeled most relevant to on the Provost’s Investment your new role? Its Minorities Fund created by Provost James that has seeded so Over the past several years, much great work by TC I’ve collaborated quite closely faculty, both in New York with TC Research Professor City and nationwide. The Inga Dora Sigfusdottir and added twist is that the other scientists at the Global Innovation Fund will Icelandic Centre of Social provide additional Research and Analysis. Our resources to TC faculty main focus has been to members who are working develop a program of research with international partners that has sought to understand and the Columbia Global both risks and protective Centers. Our goal is to make factors in healthy child and TC faculty member Xiaodong Lin, four awards this year in adolescent development. The an authority on cognition, culture and order to catalyze some next step in our work has technology, has been named Director exciting new faculty work. been to broaden the of the Advisory Board of Research I have also created a new intellectual approach and take for China’s new National Research Faculty Steering Committee a life-course view by following Center for Ethnic Minority and for International Affairs, a cohort of young people over Multicultural Education. The Center which is being chaired by time in order to see whether is being hosted at Beijing Normal Professor Lesley Bartlett. there are markers in early life University in collaboration with the The committee is composed for the kinds of inflammatory Chinese Ministry of Education. of faculty representatives processes that occur later in Among other work, Lin is from each of our academic life and cause disease. There spearheading efforts to correlate departments, along with is growing evidence that the existing data on Chinese minority several at-large members. precursors to heart disease students’ academic performance The committee convened and Alzheimer’s disease begin with regional budget levels, teachers’ for its first meeting in late very early in life, resulting, at professional credentialing, parents’ autumn and is already least in part, from various educational and income levels and providing me and the nutritional and psychological other factors. The Center is also administration with superb deprivations. If we can probing why minority students lack ideas for how we can identify biological and other motivation to study STEM-related organize our work and markers for these processes, subjects (science, technology, assist faculty to do the we can learn more about how engineering and mathematics). inter­national work they seek best to intervene much earlier to do. to prevent disease.

PORTIA WILLIAMS, CHENG DAVIS, ON THE GROUND, Executive Director, Special Advisor International Affairs: for International SEEMINGLY “We cultivate relationships Advancement: “With EVERYWHERE and help implement the U.S. Department of collaborative initiatives Education and the education Over the past 125 years, Teachers that have a significant schools of Harvard, Penn College has worked worldwide — impact with our partners and at TC. In the and Columbia, we are researching teacher from Azerbaijan to Zambia. As two past year, our work has supported STEM education and instructional models education in Indonesia, special education in mathematics and science in seven longtime team members describe, in Oman, technology in Bulgarian nations in APEC, the premier Asia-Pacific TC’s Office of International Affairs, classrooms and building a Bachelor of economic forum. We continue building launched in 2008, has created a Education degree in Pakistan.” TC’s international teacher education broader institutional presence. and education leadership training for international participants.” PHOTOGRAPH BY RYAN BRENIZER COURTESY OF XIADONG LIN; TC FILE PHOTO; COURTESY OF CHENG DAVIS

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internationalization of U.S. universities, larger, more systemic initiatives are benefiting students and scholars in both countries. TC faculty members from diverse fields have long-standing involvement in Brazil, including research partnerships and policy projects with Brazilian institutions. De Oliveira, an expert on language education, is slated to co-edit a special issue of Brazil’s top applied linguistics journal and is building partnerships with three Brazilian public universities. Lesley Bartlett, Associate Professor of Education, who wrote her dissertation on literacy education in Rio de Janeiro and Brazil’s northeast, regularly attends top Brazilian education conferences. She sends her doctoral students to study topics like affirmative action in Salvador de Bahia (Brazil’s first colonial capital) and participatory budgeting in Pôrto Alegre, capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Ryan Baker, Associate Professor of Cognitive Studies, who has taught at the Faculdade Estácio de Alagoas in the northeastern city of Maceió, studies how students in different countries use educational software. In Maceió, several of Baker’s post-docs studying a school in a local favela (s h a n ty Brazil Rising town) have found that students there work with software differently than do U.S. students. They concluded that the TC BROADENS ITS assumptions underlying artificial-intelligence models do not necessarily hold from one society to the next. INVOLVEMENT WITH THE Henry Levin, William H. Kirkpatrick Professor of Economics WORLD’S FIFTH-LARGEST and Education, who was active in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state in the early 1990s, is now coordinating a five-country study of NATION By SIDDHARTHA MITTER the ways that different school-choice models affect student stratification. The study, funded by Columbia University’s As a high-school student in rural São Paulo state, Brazil, Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, includes Luciana de Oliveira was inspired by English teacher Denise Brazilian scholars and includes Rio de Janeiro among its Abreu e Lima. Today de Oliveira is an Associate Professor of research sites. TESOL and Applied Linguistics at TC. Her old mentor — now Brian Perkins, Director of TC’s Urban Education Leaders the head of English Without Borders, Brazil’s government- Program, has been a consultant since 2010 to the municipal funded program for university-level English language government of Rio de Janeiro, helping local authorities build education — has become a colleague. leadership capacity in the schools. Perkins and two recent TC As Brazil has developed into the world’s seventh-largest doctoral graduates advised Rio’s education department to set economy, its education sector has grown as well, making the up a leadership development academy for principals, which country a natural partner for U.S. education scholars like de is about to graduate its first annual class. Two years ago, Oliveira and policy experts. Brazil has more than 50 million Perkins brought a delegation of Brazilian educators to New primary and secondary school students and expects to have York City, where they visited The Laboratory School of 10 million university students by 2015. The federal education “We’ve made an investment. We are there.” budget is more than — Brian Perkins $35 billion with addi- tional state and municipal spending. The federal government Finance and Technology, a highly regarded Bronx middle has made education a national priority and has placed special school led by Ramon González, a TC doctoral candidate who emphasis on bolstering science and the teaching of English. is a graduate of the College’s Cahn Fellows Program for Until recently, U.S. education partnerships with Brazil have Distinguished Public School Principals. been largely the result of uniquely placed individual scholars like Now TC hopes to tap the potential of still larger projects with de Oliveira leveraging their existing connections. But today, Brazilian partners. One venue for growth is the new Columbia thanks to the growing public and philanthropic interest in Global Centers/Latin America in Rio de Janeiro, which is international education in Brazil and the accelerated identifying and organizing projects with local partners in TC FILE PHOTOS

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education. William Stroud, Assistant lead player is the São Paulo–based Director of the Consortium for Policy Lemann Foundation (Fundação Research in Education (CPRE) at TC, Lemann), which made what Columbia says that with the support of the Global Provost John H. Coatsworth called a Center, CPRE is currently discussing two “game-changer” gift to the University possible projects in Rio: a pilot to support earlier this year. The foundation’s elementary schools that are failing to commitment includes establishing the meet local standards for achievement Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies, and an institutional leadership program funding a professorship of Brazilian to help foster a culture of collaboration Studies and institutionalizing funding for in secondary schools. Brazilian master’s degree students at Meanwhile, the Rio Global Center Columbia’s graduate schools. The first has launched an initiative, supported by Lemann-funded student at TC, Tonia a grant from the Columbia President’s Casarin, graduates this spring, and three Global Innovation Fund, to develop a familiar with the terrain new students will arrive this fall. public management executive program Former Brazilian preschool teacher TC scholars involved in Brazil say the across multiple fields. Perkins is on the Mariana Souto-Manning, Associate opportunities for valuable work are team, along with colleagues from the Professor of Early Childhood abundant. De Oliveira, for instance, School of International and Public Education, is researching quality dreams of starting a program to remedy Affairs, Columbia Business School and teacher education in Brazil, Singapore a chronic problem in Brazil: the lack of the Mailman School of Public Health. and the United States. Her book, English language proficiency among The aim, Perkins says, is to build Freire, Teaching and Learning: Culture local teachers of English. “We could capabilities that translate across Circles Across Contexts (2010), develop a certificate in teaching English education, public health and public explores the great Brazilian educator’s as a foreign language that would take administration, and to form practical method to foster students’ awareness place online, with a summer residency of forces shaping their lives. expertise that can carry over to other at TC,” she says. Such a program would countries. “Something may come up in not only address a pressing Brazilian Brazil now that will come up in India five years from now,” need, but also benefit TC’s TESOL students, who could work Perkins says. He’s been impressed by the team at the Rio center directly with Brazilian participants. and with the type of engagement this model signals. “It “My own work, my teaching and my students’ research have demonstrates the University’s substantive commitment to all been enhanced by steady exchange between TC and doing work in Brazil,” he says. “We’ve made an investment. We Brazilian institutions,” Lesley Bartlett says. “I really hope we are there.” will have the opportunity to do more — to have more leave time Another promising avenue to bolster ties is growing and travel support, and to do more organized collaborative philanthropic interest in international education in Brazil. The research and teaching with faculty there.”

As head of a new faculty steering The advisory committee reflects that committee for the Office of International breadth. Current members are Madhabi Affairs, education anthropologist Lesley Chatterji (assessment); Catherine Crowley Bartlett leads an effort to take stock of (speech pathology); A. Lin Goodwin (teacher TC’s international efforts “to understand how prep); Alexander Karp (mathematics to build on them.” education); Henry Levin and Mun Tsang Bartlett, whose research spans Latin (economics); Xiaodong Lin (computing and America, the Caribbean, sub-Saharan technology); Dolores Perin (adult literacy); GROWING TC’S Africa and U.S. immigrant and multilingual James Purpura (TESOL); Mariana Souto- GLOBAL LEGACY communities, believes TC’s size and Manning (education); Gita Steiner-Khamsi A new international advisory diversity are great assets for international (education development); and Lena Verdeli committee reflects the broad work: “When a person or a group identifies (clinical psychology). an area they want to work on, we almost range of TC faculty invariably have qualified faculty and students.” TC FILE PHOTOS

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 39 UNCONVENTIONAL Beginning with this issue, TC Today reports on groundbreaking faculty work that’s transforming WISDOM diverse fields of inquiry and practice.

