TC SPRING/SUMMER 2016 Today

THE MAGAZINE of TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

USING THE ARTS TO EMPOWER AT-RISK KIDS: ANDREA KERZNER (M.A.’87)

CELEBRATING TC’S MINORITY POSTDOCTORAL PROGRAM

A GIFT BRINGS DANCE EDUCATION BACK TO TC

The Art of the Possible Applying technology to creativity — and vice versa { spring + summer 2016} Table of Contents

Features

A Portrait of the Artist in Launching Careers and 10 the Digital Age 22 Widening the Discourse A new TC program grapples with the nature TC’s Minority Postdoctoral Program of creativity in the 21st century, attempting to encourages scholars who don’t check their find meaning amid technical innovation identities at the door and enhance artistic traditions developed throughout human history 30 Art = Power . Technology Center Through the arts, Andrea Kerzner From its Games Research Lab to its (M.A. ’87) is bringing hope to youth Gottesman Libraries, the College is a hub in South Africa, Uganda and the for digital innovation in education South Bronx

Photographs: Deborah Feingold departments TC 3 PRESIDENT’S LETTER Celebrating TC’s creativity and diversity Today

The magazine of Teachers College is 5 NEWS @TC produced by the Office of Development and External Affairs at Teachers On page Honors at AERA, New York’s Education College, Columbia University. Commissioner speaks at TC, celebrating Suzanne M. Murphy the Cowin Financial Literacy Program vice president, development & external affairs (ed.m. ’99, m.a. ’96) 34 UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM James L. Gardner associate vice president, 10DIGITAL DETRITUS Paradigm-changing work on spatial external affairs TC’s new program thinking, evaluating colleges, navigating Sara Clough in Creative Technologies information overload, youth gun violence, senior director, strategic marries the old and communications new. New tools such as math identity, organizational change Arduinos, maKey-maKeys and the new education philanthropy TC TODAY STAFF and invent-ablers can Joe Levine be used to animate old editor but interesting junk 40 EARLY RISERS like that pictured here, Heather Donohue Younger alumni in psychology business operations & marketing from old-time cameras initiatives manager, external affairs to outdated robots to 64 FUTURE LEADERS contributors boom-boxes and TV Paul Acquaro, Linda Colquhoun, parts. The goal is for The Last Word How teaching led Rebecca Donaldson, Harriet students to embrace an TC Student Senate President Chelsey Jackson, Patricia Lamiell, Mindy Liss, Nikki Marenbach, expanded notion of Saunders to study education policy materials, make things Urania Mylonas, Scott Rubin, move, light up and Class Acts Arab-Israeli tennis star and Kat Stephens-Mothudi, Sally Sweeney, Matthew Vincent, make noise, and say, peace-builder Fahoum Fahoum Hua-Chu Yen “I’m not intimidated.” Nina Ovryn art director alumni news TC Today Spring/Summer 2016 Volume 40, Number 2, 52 INBOX Copyright 2016 by Teachers College, Reflectionsfrom TC’s 2016 Columbia University Distinguished Alumni Award winners Articles may be reprinted with the permission of the Office of External Affairs. Please send NEWS, PROFILES & NOTES alumni class notes, letters to 53 the editor, address changes and News Parenting advice; eating by other correspondence to:

reheating; celebrating TC and China TC Today Campaign Update: ProfilesOlivia Hooker (M.A. ’47), Nick 525 W. 120th St., Box 306 New York, NY 10027 46 Once More, With Feeling Sousanis (Ed.D. ’14), Tomoko Takahashi 212-678-3412 Our Campaign donors fund their (Ed.D. ’84), Brenda LaGrange Johnson [email protected] www.tc.edu/tctoday passions, including student (M.A. ’65) scholarships and a new dance education doctoral program 56 CLASS NOTES ON THE COVER TC SPRING/SUMMER 2016 On Board Today THE MAGAZINE of IN MEMORIAM TEACHERS COLLEGE, 62 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 51 The Matchmaker: Leslie USING THE ARTS TO EMPOWER Antoinette Gentile, Robert L. Crain, AT-RISK KIDS: ANDREA KERZNER Nelson has a gift for identify- (M.A.’87) CELEBRATING TC’S MINORITY POSTDOCTORAL Susan G. Gordon, Bill Campbell (M.A. PROGRAM

A GIFT BRINGS ing needs and finding the DANCE EDUCATION ’64), Mattiwilda Dobbs (M.A. ’48) BACK TO TC people to address them The Art of the Possible Applying technology to creativity — and vice versa

Cover_v3.indd 1 5/27/16 2:49 PM Digital Illustration: Jim Lucas; Photograph: iStock by Getty Images Photograph: Nikki Marenbach

Smart Planning

Dorothy del Bueno makes plans that work. So do we.

Dr. del Bueno (Ed.D., R.N.) created the Performance Based Development System used by over 400 health care centers in 48 states. She also has created two Charitable Gift Annuities (CGA) with Teachers College.

A noted art collector, Dr. del Bueno, a past TC Alumni Council member and Distinguished Alumni Award recipient, attended TC through a Nursing Traineeship Scholarship: “The doctoral program under Dr. Mary Alice White’s expert guidance began my rewarding career in the business of competency evaluation.”

“Creating a gift annuity with a reputable non-profit is one of the smartest ways to prepare for retirement,” she says. “It provides a fixed income for life, with substantial tax benefits. There are no outside legal fees, and most important, it provides for the future of an institution close to one’s heart.”

Based on the ACGA rates of 2015, a gift annuity created at age 70 provides a 5.1% return. A deferred annuity created at age 45, which begins paying out at age 65, earns 8.9% income annually for life—most Alumna Dorothy del Bueno, Ed.D., R.N.

of which is tax-free. Teachers College Distinguished Alumni Award Recipient Geer. Tara artist by “bilateral” College, Art Gallery Teachers Macy at | Special thanks to © JD CLOSSER PHOTOGRAPH

For more information, please contact us today: Louis Lo Ré Director of Planned Giving [email protected] 212-678-3037 Teachers College, Columbia University | EIN: 13-1624202 { president’s letter}

Hope Springs Eternal

cademic Festival at Teachers reflective — to learn openly and flexibly — you can College is a joyous celebration ultimately do almost anything.” of the richly diverse creativity Speaking of people who can do almost anything, of our faculty, staff, students another powerful moment at Academic Festival was and alumni. This year’s Festival, provided — in absentia — by Dr. Olivia Hooker (M.A. themed “Full STEAM Ahead,” ’47), a 101-year-old survivor of the 1921 Tulsa race was an exuberant call to add the riots who became the first African-American woman arts to the nationwide educational focus on science, to serve in active duty in the Coast Guard and then a Atechnology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). pioneering advocate for the disabled. Feel- The Festival’s keynote, composer Theodore ing a bit under the weather, Dr. Hooker, Wiprud, Vice President for Education at the New who was to receive the Teachers College York Philharmonic, described his efforts to make the Distinguished Alumni Award, sent a video- Philharmonic’s famed Young People’s Concert series taped message expressing her gratitude more interactive for our multimedia era. for being honored and her delight in “The core of our mission is to bring great perfor- “what Teachers College is like today — how mances to all kinds of people,” Dr. Wiprud said. “Our diverse, how many people’s aims have techniques are rooted in Leonard Bernstein’s legacy, been raised.” but also in Maxine Greene’s and John Dewey’s.” We at TC take great delight and It was a gracious nod to TC’s history and to our pride in our unique Minority Postdoctoral continuing belief in what Dewey called “the audacity Fellowship program, also featured in this We are harnessing of imagination.” We approach arts education, which issue. Former Fellows have become univer- technology“ in all subject began at the College, as a means of nurturing imagin- sity deans, chaired professors, global non- areas to revitalize the ideas ative audacity in all fields. Indeed, in this issue’s cover profit leaders and business entrepreneurs. of Dewey, Greene and story, on the College’s new Creative Technologies pro- They have celebrated their unique iden- others for our times. gram, Professor Judith Burton argues that the arts tities while making societal inequities their must be taught with other subjects “in such a way that collective focus. As Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Direc- ” they extend and inform each other, making thinking tor of New York City’s Schomburg Center for Research more multidimensional, layered, flexible and complex.” in Black Culture, suggested at the Fellowship’s 20th The Creative Technologies program builds on anniversary celebration in March, such “creative dis- artistic traditions forged by TC alumni ranging from sent” benefits us all. Georgia O’Keeffe to Raphael Montañez Ortiz. The Our world faces difficult and unprecedented program also reflects how we are harnessing tech- challenges. Creativity and diversity are among our nology in all subject areas to revitalize the ideas of most valuable assets in meeting these challenges. Dewey, Greene and others for our times. This issue That Teachers College thrives by celebrating and also provides a rundown of some striking examples advancing these ideals every day makes me proud of those efforts. and optimistic about our future. As Dr. Burton says, “It’s not just that we are learning techniques and technologies. If you know how to play and explore and experiment and be SUSAN FUHRMAN (PH.D. ’77)

4 If you weren’t among this year’s more than 1,200 attendees at Academic Festival, visit http://bit.ly/1TNnKo5 to get caught up.

Photograph: Lofi Studios tc today spring + summer 2016 3 INTRODUCING Monthly Giving at Teachers College

Monthly giving to the TC Fund is a convenient, a ordable and e cient way to make a lasting di erence at Teachers College. Give a monthly gi of any amount charged to your major credit card. Visit tc.edu/GivetoTC and select the “Recurring Gi ” option, or call us at 212-678-3411.

How your monthly donation adds up

$15 per month = $180 per year

$50 per month = $600 per year

$83.34 per month = $1,000 per year and membership in THE JOHN DEWEY CIRCLE TC’s annual leadership giving society Give monthly Ensure that TC’s vital work continues every day!

TCToday-MonthlyGiving-Ad_final.indd 1 6/3/16 12:30 PM News @TC Short takes on big news at the College

Bringing The College To You

As evidenced at Academic Festival in April, there’s lots going on at TC. In this issue: Honors at AERA, New York’s Education Commissioner delivers TC’s Kossoff Lecture, celebrating the Cowin Financial Literacy Program.

Photograph: Alejandra Merheb tc today spring + summer 2016 5 { news @ TC }

DIVERSITY MAP Celebrating The Cowin Financial Literacy Program

’s cowin financial lit- eracy Program celebrated its national expansion in TC late April. Now in 46 states, the Cowin Program presented its inau- gural Joyce Berger Cowin Champions A new Race, Ethnicity Award for Financial Literacy Advocacy, and Inter-Cultural Education and Leadership (named Understanding Curriculum for the Project’s benefactor) to former Map details Teachers New York Giants football great Justin College’s more than Tuck and his wife, Lauran, founders of Tuck’s R.U.S.H. for Literacy. The festivities included a panel discussion featuring former Fortune editor Carol Loomis, Time columnist Dan Kadlec, Teaching the Teachers of Teachers Black Enterprise columnist Stacey regularly-offered60 courses Tisdale and TC faculty memberAnand on these themes. ith a new doctoral specialization in TC is “the epicenter of Marri (Cowin Program developer), Teacher Education, TC’s Department new curricula on these moderated by personal finance author of Curriculum & Teaching is redefining timely and important issues,” Beth Kobliner. http://bit.ly/1TyTqvq the preparation of teacher educators — says Amy Stuart Wells, those who teach teachers and conduct Professor of Sociology Wrelated research — and building a more thoughtful & Education, who — and coherent program of preparation to elevate backed by a TC Provost’s Investment Fund grant — the status of teacher educators and their research. led TC students in “One thing that has been missing in the conver- creating the map. “We sation about preparing teachers is the notion of undertook this project to a quality teacher educator,” saysA. Lin Goodwin, connect the dots of Evenden Professor of Education and Vice Dean. this amazing interdisci- “People already have this wrong-headed idea that, plinary curriculum.” ‘well, teaching can be done by anyone’ — so why http://bit.ly/23ohXc9 shouldn’t any teacher be able to do teacher edu- cation? But being good at something doesn’t neces- sarily make one good at translating that skill for oth- ers or unlocking it for a novice.”

PSYCHOLOGY TAKES CENTER STAGE

Art TK n April conference, “The Promise of Psychology @ TC,” showcased the full breadth of the College’s work in psychology. Faculty members Peter Coleman, Xiaodong Lin and George Bonanno keynoted, and breakout sessions featuring A TC faculty addressed research linking science and practice, social justice/advocacy, local relevance/global reach, and learning and cognition. http://bit.ly/1W6Xyqk

6 spring + summer TC.EDU/TCTODAY Photograph: Bruce Gilbert; Illustrations: Above, Jasu Hu; Below left, iStock by Getty Images { news @ TC }

HONORS & DISTINCTIONS

Ernest Morrell, TC’s Macy Professor of Education, deliv- ered the inaugural Henry M. Levin African Diaspora SIG Lecture at the Comparative & Inter- national Education Society annual meeting in March. Levin is TC’s William Heard Kilpatrick Professor of Economics & Education.

Visual Journeys Through Wordless Narratives: An In- ternational Inquiry with Immigrant Children and The Arrival, co- authored by Carmen Martínez-Roldán, As- UNDERGROUND MOVEMENT sociate Professor of Bilingual/ In May, in Zankel Hall’s basement, Faizal Badat (Clinical Psychology), Max Bicultural Education, was Levi Frieder (Art & Art Education) and fellow students, faculty and staff created awarded the Edward B. Fry a mural of fantastic faces and inscriptions such as umuntu ngumuntu Book Award by the Literacy ngabantu (“a person is a person through another person”) and gentileza gera Research Association. gentileza (“kindness begets kindness”). “We wanted to represent student diversity,” said Badat. View Frieder’s work at artolution.org Philanthropy & Education, a new peer-reviewed journal to be edited by Noah D. Drezner, Associate Students Honor Four Black Female Faculty Professor of Higher & Postsecondary Educa- our black, female Teachers College professors who have recently received pro- tion, will be published by Teachers College and Indiana motions were honored at TC’s annual Black Student Network Gala: Michelle University Press. The journal Knight-Manuel, Professor of Education in the Department of Curriculum & Teach- will highlight the increasing ing and Special Adviser to TC’s Provost (far left); Felicia Mensah, Professor of role played by education Science & Education, and Erica Walker, Professor of Mathematics & Education, philanthropy around the world. Fboth in the Department of Math, Science & Technology (second and fourth from left); PSYCHOLOGY TAKES CENTER STAGE and , Associate Professor of English Education in the Department Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz Sonali Rajan (Ed.D. ’10), of Arts & Humanities (third Assistant Professor of from left). n Knight-Manuel, Health Education, was Mensah and Walker were awarded TC’s Strage promoted to full profes- Junior Faculty Prize for sor, and Sealey-Ruiz was her groundbreaking research tenured with promotion to on the behavioral associations associate professor. of gun violence by youth.

Photographs: Above, Courtesy of Max Levi Frieder; Below, Abigail Lopez; Illustrations: Danny Schwartz tc today spring + summer 2016 7 { news @ TC }

A Big Year at AERA National Databases Special Interest Group. Honors for TC folk at every career stage Christopher Emdin, Associate Professor of Science Education; the AERA Early Career Award.