PLAYING THE STRONG HAND OW DO WE KNOW HOW TO PICK THINGS UP? Andy Gordon created a HIt’s not something most of us wonder about, but Andrew Gordon has spent much of his career pondering the question. therapy for children with His insights have enabled thousands of children with cerebral palsy to live more active lives, and his work could ultimately help cerebral palsy that draws patients who suffer from neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s, or who need a prosthetic hand. on their strengths. Now Gordon, Professor of Movement Sciences and Director of he’s showing how it works TC’s Center for Cerebral Palsy Research, has worked from the outside in. He began 25 years ago with observations of in the brain. By JOE LEVINE kids doing simple hand exercises, and his current efforts to map new or restored brain circuitry result from the therapies he has developed. Most of Gordon’s work has centered on children with hemi- plegia, a severe weakness in the limbs resulting in very low dexterity on the affected side of the body. When he was in graduate school in the late 1980s, such children weren’t expected to benefit much from physical rehabilitation, because it was believed they could not learn from experience — or “extract sensory information” — when trying to grip with an affected hand. “The general consensus was that this kind of impairment didn’t get better, but I just didn’t believe it,” Gordon says. “I had worked with these kids and seen their hand movement improve after just half an hour in the lab.” The key, Gordon found, was lots of practice. When kids just kept trying to grip or lift something, eventually they got the hang of it. GETTY IMAGES PHOTOGRAPH BY HUA-CHU YEN; TC FILE PHOTO

40 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY EXTENDING TC’S REACH Andrew Gordon’s work has been generously supported by Goldman Sachs & Co. and Mindy and Mark Dehnert, and by the Brain RecoveryProject , founded and directed by Brad and Monika Jones. Mark Dehnert is a Partner at Goldman Sachs who is responsible for the company’s Quantitative Equities Trading businesses in the Securities Division. The Dehnerts sit on the board of the Children’s Council at Columbia University Medical Center Children’s Hospital. EASY LIFT “The Dehnerts’ gift is helping us translate the work Brady Wolfe has we’re doing on upper extremities in children with benefited from mild cerebral palsy to include lower-extremity work work with TC’s in children who are more severely affected,” says Andrew Gordon. Gordon. “The support of the Brain Recovery Project is enabling us to expand the upper extremity treatment developed for children with cerebral palsy to include children who have undergone hemispherectomy surgery for epilepsy.”

Gordon became an early proponent of constraint-induced since demonstrated added benefit over constraint-induced movement therapy, which successfully employs restraint of a therapy by improving the coordination of both hands together. patient’s healthy arm to force the patient to use the weaker Variations of HABIT are now widely used in clinics and limb. Gordon adapted the treatment to be child-friendly, rehab centers. Parents line up each summer to send their chil- restraining the healthy limb in a comfortable cotton sling rather dren to the therapeutic day camp Gordon runs in Thorndike than the traditional rigid cast. Yet by 2004 he had become Hall. Recently he and student Claudio Ferre created a home disenchanted with the technique on several counts. teaching kit that can be used with children as young as two. He has expanded treatment to include children who have hemiplegia due GORDON’S LATEST WORK COULD to surgical treatment of epilepsy. POTENTIALLY HELP WHEELCHAIR-BOUND Perhaps most exciting of all, along PEOPLE TAKE THEIR FIRST STEPS. with researchers from Belgium and the Netherlands, he and two stu- dents, Bhavini Surana and Alexis His starting point was the simple but incontrovertible fact Sidiropoulos, are targeting lower-extremity rehabilitation in that “in real life, these children have the use of both their children with more severe (bilateral) forms of cerebral palsy. hands.” Gordon and his team were also steadily amassing The approach emphasizes increasing the intensity of motor evidence that the better hand had a critically important role learning-based rehabilitation training. Speaking at major con- to play. ferences, Gordon has delivered keynote addresses about this “We were finding that in kids with hemiplegia, the good hand work, which could potentially help wheelchair-bound people can inform the bad hand. The brain can transfer the sensory take their first steps. information extracted by the good hand to literally provide the But Gordon, who was recently named an Active Fellow in other hand with a template for performance.” the National Academy of Kinesiology, believes he is only begin- In other words, lifting something with the good hand first ning to tap into the real potential of his work. He has long makes it much easier to then lift it with the weaker hand. With understood that the successful rehab of kids with cerebral that as his guiding premise, Gordon and his students developed palsy provides evidence of neuroplasticity — the generation of HABIT (hand-arm bimanual intensive therapy), which has new activation patterns in the brain. Only with the advent of GETTY IMAGES PHOTOGRAPH BY HUA-CHU YEN; TC FILE PHOTO

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 41 UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM recent technologies, however, has he been able to show precisely where and how powerful new connections are being formed. Using a tool called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to study children with hemiplegia who have received HABIT, Gordon, along with Kathleen Friel, of Burke-Cornell Medi- cal Research Institute, TC student Cherie Kuo and postdoc Ana Smoren- burg have found a 50 percent expansion in the brain’s motor cortical connections to the impaired hand. To get that infor- mation, the researchers move a wand over the subject’s scalp that delivers mild magnetic impulses to the brain. When the impulses strike cells connected to the impaired hand, the hand reacts with an involuntarily muscle twitch. Now with funding from the National Science Foundation, Gordon, student Trevor Lee and fellow researcher Marco Santello, a biomedical engineer at Arizona State University, are pinpointing the precise sequence of cognitive mechanisms employed by the brains of healthy subjects to represent objects in space and direct movement toward those objects. Recently Gordon challenged a visitor THE LEARNING ANALYST: RYAN BAKER to his lab to lift a small object shaped like an upside-down “T” without How do learning environments Now Baker is focusing on MOOCs (mas- allowing it to tip to one side. Although help people learn? To find out, Ryan sive online open courses), introduced in it looked symmetrical, the object was Baker, Associate Professor of Cognitive 2012 by Harvard and other leading uni- made of metal on one side and lighter- Studies, is using advanced computer versities. Last fall his MOOC on weight plastic on the other. Though technologies to sift forewarned, the visitor needed two data on learners’ BAKER IS HELPING TO CREATE tries before he could keep the object behavior generated A NEW TC MASTER’S DEGREE level. by intelligent tutor- “Understanding how we integrate ‘what ing systems and PROGRAM THAT WILL FOCUS ON we know’ from prior manipulations with other online learning EDUCATIONAL DATA MINING. an object and ‘what we see’ is crucial,” environ­ments. Such Gordon says. “This is all the more data mining can reveal why a student educational data mining enrolled 44,000 important when our senses, and thus fails to subtract properly, pinpoint the students. Baker has mined data from the our ability to create sensory memories, killer homework problem that stumped course to address questions that preoc- is impaired.” the class and identify the best science cupy MOOC instructors everywhere: What Gordon is excited by the possibility that curriculum for a district. is the goal of MOOC education? What one day patients could be treated with In graduate school, Baker sought to draws so many potential students to a direct, targeted stimulation to the brain. learn when students went off task and MOOC? How effective are MOOC feed- It may sound like a reach, but for why. He developed software to analyze back systems? And how does MOOC Gordon, that has always been the name their clicks and keystrokes in online math instruction compare with in-classroom of the game. lessons. He is currently co-directing an learning? MOOC lectures are “mostly eight-year study to see how choices stu- pretty good,” Baker says, but instructors dents make using an intelligent tutoring need to assign better homework. system affect long-term outcomes, such Anyone up for grading 44,000 papers? as whether they go to college. — Barbara Finkelstein PHOTOGRAPH BY BRUCE GILBERT TC FILE PHOTOS

42 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM

Harsher Mothering in Tough Times

others are likelier to use harsh discipline in economically uncertain times, according to studies published last M Jeanne Brooks-Gunn year by TC’s Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and co-authors in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Child Abuse and Neglect. “Dandelions” are less susceptible to environmental variations, Analysis of data from the Fragile Families and Child Well- though obviously extreme variations are not good for anyone. being Study, which follows children born in large American TC Today: Should we excuse genetically predisposed moms cities from 1998–2000, found that with consumer confidence for spanking their children more during high stress? waning at the start of the recent recession, the proportion of Brooks-Gunn: The issue isn’t about blame. We’re all products U.S. mothers frequently spanking their children grew from of the exquisite interaction between nature and nurture, which approximately 2 percent to 8 percent. goes on from conception to death. By Fear of economic uncertainty seemed “CHANGING POLICIES looking simultaneously at biology on the to affect these mothers more than TO REDUCE MATERNAL one hand, and environment and experience did actual economic distress. on the other, we can more precisely explain TC Today spoke with Brooks- STRESS WOULD HELP variations in an individual’s life course. Gunn, Virginia and Leonard Marx ALL CHILDREN.” Changing policies to reduce maternal stress Professor of Child Development — Jeanne Brooks-Gunn would help all children. In fact, home and Education and Co-director of visiting and early education programs do TC’s National Center for Children just that. and Families. TC Today: During economically uncertain times, should we step up child-protection services and other supports? TC Today: What are the “orchid” and “dandelion” parents Brooks-Gunn: Our work associates economic downturns with mentioned in the studies? rises in harsh parenting. Other research has shown that children’s Brooks-Gunn: Some individuals seem more sensitive to head trauma and use of emergency medical services increase in environmental changes due to variation in allele patterns for recessions. So, yes, these findings highlight the need to provide each gene marker. We call them “orchids” because they do unemployment benefits, food stamps, health care and job training poorly in difficult environments but thrive in good ones. for parents. — Patricia Lamiell