Celia Genishi, Professor of Education Emerita; the Dr. John J. Gumperz Memorial Award for Distin- guished Lifetime Scholarship.

Jeffrey Henig, Professor of Political Science & Education; the Politics of Education Association Stephen K. Bailey Award.

Doctoral student Esther Ohito; the Distinguished Graduate Student Paper Award from the Critical Issues in Curriculum and Cultural Studies Special Interest Group.

Stacey Robbins (Ed.D. ’15); the SIG Workplace Learning Dissertation of the Year Award.

Judith Scott-Clayton, Associate Professor of Econom- ics & Education; the Division L Early Career Award.

Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Associate Professor of English Education; the Division K Mid-Career Award.

Doctoral student Mara Simon; the Lawrence F. he american educational research Locke Graduate Student Award for Outstanding Association’s 2016 award recipients includ- Twelve, count ’em, Paper, from the Research on Learning and Instruc- ed the following Teachers College faculty, tion in Physical Education Special Interest Group. Tfaculty emeriti, alumni and students: Elizabeth Tipton, Assistant Professor of Applied Alex Bowers, Associate Professor of Applied 12 Statistics; the Early Career Award for Division D, members of Statistics; the Outstanding Reviewer Award from the extended TC com- Category–Quantitative Research Methodology. Education Administration Quarterly. munity were honored at AERA 2016. Amy Stuart Wells, Professor of Sociology & Edu- Jared Boyce (Ph.D. ’15); the Outstanding Dis- cation; the AERA Presidential Citation for exem- sertation Award from the Advanced Studies of plary research.

NY’S COMMISSIONER: MANY WAYS TO EVALUATE ACHIEVEMENT

t’s really important that we put local control back in place and allow school districts to work with their educators” to bring students to high standards, said New York State Commissioner of Edu- cation MaryEllen Elia. In delivering TC’s 2016 Phyllis L. Kossoff Lecture on Education Policy this “I past February, Elia called herself “a strong proponent of…multiple ways to determine how well a kid or a teacher or a group of students or a school or a district is doing.” http://bit.ly/1Tx4F8D

8 spring + summer TC.EDU/TCTODAY Illustration: Bill Butcher; Photograph: J.D. Closser { news @ TC }

IN BRIEF

n TC launched a new Bilingual Latina/o Mental Health concen- tration, New York’s only program offering culturally appropriate training in delivering mental health services in Spanish to Latinas/os. Faculty and field supervisors are bilingual. Loud Reports: Headline-Makers from TC n Associate Professor of Edu- New findings on student motivation, cross-sector collaboration to improve cation & Public Policy Luis Huerta urban schools and community college transfer rates testified in Congress thatprivate school vouchers and tax credits do not improve student out- comes. n High-school students school systems, state and Executive Director of may improve science local governments, busi- TC’s Campaign for Educa- n Based on proposals made by grades by learning about nesses, community organi- tional Equity (CEE); and a blue ribbon committee including the personal struggles and zations and nonprofits im- Jessica Wolff, CEE’s Policy Associate Professor of English failed experiments of great prove educational outcomes Director. Education Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, scientists such as Albert are attracting atten- the New York Board of Regents Einstein and Marie Curie, tion nationwide, ac- n Only 14 percent of unanimously recommended $50 according to a new study cording to Collec- students starting in million in spending to coordin- led by Xiaodong Lin, Pro- tive Impact and the community colleges ate a statewide version of Pres- fessor of Cognitive Studies New Generation of transfer to four- ident Obama’s My Brother’s in Education. The study, Cross-Sector Col- year schools and Keeper program to assist young supported by a $2.5 million labrations for Edu- earn a bachelor’s men of color as they travel the grant from the National cation: A Nationwide Scan, degree within six years of road through school to adulthood. Science Foundation, found recently completed by TC entry, finds a new report by that students who learned researchers and commis- TC’s Community College n Shanghai-based Classba.com about scientists’ intellec- sioned by The Wallace Research Center (CCRC), awarded Associate Professor tual or personal struggles Foundation. The TC team the Aspen Institute College of Cognitive Studies Ryan Baker significantly that authored the report Excellence Program and a $110,000 grant to establish a improved includes Jeffrey Henig, Pro- the National Student Clear- new collaborative research their grades, fessor of Political Science inghouse Research Center. lab with TC. with low- & Eduction; Carolyn Riehl, Even in states with the best achieving Associate Profes- track records, only n A research study of the opt- students sor of Sociology & about one in five out-of-testing movement, led benefitting Education Policy; students transfer and by Oren Pizmony-Levy, Assistant the most. The study was David Houston, graduate within six Professor in International & Com- co-authored by TC students a Ph.D. student in years of enrolling. parative Education, and Assistant Janet N. Ahn, Jondou the Department of Davis Jenkins, Senior Adjunct Professor Nancy Green Chen, Fu-Fen Anny Fang Education Policy Research Associate Saraisky (Ph.D. ’15), hopes to and Myra Luna-Lucero. & Social Analysis; Michael at CCRC, worked on the answer key questions about the Rebell, Professor of Law & report with CCRC Research growing movement and the moti- n Collaborations in which Educational Practice, and Associate John Fink. vations of those who support it.

Illustration: Luci Gutiérrez; Photographs: Erick Raphael, Deborah Feingold, TC Archives tc today spring + summer 2016 9 -CENTURY LEARNING -CENTURY ST

21 A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST A new TC program grapples with the IN TH E HERE’S THE THING nature of creativity in the 21st century DIGITAL AGE BY ELLEN LIVINGSTON n PHOTOGRAPHS BY DEBORAH FEINGOLD

STARTED SEVEN

YEARS AGO WITH A PRACTICAL PROBLEM. THE TEACHERS

COLLEGE PHOTOGRAPHY LAB HAD SPRUNG A LEAK. NEVER

MIND WHAT AN OLD-STYLE DARK ROOM WAS DOING UP ON THE

LIGHT-FLOODED ROOF OF GRACE DODGE HALL. THE WATER DAMAGE

WAS SIGNIFICANT, AND THE OLD LAB WOULD HAVE TO GO.

10 spring + summer tc.edu/tctoday it Found Sound

MUSIC MAKER Art & Art Education doctoral student Max Levi Frieder in TC’s Thingspace, building one of his “Foundstruments” — a music-producing creation made from

HERE’S THE THING found objects. The Thingspace features vinyl cutters, 3-D printers, laser cutters and other tools. { portrait of the artist}

HERE SOME MIGHT HAVE SEEN ONLY HEADACHES, JUDITH BURTON, PROFESSOR OF ART & ART EDUCATION, SAW OPPORTUNITY.

TOGETHER WITH A DOCTORAL STUDENT WHO HAS SINCE GRADUATED,

SEAN JUSTICE (ED.D. ’15), AND FUNDED BY THE MYERS TRUST, BURTON SET WABOUT CREATING THE MYERS MEDIA ART STUDIO, A CUTTING-EDGE NEW FACILITY IN THORNDIKE HALL LOCATED IN — WHERE ELSE? THE BASEMENT.

But this being TC — home over the years to artists projects. She asked a new faculty member, Richard Jochum, ranging from Georgia O’Keeffe to Raphael Montañez Ortiz to begin thinking about how to apply the same sensibilities to and educators from Arthur Wesley Dow to Maxine Greene — working in the digital medium. Jochum, now Associate Pro- hardware was only a part of the conversation. fessor, obtained a TC Provost’s Investment Grant to develop “TC has historically played a key role at turning points a creative technologies curriculum. He also launched a series in art education,” says Burton, who also directs the College’s of annual symposia and mounted a digitally focused exhibi- Macy Gallery. “So we felt a responsibility to grapple with tion in Macy Gallery titled “New Gifts.” the rapidly expanding influence of technology in every aspect But there was one more piece of the puzzle. As Burton of the arts.” contemplated the growing presence of computers in art At that time, Burton taught a course called “Processes and art education, she found herself thinking about the im- and Structures in Visual Education,” which emphasized portance of physical stuff and making things with one’s developing students’ creativity and imagination rather than hands. In 2014, while giving the keynote address at an exhibi- conventional technical skills with any particular set of tools or tion called “thingworld” at China’s National Art Museum, she had a revelation. The unique proposition of a creative technologies curriculum at TC would be its grounding in enduring artistic traditions. “As we move forward into this Possible Art world in which we’re giving away so much to the machine, human sensi-

RICHARD JOCHUM’S bility is getting lost,” she says. “And students roll these it was suddenly clear to me that we multi-sided dice needed to create a space to bridge to set the parameters between the computer screen and for new artworks they create. One more physical 3-D engagements student’s toss trigger- with visual and traditional tools and ed a project showing materials such as wood, metal and what Van Gogh’s found objects. We needed to contin- “Starry Night” would look like in different ue using the same kind of language eras and settings. about art in order to keep the digital

12 spring + summer tc.edu/tctoday DIGITAL DISPLAY Images from an exhibition on creative technology, mounted in Teachers College’s Macy Gallery in June 2015. The exhibition was co-curated by Richard Jochum and Sean Justice, assisted by TC doctoral student Meghana Karnik and supported by a TC Provost’s Investment Grant. The show featured 22 artists, most of whose works were interactive, creating an enhanced user experience. For example, the far-left image in the second row and the far-right image in the third row are of clothing that can be illuminated through a wireless connection to an iPad. The bottom middle image shows a light box that the viewer can press to make colors more or less intense.

Photographs: Margaret Ferrec tc today spring + summer 2016 13 { portrait of the artist}

Good Stuff from becoming something wholly different.” Late this past winter, it all came TRASH TALK Judith together when New York State Burton and Jaymes formally approved a free-standing Dec (second photo from certificate program at TC in Crea- top) discuss found art in the Thingspace, tive Technologies, open to anyone, TC’s “space to bridge and a specialization in Creative the computer screen Technologies within the College’s and more physical Ed.M. program. Both will officially 3-D engagements.” Top: a soldering begin this summer, though some of tool. Bottom: an old the core courses have been offered TV monitor part. for the past several years. The 15-credit sequence of courses not only provides hands- on experience with emerging technologies, but poses com- pelling philosophical questions about art and where it is headed. What does it mean to be an artist in the digital age? What role should traditional art forms play? Are there still clear standards for what constitutes art and core artistic skills? How should teachers incorporate new technologies into their school classrooms? How can artists find meaning amid technical innovation that changes almost daily? And how to transfer entrepreneurial and problem-solving skills enhanced by art? “We’re living in a world of digital materialism and we need to engage our students with that world in order to un- derstand what it’s about,” Burton says. “We need to provide leadership rather than being led by it. That means finding creative and exciting ways to use technology that build upon and enhance the artistic traditions that have developed over the course of human history.”

New Media, New Forms

hen Richard Jochum met for the first time this past February with students in “New Media, New Forms,” a required class in creative technologies for all Art & Art Education M.A. students seeking teaching certifica- tion, he told them, in essence, to check their egos at the door. “There’s always going to be someone who knows more than you do about some new technological advance,” he said — Wso forget about mastering the medium in the way that painters and sculptors aspired to in the past. Instead, Jochum advised, focus on collaboration and staying open to new and different ways of doing things.

14 spring + summer tc.edu/tctoday “Different” is certainly the word evoked by both the HE GADGETRY IN THE MYERS Myers Studio and the adjoining Thingspace (or “fab lab,” for fabrication laboratory) created by Burton, Jochum STUDIO REQUIRES A VOCABULARY and their team of digital natives. Merely describing the gadgetry in the Myers Studio requires a vocabulary more MORE REMINISCENT OF SCIENCE FICTION reminiscent of science fiction than the artist’s atelier. The room’s bins are filled with drawdios — tiny synthesizers that use a pencil to create musical sounds; Arduinos, TTHAN THE ARTIST’S ATELIER. BINS ARE which are microcontrollers used to build interactive devices; invent-abling kits, designed to help school-aged children FILLED WITH DRAWDIOS, ARDUINOS, create simple engineering projects; and maKey-maKeys, electronic tools that connect every-day, non-wired objects INVENT-ABLING KITS, MAKEY-MAKEYS to computers, endowing them with new powers (the classic example: a row of bananas that becomes a playable piano AND IMAC WORKSTATIONS. keyboard). The studio’s banks of iMac work-stations, replete with webcams and microphones, enable artists to access powerful art programming tools such as Scratch, TurtleArt and SketchUp. television sets, phones, vacuum cleaners — awaiting decon- Next door, the Thingspace is equipped with wood struction and reconstitution into new forms and objects. and metal shops, as well as vinyl cutters, 3-D printers, laser “The goal is for us to learn to embrace an expanded cutters, large-format printers and other equipment that notion of materials,” Jochum told his students. “We want to simply didn’t exist a decade ago. The tables and shelves are lower the barrier, so you feel more inclined to revisit some littered with the detritus of the late 20th century — old of these new materials and say, hey, I want to have my own

Confidence Man

STUDENT CENTERED Jochum at The Wall, an exhibition space in Macy Gallery where students are encouraged to show their works. The goal, with all forms of art, is for students to say, “I’m not intimidated.”

tc today spring + summer 2016 15 { portrait of the artist}

HE ASSIGNMENT: CREATE AN INTERACTIVE

ART PIECE ABOUT A CHILDHOOD EXPERI-

ENCE. ONE STUDENT CONNECTED SMALL TRUBBER BALLS TO HER COMPUTER; WHEN THEY BOUNCED, IMAGES OF BOUNCING

BALLS SHE HAD PLAYED WITH AS A CHILD

JUMPED UP AND DOWN ON THE SCREEN.

students make pop-up books in my art classroom — not just with traditional paper and crafts, but maybe with circuits that light up. The goal is to have you say, ‘I’m not intimidated.’”