HE’S A LATTER-DAY DE TOCQUEVILLE In November, Hervé Varenne, TC Profes- “profound effect” on anthropology and edu- sor of Anthropology and Education, was cation through books such as Americans honored with the George and Louise Together: Structured Diversity in a Midwest- Spindler Award for lifetime achievement ern Town (1977). from the Council on Anthropology and In comparing Varenne to “another famous Education. He received the award — French observer, Alexis de Tocqueville,” the named for the husband-wife team who Council’s award committee cited Varenne’s along with TC’s Margaret Mead did much “insights into American culture as expressed to establish the field — for exerting a through the actions of ordinary people.” PHOTOGRAPH BY BRUCE GILBERT TC FILE PHOTOS

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 43 STARTING WITH THIS ISSUE OF TC TODAY, WE INTRODUCE RECENT GRADUATES WHO ARE SHAPING THEIR FIELDS. FIRST UP ARE SOME YOUNG ALUMNI WORKING IN HIGHER EDUCATION. By SIDDHARTHA MITTER Illustrations by AGATA NOWICKA RECENT ALUMNI IN THE FIELD

government education projects. Education, received her doctorate in The team’s first report, which came International Educational Develop- out last year, found some staggering ment, with a concentration in finance discrepancies in spending on and planning. She wrote her disserta- different programs to increase high tion on the educational barriers that school completion. confront China’s migrant children, “In some cases, it cost $100,000 to particularly those from ethnic keep one student from dropping out,” minority populations. For that work, Cheng says. “In others it cost only $700.” she spent several months conducting The project’s interviews, focus Henan Cheng second phase, groups and school Quantifying the on early literacy visits in Kunming, Benefits of Social Justice programs, is POLICYMAKERS NEED TO the capital of now under way. KNOW WHAT THEY CAN Hunan Province, a As a designer of cars and trucks in The team is also AFFORD.” — Henan Cheng region in China’s Hubei Province in her native China, building a cost- southwest that Henan Cheng (Ed.D. ’10) learned effectiveness borders Vietnam, that cost-effective design is critical to assessment tool Laos and Myanmar. mass production. for funders and school districts. Its Currently Cheng is studying the Now as a postdoctoral fellow at engine will be a database of key education of children left behind Teachers College’s Center for Benefit- factors such as regionally adjusted in rural Sichuan by parents who Cost Studies of Education (CBCSE), salary levels and facilities costs. The have migrated to industrial areas. Cheng is bringing that same focus to tool also will have a Web interface. She is also holding discussions the education policy arena. “Evaluations report on whether a with colleagues in China about the Cheng is a member of a federally program was effective, but they seldom possibility of setting up a cost-benefit funded team led by CBCSE Co- mention its cost,” Cheng says. “But studies center in Beijing. “There are a Director Henry Levin, William H. policymakers need to know what they lot of Teachers College alumni there,” Kilpatrick Professor of Economics can afford.” she says. “Cost-benefit analysis is a and Education, that is assessing the Cheng, who also serves as Assistant very new area in China and something cost-effectiveness of decades’ worth of Director of TC’s Center on Chinese we can work on together.”

Bianca Baldridge she says, “yet they have a certain kind of knowledge Telling Tales of Out of School that’s invaluable.” In her new role, she’s been learning the local landscape, Many educators cite Dewey’s view that learning extends from branches of the Urban League and the Boys & Girls beyond school, but Bianca Baldridge (Ph.D. ’12) is putting Club to small groups that focus on youth of color and “tap the idea into action. Raised in a working-class section of Los into racial identity.” Angeles, Baldridge participated in a leadership development “I want my students to see the broader scope of after- program during high school that sparked her confidence and school programs, because you only hear about the academic ambition. She wrote her TC dissertation on how the staff of a side — the achievement-gap rhetoric, funding and testing. I community-based organization in Harlem worked with youth want students to understand the range of work that can and while dealing with funder priorities and other pressures. should be done.” Now Assistant Professor of Educational Policy Studies Baldridge believes that bringing community organizations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Baldridge teaches into partnership with schools and parents can create nurturing theories of youth, education and society and builds service- environments that keep youth from getting in trouble. learning courses to take students where community “Everybody checks up on you, as it once was in many organizations do their work. She is setting up a minor communities,” she says. For marginalized minorities, “the idea concentration in out-of-school and after-school education. of community education has always been part of the struggle “Youth workers are not well-reported in the literature,” for freedom.”

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and directs its Center for Learning for undocumented students than for and Professional Education, is others, and stigma is very present,” even conducting two projects focused on though education is typically the best undocumented students. antidote to that stigma. In one study of two states that offer Nienhusser also works with the educational benefits to undocumented Hartford public schools, where most students (Connecticut and New York) of the students are Latino or African and two that do not (Georgia and American, to trace how supports in and Wisconsin), Nienhusser explores the out of school shape students’ college personal beliefs and professional values choice and access. of administrators. At TC, Nienhusser, who is Latino, In his other project, Nienhusser earned his doctorate in Higher and is looking at the stigma H. Kenny Nienhusser that afflicts many Documenting the undocumented students THE COLLEGE CHOICE PROCESS IS Struggles of the Undocumented when they deal with those who shape their VERY DIFFERENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED Why are minority students under- educational path. The work STUDENTS.” — H. Kenny Nienhusser represented in U.S. higher education? draws on the theory of Barriers such as soaring tuition costs social stigma developed by and ongoing challenges to affirmative Erving Goffman, which holds that the Post-Secondary Education while action are obvious answers. But Kenny shame people feel when they perceive serving as Director of Academic Nienhusser (Ed.D. ’11) believes that themselves as failing to meet societal Administration for the Department of more subtle factors can be just as standards drives them to conceal Mathematics, Science & Technology. powerful, especially for students who shortcomings and needs. Today he embraces his faculty role. lack U.S. citizenship. “We tend to think of stigma in terms “I love teaching and I love my Nienhusser, who teaches in the of race, sexual orientation or HIV research,” he says. “I want to have an University of Hartford’s doctoral status,” says Nienhusser. “But the impact on my community, and that’s program in educational leadership college choice process is very different what I’m doing.”

have face-to-face teachers in a brick-and-mortar setting, but Julie Schell also significant online features,” Schell says. Building the Three OnRamps courses — in pre-calculus, computer On-Ramp to science and English language arts — are completing their College Success pilot year, serving about 1,380 students in 17 schools. A fourth, in statistics, pilots this year. Dual-credit college Schell has a longstanding interest in pedagogical courses for high-school innovation for college students. At TC, where she students are a growth field. earned her doctorate in Higher and Postsecondary But a proliferation of low- Education with Professor Anna Neumann, Schell says quality courses is resulting she “looked at how STEM professors at major research in more students entering universities who were working to improve their college unprepared to introductory teaching went about it.” She spent four handle the work. years at Harvard as a post-doc and research associate “In Texas, kids are coming into university with sometimes with Eric Mazur, a physicist-turned-education a full year of college credit,” says Julie Schell (Ed.D. ’09). “We innovator whose methods emphasize blended and would prefer that students take fewer dual-credit courses, interactive learning. but better ones.” Mazur introduced her to UT-Austin Vice Provost Schell, Director of OnRamps and Strategic Initiatives at Harrison Keller, the initiator of OnRamps, who The University of Texas at Austin, has a plan to make that recruited her last year. It was an easy sell. “OnRamps happen. OnRamps (onramps.org) is UT-Austin’s initiative to combines the best innovation out there in terms of develop dual-credit courses using the latest techniques, such pedagogy, delivery and policy,” Schell says. “We could as project-based learning, flipped classrooms and, at UT- change the world of higher education with Austin in particular, blended learning. OnRamps courses “all this project.”

46 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY RECENT ALUMNI IN THE FIELD