The Reanimators

aymes Dec’s Thursday evening course on Digital Found- ations in Creative Technologies also emphasizes the core theme of integrating digital technology with the material world, but it goes deeper into the programming side of that equation. One chilly evening early in the spring semester, stu- dents presented projects they had completed using a program called Scratch. The assignment was to “create an interactive Jart piece about an experience from your childhood that influenced or inspired you.” One student had connected small rubber balls to her computer; when they bounced, images of bouncing balls she played with as a child jumped up and down on the screen. Another had recreated a scene of her father pushing her on a swing as she delightedly shouted “Zero G!” Scratch is a programming language developed by MIT scientists specifically to get young children hooked on computer programming. It employs a system of graphic blocks, each repre- senting a different animation element (for example, “play sound”) that can be used in a nearly endless number of combinations. “Scratchers” program by dragging together these blocks, which resemble puzzle pieces and fit only when they make sense. Dec says he’s seeing a new kind of creativity rapidly taking hold in K-12 classrooms, powered by the availability of these types of education-oriented programs, a wide range

16 spring + summer tc.edu/tctoday Tech Team of open-source computer hardware and software, and the burgeoning “maker movement,” in which would- be IT TAKES A VILLAGE inventors band together to create In TC’s Creative Tech new machines and electronic devices program, everyone from old equipment. Dec himself has adds knowledge. Above: Program cata- been at the forefront of that move- lyst Judith Burton ment, setting up New York City’s first flags TC’s role at school-based Maker Space/Fab Lab at turning points in art the Marymount School of New York education. Below, left: Student Bashir in 2011. Today, Dec says, such spaces Oyakhilome Harrell have become commonplace at the in Myers Studio, city’s independent schools, and which Sean Justice Historic public schools are now scrambling for (Ed.D. ’15; below, Figures right) helped equip. funding to establish them as well. Rather than teaching coding or the use of software in a vacuum, TC PIONEERS: The projects in Creative Technologies encourage students to think College has been about the ways the digital can animate and redefine the physi- home to many artists cal. Recent projects in Dec’s class have focused on using copper over the years who went on to achieve tape and conductive cloth to make paper crafts and articles global fame. From of clothing that light up and make sounds. In one instance, top: TC alumni students used a program called TurtleArt to create intricate Georgia O’Keeffe, Ad geometric shapes based on traditional Islamic tile designs. Reinhardt, Agnes Martin and Raphael Once completed, students will use a software program called Montañez Ortiz. Tinkercad to transfer their designs into clay tiles that can be produced on a 3-D printer. “Art has always been about technology even going back

Historic Figures Photographs: Alfred Stieglitz; John Loengard/The LIFE Collection, Getty Images; tc today spring + summer 2016 17 Mildred Tolbert, courtesy Harwood Museum; Samatha Isom “ { portrait of the artist} T’S NOT JUST THAT WE ARE LEARNING to the caves,” Dec says. “The paintbrush can be considered technology. What’s happening now is that a much broader TECHNIQUES AND TECHNOLOGIES,” range of tools is becoming more accessible and cheaper.” Burton and her team emphasize that the interaction be- tween the arts and technology is very much a two-way street. BURTON SAYS. “IT’S THAT WE ARE MOVING She talks about replacing the acronym STEM (for science, technology, engineering and mathematics) with STEAM — a ITOWARD LEARNING HOW TO LEARN, vision in which art is understood and taught along with the other subjects “in such a way that they extend and inform HOW TO BE OPEN AND FLEXIBLE, BE MORE each other, making thinking more multidimensional, layered, flexible and complex.” ADAPTIVE AND IMAGINATIVE. THESE “It’s not just that we are learning techniques and technol- ogies,” Burton says. “It’s that we are moving more toward learn- ARE THE SKILLS WE NEED THESE DAYS.” ing how to learn, how to be open and flexible, be more adaptive and imaginative. Maybe you don’t know how to code or use this or that piece of technology. But if you have a way of approach- ing it and the ability to acquire the knowledge you want, if you know how to play and explore and experiment and be reflective — to learn openly and flexibly — you can ultimately do almost anything. These are the skills we need to be learning these days.” It was in search of those skills that Denise Hand sought out Dec’s class. A New York City middle school teacher who already had a strong background in technology, Hand wanted to expand her computer skills but felt most courses approached the subject in a dry, technocratic way. “My concept of computer science is much more like what we’re doing in this class,” Hand said in February. In one of her projects, she created a model of Paul Revere’s midnight ride that — using circuits on cardboard, like the “sliders” in some children’s books — could actually light up with one light or two. In another, she created an interactive Gotham-like cityscape, replete with a structure modeled on the Empire State Building, in the style of a famous pointillist artist, that changes to red when the right buttons are pushed. The point of both projects was to learn to manipulate different tools, not invent something of immediate utilitarian value, Hand said, but she has no doubt about the ultimate payoff. “I feel like any time I learn something new it does appear in my own classes, whether 100 percent directly or in a more roundabout way.”

Setting the Parameters

hen he first began teaching New Media, New Forms, Jochum assigned a final project in which students tossed three six-sided dice to set the parameters for a new artwork they would create. The sides of the first die listed new Wtechnologies, such as scanning, audio or computer coding. Beyond The sides of the second die repre- which users could manipulate a sliding control to adjust sented more traditional media such the visual representation of the air quality in famous paint- Technology as painting, sculpture or collage. ings. Thus, a viewer could see not only how Van Gogh saw The third die listed broad themes, his “Starry Night” through the clear air of late 19th-century such as identity or community. Each Provence, but also how it would appear if the artist had been LEARNING ABOUT LEARNING Jochum, student rolled the dice and was gazing out of the window into the thick pollution of early doctoral student and challenged to create an art work 21st-century Beijing. Thingspace Coordinator that incorporated whichever three Andrew Corpuz, and parameters were coming up — for doctoral student Gen X-Box? Sohee Koo. Opposite example, painting, audio, communi- page: On the shelves ty — creating a multitude of possi- n the classic Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup, of the Thingspace, bilities. Yet after teaching the course Groucho Marx’s character, President Rufus T. Firefly, glances artists can rummage through the dust bin of for a number of years, Jochum at an official briefing and says, “Why, a four-year-old child technological history. decided that even three six-sided could understand this report. Run out and find me a four- dice are too limiting. So now he uses year-old child. I can’t make head or tail out of it.” three 12-sided dice, which — prac- That moment more or less came to pass in Jaymes ticing what he preaches — he creates Dec’s class in February. Several of the students were getting from scratch with his students on a Ifrustrated trying to master Scratch, including one who de- 3-D printer. scribed her project as “a massive failure that was driving Jochum has been fascinated me insane.” Having anticipated such responses, Dec had with the final projects students have created in years past. brought a guest expert to class: his 10-year-old niece, One woman whose toss of the dice turned up creative coding, Lucia, who proceeded to breeze through five or six Scratch painting and environment created a computer program in (CONTINUED ON PAGE 20)

tc today spring + summer 2016 19 { portrait of the artist} MORE 21ST-CENTURY LEARNING

(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 19) T ECH- programs in which she is com- The College is a hub for digital innovation pletely fluent. It was an amusing moment, but it echoes comments made by speakers at a summit on arts NOLOGY education that Burton convened to create better teaching and learning at TC this past winter. “We are facing a society and economy which are charac- terized by complexity, ambiguity CENTER and uncertainty,” said Gerald Bast, President of Austria’s Uni- versity of Applied Arts in Vien- na. Artists are experts in dealing with these issues, he said, and art education should enhance their imaginative and associa- HE CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIES PROGRAM IS tive abilities, problem-solving and critical thinking. ONLY ONE FACET OF TEACHERS COLLEGE’S INCREASINGLY With the tools and materi- WIDE-RANGING LEADERSHIP IN DIGITAL INNOVATION als on hand in the Myers Studio, Richard Jochum says he can IN EDUCATION. TC IS WELL KNOWN FOR STRENGTHS IN: only guess what his students will come up with in the future. T If you’re the parent of an ele- mentary or middle-school stu- dent, he says, it’s just a matter COGNITION AND CONCEPT Assistant Professor Catherine Chase of time before he or she comes FORMATION explores how the design of instruction home with a creation made with affects student learning, transfer and moti- one of those tools — something C’s Institute for Learning Technolo- vation. She studies an instructional method that lights up or moves or makes T gies (ILT) explores grounded cogni- called Invention-with-Contrasting-Cases, noise. tion — the fuller understanding resulting in which students invent a representation Will it be art? That’s one from the learner’s ability to create mental of a fundamental scientific structure that for the critics. TC and perceptual simulations of concepts or accounts for the variation across cases. Chase processes. ILT unites “John Dewey’s em- guides students through the invention pro- phasis on the importance of learning from cess using a computer-based Invention Tutor. MORE ABOUT experience with E.L. Thorndike’s insistence Associate Professor Sandra Okita, CREATIVE TECH on empirical rigor,” says Director John a faculty member in the Communications, Watch a PBS MetroFocus Black, developing and evaluating visual- Media & Learning Technologies Design segment from February to learn izations, animations and physical embodi- (CMLTD) program, explores how form- about TC’s new concentration ments to teach math, science and literacy. ing peer-like relationships with robots, and advanced certificate program Black, Cleveland E. Dodge Professor agents and avatars helps young students in Creative Technologies. of Telecommunications & Education, has learn and share knowledge and ideas. She http://bit.ly/1orcNfT consulted for IBM and Xerox and mentored has also demonstrated that using robotic many education technology start-up leaders. companions can reduce pain and emotional

20 spring + summer tc.edu/tctoday anxiety in seriously ill children. creation and study of games to stimu- Library Maker Spaces to classroom Black and ILT provide and evalu- late learning and behavior change. activities. Through CTSC, New York ate embodied learning experiences and Research Assistant Professor City 11th and 12th grade English and programming instruction in the Teach- Joey Lee, Coordinator of TC’s Games Social Studies students use technology ers College Community School. Research Lab, “gameifies” climate to create oral histories within their change and other science learning communities. CTSC also partners with GAMES AND VIRTUAL REALITY topics. Through Columbia University’s New Haven, Connecticut schools on partnership with the NASA Goddard technology-based teacher professional C’s CMLTD Program studies the Office of Education, he’s creating a development and curriculum design. T digital revolution’s impact on all portal aimed at improving teachers’ areas of education and human experi- classroom use of virtual reality. Lee FACILITATING DIGITAL ence. CMLTD “explores how existing offers teachers a summer “Teacher COLLABORATION and emerging forms of computing — Tinker Technology Bootcamp” on including mobile technologies, digital games, robotics, virtual reality, apps, ithin the College’s Gottesman platforms and interactive media — interactive websites and other tools. W Libraries, directed by Gary affect education and all human experi- Natriello, Ruth L. Gottesman Professor ence,” says Director Lalitha Vasudevan, LEARNING ANALYTICS of Educational Research, the EdLab continually redefining educational creative services unit has facilitated technology research and design. ssociate Professor Alex Bow- digital initiatives such as the national Digital games tap users’ desire A ers mines data to help school distribution of a curriculum about Hur- to win and enable them to experience districts predict and improve long-term ricane Katrina and its aftermath. their actions’ consequences. Vasudevan, outcomes for different populations of Associate Professor of Technology & students. A former pharmaceutical THE MAKER MOVEMENT Education, is launching a Master of cell biologist, Bowers uses a technique Arts program in Design and Develop- called cluster analysis to identify, as ssistant Professor Nathan ment of Digital Games centering on the early as the third grade, students at risk A Holbert’s Snow Day Learning for failure to graduate. Lab makes and studies games, toys Fiona Hollands, Associate and technologies that offer children Director of TC’s Center for opportunities to experience and Benefit-Cost Studies of Edu- explore different phenomena, reveal- cation, has helped create new ing how, in a digital age, they make digital tools to enable schools sense of the world through play. Com- and districts to conduct cost- puter science, engineering and maker benefit analyses of different activities are also framed to appeal to interventions. Hollands co- more girls and young women. authored a sweeping assess- Making media is also a focus of ment of massive open online CMLTD’s Media & Social Change Lab, courses. directed by Vasudevan and involving other program faculty, including Assis- PARTNERING WITH tant Professor Ioana Literat. TC SCHOOLS

C’s Center for Technol- T ogy and School Change of Education (CTSC), led by Associate Professor of Practice Ellen New fields of inquiry that cross Meier, helps schools link their departments and disciplines

Photograph: TC Archives tc today spring + summer 2016 21 Launching Careers and Widening the

TC’S MINORITY POSTDOCTORALi PROGRAM ENCOURAGES SCHOLARS WHO DON’T CHECK THEIR IDENTITIES AT THE DOOR D scourse n BY ELLEN LIVINGSTON

HEN MONIQUE LANE WAS A DOCTORAL STUDENT, NO ONE AT HER graduate school of education studied the educational needs of black girls and women. Fortunately Lane, who grew up in South Los Angeles wishing for a teacher who under- stood the trials of “being black, female and serious about learning,” found a “mentor from afar” — Illinois State University professor Venus Evans-Winters, author of Teaching Black Girls: Resiliency in Urban Classrooms. n This past winter, Lane — now a Teachers College Minority Postdoctoral Fellow — organized “And Still We Rise: A Conference on Black Girls and Women in Education,” which drew over 300 scholars, public school teachers and others to Teachers College. (http://bit.ly/1Z0urmt) Evans-Winters spoke, and several black female college and high school students read poetry and participated in panel discussions. W (CONTINUED ON PAGE 24)

22 spring + summer tc.edu/tctoday Photograph: J.D. Closser “The Fellowship supports knowledge production that shapes new narratives and new understandings of what’s normal.”

— LALITHA VASUDEVAN

VALUING VARIETY Paul Green (next to Vasudevan) says TC has welcomed those who “valued perspectives on the periphery of what was considered normative.”

tc today spring + summer 2016 23 “It was amazing to see TC’s Fellowship, modeled on programs offered by some educational foundations. the light in these young “Teachers and administrators in our nation’s public schools were predominantly white, although more and more students were not,” recalls Zumwalt, now Evenden Professor Emerita. women’s eyes as they “We saw this fellowship as our contribution to the profession.” Today, blacks earn 7 percent of all U.S. doctoral degrees saw their ideas celebrated,” and Latinos 5 percent — numbers that are up since the ’90s but still woefully small. Still, the former TC Postdocs exert says Monique Lane, who outsize influence because their work, from helping young students of color see themselves as math scholars to exploring the impact of growing up Muslim in post-9/11 America, spotlighted high school powerfully reflects who they are. “The Fellowship demonstrates our conception of what students at her conference. an academic community is all about,” says current TC Pro- vost and Dean Tom James. “New funds of knowledge have been brought into the institution, new questions have been Lane’s story resonated powerfully at the Minority Post- asked, new disciplinary perspectives have been seeded.” doctoral Fellowship’s 20th anniversary reunion at TC in All involved agree the program remains essential. March. The program’s 30-plus alumni include college deans, “To ask why we still need this kind of program is to department heads, endowed professors, a World Bank assume that we have parity,” said Soo Ah Kwon, a Minority policy analyst and four current TC faculty members. Better Postdoctoral Fellow in 2005-06 and now Associate Professor still, suggested keynote speaker Khalil Gibran Muhammad, of Asian American Studies and Human Development & Fam- Director of Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in ily Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Black Culture, they are challenging a higher education system “This is about asking important questions about inequalities that still seeks “white students in black or brown face”— that are still very deeply structured in our society.” scholars who check their race or ethnicity at the door. Calling Illustrating that point, Thurman Bridges, a Fellow from for “more creative dissent and less cosmetic diversity,” 2009—11 and now Associate Professor of Teacher Education Muhammad, later joined by prize-winning poet Gregory at Baltimore’s Morgan State University, described visiting Pardlo, invoked Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s public schools after protests triggered by the death of Freddie post-assimilationist vision of minorities teaching from their Gray, a black man, in Baltimore police custody. experiences and seeking more than mere representation. “I see students who are empowered and ready to resist The TC Minority Postdoctoral Fellowship grew directly and raise their hands, but state leadership and teachers as out of the Holmes Group, a national initiative co-founded in leaders aren’t pushing students to think in those critical ways,” the early 1990s by then TC President P. Michael Timpane to he said. “Yet students were engaging in those conver- increase recruitment and retention of diverse teacher educa- sations on their own and looking to do something productive. tion faculty. In 1995, Karen Zumwalt, then Dean, developed We need to provide them with opportunities to do that.” (CONTINUED ON PAGE 26)

“We Have a Lot of Work to Do”: Delores Jones-Brown

Delores Jones-Brown, who attended a segregated elementary school, says TC’s Minority Postdoctoral Fellowship helped her become Professor and Founding Director of the John Jay College Center on Race, Crime & Justice. “In my personal life there’s evidence of substantial change in racial dynamics, but there are still brutal realities out there,” says Jones-Brown. “We have a lot of work to do.”

24 spring + summer tc.edu/tctoday Photographs: This page, Bruce Gilbert; Opposite page, clockwise from left, Jonathan Timmes, J.D. Closser, Bruce Gilbert, Sara Stathas { the spirit of summer}

For Muslim youth, “there isn’t a time before 9/11” and being “a

target of surveillance.” — ARSHAD ALI

DIVERSE VIEWS Arshad Ali (above) studies post-9/11 Muslim youth; Soo Ah Kwon (below), activist youth of color; and Alia Tyner-Mullings, alternative urban schools.

TC

tc today spring + summer 2016 25 Yet 2008-09 Fellow Michael Wilson, currently Assistant Professor of Inclusive Education TheDifference a at TC and Director of the Teachers College School to Prison Year Makes Pipeline Project, cited TV host Melissa Harris Perry, who fell out FIVE TC MINORITY POSTDOCS REFLECT ON A CAREER-CHANGING FELLOWSHIP with MSNBC after protesting its decision to preempt her show for presidential campaign coverage. Soo Ah Kwon As a doctoral student, Soo Ah Kwon helped Asian and Pacific Islander “We’re constantly in this space students in Oakland defeat expansion of a local juvenile correctional of trying to figure out where do ANALYZING THE facility. n Kwon found that success inspiring but was equally interested POWER OF ACTIVIST I raise my hand, how do I raise in how the students were affected by working within the political system. YOUTH OF COLOR my hand, how insistent am I, and In her subsequent book, Uncivil Youth: Race, Activism, and Affirmative how far do I take this?” Wilson Governmentality, she built on French philosopher Michel Foucault’s said. “How comfortable will an notion of “governmentality” to explore how activist youth of color simultaneously work toward institution be when you turn your racial, social and economic justice and are limited by and even unintentionally reinforce existing words on them? When you turn the power structures. n Kwon, now Associate Professor of Asian American Studies and Human words inward you are challenging Development & Family Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, says Uncivil Youth the institutional preservation. owes much to her 2005-06 Minority Postdoctoral Fellowship at TC. She worked closely with That’s the greatest challenge — education anthropologist Hervé Varenne, an authority on how schools unwittingly limit educa- each individual’s ability to find that tional activities and the rewards they produce. n Kwon currently studies global youth citizenship, balance.” particularly programs promoted by the United Nations, and investigates the growing impact For Associate Provost Kristine of international students, particularly Asians, on American higher education. n “People like to Roome, Fellowship Coordinator, think we’ve moved beyond notions of race,” says Kwon, but the TC Fellowship addresses the reunion was a step toward a “important questions about inequalities that are still very deeply structured in our society.” broader dialogue. “We’re starting to think about this program col- lectively,” Roome said. “This net- Maisha T. Winn 2003 TC Minority Postdoctoral Fellow Maisha Winn discovered the work of accomplished individuals, Bronx classroom of “Joe the poetry teacher” — Joe Ubiles, co-founder THINKING ABOUT who all had their start at TC, of school-based Power Writers, which “empowers urban youth through YOUTH IN THEIR constitutes a wonderful resource. n In her book, FULL HUMANITY the mastery of language and cultural literacy.” Writing in We brought them home to engage Rhythm: Spoken Word Poetry in Urban Classrooms, Winn — now Susan J. collectively in the conversations Cellmer Distinguished Chair in English Education and Professor of Curricu- happening across the country. We lum & Instruction, Language & Literacies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Edu- are not sure where it’s going to go. cation — writes that Ubiles taught in a room without windows, “but his compassion forged a view All we know is that it’s time.” many could no longer afford in New York City.” n Winn left TC with a tenure-track position and the material for Writing in Rhythm (published as Maisha T. Fisher). In Girl Time: Literacy, Justice, and Learn more about TC’s Minority Postdoctoral 4 Fellowship at http://bit.ly/1st2mK8 the School-to-Prison Pipeline, she examines a theater program that prepares incarcerated girls “for a performance of possibilities.” n “When I set foot in a regional youth detention center — a (CONTINUED ON PAGE 28)

Telling a Uniquely American Story: Cally Waite

Professor Cally Waite, director of TC’s History & Education Program, is an authority on historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), an interest she developed as a TC Minority Postdoc. Founded mostly to educate newly freed slaves, HBCUs offer a unique window on “the intersection between theoretical democracy and democratic citizenship,” Waite says.

26 spring + summer tc.edu/tctoday Photographs: This page, Bruce Gilbert; Opposite page, clockwise from left, Todd Maughan, J.D. Closser, Deborah Feingold, J.D. Closser { the spirit of summer}

“I was floored by the warehousing of brown children. Why are we doing

this to our kids?” — MAISHA T. WINN

COUNTERPOINT Above and lower right: Minority Postdocs Maisha T. Winn and Rigoberto Marquez. Left: Khalil Muhammad keynoted the reunion conference.

tc today spring + summer 2016 27 jail for children — I was floored by the ware- Arshad Ali The revelation in 2011 that New York City police and the CIA housing of brown children,” she says. “Why had spied on Muslim communities sparked civil rights lawsuits. STUDYING YOUTH are we doing this to our kids?” n Winn now It also redirected the research of then-TC Minority Postdoctoral IN THE CROSSHAIRS studies restorative justice attorneys working in Fellow Arshad Ali. n “I had been exploring how race and courts and schools. And she still channels Ubiles, religion affect the identities of Muslim youth in a post-9/11 world,” who was “thinking about young people in recalls Ali, now Assistant Professor of Educational Research at their full humanity.” George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education & Human Development. “When the news broke, that research morphed into thinking about surveillance.” His TC Fellowship empowered him to proceed. “It was really powerful to have someone like Lalitha In Fall 2004, TC Minor- George Bond [the late TC education anthropologist] engage me as a colleague.” n In Vasudevan ity Postdoctoral Fellow a recent article in Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Ali describes a growing “culture Lalitha Vasudevan sat of fear” among Muslim youth. The “dangerous, violent, rebellious and suspect figure of CREATING NEW in her new office and the Muslim continues to haunt the American imagination,” he says, hampering young NARRATIVES thought: Now what do I Muslims in developing trust and participating socially. n “For these youth, there isn’t a do? n “It was a great time before 9/11,” he says. “A world in which they’re a target of surveillance, of political moment,” recalls Vasudevan, now TC Associate attack, of cultural attack — that’s normal. My interest is in how they are making sense of Professor of Technology & Education. “The blank this world and in helping them see themselves as people with agency.” n Ali applauds walls reminded me that it was on me to make President Obama for telling American Muslims “you fit right here,” but notes that “state things happen. In grad school, you are pushed actions — spying on Muslim communities, as part of a larger concern of policing of to cultivate scholarly expertise, somewhat to communities of color — continue. People’s rights and lives are on the line.” the detriment of your own intellectual curiosity. Then you’re advised to stick to what you know. So before seeking a tenure-track position, I Rosalie Since 1970, the U.S. Hispanic population has grown by 592 percent. wanted to figure out what I wanted to do next.” - Yet being “the only one” is still common for Latino scholars, says The Fellowship supports “knowledge produc- Rolón Dow Rosalie Rolón-Dow, Associate Professor at the University of tion that shapes new narratives and under- FOCUSING ON THE Delaware (UD) School of Education. “Even though Latinos are the standings of what’s normal.” n Vasudevan UNDERREPRESENTED largest group among underrepresented students, we still don’t know has since studied “the lived experiences of a lot about their experiences.” Rolón-Dow, who is of Puerto Rican African-American adolescent boys” and court- heritage, is Co-Chair of UD’s Latino/Hispanic Faculty and Staff Caucus. “Like so many insti- involved youth. In Arts, Media, and Justice: tutions, we have some diversity and equity issues. The goal is to better inform what the Multimodal Explorations with Youth (2013) university is doing about them.” n As a 2002-03 TC Minority Postdoctoral Fellow, Rolón- and Media, Learning, and Sites of Possibility Dow, now an authority on educational identity among Latino students, learned to navigate (2008), she has championed cultivating stu- the academy. n “I thought, I’ll just take a chapter from my dissertation and it will be a dents’ creative agency. The recipient of TC’s publication, but that wasn’t the case. Many people that year helped me learn to write for Strage Prize for Junior Faculty, she heads a different audience.” n Rolón-Dow believes such experiences remain essential in direct- TC’s Media and Social Change Lab and Center ing students from underrepresented groups for Multiple Languages & Literacies and co- into academia. n “We face challenges that leads TC’s Civic Participation Project. n “Being other faculty don’t, whether it’s alienation or of Education at TC has been an honor and a privilege,” finding mentors,” she says. At the same time, she says. “Relationships from that Postdoc “culturally and politically, Latinos are a powerful Pioneering new approaches to year are still bearing fruit.” — JOE LEVINE force, and there is so much to investigate.” TC teaching and learning

Urging a Global Perspective: Paul Green

The official desegregation of U.S. schools resulted in “the loss of African-American public school teachers,” writes former TC Minority Postdoc Paul Green. Green, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California at Riverside, worries that, taught primarily by white teachers, today’s diverse American student population is poorly understood.

28 spring + summer tc.edu/tctoday Photographs: This page, J.D. Closser; Opposite page, clockwise from left, Bill Cardoni, J.D. Closser, Bruce Gilbert, J.D. Closser “We face challenges that other faculty don’t, whether it’s alienation

or finding mentors.” — ROSALIE ROLÓN-DOW

EMPANELED Clockwise from top left: Rosalie Rolón-Dow; recon- sidering the Minority Post- doc at 20; TC Professor and former Postdoc Erica Walker; poet Gregory Pardlo.

tc today spring + summer 2016 29 Art = Power

THROUGH THE ARTS, ANDREA KERZNER IS BRINGING HOPE TO YOUTH IN SOUTH AFRICA, UGANDA AND THE SOUTH BRONX

BY WILL BUNCH

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DON HAMERMAN

30 spring + summer tc.edu/tctoday ast October, Andrea Kerzner, founding CEO of the arts education nonprofit Lalela, flew to her native South Africa to launch a new Center of Art & Innovation in Jo- hannesburg’s Maboneng Precinct. Kerzner (M.A. ’87) Llives in New York City, “so I’m not always there for the transformative moments” — but on this occasion she’d asked former Lalela stu- dent Siyolisi Bani to speak. “When we first met him in Cape Town, he was in a gang, growing up in one Art = Power of our most marginalized communities and at risk of losing all hope, like so many THROUGH THE of South Africa’s youth,” ARTS, ANDREA Kerzner says. “But he loved KERZNER IS doing art, so he joined our program. One day, we BRINGING HOPE framed one of his paintings TO YOUTH IN and included it in an exhibit SOUTH AFRICA, in our gallery at the One & UGANDA Only Cape Town Hotel.” AND THE SOUTH ( CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE ) BRONX

BY WILL BUNCH

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DON HAMERMAN

tc today spring + summer 2016 31 { art = power}

In Maboneng, Bani, now at university studying graphic de- For Kerzner, the trip’s highlight “was an art project in the sign, said that seeing his painting in the gallery made him realize KwaZulu-Natal region, an area hit hard by HIV/AIDS. We “anything in life was possible.” engaged young school children in art workshops. One creative “Siyolisi is now working with us, helping youth from his moment led to another, and during a mask-making project, chil- community see a new world of possibility,” Kerzner says. dren donned the masks they decorated and began to open up about how they lived and what they endured. Listening to these A Gift of Imagination stories, seeing how art broke down barriers and gave children a new voice when they were too traumatized to use the voice they n South Africa, where only three in 10 students in lower-in- had — it was joyful and transformative. Also the transformation come township schools reach grade 12 and two-thirds of of my daughter and her friends as they interacted with students I young people ages 18—25 are unemployed, “possibility” is a from different cultures — it changed my life to see the difference raison d’être for Lalela. one could make.” “There are huge structural issues in South Africa — obvi- ously people need clean water and health care — but I believe Mapping Hearts, and More it is important to empower the younger generation to make changes for themselves,” says Kerzner. “South Africa needs ver the next several years, with UNICEF and the In- entrepreneurship, but without adequate education and hope for ternational Rescue Committee, Kerzner worked with the future, youth turn to drugs, violence, crime. The first sub- O refugee children and former child soldiers of eastern jects to be taken out of low-income schools are the arts, and this Chad, Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She robs youth of the creativity that leads to innovation and positive launched Lalela, with the motto “Art = Power,” in Cape Town change. Art massages the right brain and gives you the power to in 2010, when South Africa hosted soccer’s World Cup. With think outside the box; it improves self-confidence and develops schools on extended break, her priority was providing activities powers of persistence, collaboration and solution thinking. Stu- to keep kids off the streets. dents engaged in the arts are five times less likely to drop out of “Initially we worked with just 20 children, then bussed school, and two times more likely to graduate from college.” children in from surrounding communities Mondays through Lalela (Zulu for “to listen”) has been about possibility for Fridays,” she recalls. “After five weeks we had a growing Kerzner, too. Her father was a successful entrepreneur who community of young artists! The local primary school principal developed South Africa’s largest hotel and resort chain. He be- said, ‘Can we continue?’” came a supporter and friend of President Nelson Mandela. Yet Today Lalela directly serves more than 2,200 South African Andrea left South Africa during apartheid “because I couldn’t students ages six through post-high school, reaching thousands live in that system anymore and didn’t want my more in schools through the curriculum ‘I AM’ children growing up there. The devastating effects (for “ideas, art and music”). Lalela staff work with of apartheid motivated me to launch Lalela,” she LALELA, former child soldiers at Hope North, in northern says. “I saw people without homes. I saw a com- IN A WORD Uganda, using an arts facility built specifically for munity develop across the valley from our family Lalela with money raised in part by students at home with no sanitation or running water.” Always New York City’s Blue School. inspire with creativity. “In all our work, the primary goal is typically A Life-Changing Trip artistic — teaching skills such as using and mixing Reimagine colors, exploring creativity and understanding trial erzner’s own daughter sparked Lalela’s challenge as opportunity. and error,” Kerzner says. “The secondary goal is eventual creation. “I’d worked in finance, Trust we can be about character development, advancing life skills K looking after my family’s investments,” the trailblazers of change. and academic achievement.” says Kerzner, who earned a London Business Lalela also asks youth from divided commu- School degree after studying organizational psy- Lalela Project provides nities to work together to create “Heart Maps” to chology at Teachers College. “My daughter wanted educational arts to at-risk heal hatred and mistrust. to take her friends to South Africa to fulfill their youth, sparking creative “They ask each other, ‘What heritage were you school’s community service requirement.” thinking and awakening the born with, what are your fears, your challenges and entrepreneurial spirit.