Eric Oberstein citing the gamut of related fields he Bringing Strategy to the Arts studied at TC, including accounting, publicity, and contract and copyright “Basketball is law. Running a tour for the king here,” says 18-member orchestra in Cuba, he also Eric Oberstein, came to understand the performers’ Associate point of view. “That experience threw Director me into the fire,” says Oberstein, who of Duke is part Cuban and was making his Performances first visit to that country. He ended (M.A. ’09), up producing a Grammy-nominated the university-based performing arts album with the orchestra. series. But Oberstein hopes Duke’s Oberstein, who plays percussion and Hakim Williams arts culture may yet rival the Blue saxophone and also holds a master’s Understanding the Causes of Violence Devils’ on-court appeal. degree in Arts in Education from This season Duke already has hosted Harvard, was drawn to the challenge of Violence is so commonplace in performances by the Kronos Quartet, building ties between a university, its Trinidad and Tobago, where Hakim Urban Bush Women, Zakir Hussain community and the arts world as well as Williams (Ed.D. ’12) grew up, that and others. But Oberstein, who earned the chance to return to an organization Williams took on the middle names his degree in Arts Administration and he first worked with while a Duke Mohandas, after his hero Mahatma served as Executive Director of the New undergraduate. Gandhi, and Amani, which in Swahili York-based Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, “It’s great to return to my alma means “peace.” He earned his doctorate understands the challenges he faces. mater to be a part of this,” Oberstein in international education development, “Folks go to a show, but they don’t says. “But I’m most excited about what focusing on peace education. know how it came to be,” he says, comes next.” Today, as Assistant Professor of Education and Africana Studies at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, Williams researches social sources of violence and possibilities for nonviolent Francesca Socolick had opportunities to go to Florence alternatives. Making 40,000 Learners Feel Special and Shanghai.” “I’m looking at direct violence — When she was a student in TC’s physical, verbal, emotional, psychological Poorly used technology gets in the Instructional Technology and Media — but also structural violence in the way of learning; just think of any class program, Socolick studied and built system,” Williams says. The latter, where you’ve had to endure watching apps to help museum visitors get more he believes, stems in part from the a video with horrible sound. But when out of viewing exhibitions. The scale continuation of colonial policies that the technology is right, says Francesca was vastly smaller, but the goal was directed resources to privileged schools. Socolick (M.A. ’11), “it helps everyone the same. “The overlap is technology “I hope to engage in a national and be present.” for learning: How do you leverage the Caribbean-wide conversation about As technologist and support lead online learning environment for the violence and educational equity.” for NYU Classes, an open-source physical environment?” In any setting, At Gettysburg, Williams teaches courses learning management system rolled she says, the real work involved in on human rights, globalization, the out by New York University in 2013, making technology serve learning is postcolonial condition and the Caribbean. Socolick strives to achieve “always about the people, never This year he will bring students to visit that level of immediacy the computers.” non-governmental organizations working for all NYU students, With the NYU platform, Socolick says in Trinidad and Tobago. faculty and staff, her top priority is “working with faculty Most of Williams’s students are including those in the to make sure they feel comfortable.” white and well-to-do, and typically university’s overseas Many were wary at first, but as word they sign up for his classes primarily programs. spread that the tool is customizable, to satisfy distribution requirements. “Two years out requests poured in for everything from Williams relishes the opportunity to go of school I never assessments for a lecture course of 400 beyond preaching to the choir. “I love thought that I’d students to a text editor that accepts the college, and I love to challenge my be managing an Arabic. “I find out what they want to students,” he says. “At the end, they application with 40,000 do,” she says. “It almost feels like a say they are so glad they had to take users,” Socolick says. “I’ve counseling service; it’s client-specific.” something like this.”

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 47 As the Campaign for Teachers College gets under way, CAMPAIGN TC Today reports on progress toward our funding goals and stories of the campaign’s powerful impact on TC’s UPDATE people, programs and campus.

Where the Future Comes First is off to a strong start, $39 Million of raising $153 million to date* $110 Million toward the total goal of $300 million. Launched at TC’s $83.2 Million 125th Anniversary Gala in of $100 Million November, the campaign builds on the College’s historic Legacy of Firsts by investing in our priority funding areas:

$16 Million of $60 Million

1 Scholarships & Fellowships Support students to achieve their dreams 2 Faculty & Programs Attract and retain world-class scholars and galvanize innovative $15.2 Million programs of $30 Million 3 Financial Flexibility Advance priority initiatives 4 Campus & Technology Build a 21st century campus

Campaign Raised Goal to date

*As of April 15, 2014 GOAL: $300 MILLION / TOTAL TO DATE: $153 MILLION COURTESY OF PEACE CORPS FELLOWS PROGRAM TC; AT PHOTOGRAPH BY HUA-CHU YEN WHERE THE FUTURE COMES Giving with Impact FIRST ON THE ROAD

The Campaign is engaging CAMPAIGN PRIORITY No 1 teachers. “New York City was willing to TC’s 90,000 alumni and friends SCHOLARSHIPS & FELLOWSHIPS give them teaching certificates,” Jaffe around the world with the College TC’s future begins with the leaders of says, “and TC had the courses, so we and each other. President Susan tomorrow: our students. Supporting stepped up with some scholarships.” Fuhrman and TC faculty and staff have scholarships and fellowships through been on the road this year spreading the campaign helps free our students New Solutions to the news about the campaign and from the burden of student loan debt so Early Math Learning building a powerful global network of they can make a positive difference in TC ambassadors. schools and communities in New York Helping young Stops on the campaign trail this year City and around the world. Following children learn math have so far included Florida, Seattle, is a look at how campaign giving has a is tough, but the Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seoul, real-world impact on students and the solution ­— inspiring Hong Kong, Kansas City, Minneapolis, lives they touch. them to love it —­ and Madison, Wisconsin — with more takes magic and solid destinations to come. From the Peace Azadeh Jamalian research that spurs Corps to NYC student achievement. EVERY GIFT Classrooms TC Cleveland H. Dodge MAKES A DIFFERENCE Foundation Fellow Azadeh It’s an idea so good Jamalian and her fellow researchers The Campaign offers a variety of ways scores of other in math education and early childhood to give at all levels to support our urban universities development are providing just that extraordinary students. Tiffany Williams replicated it: spark for kids in local public schools • Create an Endowed Scholarship with The Elliot and and beyond. “I felt passionate about a minimum of $50,000 gift. Roslyn Jaffe Peace Corps Fellows researching new solutions to issues in Program, which has enriched the teaching and learning, and the Fellowship • Give to an existing Endowed educations and lives of thousands of empowered me to do just that,” says Scholarship Fund. students in New York City’s high-need Jamalian, a Ph.D. student in TC’s • Support the TC Fund Scholars Program schools for more than 25 years. Cognitive Studies in Education program. by establishing a one-year scholarship As part of the campaign, the Jaffes Jamalian is a member of a team for a student with demonstrated need. have renewed their commitment to that’s using the MathemAntics the program that supports returned educational software developed by ENHANCE THE POWER OF Peace Corps volunteers, who receive Herbert Ginsburg, TC’s Jacob GIVING TO TC STUDENTS alternative certification as they teach H Schiff Foundations Professor of full-time in New York City schools and Psychology & Education, to make TC’s Board of Trustees will generously pursue TC master’s degrees. In turn, groundbreaking discoveries about match dollar-for-dollar any gift of the Fellows create meaningful learning how very young children understand $2,500 designated to financial aid. experiences for children in some of the mathematical concepts. Their research That means a gift of $2,500 becomes a City’s most disadvantaged schools and could help future generations learn named $5,000 TC Fund scholarship for communities. more effectively — ­and at younger ages the academic year. And you’ll meet your “The program inspired me to think ­— especially in underserved schools. scholar and hear about the work creatively about how to make content Bill Rueckert, TC board Co-Chair you’re supporting. relevant and better engage my students,” and Cleveland H. Dodge Foundation says Fellow Tiffany Williams. President, believes their work is To learn more about how to support The program has produced more central to TC’s mission. “Everything TC students, please contact: than 800 public school educators, says the College does, from our work on Scott Rubin Director Nicolas Stahelin. Its alumni educational equity to producing the [email protected] retention rate in public schools is best-prepared teachers, flows from our 212-678-3722 among the nation’s highest. research. That’s the unique advantage Elliot Jaffe says he and his wife we’ve had from the beginning.” Please visit tc.columbia.edu/future for created the program to harness the campaign updates and more stories about idealism and expertise of former Peace how giving to TC is changing the world — Corps members who wanted to become from one child to entire nations. COURTESY OF PEACE CORPS FELLOWS PROGRAM TC; AT PHOTOGRAPH BY HUA-CHU YEN

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 49 FUTURE LEADERS

In 11th grade, Washington conducted a study, later referenced by Hill and others, comparing two local public high schools. One, in the suburbs, boasted cutting-edge facilities and provided students with Apple laptops. At the other, an urban school, students couldn’t take textbooks home at night. Washington attended Spelman College, the nation’s oldest historically black college for women (tag line: “a choice to change the world”), and then earned a master’s degree in TESOL from American University School of Education, Teaching and Health. Then came her trials by fire in the public schools, where one girl responded to her persistent outreach by cursing and hurling objects at her. “She later told me she’d never had an educator that she sensed genuinely Her Choice to cared about her progress,” Washington recalls. “When she said she wanted to go to Yale and pursue a Ph.D., it made Change the World me want to do more.” At TC, Washington has taken Like her illustrious ancestor, Amanda Washington is trying courses in law and educational equity with Michael Rebell, Jay Heubert, to fix more than the classroom for poor students of color Jeffrey Henig and Carolyn Riehl. By JOE LEVINE “During the first week, Professor Rebell talked about many of the challenges I’d n summer 2009, while working for that these kids had internalized the encountered as a teacher, including ITeach for America in a low-income belief that they couldn’t be more than debilitating issues of race, poverty, public high school in Philadelphia, what some people have told them.” health care and school funding.” Amanda Washington was interrupted As a seven-year-old, Washington set Washington is proud to carry her by a student. “He said, ‘Ms. out with her father on foot to retrace great-great grandfather’s name, but Washington, it’s great what humbly regards the connection as “an you’re trying to do, but we WE MUST REPAIR OUR STUDENTS’ accident of birth” — a legacy to be all understand that we’re not lived up to rather than a pedigree to going anywhere because SELF ESTEEM, SELF-AWARENESS AND brag about. we’re black,’” recalls THEIR ABILITY TO CONCEPTUALIZE She quotes from his book Up From Washington, now a TC A LIMITLESS FUTURE.” Slavery: “‘It is important and right education policy student. that all privileges of the law be ours, For Washington — the but it is vastly more important that great-great granddaughter of Booker T. the 200-mile trek that Booker and his we be prepared for the exercise of Washington — the moment framed a family made after they were those privileges,’” adding “so today, as challenge in historical terms. “My emancipated as slaves. The latter-day educators and allies, we must repair great-great grandfather couldn’t attend Washingtons turned around after 20 our students’ self-esteem, self- school because he had to help support miles, but Amanda’s life’s journey was awareness and their ability to his family,” says Washington, whose just beginning. On her 13th birthday, conceptualize a limitless future.” mother and father are, respectively, a family friend Oliver Hill, a former lead pediatric neurologist and a doctor of counsel for Virginia plaintiffs in the internal medicine. “So he decided to landmark desegregation case Brown v. Watch an interview educate himself by any legitimate Board of Education, gave her an atlas with Washington at means. I think his message today would inscribed “To Amanda: You’re going to tc.edu/news/9413. be the same. So it was heartbreaking inspire people and change the world.” PHOTOGRAPH BY HUA-CHU YEN PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRUCE GILBERT

50 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY ALUMNI NEWS

At Academic Festival, a Chancellor Who Listens, Speaks “I’ve been to 30 schools so far and in every one I’ve found something to replicate and share,” Carmen Fariña, New York City’s new public schools chief, told a packed audience at Teachers College’s Academic Festival on April 12. “We have to stop keeping what we do well a secret — and give it away.” PHOTOGRAPH BY HUA-CHU YEN PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRUCE GILBERT

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 51 Academic Festival 2014

Delivering the Phyllis L. Kosoff Lecture on Education and Policy, Fariña reflected on the first 100 days of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration and set out the City’s education agenda. Her speech served as the keynote for Academic Festival, this year titled “Where the Future Comes First” after TC’s $300 million campaign. A former teacher, principal and superintendent in the city’s schools, Fariña credited TC for its “pivotal role” at key moments in her career, with faculty such as Lucy Calkins, Celia Oyler and Aaron Pallas helping to shape her ideas and professional decisions. Fariña also has served on the board of TC’s Cahn Fellows Program for Distinguished Principals. She presented a vision for a New York City school system that values the accumulated knowledge of teachers, staff and parents and looks for ways to develop and share best practices through collaboration. “All the answers are in the room,” she said, outlining an agenda based on four pillars: “Return dignity and respect to the workforce. Improve student achievement by aligning Common Core strategies with all that we do. Engage parents in every aspect of school life. Create new collaborative models,” including with universities and cultural institutions. Other highlights of Academic Festival included honors for five alumni: David W. Johnson (Ed.D. IN CASE YOU MISSED IT ’66), Professor Emeritus of Educational Psychology There wasn’t much downtime at the University of Minnesota; Deborah at TC’s Academic Festival 2014. Kenney (Ph.D. ’94), founder and Chief Executive From top: airborne children enjoy of Harlem Village Academies; Kate Parry (Ed.D. SKIP!; faculty member and lifetime ’86), Professor of Applied Linguistics at Hunter achievement award recipient College; James Gordon (Ed.D. ’85), Associate O. Roger Anderson (left); recipients of TC’s 2014 Distinguished Alumni Dean and Chair of the Division of Biokinesiology Awards (from left): Eric Shyman, and Physical Therapy at USC; and Eric Kate Parry, David Johnson, James Shyman (Ed.D. ’09) Assistant Professor of Special Gordon and Deborah Kenny; Education in the School of Education at Dowling doctoral student Michael Swart College, who received TC’s Early Career Award. discusses math apps keyed to O. Roger Anderson, Professor of Natural the children’s show “Cyberchase”; Sciences and Chair of the Math, Science and Deborah Kenny with faculty Technology Department, was honored for 50 member Lambros Comitas. years of teaching at TC. “Many remarkable people have passed through Teachers College during its 125 history,” John Allegrante, Professor of Health Education and Associate Vice President for International Affairs, said in his tribute to Anderson. “You stand among the very, very few of whom it can be truly said: ‘TC would not be TC without him.’”

Find more on Academic Festival 2014, including video, at tc.edu/news/9465. PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRUCE GILBERT

52 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY Class Notes

ARTS AND HUMANITIES Kevin Nesbitt (M.A. ’00) is CLINICAL AND Arlo Klinetob (M.A. ’67) is Director of Faculty Affairs COUNSELING Vice Chair of the Foothills Art and Art Education and Academic Integrity PSYCHOLOGY Chapter of the Adirondack The artwork of New York- Officer at John Jay College. Mountain Club and based Lynne Margaret Clinical Psychology Chairman, Broadalbin Town Brown (M.A. ’01) focuses on Teaching of Francis J. O’Brien Jr. (Ph.D. Board of Appeals. cultural identity and Social Studies ’80) has transitioned to contemporary global society. Andrea Delorey (Smith) engineering math while still Patricia L. Supplee (Ed.D. (M.A. ’95) is an elementary working on extinct ’87) was selected for a Language, Literacy, school assistant principal in Amerindian languages of Fulbright Specialists Program and Social Studies Fort Collins, CO, and board southern New England. at the National Defense Phyllis Gimbel Schnitman member of No Barriers USA. University in Phnom Penh, (M.A. ’69) co-authored Psychological Cambodia. She assessed and Healthy Schools: The Hidden Jena R. Epstein (Rakoff) Counseling developed English as a Component to Teaching and (M.A. ’04) and husband Eric Retired school and Second Language curricula Learning (Rowman & have a new son, Jonah David. rehabilitation counselor Iris and materials for Cambodian Littlefield). Nelson-Schwartz (M.E. military personnel in the UN Cynthia John (M.A. ’61) has ’80) works part time in the Peacekeeping Forces. Following the Sandy Hook retired as Associate Professor Department of Ed-Division of tragedy, Dominick of Education from Neuman Special Education at PS 186 Elementary and Tarquinio (M.A. ’78) University. in the Bronx. Childhood Education invented a security door Lisa Richtmann (M.A. ’95) latch teachers can lock from TESOL Psychology in teaches at The Children’s inside the classroom by “Synesthesia in Literature,” a Education Own School in Winchester, pressing a button. chapter by Patricia Duffy Gavin Ryan Shafron (M.A. MA, New England’s oldest (M.A. ’82), appears in the ’12) teaches psychology at Montessori School. Music and Music recently published Oxford Cañada College in Redwood Education Handbook of Synesthesia. City, CA. He has published in Mala Hoffman’s (M.A. ’89) Alex Marrero (M.A. ’10), The Journal of Clinical poetry collection A Year of Executive Director, Southern Theater Education Psychology: In Session, the APA Wednesdays was published by Hudson Valley Youth Educator Susan Hefler journal Psychology of Popular Finishing Line Press. Symphony, is now also (M.A. ’71) is a Jungian- Media Culture and in TC’s Affiliate Facilitator for Orange oriented psychotherapist and own Graduate Student Journal Giftedness County Community College. a registered drama therapist. of Psychology. The Wisconsin Association for Talented and Gifted has Teaching of English designated Ronald L. Margaret Barrow (Ed.D. BIOBEHAVIORAL CURRICULUM AND Rubenzer (Ed.D. ’84, M.A. ’10) co-created the SCIENCES TEACHING ’83, M.Phil. ’80) a Pioneer in Transitions and Transactions organized advocacy for Conferences at Borough of Applied Physiology Curriculum and gifted children. Manhattan Community Michael La Fountaine Teaching College. TC’s Sheridan Blau (Ed.D. ’08, M.E. ’05, M.A. Marian L. Martinello (Ed.D. keynoted the first conference ’03) received the 2013 New ’70), President of the University EDUCATIONAL POLICY in 2012, and TC students Investigator Award from the of Texas-San Antonio Retired AND SOCIAL ANALYSIS who presented published in American College of Sports Faculty Association, is Teaching Literature in Medicine. He researches exploring the University’s Sociology and Community College Classrooms: traumatic neurological history for UTSA’s 50th Education Traversing Practices (McGraw- injuries’ impact on the anniversary in 2019. She has Judy Pryor-Ramirez Hill). cardiovascular system’s presented to the Texas State (M.A.’05), a lecturer in endocrine function. Historical Association. sociology, teaches the course PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRUCE GILBERT