32 spring + summer tc.edu/tctoday HEALING BY GIVING VOICE The Lalela Project is premised on the belief that doing art not only engages children’s creativity and hope, but also gives them the voice to describe how they have lived and what they have endured. To support or learn more about Lalela, visit www.lalela.org.

your dreams?’” Kerzner says. “Then they map each other’s “I’m a firm believer in not duplicating services, and New answers to the four chambers of their hearts. They learn to York City has strong arts programs,” she says. “But we were asked appreciate differences, common challenges and dreams. After to come by the Beacon After School Program. Also, several a while, dialogue turns into laughter and deeper understanding. board members and volunteers live in New York City, and they You can watch the walls of past hatred break down right in were anxious to see us do something here.” So far, Hunts Point front of your eyes.” youth have responded enthusiastically. “The at-risk communities In another Lalela program, “Photography for Social in South Africa and the South Bronx are similar — single-parent Change,” young people document community issues. One households, unemployment, gangs, domestic and sexual violence.” group photographed a neighborhood where children played in For Kerzner, the Lalela Project clearly has become an all- garbage and open sewage. On Mandela Day, the group showed consuming passion. Beyond creating qualified partnerships with their pictures in the community hall. foundations and seeking corporations to invest in the next gen- “They called on everyone to do something,” Kerzner says. eration of change makers, she spends her time ensuring that her “There was a cleanup and a new community awareness. Our core team remains intrinsically motivated. “They work all day in students taught their moms cleaning techniques such as using difficult, emotionally demanding situations,” she says. “I speak lemons from local trees as sanitizers.” with them most every night. It’s a tough atmosphere, and you can’t reward highly, so it’s impor- New Directions tant for me to create the right culture, with an innovative arts of Education n 2014 Kerzner brought Lalela to New York City, through atmosphere that really reflects an after-school program for middle school students in the our values. Because there’s so New fields of inquiry that cross IHunts Point section of the South Bronx. much more to be done.” TC departments and disciplines

Photographs: Top left and right, Don Hamerman; Below right, Courtesy of the Lalela Project tc today spring + summer 2016 33 Unconventional Wisdom Paradigm-changing work byTC faculty and staff members

“I’m fond of language — I use it all the time — but we think in other ways, too,” says Tversky, TC Professor of Psychology & Education, and Stanford University professor emerita. “We live our lives in space, we navigate space, we know firsthand about distance and direction and we use our bodies and space to understand, reason, communi- cate and create.” Language is a product of spatial and visual thinking, Tversky argues. In individuals’ development and that of our species, gesturing precedes speaking: pointing, connecting things with lines drawn in the air, or showing the size of the proverbial big fish by spreading the arms wide. Both physical gestures and (in Tversky’s parlance) “frozen” ones — sketches, maps, diagrams — express meanings more directly than words, which have arbitrary relations to mean- ing. “Upwards, in gesture or diagram, is readily produced and understood, even by preschoolers, to indicate more, better and stronger,” Tversky says. “Going up requires overcoming gravity and over- coming gravity takes health, strength, wealth. By expressing meanings more directly, both forms of spatial commu- nication — gestures and diagrams — foster thought and creativity.” Spatial thinking enables leaps in understanding that, quite literally, are Education’s Final Frontier beyond words. Tversky and her former Barbara Tversky explores the untapped power of spatial thinking postdoctoral student Masaki Suwa have documented the “conversations” archi- tects have with their own sketches, through which, by keeping drawings ambiguous n february, the sound of two black holes and repeatedly reconfiguring them, they contin- colliding billions of light years away confirmed ually discover new possibilities. Another former Einstein’s theory of gravitational waves linking student, Andrea Kantrowitz (Ed.D. ’14), similarly time and distance. documented artists’ “conversations” with their It also underscored what Barbara Tversky initial renderings. Gestures integrated with ex- Ihas long asserted: that “our ability to use spatial planations can change thought. Work by Azadeh thinking to understand complex abstract con- Jamalian (Ph.D. ’14) shows that gestures help stu- cepts separates us from other species.” dents understand subtle temporal concepts such

34 spring + summer TC.EDU/TCTODAY Illustrations: Jon Krause { unconventional wisdom }

as cyclicity and simultaneity. And gesturing can In a word, no, says TC’s Corbin Campbell, support memory and thinking. Tversky, Jamalian, Assistant Professor of Higher Education. “It might postdoc Valeria Giardino and students Melissa signal to employers that students are smart com- Bradley and Yang Liu have shown that when stu- ing in, but it has little to do with what’s actually dents study complex descriptions of space or happening inside that university.” STEM systems, most model the spaces or the sys- Campbell spearheads a unique research tems through spontaneous hand gestures. They program that quantifies post-secondary then perform better on tests of memory and infer- educational quality down to the classroom level I’m interested ence. Similarly, in her dissertation with Tversky, and compares it within and across institutions. in starting a con- Eliza Bobek (Ph.D. ’12) showed that creating visual In a multi-institutional study in 2013 and 2014, versation“ with explanations of STEM phenomena benefits learn- she, her TC students and others watched the broader public ing more than creating typical verbal explanations. hundreds of class sessions and analyzed syllabi about what’s The takeaway? “We need to better under- at nine diverse institutions, including public stand how the human mind learns and thinks and private, more and less selective, and re- important in a spatially and how we can improve that thinking,” search-based and liberal arts. college education. One preliminary finding, albeit What environ- from a small sample size: classes ments foster We live all our lives in space, we taught in so-called “broad access” good teaching navigate space, and we use our bodies institutions scored higher than and learning? “ those in more selective, prestigious and space to understand, reason, schools on teaching quality indi- — Corbin Campbell, Assistant Professor ” communicate and create. cators such as leveraging students’ of Higher Education prior knowledge and connecting it — Barbara Tversky, ” Professor of Psychology & Education to a course’s core ideas. There’s precedent for Camp- says Tversky, who was elected to the American bell’s detailed observations inside schools. Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2013. “We need “In K-12 education research, we have tens to teach spatial reasoning — how to create and of thousands of videotaped observations, used understand diagrams and maps and how to make in countless studies,” she says. “But in higher inferences from them, how to think about spatial education, there has been little quantitative obser- transformations.” She herself teaches two such courses, Spatial Cognition and Visual Commu- nication. But the focus on spatial thinking should begin with young children, she says, and should be as fundamental as arithmetic and writing. Otherwise, that proverbial big fish will get away. — JOE LEVINE

Not Judging the Bookish By Their Covers

0…what’s the point of those higher ed rankings, anyway? Does ranking high in the annual “best colleges and universities” listings really reflect the quality of teaching and learning Sin a school?

Photographs: Left, Bruce Gilbert; Right, Erick Raphael tc today spring + summer 2016 35 { unconventional wisdom }

vational research.” Ethnogra- phies exist, she says, but do not lend themselves to structured comparison. Campbell, an Academic Fellow for the Institute for Higher Education Policy and Lumina Foundation’s Policy Direct program, reports strong interest in her project — includ- ing from faculty her team has observed. “I think they feel they put a lot of effort into teaching practice that sometimes gets ig- nored.” Ultimately, though, she’s targeting a larger audience. “I’m interested in starting a conversation with the broader public about what’s important The expert in a college education. What mindset is critical, environments foster good but“ you have to teaching and learning? How recognize how it much do you know about that hinders us from broad-access institution next door that — guess what — has assessing trends, great teaching and learning forming new practices? Don’t discount that graduate from cause us to over-simplify. “The expert mindset insights and fos- there!” — SIDDHARTHA MITTER is critical but hinders us from assessing trends, tering needed forming new insights and fostering needed con- conversations. versations.” Navigating in the Age of Culture, too — societal or professional — can — Lyle” Yorks, blind us to alternative perspectives. Professor of Adult & Continuing Information Overload “Because people do not have a culture but Education inhabit one, they are never free agents capable n the 21st century, “we are swamped of transcending their situation,” Yorks writes in by input and interconnected in unprecedented his paper “Cross-Cultural Dimensions of Team ways,” says Lyle Yorks, Professor of Adult & Learning.” Continuing Education. Yet we also are “siloed” Yorks asks his TC students to weigh conflict- by everything from our professional expertise to ing advice in their own jobs and apply strategic Ithe news sources we trust. tools and practices to learn from uncertainty. He Yorks addresses that paradox — “perhaps the also challenges organizations to navigate complex- major learning challenge adults face” — through ity. In his 2013 book, Strategic IT: Best Practices research; through workshops for corporate for Managers and Executives, Yorks and coauthor and institutional clients; and through “Strategic Arthur M. Langer urge chief information officers Advocacy,” his course in AEGIS (Adult Education to strategically deploy technology by building of Research Guided Intensive Study), the TC doctoral pro- collaborative alliances organization-wide. In their The groundbreaking ideas gram he directs for mid-career professionals. award-winning paper, “The Role of Reflective of TC faculty, in action His message: How we filter information can Practices in Building Social Practices in Orga-

36 spring + summer TC.EDU/TCTODAY Illustrations: Jon Krause; Photograph: Bruce Gilbert { unconventional wisdom }

nizations,” Yorks and his former student Yoshie alumna Alberta Strage and her husband, Henry), Tomozumi Nakamura (Ed.D. ’10) argue that believes steps can be taken on gun violence forming these social networks requires employees despite political gridlock. to connect with colleagues with diverse back- For example, while schools increasingly grounds and viewpoints. budget for security to deal with “active shooter” In their recent paper, “Do I Really Know situations, Rajan argues for prevention focused You? Do You Really Know Me? Empathy Amid on student behaviors. In a forthcoming paper, The conver- Diversity in Different Learning Contexts,” Yorks she and Ruggles delve deeper into substance “sation should and Elizabeth Kasl argue that intellectual under- use and abuse, prevention of which they believe be about what standing from an “effortful, top-down process” should be integrated with efforts to address teachers can do can’t alone bridge such differences. The two violence. “If we asked a student who is coping in conjunction champion building an empathic understanding by engaging in regular substance use, ‘What else with others of others through “presentational knowing” — is happening?’ the prevention of firearm-relat- to support these sharing one’s perspective through storytelling ed violence could be a matter of schools and youth in crisis. and other expressive forms. communities…providing additional and more That’s an idea that even 20th century folks comprehensive support.” — Sonali Rajan, ” can appreciate. — SIDDHARTHA MITTER Now Rajan is distilling current knowledge Assistant Professor of about violence prevention programs. Health Education “The conversation should be about what teachers can do in conjunction with others — Youth Gun Violence: Many principals, psychologists, guidance counselors, Causes, No Magic Bullet parents, community members — to support these youth in crisis,” she says. “That conversation un violence by youth makes would do wonders.” — SIDDHARTHA MITTER TC headlines but is difficult to research. There’s little funding, and rhetoric from the gun-control debate hampers formu- lating evidence-based research hypothe- Gses about causes and prevention. The result, says Sonali Rajan, Assistant Pro- fessor of Health Education: We tend to fall back on conclusions unsupported by evidence. Take the oft-cited idea that young people who commit gun violence are mentally ill. Mining a massive fed- eral database, Rajan and Kelly Ruggles, an Assis- tant Professor at NYU Langone Medical Center, found that among the 5 to 10 percent of Ameri- can teens who report regularly carrying a firearm, there is a much stronger association with sub- stance use, engagement in physical fighting and exposure to sexual violence than with any poor mental health indicator. In fact, mentally ill teens are likelier to be victims than perpetrators of vio- lence. The study, published in PLOS ONE in 2014, found no association between screen time (in- cluding video game use) and firearm possession. Rajan (Ed.D. ’10), who received TC’s 2015 Strage Junior Faculty Prize (established by TC

Photograph: TC Archive tc today spring + summer 2016 37 { unconventional wisdom }

[ GUEST FACULTY ESSAY ]

Giving Math a Makeover many ways to engage in literacy: read widely, write well, and perform in spo- WE CAN ALL BE MATH PEOPLE BY ERICA WALKER ken word contests, readings, recitations, plays and programs. Are there many ways to be a math person? In my book, Beyond Banneker: Black Mathematicians and the Paths to Excellence, mathemati- cians, undoubtedly because they have very strong, positive mathematics iden- tities, identify multiple mathematical spaces that supported their mathematics learning and development as “mathe- matical people.” They talked about doing and learning about MATH IDENTITY math in school and “Our mathe- at home, during af- ter-school programs, matical lives family trips, and are informed neighborhood sports by experiences games, at churches in and out and on porches, and of school and in parks and school spaces that assemblies. support or I seek to un- undermine our cover more of these spaces, both contem- orientations porary and historical, toward math.” to develop a more — Erica Walker complete portrait of how the public can engage in positive and powerful mathe- matics experiences. Doing so, and making such spaces widely available fter 20 years of research fixed), experiences we have with math and accessible, is critical to ensuring not and teaching in mathematics in and out of school, and mathematical just mathematical competence, but also education, I’m still struck that spaces that support or undermine our mathematical excellence for all. TC most people tell me deeply orientations toward math. I’ve devel- personal stories about their oped this notion of mathematical spaces Anegative experiences with math. It has from research on literacy and social and always bothered me that math has such a cultural geography, as well as my own poor reputation, enabled by very narrow historical and contemporary research on and stereotypical representations of Black American mathematicians. I argue math in media and popular culture. It’s that mathematical spaces, although per- past time to write a new American story haps not as widely recognized as spaces Erica Walker is Professor of Mathematics & Edu- about math. that promote literacy practices, must be cation at TC. This essay is adapted from “‘A My current research focuses on uncovered and leveraged for people’s Multiplicity All at Once’: Mathematics for Every- one, Everywhere,” her 2015 Etta Falconer how our mathematical lives are informed math learning and socialization. Lecture at the Centennial Mathematical Asso- by our multiple identities (both fluid and Research reinforces that there are ciation of America MathFest.