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 53 CLASS NOTES

Youth Mentoring in the City Special Education Ilana Horwitz (Straznik) leadership for the Central at The New School. Kay Alicyn Ferrell (M.A. (M.A. ’08) began a doctoral Islip American Parks Civic ’75) is the author of Reach Out program in education at the Association and for and Teach (2011). She Stanford Graduate School of community Broadway HEALTH AND BEHAVIOR received the NY: American Education in fall 2013. productions. Anderson is a STUDIES Foundation for the Blind, certified Phi Delta Kappa Migel Medal in 2013. Kathryn Moore (Doane) International emeritus Nursing Education (M.A. ’13) discussed Youth as member. Laura Caramanica (M.E. Peacebuilders in Fiji at the ’81) was inducted as a Fellow HUMAN DEVELOPMENT Asia-Pacific Peace Research Les Barbanell (Ed.D. ’76) of the American Academy of Association’s Bangkok published Breaking the Nursing in October 2013. Developmental conference in November. Addiction to Please: Goodbye Psychology Guilt, which focuses on Cleo Graham (M.A. ’80) is Abdul M. Isira (M.A. ’99) “caretaker personality disorder.” the first African American credits his TC psychology MATH, SCIENCE AND ordained by the Rhode Island degree with propelling his TECHNOLOGY Edward A. Mainzer (Ed.D. Conference of the United career in corrections. ’90) is on the Board of Church of Christ. Communication Directors of the American At 89, Edith S. Marks and Education School Counselor Association. Guidance (M.A. ’70) has published a Michael A. O’Toole (M.E. Jane Katz (Ed.D. ’78, M.E. novel, Like Everybody Else, ’97) has completed 10 years Higher and ’72) won 13 Masters about a blind man whose life (three as board President) at Postsecondary swimming medals at the 19th is upended after an Philadelphia social services Education Maccabiah Games in Israel. operation gives him sight in agency Face to Face Jim W. Morrison (M.A. ’05) Katz, 70, is among the Games’ one eye. Marks coordinates Germantown. is Senior Advisor to the longest-tenured competitors. one of the world’s largest Provost at the University of Glaucoma Support and Secondary School Notre Dame. Health Education Education groups. Science Education Srdjan Stakic (Ed.D. ’05, George Papayannis (M.A. Higher Education M.A. ’01) premiered his first ’03), a physics, biology, and Anne Pruitt-Logan (Smith) feature film, Yellow Face, INTERNATIONAL AND chemistry teacher at Boston’s (Ed.D. ’64, M.A. ’50) was based on David Henry TRANSCULTURAL Fenway High School, was named among the Top 25 Hwang’s Pulitzer Prize- STUDIES recently awarded a two-year Women in Higher Education nominated play. The first Wipro Science Education in Diverse Issues in Higher feature film funded by International Fellowship. Education in March 2013. YouTube, Yellow Face won the Educational audience award at the L.A. Development Organizational Asian Pacific Film Festival. Eva Armour (Gordon) ORGANIZATION AND Psychology (M.A. ’07) is Director of LEADERSHIP Gretchen Ladd Barrientos Nurse Executive Role Global Strategy and (M.A. ’00) and her husband Robin S. Goodrich (Ed.D. Programs for Seeds of Peace, are expecting a little girl in ’12) is Associate Dean of the which works with new Adult Education July. Their son Xander is 19 College of Health generations of leaders from Guided Intensive months old. Professions and the College nations in conflict in the Study of Arts and Sciences at Middle East and South Asia. Richanne C. Mankey Following a private- and Davenport University in (Ed.D. ’07) is Interim Vice public-sector career, Grand Rapids, MI. Laurie Cigal (O’Connor) President for Institutional Gabrielle Vetter-Taaffe (M.A. ’03) is Executive Advancement at Daemen (M.A. ’84) is doing consulting. Nutrition Education Assistant to the President of College and remains Vice Paulette Sinclair-Weir Latin American Operations at President for Student Affairs. Student Personnel (M.S. ’79) remains passionate Brink’s Inc., where she uses Administration about lessons learned from her Spanish and Project Educational Joanne C. Conlon (Ed.D. TC’s Joan Gussow about coordination skills. Administration ’85) is Associate Professor protecting the environment Johnnie E. Anderson with tenure at Westchester and buying and eating locally (Ed.D. ’86, M.E. ’84, M.A. University of Pennsylvania. grown food. ’66) provided administrative

54 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY ALUMNI ASSOCIATION PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE and highlighted the leadership of Dear TC Colleagues alumni, faculty and students in and Friends, education, health and psychology (see page 51). Speakers included During my first year as President of the TC Alumni New York City Department of Association, we worked with the TC Alumni Council Education Chancellor and former to host numerous 125th anniversary celebrations and TC Cahn Fellow board member reconnect with alumni worldwide. Carmen Fariña, faculty Lisa Miller With the launch of TC’s $300 million campaign and Ryan Baker and alumni Eric Where the Future Comes First, the Alumni Council is Nadelstern and James Gordon. using social media and other tools to engage as many Visit tc.edu/festival for videos, PHOTOGRAPH BY BRUCE GILBERT of our 90,000 alumni as possible. Beyond raising photos and stories and join us at money and support for campaign priorities, the goal is TC for next year’s Festival. to reconnect you with TC and one another. I encourage My goal this year is to connect current students you to stay informed by following Alumni Relations with alumni and involve them in our activities. So as on social media or joining the email list to learn more we embark on a new era at Teachers College, come about your classmates, programs and events. Get back to Morningside Heights to network, to reunite connected at tc.edu/alumni/connect. with faculty or to take part in one of our celebrations TC’s sixth annual Academic Festival in April brought and thought-provoking discussions. I look forward to nearly 1,000 alumni, students and friends to campus hearing from and seeing you!

Sincerely, Stay Connected! Meet the full Alumni Council at: TC.edu/alumni/councilmember Help us achieve our goal of Communicating with More Alumni than Ever Patrick P. McGuire, (Ed.D. ’94) Before. Updating your information, share your news with us and connect President to the TC Network at: TC.edu/alumni/connect Teachers College Alumni Association

WWW.tc.EDUSPRING/ today + SUMMER SPRING 2013[2014] 55 55 IN MEMORIAM

“He Chaired Committees with the Approach of a Brilliant Litigator” TC mourns Trustee James Benkard

ames Benkard, a TC Trustee since 1980 and the longest-serv- E. John Rosenwald Jr., who served with Benkard both on TC’s Jing member on the College’s current board, passed away in board and that of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), said early April at age 77. that Benkard — who also was a Trustee of Vassar College “Jim Benkard has been an invaluable presence on our board —“chaired committees and gave reports with the approach of a and in the life of Teachers College for the last 34 years, and a brilliant litigator.” source of wise counsel to me personally,” said TC President “Everyone always paid attention to what he said,” Rosenwald Susan Fuhrman. “His intelligence, wit, independence and ded- said. “TC is a better place because he walked its halls.” ication will be greatly missed by the entire TC community.” Benkard attended St. Bernard’s School in Manhattan, St. As a senior partner of the New York City law firm of Davis, Mark’s School in Massachusetts and Harvard University, Polk & Wardwell, Benkard represented large corporations and where he wrote on sports and academic issues for The Harvard securities firms and was a member of the American College of Crimson. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps and earned his Trial Lawyers. He also served as a Director of Prisoners’ Legal law degree at Columbia Law School. Last year, the New York Services and did extensive pro bono work on behalf of inmates City Bar Association’s Capital Punishment Committee honored on death row. Benkard’s successful representation of Joseph him with its Norman Redlich Capital Defense Pro Bono Award. James in 1975 was a key factor in New York State’s ultimate As chair of EDF’s Litigation Review Committee, Benkard elimination of the death penalty. briefly found himself in the national spotlight during the pres- At TC, Benkard served on the board’s Business & Finance idency of George H. W. Bush, when, because of opposition by Committee, Executive Committee and Compensation Com- the conservative Washington Legal Foundation, he was passed mittee, which he most recently chaired, and he played a key over for the job of assistant attorney general in charge of the role in each of TC’s two previous major fundraising campaigns. Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources He also participated in the presidential searches at TC that led Division. As reported in a New York Times column by Anthony to the appointments of Arthur Levine and Susan Fuhrman. Lewis, Benkard, a Bush supporter who considered himself a “When Jim was invited to become a TC Trustee, he initially moderate Republican, subsequently predicted that if the thought he was joining Columbia University’s board,” recalled administration continued to bow to pressures from the far right, Levine, now President of the Woodrow Wilson National Fel- it would alienate other Republican moderates — a forecast that lowship Foundation. “He came to his first meeting and realized proved correct in the 1992 election. he’d made a gross error, but fell in love with the place and Benkard is survived by his wife of 49 years, Margaret (Peggy) stayed for 34 years.” Walker Spofford Benkard; their three children, Andrew Benkard later recruited current Co-Chair Jack Hyland to Benkard, James Benkard and Margaret Benkard Chaves; and TC’s board, promising Hyland, “You won’t regret it.” six grandchildren, Penelope, Dexter and Oscar Benkard, Evelyn “That was in 1988, 26 years ago, and he was right, I haven’t Benkard Gaumnitz, and Margaret and Nathaniel Chaves. He regretted it, not one minute,” Hyland said. is also survived by his sister, Joan Derby Benkard Jackson. — Joe Levine COURTESY OF ANDREW BENKARD TC FILE PHOTOS; TILLMAN: PHOTO BY ELI AARON, COURTESY CENTER, RESEARCH NATIONAL COLLECTIONS SPECIAL RECORDS, EDUCATIONASSOCIATION THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