38 spring + summer TC.EDU/TCTODAY Illustration: Joyce Hesselberth; Photograph: Ellen Livingston { unconventional wisdom }

First Editions TC AUTHORS TC’S FACULTY IN PRINT BY ALINA TUGEND

• Decide who in the organi- by Jeffrey Henig, TC Professor zation will take part in leading of Political Science & Educa- change. tion, and Frederick M. Hess of • Do. Amid complex continu- the American Enterprise Insti- ous change, execution is always tute, spotlights the foundations happening. Tap into the “collec- that fund many of them. tive intelligence” of the orga- The book’s contributors Whatever nization to help change move (among whom are Stanford your current organ- faster and more effectively. emeritus professor Larry Cuban, “ • Discern, by collecting and journalist Dana Goldstein and ization’s pace of making sense of data. What did blogger Alexander Russo) change, it is prob- you expect to happen? What did find that major funders such ably too slow. PADDLING IN THE happen, and why? What should as Gates, Lumina, Ford, Broad PROVERBIAL CREEK be done differently next time? and Walton have become more — Bill Pasmore, ” How corporations can navi- It’s impossible to stop intentional, backing work with Professor of Practice gate ongoing change the white water of change, specific policy aims and requir- of Social-Organizational Psychology Pasmore concludes, but skillful, ing measurement of progress n “Whatever your current thoughtful leaders can navigate toward those goals. organization’s pace of change, the rocks and avoid overturning Is that good or bad? it is probably too slow,” warns the boat. Foundations today are often Bill Pasmore in Leading Con- too ahistorical, approaching tinuous Change: Navigating education reform with “lightly Churn in the Real World. refurbished ideas…greeted as Too many companies still radical innovations.” Spending attack one problem and goal is increasingly shifting to sup- at a time, says Pasmore, TC port advocacy and dissemi- Professor of Practice of Social- nation rather than research. The new reform Organizational Psychology, and Too often, foundations don’t movement and the that’s not how the world works understand the impact of “ in the digital age. Instead, lead- their own actions. Many also new education phil- ers need to prepare for the underestimate the importance anthropy have been “permanent white water” of classroom teachers. hugely consequen- of ongoing interruption and “The reform movement tial simply because constant course change. GIVING, WITH and the new education they show that the Yet paradoxically, the solu- STRINGS ATTACHED philanthropy have been hugely tion is not to charge into the fray Foundations are becoming consequential simply because American system and attack everything at once. bigger players in education they show that the American of public education Rather, leaders need to “step system of public education is is more flexible, away from the buffet” of change n Standardized tests. The more flexible, resilient and re- resilient and respon- initiatives and improvement pro- charter school movement. The sponsive than many had come sive than many had jects, says Pasmore. He offers a Common Core State Standards. to believe,” Henig and Hess “four Ds” model for developing a Controversial education conclude. Still, more open and come to believe. more thoughtful plan of attack: initiatives are much in the thoughtful research is needed news, and now The New Ed- to determine “whether they — Jeffrey Henig, ” • Discover which issues to Professor of Political address in order to create the ucation Philanthropy: Politics, use their influence wisely and Science & Education most impact. Policy and Reform, co-edited in pursuit of the right goals.”

Book photographs: Bruce Gilbert; Photographs: Above: Bruce Gilbert; Below, Erick Raphael tc today spring + summer 2016 39 Early Risers In this issue: young alumni working in psychology By amanda lang

[ NAIRA MUSALLAM (PH.D. ’11) ] complex global problems, such as conflicts and genocide, by intensely analyzing data collected Driven by Data in real time. n While at Tel Aviv University, In a complex world, using analytics to guide sound decisions Musallam worked with Palestinians and Israelis suffering post-traumatic stress disorder from political violence. At Teachers College, she aira musallam is a palestinian rendered an Arabic translation of The Handbook and a citizen of Israel. She attended The of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice, co- Mar Elias Institution, a Catholic school edited by Morton Deutsch (Founder) and Peter that preached tolerance to its mix of Coleman (Director) of the College’s Internation- Christian, Muslim, Druze and Jewish al Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolu- Nstudents. She possesses both a strong sense of tion. She also came to believe in the power of social justice and a deep understanding of life’s analytic techniques such as inferential statistics complexities. Hence her approach to solving and predictive modeling. She subsequently

40 spring + summer TC.EDU/TCTODAY Photograph: Heather Donohue I WANT TO REACH [ ISAAC GALATZER-LEVY (PH.D. ’10) ] millions of people,” says Naira“ Musallam. She’s Predicting Our Responses en route to doing so to the Unpredictable through a startup that Anticipating (and aiding) how people will cope with trauma builds, analyzes and creates presentations from data patterns ou wake up one morning, expecting business as usual, not readily apparent to and suffer a major heart attack. Modern medicine stabilizes you average users. physically, but how will you fare psychologically and emotionally? n Understanding and predicting people’s differing responses to Y the same type of event, argues Isaac Galatzer-Levy, can reveal who directed R&D for a global con- is at risk for post-traumatic stress, depression and anxiety, and facilitate sulting firm and taught applied helping them more quickly. n Such predictions are neither simple nor statistics and national security/ infallible. “The social, the environmental and the biological combine in dif- Middle East affairs at NYU. ferent ways for different people,” says Galatzer-Levy, Assistant Professor of n Last summer, while becoming Psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine. n Galatzer-Levy’s groundbreak- the first Arab woman to summit ing studies, conducted with his TC mentor, psychologist George Bonanno, Denali (North America’s high- have advanced understanding of variation in human stress response. Now est peak, formerly called Mt. he is studying emergency room patients, building a unique NYU database McKinley), Musallam hatched that includes people with different genetic makeups and experiences who a new venture, Frontier7, with have all undergone a singular potential trauma. He combines different fellow climber Tim Lawton. The methods, including latent growth mixture modeling, which classifies indi- goal: to empower organizations viduals based on their pattern of long-term adaptation to stress rather than “to focus on what matters” by according to classic definitions of psychological disorders in the American democratizing and scaling up Psychological Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. He also uses scientific expertise. The product: machine learning to identify patterns that indicate risk. n The method- a platform to build, analyze and ology is complicated, but the goal is simple: “To match individuals to the create presentations from data treatments that are best for them while not disrupting healthy coping.” patterns not readily apparent to average users. The company’s THE SOCIAL, THE client list includes The Estée environmental, the biological Lauder Companies, which it has all combine in different helped engage employees in “ ways for different people,” 34 countries, and NYU students working with Syrian refugees. says Isaac Galatzer-Levy, n “Frontier7 scales scientists’ who is researching how expertise to offer answers for these factors play out in everyone who didn’t have the differing human responses privilege of gaining Ph.D. skills to traumatic events. at TC,” says Musallam. “It’s my little way of giving back!”

Photograph: Sumati Gupta tc today spring + summer 2016 41 { early risers}

[ SHEFALI TSABARY (M.A. ’06) ] The Awakened Psychologist Becoming a mother leads to a focus on parenting in the moment

sychologist shefali Tsabary launched her practice using the best of western concepts and theories. It was Ponly after becoming a parent that Dr. Shefali, as she’s known, began drawing on her back- ground in the eastern practice of mindfulness, realizing that if she could teach people to practice “mindfulness in the moment” it could be game- changing for many family re- lationships. n In parent-child interactions, much of the stan- dard advice focuses on how to change the child, but Dr. Shefali thinks this is backwards. “All the readings of self-growth lead us to our own evolution, so why not in the (Namaste 2013); and The Awakened Family: A parent-child dynamic?” n That idea is at the Revolution in Parenting (Viking 2016), released heart of Dr. Shefali’s three books — The Conscious this past spring. She’s sounded the same call Parent: Transforming Ourselves, Empowering Our in appearances on “Oprah’s Lifeclass,” in her Children (Namaste 2011); Out of Control: Why TED Talks and via online courses. n Dr. Shefali Disciplining Your Child Doesn’t Work and What Will credits TC for giving her the “depth of understand- ing that opened me up to so many modalities, which allowed me the creativity to find my own SHEFALI TSABARY BELIEVES that the approach.” She says her private practice has standard psychological emphasis on changing kept her grounded. n “For the most part, parents the child has it backward. “All the readings have the same concerns,” she says. “Everyone of self-growth lead us to our own evolution, so is concerned about their children having a posi- why not in the parent-child dynamic?” tive self-worth.”

42 spring + summer TC.EDU/TCTODAY Photograph: Lily Rose { early risers}

[ ALEX PIETERSE (PH.D. ’05) ] a multicultural counseling course because they viewed racial group Quantifying Racism’s Unique Harm membership differently. Stu- Documenting the damage from an intergenerational trauma dents of color were far likelier to have had negative racial experi- ences, to see themselves as repre- s a nurse, alex pieterse unique piece about race is that senting their racial group and to learned “to be with it’s your experience as part feel unsafe in taking the course. people in their vulner- of a larger collective. There is an n Pieterse believes the deaths ability.” Fascinated by intergenerational transmission of Michael Brown, Freddie Gray “race and racism as a of trauma, which leads to an and other black men at police Aconstruct and the health-related ongoing sense of invalidation.” hands have renewed the national outcomes of that construct,” he n Pieterse has developed and conversation about racism. Yet came to TC to study with psych- validated an inventory to assess the grim headlines continue, and ologist Robert Carter, who has anti-racism awareness and the discourse on race is far from spent years documenting the behavior among students in universal. “I have three young health impacts of race and dis- counseling and counseling psych- boys of my own,” he says. “If crimination. n “I knew I would ology programs. He showed that my work contributes to better learn from him,” says Pieterse, white students and students opportunities for them, it will be now Associate Professor of Coun- of color responded differently to worth it.” seling Psychology at the University

of Albany School of Education, “but I did not anticipate how in- THE UNIQUE PIECE about race is that it’s vested he would be in my learning your experience as part of a larger collective. There and growth.” n Aided by Carter, is“ an intergenerational transmission of trauma, Pieterse has realized that “the which leads to an ongoing sense of invalidation.’’

Photograph: Courtesy of Alex Pieterse tc today spring + summer 2016 43 { early risers}

THE ACT OF parenting changes you. In“ a world of competition, parenting sometimes teaches us collaboration. In a world of violence, we know our kids respond better to understanding. In a world of distraction, parenthood demands our presence.

in academia.” n ”“Mothers are the beginning of life and the cor- nerstone of all psychology,” says Athan, Lecturer in Counseling & Clinical Psychology and Direc- tor of TC’s Maternal Psychology Laboratory. “Scratch psycho- logy and you hit a mother. But she’s invisible in terms of under- standing her subjective experi- ence — the person we seem least curious about. What’s that about?” n Athan has helped put matrescence — a term coined by the late medical anthropologist [ AURÉLIE ATHAN (PH.D. ’10) ] Dana Raphael — front and center in the larger discourse. She Taking Motherhood Seriously helped create TC’s new curricu- Telling “the biggest story never told” lum in Reproductive & Maternal Well-being, with courses ranging from her own “Mother Matrix: sk most passersby the phases of life, and you’ll get Developmental and Clinical the usual suspects: childhood, adolescence, adulthood. But Implications” to “Special Topics: matrescence? Not so much. n That, says Aurélie Athan Working with LGBTWQ Couples (Ph.D. ’10), is because the transition to motherhood — and Families,” taught by Gregory and its accompanying biological, psychological, social, Payton. She sees TC as an ideal Acultural and spiritual complexities — is “the biggest story never told standard-bearer in a policy

44 spring + summer TC.EDU/TCTODAY Photograph: Bruce Gilbert { early risers}

area undergoing long-awaited [ JAMES F. SUMOWSKI (PH.D. ’07) ] changes such as greater attention to family leave and increased awareness of perinatal mood dis- Bridging the Mind-Body Duality orders. (A federal panel recently A philosophy major becomes a neuropsychological researcher recommended screening preg- nant women and new mothers for depression, and TC is offering s an undergraduate, james f. sumowski majored the first known graduate level in both philosophy and psychology. He was sufficiently intrigued course in perinatal mental health.) by modern philosophy’s “mind-body problem” — the relation- n “The act of parenting changes ship between the body and the presumed immaterial mind or you,” prompting behaviors and soul — to further pursue psychology, and eventually neuropsy- Achology. n Interested in children’s cognition and learning, Sumowski values that often counter our cul- ture’s demands, Athan says. “In a enrolled in the School Psychology program at Teachers College, led by world of competition, parenting Stephen Peverly. A neuropsychological assessment course with David M. sometimes teaches us collabora- Erlanger “made clear that brain structure and function represents the tion. In a world of violence, we solution to the mind-body problem.” While at TC, Sumowski, seeking know our kids respond better to more focused neuropsychological training, completed a clinical neurosci- understanding. In a world of dis- ence research fellowship on multiple sclerosis (MS). n Now Associate traction, parenthood demands our Professor of Neurology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in presence.” n While grateful for New York City (as well as a TC adjunct faculty member), Sumowski, with increased attention to mothers a five-year R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health, is investi- in crisis, she believes the conver- gating cognitive decline in people with MS. He is seeking modifiable sation about motherhood must lifestyle factors to protect against decline. n “TC’s School Psychology expand to include more than cri- program gave me a strong foundation in cognitive psychology and psy- sis and dysfunction. n “Women chological assessment and a unique perspective in studying neurologic are not of interest until they’re disorders,” he says. “TC prepared me extremely well for a career ded- going mad. If I say postpartum, icated to clinical practice and research within neuropsychology.” TC you say ‘depression.’ We don’t want to only reinforce negative A TC COURSE “MADE narratives. Our work is to under- clear that brain structure stand the whole developmental life span, so we can get to women and function represents before they are struggling. Can the solution to the mind- we care for mothers throughout body problem” and provided the process?” — ELLEN LIVINGSTON an erstwhile philosophy major with “a unique perspective in studying neurologic disorders” that of Our Fields he is now using to help patients with MS. Younger TC extended family members making their mark

Photograph: Frida Sterenberg tc today spring + summer 2016 45 { campaign update}

Once More, With Feeling: TC’s Passionate Donors Rally to the Campaign

s our record-breaking Campaign, Where the Future Comes First, nears its historic goal of $300 million, a remarkable outpouring of support is positioning us for preeminence and impact for generations to come. Simply put: Our generous and savvy donors are transforming TC by funding their passions on every front.

Take Jody and John Arnhold, whose very generous Education and Arnhold Endowed Scholarship for full- gift will establish a unique Dance Education doctoral and part-time students. “Dance education is the grass- concentration preparing those who educate dance teach- roots effort for the arts and is good for children, schools ers, policy makers and leaders in the field. TC was the and democracy. It builds good citizens with collaborative birthplace of dance education a century ago. skills, creativity and imagination.” Jody Gottfried Arnhold (M.A. ‘73) is Founder of 92Y’s Dance Education Laboratory and Honorary Chair Supporting TC’s Talented Students of the Board of Ballet Hispanico. She co-chaired the committee that drafted the New York City Department of ther donors are providing scholarship sup- Education Curriculum Blueprint for Teaching & Learn- port so TC students can focus on building a Aing in Dance. better world. Their con- O She also leads PS DANCE!, a movement to provide tributions include: dance education for every student, and is executive pro- n The Donna E. Shalala Schol- ducer of a New York Emmy-nominated documentary, PS arship Fund, supporting students DANCE!, about dance education in five New York City in education policy. Dr. Shalala, public schools. “We know what dance does for the body, a former TC faculty member, is but it also feeds the heart and mind,” says Jody, whose among our era’s most effective gift with John establishes the Arnhold Chair in Dance champions for public education

SUZANNE M. MURPHY Vice President, Development & External Affairs u

OUR GENEROUS AND SAVVY DONORS are transforming Teachers College by funding their passions. These amazing gifts eloquently demonstrate that at TC, everyone can find a match for what they feel strongest about.

46 spring + summer TC.EDU/TCTODAY Photograph: John Emerson { campaign update}

Once More, With Feeling: TC’s Passionate Donors Rally to the Campaign

TAKING BOLD STEPS Jody Gottfried Arnhold (M.A. ’73) is working to ensure dance education for every U.S. student. Jody and John Arnhold are funding a doctoral concentration to prepare educators of dance teachers, policy makers and leaders in the field.

and health equity. She has led three major universities, become Lewicki Scholars. Alex’s study of women in served as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the conflict-ridden Timor-Leste was named Outstanding Clinton administration and is currently President of The Graduate Student Paper on Social Justice by TC’s Clinton Foundation. International Center for Cooperation and Conflict The Shalala Scholarship is endowed by Dr. Shalala’s Resolution (ICCCR). former students, including TC President Susan n The Debra A. Noumair Endowed Fellowship. Fuhrman (Ph.D. ’77) and Allan Odden (Ph.D. ’75), Organizational psychologists believe in working together. University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Emeritus, At May’s five-year anniversary of TC’s Executive Mas- and his wife, Eleanor; and by faculty in TC’s Depart- ter’s Program in Change Leadership, alumni created a ment of Education Policy & Social Analysis. new need-based scholarship named for Debra Noumair, n The Roy and Deborah Lewicki Scholarship Fund. Associate Professor of Psychology & Education. They Roy Lewicki (Ph.D. ’69), double emeritus professor at The have already raised $75,000. Ohio State University, is an authority on strategic nego- n The Professor Frances Connor Endowed Schol- tiation. The gift honors TC Professor EmeritusMorton arship Fund. The late Professor Connor (Ed.D. ’53) Deutsch, who launched the field of conflict resolution. called for “hope, not preconceived limits” for children The Lewicki Scholarship Fund supports students with disabilities, launching today’s inclusive education researching conflict resolution or social justice. movement. A recent bequest from her estate significantly Alexandra Da Dalt (M.A. ’16) typifies those who will increased the Connor Scholarship’s value, ensuring fund-

OUR GENEROUS AND SAVVY DONORS are transforming Teachers College by funding their passions. These amazing gifts eloquently demonstrate that at TC, everyone can find a match for what they feel strongest about.

Photograph: Left, Christopher Duggan; Right, Arthur Elgort tc today spring + summer 2016 47 { campaign update}

HONORING AN ICON Left: Allan Odden (Ph.D. ’75, with his wife, Eleanor) co-created a scholarship honoring former TC professor Donna Shalala (center). Right: Alexandra Da Dalt (M.A. ’16) was honored for research on post-conflict Timor-Leste.

ing well into the future for students like current Connor n The Morse Fellowship. Former TC Board Co- Scholar Christine Iturriaga. At TC, Christine, Special Chair Enid (“Dinny”) Morse and her husband, Lester, Education District Chair for Yonkers, New York, studies have generously supported many TC initiatives — includ- stress in parents of young children with autism. ing the Enid and Lester Morse Chair, held by Professor n Two-year Jonas Nurse Scholarships. This fall, TC — Ruth Vinz, who directs the College’s Center for the the birthplace of nursing education — launches an online Professional Education of Teachers (CPET). A new doctoral program for nurse educators. Four students will Morse Fellowship will support students in TC’s teacher receive scholarships from the Jonas Center for Nursing preparation programs. and Veterans Healthcare — the first time the Center has “CPET provides rich, deep projects that support funded students in an Ed.D. program. teachers in learning,” Professor Vinz says. “Dinny and “Nursing education faculty have particularly de- Lester share that vision. They want to create citizens of manding jobs that require excellent teaching skills,” says the world who are not tied to one way of thinking, but Professor Kathleen O’Connell, the who instead trust their own curiosity and capacity for We have raised program’s creator. Tom James, TC’s thought and feeling.” $242.9 million Provost and Dean, adds that the toward our Campaign grant “confirms the growing impor- Supporting Faculty Programs goal of tance of nursing education in a time $300 million* of great change in the field, and the C also has the Morses to thank for their role that schools of education — TC daughter, Trustee Leslie Nelson, Vice Chair of *AS OF MAY 31, 2016 in particular — can play.” T our Campaign (see page 51). Three years ago,

AS OUR RECORD-BREAKING Campaign, Where The Future Comes First, nears its goal, an outpouring of support is positioning TC for preeminence for generations to come.

48 spring + summer TC.EDU/TCTODAY Photographs: Left, Susan Cook; Right, Nikki Marenbach { campaign update}

Revitalizing Our Campus Reflecting lessons learned at TC about context, an alumna is funding the creation of user-friendly 21st-century classrooms Leslie and her brothers, Douglas and Andrew Morse, honored their parents by funding a music curriculum at the Teachers College Community School (TCCS), taught by Teaching Artists from Young Audiences ’s great education anthropologist Lambros Comitas New York and TC students. When TCCS Teaching has long argued that where something is learned Artists wanted to learn more about pedagogy, Leslie influenceshow it is understood. Alumna and Trustee proposed a Teaching Artist professional development TC Emerita Patricia Cloherty (M.A. ’70) applied that program tapping TC’s research-based understanding idea in her enormously successful career in international finance, of students. Now she, Doug, Andrew, and family friend during which, at President Bill Clinton’s behest, she helped Russia Kim Greenberg (mother of a TC alumna), are funding establish its private sector. Now she’s applying it again with a that program. generous gift, made in honor of Professor Comitas, to help TC As TC Music & Music Education Professor Lori create 21st-century classrooms in which technology helps students Custodero puts it, the program isn’t “selling a specific realize John Dewey’s vision of actively exploring ideas and con- approach or answer, but instead bringing awareness structing understand- to Teaching Artists about the need to understand ings. students as learners — to know their dispositional The College strengths and their culture.” will begin work this Gifts to two other important efforts at TC share fall to modernize six that stance. classrooms in Grace One is alumna and Trustee Edith Shih’s support Dodge Hall (home to to establish the summer Xiamen Music Education Lab nearly two-thirds of all at China’s Xiamen University, uniting music education TC classrooms) with a goal of bringing students from Xiamen University and Teachers College. them online by spring Edith, a longtime Chinese education advocate, is an 2017. The effort ideal partner for the Lab, which is led by Associate Pro- follows a carefully fessor Randall Allsup (Ed.D. ’02). The top legal mind planned run-up period at Hutchison Whampoa — a Fortune 500 investment during which TC built holding company based in Hong Kong — Edith has two prototype “smart fostered a broader culture of learning and good gover- classrooms” in Horace nance. She has also funded TC scholarships for Chinese Mann and Zankel Halls students and — a talented singer — performed a moving Patricia and extensively tested rendition of “Over the Rainbow” at our College’s doctoral LOCATION SPECIALISTS Cloherty (M.A. ’70) and TC education them with a wide convocation this spring. anthropologist Lambros Comitas. range of faculty and TC’s Campaign for Educational Equity (CEE), student users. As with led by Professor Michael Rebell, similarly focuses those spaces, the new classrooms will offer conference tables on understanding learners’ needs. CEE’s Compre- of gleaming white board, video monitors and internet apps to hensive Educational Equity Project seeks to identify, enable real-time sharing of content from any smart device — but cost out and implement supports to level the playing the technology will have a more user-friendly single-touch inter- field for under-served students. Now theJudith and face and a software base that makes the system more flexible. James Dimon Foundation is funding the Project’s “Our new classroom approach is to create a flexible modular analysis of legal and policy perspectives on preparing space that provides a physical place where both faculty and stu- dents can have the freedom to incorporate new methodologies in support of their curriculum,” said Laura M. O’Connell, Director of Capital Projects, who is heading up the initiative. “We’re also providing a cost-effective option for the institution to address AS OUR RECORD-BREAKING Campaign, Where The Future Comes First, nears its goal, an outpouring of support is positioning TC for preeminence for generations to come. long-term capital needs.”

Photograph: Susan Cook tc today spring + summer 2016 49 { campaign update}

CHANGE AGENTS Alumni from TC’s Executive Master’s Program in Change Leadership (XMA) at the program’s five-year anniversary. They joined forces to create the need-based Debra A. Noumair Fellowship to support an XMA student.

all students (especially those from poverty back- Get on Board grounds) for competitive employment and productive careers. hese amazing gifts eloquently demonstrate Education reformer and innovator Raymond that at TC, everyone can find a match for Smart is supporting a new CEE project to advance T the areas of inquiry and good works they feel understanding of the resources, services and sup- strongest about. As our Campaign nears the home ports necessary to prepare students for civic par- stretch, we invite you to play a part by funding your ticipation. Many state courts have ruled that such passion and extending our historic legacy of firsts preparation is an essential part of the right to a “sound in education, psychology and health. Your support will basic education.” Yet financially strapped schools shape an even brighter future for TC and the world — (particularly those serving many low-income students so why not start right now? of color) have reduced or eliminated social studies courses and service-learning opportunities, and sur- veys show that high-school graduates remain ignorant

of basic facts about our government and democratic SUZANNE M. MURPHY (ED.M. ’99, M.A. ’96) political system. VICE PRESIDENT DEVELOPMENT & EXTERNAL AFFAIRS

YOUR SUPPORT will shape an even brighter future for Teachers College and the world.

50 spring + summer TC.EDU/TCTODAY Photograph: Yemi Olorunwunmi On Board Spotlighting the work of TC’s dedicated Trustees I By joe levine

The Matchmaker Leslie Nelson has a gift for identifying needs and finding the people to address them

eslie nelson remembers a family vacation when her mother, Enid “Dinny” Morse, then Teachers College Board Co-Chair, was often on the phone. “She was a member of the pres- idential search that brought in Arthur Levine,” Lsays Nelson, who became a TC Trustee herself in 2010. “I guess I MEETING NEEDS have TC in my genes.” “On-site initiatives Like her mother, Nelson, for- often provide mer founding head of a success- ful interior design firm, approaches the best solution. her TC board service with a keen- So I thought, eyed humility, advancing ideas why not bring based on a deep understanding the mental of institutional needs. Consider her improvement of the Teachers health services to College Community School music the school?”

program, funded by the Morse —Leslie Nelson family, which imports musicians from Young Audiences New York. Upon hearing that the up. I am a firm believer that on-site initiatives often pro- teaching artists wanted to learn more about pedagogy, vide the best solution. So I thought, why not bring the Nelson and her brothers, Douglas and Andrew Morse, mental health services to the school? It’s like the old mod- proposed the creation of a teaching artist certificate el of mammogram mobiles, which brought the screening program that imparts pedagogical and practical skills to right into the underserved neighborhoods.” facilitate better communication with students with diverse Given her success in galvanizing these efforts, possi- learning styles. They have since funded that initiative bly only Nelson was surprised when, in 2014, the College with their friend, Kim Greenberg, parent of a TC alumna. asked her to serve as Vice Chair of its Campaign, Where Similarly, another developing project — through the Future Comes First. which TC clinical psychology doctoral students will pro- “I nearly fell off my chair,” she says. “But it turns out vide on-site mental health support in public schools — I like matching people’s interests with TC’s work. arose from Nelson’s longtime service as a volunteer public “Being on the board has been more fulfilling than I school assistant teacher. ever would have expected,” adds Nelson, who has served “One year, we had a particularly challenging group on the College’s audit, academic affairs, strategic innova- of fourth graders,” she recalls. “Many students had social tion, compensation and development committees. “I’ve and emotional issues that inhibited their academic ability. learned so much, and Susan Fuhrman and her team Even when these issues were diagnosed and treatment treat the Trustees as genuine collaborators.” As Nelson recommendations were made, there was often no follow- has repeatedly demonstrated, that’s because they are. TC

Photograph: Bruce Gilbert tc today spring + summer 2016 51 Inbox Jeffrey Putman (Ed.D. ’11), Alumni Council President, shares award-winning

REFLECTIONS ON TC There are thoughtful people on“ both sides of the aisle working to ensure…access to education. T ACADEMIC FESTIVAL They need TC to prepare the next A 2016, IT WAS MY HONOR generation of policymakers. TO INTRODUCE SIX RECIPIENTS — MaryEllen McGuire (Ph.D. ’02),” OF THE TEACHERS COLLEGE President of the Postsecondary National Policy Institute DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AND EARLY CAREER AWARDS — The chief benefit of RANDY BENNETT, DAVID JOHNS, having a thriving company is… MARYELLEN MCGUIRE, LIDA it “allows us to give back to ORZECK, NANCY SCHLOSSBERG support a thriving society. AND YUPHA UDOMSAKDI. HERE — Lida Orzeck (Ph.D. ’72), ” ARE SOME THOUGHTS THEY lingerie company Hanky Panky co-owner SHARED ABOUT THEIR KEY TC EXPERIENCES, FAVORITE PRO- FESSORS AND TOP LESSONS LEARNED. A SEVENTH HONOREE, OLIVIA HOOKER, IS FEATURED ON PAGE 53.

I learned…not just about education, but also“ about the social aspect of the USA, especially democracy. — Yupha Sookcharoen ” Udomsakdi (M.A. ’60), Thailand’s first female Minister of Education

I learned not only what assessment“ can do to help kids... but also to question the quality of assessment. I took a pay cut from — Randy Bennett (Ed.D. ’79),” Norman O. Frederiksen Chair in “teaching to try…policy- Assessment Innovation at making and the things that Educational Testing Service Aaron Pallas, Amy Wells and Lynn Kagan taught me.

TC’s Esther Lloyd — David J. Johns (M.A. ’06),” White House Executive Director, Jones “introduced me to Educational Excellence the world of the mind for African Americans and the intellect. — Retirement guru” Nancy K. Schlossberg (Ed.D. ’61)

Next up: How you met your best friend at Teachers College — and who is or was that per- TC son? Respond via facebook.com/Teachers Today CollegeAlumni/ and Twitter (@TeachersCollege)

52 spring + summer TC.EDU/TCTODAY Photograph: Bruce Gilbert Alumni News

[ ALUMNI FOCUS ] Keeping Her Mind Up HOW OLIVIA HOOKER, 101, HAS ACCOMPLISHED AND OVERCOME

livia Hooker was six on May 31, 1921, the day a white mob burned Tulsa, O Oklahoma’s Greenwood District. The Tulsa Race Riot, as it became known, was ostensibly trig- gered by a sensationalized encounter between a black shoeshine boy and

(CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE)

Photograph: Karsten Moran tc today spring + summer 2016 53

Photograph:Photograph: Name Name Tocome Tocome Alumni Focus

TRUE, THAT all right, I have to deal with these “It could be a neural reactions.” She’s dealt with them ever since. lovely world In 1937, she earned a B.A. in educa- if everyone was tion and psychology from The Ohio peaceful in State University. During World War their efforts II, knowing nothing about the military, and aims.” Hooker became the first African- American woman to serve in the U.S. — Olivia Hooker Coast Guard. (M.A. ’47) After the war, she earned an M.A. in Psychological Services from TC and, subsequently, a Ph.D. from the Uni- versity of Rochester, where she was the only woman and only African-American in her cohort. She taught for 22 years at Fordham University, devel- Olivia Hooker (continued from page 53) oping programs for the learning disabled and co-found- ing the American Psychological Association’s Division a white female elevator operator. White 33 on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. resentment against Greenwood, the nation’s In her 80s, Hooker co-founded the Tulsa Race Riot wealthiest black community, was the deeper cause. Commission, which has lobbied Congress (albeit un- Hooker’s home and her father’s store were torched. successfully) for restitution to survivors. In her 90s, she Several hundred blacks were killed and thousands volunteered in the Coast Guard Auxiliary and in 2015, detained by police, as though they were the aggressors. the Coast Guard officially renamed its Sector New York History ignored the incident for more than half a century. Galley in her honor. Hooker (M.A. ’47) has refused to be defined by those “It could be a lovely world if everybody was peace- terrible events. Her parents imbued her with such a love ful in their efforts and aims,” she says. “Once in a while of ideas that, at 101, she still recalls telling her sister Irene, you find somebody that’s spent their lives trying to make newly returned from college, that she was working hard things better for all of us, and that is a pleasure.” It is “to keep my mind up.” indeed. — ELLEN LIVINGSTON “She said, ‘you don’t have a mind, all you have are neural reactions,’” says Hooker, laughing. “So I said, well, u Watch a video of Olivia Hooker at http://bit.ly/1TFR5PK.