56 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY IN MEMORIAM

Classification and Rating was a leading authority on Educational Software Act Administration of the traffic safety. Malfetti served of 1984 and founded TC’s Motion Picture Association as Associate Director of the Computing in Education of America. American Assembly, created Program, passed away in by Columbia President late October. Taylor also Dwight D. Eisenhower to co-founded and later Thomas W. Evans focus leading experts on chaired TC’s Department of major societal issues. Communication, Computing Thomas W. Evans, who & Technology in Education. chaired TC’s Board of An accomplished bass- Trustees from 1991 to baritone, Taylor sang all 1998, passed away last Frances Ianni over the world and at TC June at age 82. Evans convocations during the served as an adviser to Francis Ianni, Professor 1980s and 1990s. He U.S. Presidents Ronald Emeritus and former was also an artist who Reagan and George H. W. Director of the Horace Mann Frank Moretti documented his time at Bush and assisted Richard Lincoln Institute at TC, TC with sketches that Nixon in his 1968 and passed away in December. Frank Moretti (Ph.D. included renderings of past 1972 campaigns. He was a He is best known for A ’83), TC Professor of presidents Lawrence Cremin partner in the New York firm Family Business, a study of Communications and and Arthur Levine. of Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, organized crime published a leading theorist and Alexander & Ferdon and in 1972. While teaching practitioner of digital later Chief of Counsel to at University College technology in education, Andrews Kurth. in Addis Ababa, Ianni passed away last July at age studied Ethiopia’s remote 69. Moretti co-founded and nomadic cultures. During served as Executive Director the Kennedy and Johnson of the Columbia Center for administrations, he served New Media Teaching and Rodney Tillman as Associate Commissioner Learning, which partners for Research in the U.S. with all 18 schools within Rodney Tillman (M.A. ’49, Office of Education. Columbia and more than Ed.D. ’55) passed away Richard Heffner 3,000 faculty members. in July 2013 at the age In the early 1990s, as of 91. Tillman served as Richard Heffner, a Associate Headmaster at a consultant for the U.S. recipient of TC’s Medal for the Dalton School, Moretti Department of Education, Distinguished Service and won national attention for the World Bank, the Joint husband of psychotherapist his work with TC faculty Council for Economic Elaine Heffner (Ed.D. ’86), member Robbie McClintock Education, and the passed away in December James Malfetti to wire Dalton and network Ministries of Education for at age 88. Heffner’s it with New York City cultural Greece, Korea and Iran. pioneering talk show, “The James Malfetti Sr., institutions. He also served as Dean Open Mind,” spanned Professor Emeritus of of Education at George nearly six decades on Health and Behavior Washington University. public television. He helped Studies, passed away Tillman was a member of establish public television in November at age TC’s Grace Dodge Society. in New York City, taught 92. Co-author of the for many years at Rutgers groundbreaking 1964 University and authored text Reproduction, several books, including the Sex and Preparation Robert Taylor best-selling A Documentary for Marriage, Malfetti History of the United States. developed Columbia‘s first Robert Taylor (Ed.D. ’70), Heffner also served for 20 undergraduate course in a digital pioneer who years as Chairman of the health and hygiene. He also helped shape the National COURTESY OF ANDREW BENKARD TC FILE PHOTOS; TILLMAN: PHOTO BY ELI AARON, COURTESY CENTER, RESEARCH NATIONAL COLLECTIONS SPECIAL RECORDS, EDUCATIONASSOCIATION THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 57 PHOTOGRAPH BY HEATHER VAN UXEM LEWIS ALUMNI FOCUS DOING WHAT MOTHERS DO Phyllis L. Kossoff sought help for a daughter with cystic fibrosis, and afflicted families nationwide gained a powerful advocate

Phyllis L. Kossoff collects aphorisms, including one “I like programs, not plaques,” says Kossoff, who in 2004 translated from the 17th century Japanese: “Now that my created TC’s Phyllis and Burton Kossoff Scholarship Fund, house has burned down, I can see the moon.” which so far has supported 10 students in the College’s When their newborn daughter Stephanie failed to thrive, Department of Human Development. (The current Kossoff Kossoff and her husband Burton learned she was afflicted with Scholar, Kalina Gjicali, is a master’s student in Cognitive cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that then killed most children Studies & Education.) by age five. Stephanie died at 19 as a freshman at Barnard. For Picking program topics at Baruch and Barnard was easy — Kossoff, the loss can still seem fresh. Yet along the way, her life business leadership for her husband’s lecture and early began again. childhood for her daughter’s scholarship (“children loved her”) “Better to light a candle than to rail against the darkness,” she — but it was a meeting with faculty member Sharon Lynn says, paraphrasing the Chinese proverb. Best known to the TC Kagan that decided her on a policy focus for TC’s lecture. community for the policy lectures that bear her name, she is a (Kossoff also maintains a pioneering lecture at Hunter’s petite, graceful woman who speaks softly and smiles often. Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute.) “When Stephanie was born, so little was known about CF that “She explained the need to have evidence-based, data- there wasn’t a chapter in the textbooks. driven research translated into policy So we did what parents do. I did what that’s mainstreamed into the mothers do.” education system,” Kossoff says. “I Kossoff struggled to give Stephanie thought, that’s where I want to be, and her younger brother Mitchell because policy comes nearest to a something approaching a normal life tangible result.” even as she tried to protect Stephanie TC’s Phyllis L. Kossoff Lecture on from children with colds and Education and Policy has included a respiratory infections. “It was hard on debate between the two presidential my son, and he was a supportive and nominees’ education advisers in fall loving brother,” she says of Mitchell, 2012; a major policy address by U.S. now a practicing New York City Secretary of Education Arne Duncan; attorney. a round table featuring New York Working with other parents and State Regents Chancellor Merryl supported by Burton, Kossoff also Tisch (Ed.D. ’05); and policy addresses spurred the creation of the national by two New York City public school Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Over the chancellors — Dennis Walcott in 2011 past 50 years, thanks to antibiotics, gene-protein therapy and and former TC Cahn Fellow board member Carmen Fariña other advances enabled by the foundation, the median lifespan this spring. for those with CF has risen above 40. “I’m honored that the Kossoff Lecture is credited with Kossoff, whose father died when she was two, credits her helping to establish TC as the nation’s premier address for the mother, the first female sales rep in the paper goods industry, national conversation on education,” she says. for teaching her that “‘No’ is just the beginning of a Kossoff sometimes becomes upset when people compliment conversation.” She herself graduated from Hunter College at her for her cystic fibrosis advocacy. 19, earned her TC master’s degree in health and physical “If there’s a legacy, it’s my daughter’s legacy,” she says. education and taught “manners and morals” to East Harlem Still, she was touched when a former student graduating junior high school girls before focusing on CF. Ten years ago, from college wrote to thank her. she turned her attention to higher education, endowing “She said she knew how much I cared and how much her scholarships and lectures at Barnard in her daughter’s name; success would mean to me.” Kossoff smiles. “A note like that is at Baruch College in her husband’s name (he was an alumnus pretty special.” — Joe Levine and trustee); and at Hunter and TC in her own. PHOTOGRAPH BY HEATHER VAN UXEM LEWIS

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 59 ALUMNI FOCUS

TOP-DRAWER ENTREPRENEUR Lida Orzeck was a psychology researcher who started a values-driven lingerie business. Go figure

Conducting a study of hospitals’ emergency But it wasn’t until the launch in 1986 of a $15, one-size-fits- medical response times requires fluency with metrics and most lace thong known simply as 4811 that Hanky Panky mathematical calculations, the ability to speak and write began to achieve truly cult-like status. The company’s well, and a knack for gaining people’s trust. popularity further skyrocketed in 2004 when the Journal So does selling lingerie to the stars, which may at least partly published a front-page feature that dished on celebrity clientele explain how Lida Orzeck (Ph.D. ’72) went and quoted the owners of La Petite from doing research for the Health and Coquette and Trousseau. Hospitals Corporation to a career as “I’m really Hanky Panky’s panty line has been CEO of Hanky Panky, a trend-setting firm only the most visible part of its story. that numbers Cindy Crawford, Julianne humbled... most Orzeck and Epstein (the company’s Moore and Rihanna among its customers entrepreneurs fail President and head designer) channel a and has been hailed in The Wall Street percentage of earnings into supporting Journal for having “revolutionized the within five years.” nearly 60 nonprofits, including the thong market.” International Organization for Women & “It’s amazing — I’m really humbled by it,” says Orzeck of Development and the Southern Poverty Law Center (Orzeck the success of the business, which has turned a profit in each sits on the boards of both), Make A Wish Foundation, of its 37 years in operation. “Most entrepreneurs fail within Disabled American Veterans, Planned Parenthood, the five years.” American Red Cross and Barnard College, where Orzeck Hanky Panky was born in 1977, when Orzeck received a earned her undergraduate degree. handmade lingerie set crafted out of handkerchiefs as a birthday Orzeck says that to be successful as an entrepreneur, “you gift from her friend Gale Epstein. When the two recognized the need energy and the willingness to put in time and to call on design’s marketable promise, Orzeck — with the subsequent people constantly for advice and counsel.” encouragement of one of her TC mentors, psychologist Morton And perhaps the ability to see the shape of things to come. Deutsch — decided to dive into the company’s creation. With —Kelsey Rogalewicz virtually no business background, she showcased Epstein’s unique designs at major department stores in New York City and California and found takers at nearly every turn. COURTESY OF LIDA ORZECK COURTESY OF THE OBERLIN COLLEGE ARCHIVES

60 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY ALUMNI FOCUS

THE ART OF OVERCOMING Music inspired pianist and music educator Frances Walker-Slocum to persevere in the face of racial prejudice

“The arts build moral strength and all kinds music theory, which gave her an edge when it came to securing of inner strength,” says Frances Walker-Slocum (M.A. ’52, teaching opportunities. Ph.D. ’72). The turning point in Walker-Slocum’s career came in 1975, The 90-year-old Walker-Slocum, a pioneering black when she was commissioned to assemble a program of piano classical pianist and music educator, has needed plenty of both. music written by black American composers and perform it Injured in a fire at age five, Walker-Slocum at the Kennedy Center in Washington, learned to play the piano only because her D.C. and Carnegie Hall. The latter mother forced her to take lessons, but her “The arts build performance for the Bicentennial, which brother George, who in 1996 became the first moral strength she calls the most memorable of her black classical composer to win a Pulitzer career, moved audience members to tears Prize for Music, always encouraged her. and all kinds of and a standing ovation and received a Walker-Slocum attended Oberlin College glowing review in The New York Times. Conservatory of Music, which despite being inner strength.” Oberlin subsequently invited her to the first conservatory in the country to admit return as the college’s first tenured black black students still reflected many of the prejudices of the day. female professor. She taught until her retirement in 1991. She met her future husband Chet Slocum, who was white, While Walker-Slocum has stopped playing the piano while teaching at Tougaloo College in Mississippi — a state because of her health, she has added “author” to her list of that prohibited interracial marriage and posed such a hostile many accomplishments, publishing the memoir A Miraculous environment that the couple ultimately fled to New York City. Journey in 2006. In a world she finds increasingly The marriage also so displeased Walker-Slocum’s father, a materialistic, the book is her message to younger generations physician, that he refused to support her continuing education that a life premised on cherishing the arts is not only still at TC. She completed her degree only after faculty member possible but essential. Raymond Burrows, chair of the scholarship committee, As a member of TC’s Grace Dodge Society, Walker-Slocum awarded her the $500 Adelaide M. Ayers Fellowship. expresses that same message by helping students in need. “It was at Teachers College, at Columbia, where I found “Giving is what my life is about now,” she says. “I’m giving myself, where I gained self-esteem,” she says. She particularly back what was given to me.” —Kelsey Rogalewicz credits Professor Charles Walton for helping her to master COURTESY OF LIDA ORZECK COURTESY OF THE OBERLIN COLLEGE ARCHIVES

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 61 ALUMNI FOCUS

HELPING A SCHOOL FIND ITS VOICE Former English teacher Rashid Davis has won Presidential plaudits for his guidance of a unique technology school

As a former English teacher, Rashid Ferrod Davis see it himself,” he says. “It really makes us feel like we’re on the (M.A.’95) seemed an unlikely choice to serve as founding right track.” Principal of Brooklyn’s Pathways in Technology Early College Davis believes his TC background in English education High School (P-TECH). But since its launch in 2011, the school helped put him on the right track, too. Under the guidance of — the fruit of a partnership between IBM, the New York City “powerhouse” professors such as Ruth Vinz, he framed his Department of Education, and the City University of New York mission as helping underserved youth find their own voices. As — has proved so successful that President Obama mentioned a participant in TC’s Cahn Fellows Program for Distinguished it in his 2013 State of the Union address and then paid a visit Principals in 2012, he also explored how athletic skills could to the school in October. help young men of color learn to see themselves as scholars “This country should be doing everything in our power to and prepare for academic roles. give more kids the chance to go to schools Earlier this year, Davis received the just like this one,” the President said, Lewis Hine Distinguished Service Award calling the school “a ticket into the middle President Obama’s from the National Child Labor class,” and suggesting that every member Committee in recognition of his work. of Congress make a pilgrimage to see visit “makes us feel While he is proud of the honor, Davis is P-TECH and its students in action. prouder still that P-TECH provides an Prospective P-TECH students are not we’re on the right out-of-the box model for other districts screened and are admitted solely for track.” around the country. In 2012, five their interest in information technology P-TECH-styled schools opened in (grades are not a consideration). The Chicago in collaboration with companies school, in turn, supports student motivation by tying learning such as Microsoft, Motorola and Verizon. This year, two more to clear career outcomes. Following a six-year course of schools modeled on P-TECH opened in New York City, with studies developed in consultation with IBM, P-TECH three more expected to open next year. Governor Andrew students earn their high school diploma and an associate’s Cuomo has committed funding for more than 16 P-TECHs degree in applied science, computer information systems or across New York state. electromechanical engineering from New York City College Of course, creating these schools requires a significant of Technology (City Tech). investment by both the public and private sectors. Addressing For Davis, the President’s visit was a powerful validation of that concern, Davis quotes from remarks the President made the school’s unique approach. during his visit to P-TECH: “We were just thrilled that our students have garnered “If you think education is expensive, wait until you see how enough attention for the President to come here firsthand and much ignorance costs.” —Kelsey Rogalewicz COURTESY OF RASHID DAVIS SALETT STANLEY OF COURTESY

62 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY ALUMNI FOCUS

WHAT HE COULD DO FOR HIS COUNTRY A member of the Kennedy inner circle, Stan Salett recalls fighting for civil rights, school reform and an end to poverty

“Movements aren’t built on leadership but on the latter’s unsuccessful 1980 presidential bid. Under Kennedy movement itself — of individuals taking that first step from in-law Sargent Shriver, he also helped create the Head Start inertia to action, as if passing through a doorway,” says Stanley and Upward Bound programs, which offer students in need Salett (M.A. ’63). access to early childhood and higher education respectively. As detailed in his memoir, The Edge of Politics: Stories from “I could get on [with the Kennedys] because I spoke the Civil Rights Movement, the War on Poverty and the Challenges Boston — meaning you never let the other person finish their of School Reform (2011), Salett, who played key roles in all of sentence,” says Salett, a Massachusetts native who last year those areas, has never left any doubt about which side of the received the Claiborne Pell Award from the New England door he stands on. Educational Opportunity Association. Salett was a graduate student at Harvard when he took a Salett particularly admired RFK’s ability to connect with course guest-taught by TC education outsiders and bring them into the circle historian and future President of discussion, and for his commitment to Lawrence Cremin. Captivated by “While I was working for his personal ideals. Cremin’s personal magnetism and vision Bobby Kennedy, I was at “While I was working for Bobby of education as a tool for social change, Kennedy, I was at times getting arrested Salett transferred to TC, where he times getting arrested on the weekends in civil rights represented TC on the Columbia on the weekends in civil demonstrations and then coming into University Student Council and rights demonstrations work with my name in the newspaper,” he successfully fought to end recalls. “He was aware of my split life and discriminatory off-campus housing. He and then coming into never discouraged me from my work with also met his future wife Elizabeth Pathy work with my name in CORE” (the Congress of Racial Equality). Salett (M.A.’62), who later founded the the newspaper.” Not that Salett would likely have National Multicultural Institute. refrained from doing it. After TC, Salett headed to “The civil rights movement is often Washington, where he subsequently served all three described as having been led by a relatively small group of Kennedy brothers. During JFK’s administration, Salett exceptional individuals,” he says. “But in my view, the worked in the U.S. Department of Labor, as a member of movement itself was the outcome of a great many ordinary the Committee on Youth Employment, and on the individuals taking extraordinary action.” President’s Committee on Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Stan Salett is proud to consider himself one of them. Crimes, chaired by Attorney General Robert Kennedy. He —Kelsey Rogalewicz later served as aide to Senator Ted Kennedy during the COURTESY OF RASHID DAVIS SALETT STANLEY OF COURTESY

SPRING + SUMMER [2014] 63 STUDENT VOICES

the A new column filled with the voices of LAST WORD TC students

when it comes to social justice. TC admitted aspiring black teachers from the South when southern states would not. The College’s Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology has been in the forefront of investigating the psychological correlates of prejudice and discrimination. Today I can say, unequivocally, that TC has lived up to that legacy. In addition to providing me with a rigorous psychology curriculum, the College also has provided the atmosphere for me to develop as an immigrant advocate and student leader. So, yes, Teachers College, like all institutions, can improve its game. I thank my fellow students for sharing their experiences and raising their concerns. But just the fact that we are openly discussing these issues in a A Place to Be the First magazine that goes out to thousands of alumni and friends tells me that I By BOBBY COX chose an institution whose values align with my own — and that I am making am especially pleased to inaugurate life. As a gender non-conforming boy the right choice in staying on as a Ph.D. IThe Last Word in an issue of TC who preferred to play with Barbie candidate in Counseling Psychology. Today that focuses on the ways that instead of G.I. Joe, I was misunderstood At Teachers College, one truly can the College is trying to change the and subjected to many slurs. I knew #bethefirst. world — including through new efforts instinctively that this was wrong, and to mainstream issues of gender and in high school, when I began working sexuality into courses in different with undocumented immigrants from departments. These kinds of efforts Mexico, I immediately noticed parallels drew me to TC in the first place, and between my own experience (and that as I complete two years of study here, of other gay-identified friends) and the like the students quoted in the story discrimination that these immigrant on gender and sexuality, I find myself families faced. All of us were victims reflecting upon my prior expectations of injustice that targeted immutable and how they match up with the reality aspects of human identity, and all of my TC experience. of us suffered depression, anxiety This spring, TC Student Senate I grew up in Port Fourchon, a small and fear. It was these observations President and first-generation college fishing town on the coast of Louisiana that inspired me to become the first graduate Bobby Cox received his where no one viewed education as member of my family to go to college master’s degree in Counseling and the key to success. My father was and to think about doing research Clinical Psychology. a fisherman with an eighth-grade that might help prevent the negative education and my mother was a mental health outcomes that result from homemaker with a high school diploma. discrimination. I didn’t even learn what college was I chose Teachers College as the place until I was in high school, but I did to do that work because TC is a place learn about injustice very early in my where “firsts” happen — particularly . COURTESY OF BOBBY COX 64 TC.EDU/ TCTODAY years of helping TC students in need.

Grace Dodge was described by a New York City newspaper as having “the hundred-year look.” That is, she looked ahead a century and made her plans accordingly. No truer words were written as today, one hundred years later, the scholarship that Grace Dodge established is still going strong.

TC founder, Grace Dodge passed away in 1914. Her bequest Ask Yourself: gift to Teachers College was its first and was designated as an What Will My Legacy Be? endowed fund offering unrestricted scholarship assistance. Take your own hundred-year look into the next century. • Leave a gift to TC in your Will • Designate TC as a beneficiary of your IRA or life insurance • Create a life-income plan — Charitable Gift Annuity

Any one of these options is easy to do and can provide substantial tax benefits for you now and for your heirs in the future. For help in planning your gift to TC just contact the Office of Planned Giving: 212-678-3037 or [email protected] Non-Profit Org US Postage PAID Teachers College

525 West 120th Street | Box 306 | New York, NY 10027 | tc.edu

THE STREET THAT SPANS THE WORLD Heather Kim (M.A. ’11) and Stella Hyun-Soo Kwon (M.A. ’09) in Seoul, where alumni recently welcomed TC President Susan Fuhrman.

PHOTOGRAPH BY DYLAN GOLDBY