[ GRACE NOTE ]

DISTINGUISHED, EVEN IN ABSENTIA

In April, Olivia Hooker was slated to receive the Teachers College Distinguished Alumni Award at TC’s Academic Festival. She wasn’t feeling well, so the College brought the award to her — and she sent a videotaped message to the Festival audience. “It would have been my joy to be with you,” Hooker said. “I thank the College for their vision. I will treasure this day for the rest of my life.”

54 spring + summer TC.EDU/TCTODAY Photographs: Above, Karsten Moran; Center, courtesy of Olivia Hooker; Below, Susan Cook { alumni news & events}

[ ENHANCING AN HISTORIC PARTNERSHIP ] [ SCHOOL FOR PARENTS ]

PARENTING ADVICE FROM THE MOTHER SHIP

At Campaign Committee member Helen Pennoyer’s sug- gestion, TC recently offered alumni an informational series titled “Smarter Parenting and Grandparenting.” The ses- sions: “Beginning Limit-Setting and Positive Discipline” (Bronwyn Becker Charlton, Ph.D. ’03); “Raising Children Who Soar: A Guide to Health Risk-Taking in an Uncertain World” (faculty member Nancy Eppler-Wolff, Ph.D. ’85); “The Spiritual Child: The New Sci- ence on Parenting for Health and Lifelong Thriving” (Professor Lisa Miller). A Century and Counting

[ SHORTCUTS TO BETTER EATING ] TC and China’s U.S. Consulate look to the future

ast fall, the Presidents of China and the United States pledged stronger cultural and educational exchange in 2016. L In January, 250 friends of Teachers College and the Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China gathered at the Consulate in New York City. TC President Susan Fuhrman (Ph.D. ’77) called the event — spear- headed by Maryalice Mazzara

(Ed.D. ’84), Director of Academic TC faculty partner Affairs at the SUNY Levin Insti- with China’s tute and Deputy Director of SUNY higher education institutions, Confucius Institute for Business and TC’s current — “a wonderful opportunity to enrollment includes nearly explore how TC could build on its historic ties with China.” “Education must lay the groundwork for working as a team,” said Chinese Ambassador 300 Chinese and Hong Zhang Qiyue. American and Chi- Kong students. nese students must possess “an REHEATING FOR HEALTHY EATING international vision and a big heart respecting all societies.” In the early 1900s, Chinese TC alumni built the mod- Healthy eating is “totally doable,” best-selling nutritionist Ellie Krieger (M.S. ’94) told TC listeners in February — particularly when it’s already ern Chinese education system. Today, TC faculty partner done. Krieger’s You Have It Made: Delicious, Healthy, Do-Ahead Meals with China’s higher education institutions, and TC’s cur- (2016), explores the nitty-gritty of pre-preparing and reheating. Krieger bridges rent enrollment includes nearly 300 Chinese and Hong the gap between nutrition knowledge and behavior change. Kong students. —MINDY LISS

Photographs: Susan Cook tc today spring + summer 2016 55 Class Notes

Arts & Humanities [ ARTS & HUMANITIES ] ART ADMINISTRATION Eric Oberstein (M.A. ’09) produced Eric Oberstein (M.A. ’09) served as Producer of The Afro the The Afro Latin Jazz Suite, by Arturo Latin Jazz Suite by Arturo O’Farrill, which earned the O’Farrill, the GRAMMY Award winner GRAMMY Award for Best Instrumental Composition at the 58th Annual GRAMMY Awards for the Best Instrumental Composition in Los Angeles in February. th The suite appears on O’Farrill’s at the 58 Annual GRAMMY Awards. album, Cuba: The Conversation Continues. Oberstein and his team won a GRAMMY in 2015 tion of Drawing and Writing (CzechSlovakDances.com), a vid- who is completing his M.S.Ed. for The Offense of the Drum, (Heinemann 1992), by Janet eo and instruction book for use at Bank Street College of Edu- which was honored as Best Olson (Ed.D. ’89), was display- in public school classrooms. cation, was recently published in Latin Jazz Album. ed at the Cape Cod Museum the anthology The City that Never of Art. SCULPTURE & CRAFTS Sleeps: Poems of New York, which ART & ART EDUCATION Abrupt Departure, a sculpture includes works by Langston City Abstract by Andrew Buck MUSIC & MUSIC by Judith Peck (M.E. ’75), was Hughes, Claude McKay, Maya (Ed.D. ’15) was accepted into EDUCATION included in the NEXUS Exhi- Angelou, Federico Garcia Lorca, the Huntington Arts Council’s Edward J.P. O’Connor (Ed.D. bition, an international juried Adonis, e.e. cummings, Allen Juried Art Exhibit “Driven to ’67) co-authored (with František fine art show at the Arts Guild of Ginsberg and Walt Whitman. Abstraction.” Bonuš) and published The New Jersey in Rahway. Golden Gate Is Open: 31 Folk Alicia Pérez-Katz (M.A. ’98) is The second edition of Envision- Dances from the Czech and Slovak TEACHING OF ENGLISH resident Principal Ambassador ing Writing: Toward an Integra- Republics for Children and Adults Shokry Eldaly II (M.A. ’11), Fellow for the U.S. Department

LOST & FOUND

The Birth of a Romance

WHILE WALKING a friend to class through the Teachers College lobby about 10 years ago, the son of Doris Phillips Wilson (M.A. ’69) thought a woman in a photo on the wall might be his mother, who earned her degree in Business Education and recently received the State of Texas Piper Professor Excel- lence in Teaching Award. Sure enough, she was — and on closer inspection, her son discovered that his father, Bill Wilson, a graduate of TC with M.A. and Ed.D. degrees in Higher Education, was in the photo as well. Nowadays Doris comes to New York frequently, both to visit her three children and to pay respects to the photo, particularly since Bill Wilson passed away in 2013. During her most recent visit in summer 2015, a crowd gathered around her to hear her story. “I felt like a celebrity,” she says. — JOE LEVINE

56 spring + summer TC.EDU/TCTODAY Photograph: J.D. Closser { class notes}

[ ALUMNI FOCUS ] A New Way of Thinking Nick Sousanis is helping academia visualize new dimensions of Education, representing prin- Michael McKeough (Ed.D. ’77, cipals for the entire country. M.E. ’75) became Chair of the Physical Therapy Department TEACHING OF SOCIAL at California State University, ast November, the science journal Nature featured a STUDIES Sacramento. nine-page comic, “The Fragile Framework,” describing Judy Dick (M.E. ’09) illustrated L humanity’s slow awakening to climate change. The artist a Jewish-themed adult coloring SPEECH & LANGUAGE was Nick Sousanis (Ed.D. ’14), who calls his medium “a way book, Shalom Coloring (Behr- PATHOLOGY to access whole new ways of thinking from which we usually man House 2015). Reem Khamis-Dakwar (Ph.D. shut ourselves off.” ’07) has been appointed Chair Sousanis’s TC dissertation, Unflattening, is an extended Jessica Shiller (M.A. ’95) of the Communication Sci- meditation on perception and cognition, entirely in comic authored The New Reality for ences and Disorders Program book form. Harvard University Press, the work’s publisher, Suburban Schools: How Subur- at Adelphi University (AU). calls it “an insurrection against the fixed viewpoint.” ban Schools Are Struggling After graduating from Teachers “I started out making a comic because I saw the educa- with Low-Income Students and College, Khamis-Dakwar was tional potential of the medium,” says Sousanis, a postdoctoral Students of Color in Their Schools appointed Associate Researcher fellow at the University of Calgary. “I didn’t anticipate how (Peter Lang Publishing 2015). at TC’s Neurocognition of hungry people were for alt-scholarship and comics.” Language Lab, directed by Unflattening has TESOL Karen Froud. She joined AU as won the 2016 Ameri- Elizabeth Upton (M.A. ’89) an assistant professor, estab- can Publishers Award authored the children’s book lished the Neurophysiology in for Professional and Maxi the Little Taxi (Scholastic Speech Language Pathology Scholarly Excellence Press 2016), illustrated by Lab and received tenure in (PROSE) in Humanities Henry Cole. 2014. Khamis-Dakwar has men- and the Lynd Ward tored several undergraduate Prize for Graphic Novel Biobehavioral and doctoral students at AU of the Year (named for Sciences and is becoming internationally an early 20th century recognized for her expertise in TC graduate who made NEUROSCIENCE & language assessment and inter- wordless woodcut EDUCATION vention in culturally and ling- novels). Sousanis has Maria Corazon I. Fernandez uistically diverse populations. become a leading (M.E. ’87) is a clinical psycholo- Her research focuses on devel- champion of learning gist at the Brain Wellness Cen- oping authentic and innovative and scholarship that ter of the Asian Hospital and approaches in the assessment “incorporates ways to get past some of the boundaries we Medical Center (Manila) and at of language, speech and emer- set for ourselves.” the Neurodevelopmental Clinic gent literacy in Arabic. In that spirit, Sousanis defended his dissertation at of the University of Perpetual the home of the late TC philosopher Maxine Greene, joined Help Dalta Medical System. Counseling & afterward by his newborn daughter. “That’s what you want She conducts neurocognitive Clinical Psychology to teach,” he says of the playful curiosity between the baby screenings of adults with memo- and the 96-year-old scholar. “To open people’s eyes about ry and cognitive problems. PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNSELING themselves and the world.” Richard V. Campagna (M.A. Sousanis’s book is selling worldwide, with translations PHYSICAL EDUCATION ’91) hosted a multi-disciplinary, coming soon. He has connected with big comics companies Wendy Gross (M.A. ’71) multi-media symposium on and respected figures such as artist and comics theorist Scott published Spirit in Motion: “Optimistic Existential Philos- McCloud. This fall he becomes an assistant professor at San Gym & Water Fitness / Yoga ophy and Psychology” in Iowa Francisco State University. Breath-Stretch Technique City. The content was substan- “I’m an evangelist for comics and alternative forms,” he (AuthorHouse 2015). (CONTINUED ON PAGE 58) says. “I’m happy to do it as a teacher.” — SIDDHARTHA MITTER

Photograph: Leah Keller tc today spring + summer 2016 57 { class notes}

[ BIOBEHAVIORAL SCIENCES ] sees the honor as a reflection of the in-depth training she Reem Khamis-Dakwar (Ph.D. ’07), received at TC, which “truly informed the book on every page.” Fabricant is a member Communication Sciences & Disorders of TC’s Alumni Council.

Program Chair at Adelphi University, is PSYCHOLOGY IN EDUCATION recognized for language assessment and Nimat Hafez Barazangi (M.A. ’72) authored Woman’s intervention in diverse populations. Identity and Rethinking the Hadith (Routledge 2015). Barazangi gave a Book Talk tially inspired and developed three groups (one for men and ’01) received an Axiom Busi- at TC’s Gottesman Libraries during his time as a TC student two for women) and has two ness Book Award for Creating in April. and member of the Alumni individual clients. She can’t Career Success (Wadsworth Council. wait to take on others as she Publishing 2013), securing a Curriculum & finishes the first quarter of bronze in the Career category. Teaching Katie Dorsey (M.E. ’15, her psychology doctorate. The book includes research M.A. ’15) is interning at the by TC faculty (as well as from CURRICULUM & TEACHING Denver County Jail. She runs Francine Fabricant (M.E. many other sources). Fabricant PS DANCE!, a documentary film

[ ALUMNI FOCUS ] A Translator’s Odyssey

hen Tomoko Takahashi (Ed.D. ’84), groped for the right expression; often, she Her career in applied linguistics rekin- an applied linguist specializing in simply rewrote while translating. dled, Takahashi draws inspiration from Parks, W the dynamics of second language Ultimately, “I became fascinated by whom she often visited. “Here was this learning and cross-cultural communication, self-translation — I felt that I had a book national treasure, and I would find her in the decided to publish her memoir, Samurai and about it in my head,” says Takahashi, who kitchen, slicing tomatoes,” she recalls. “There Cotton, in English, she did the Japanese- sought guidance from translation theorist are a lot of memories.”— SIDDHARTHA MITTER to-English translating. After all, Takahashi Rita Wilson of Australia’s Monash University. has published research on second language Takahashi is Dean of the Graduate acquisition, co-authored with her Teachers School for Soka University of America in College advisor, Leslie Beebe, and textbooks Southern California. She has other respon- in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China. She’s sibilities, including as a Commissioner and translated works from English to Japanese — accreditation evaluator for the WASC Senior including three by Rosa Parks, the late civil College and University Commission. Still, rights icon, who became a close friend. prompted by her conversations with Wilson, Also, Samurai and Cotton tells of she completed a second doctoral dissertation Takahashi’s father’s and her own journey to — “Lost and Found in Self-Translation: the United States. But therein lay the rub. Author-Translator’s Re-encounter with the “You care so much because it’s your self- Past, Self, Inner Voice, and Hidden Creativity” expression,” says Takahashi. Sometimes she — in 2014, 30 years after her TC doctorate.

58 spring + summer TC.EDU/TCTODAY Photograph: Eric Mitsu Kimura { CLASS NOTES}

[ ALUMNI FOCUS ] about dance education Graduate School of Educa- An Ambassador for in public schools, was nominat- tion at the University of ed for a NY Emmy award. California, Berkeley, effective Lifelong Learning The film’s Executive Producer, June 30, 2016. A member Brenda LaGrange Johnson’s career could be described Jody Gottfried Arnhold of the National Academy of as “continuing education” (M.A. ’73), is a dance educa- Education, a newly elected tor/advocate, founder of 92Y member of the Sociological Dance Education Laboratory Research Association and a renda LaGrange Johnson was teaching in Brooklyn and 2013 TC Distinguished Fellow of the American Re- when she enrolled in Teachers College’s education Alumni Award recipient. search Association, Carter will psychology master’s degree program. Arnhold has been leading a bring to Berkeley her stature B “I had so many papers that I brought my typewriter nationwide effort to ensure as a scholar, her strong vision on the subway!” says Johnson (M.A. ’65), adding that she that every child in every public for leadership in the field of has no regrets. “The most important thing any person can school in every state has access education and her passion- do is continue their education. Keep taking in new ideas to a dance teacher and a quality ate commitment to public and ideals.” dance education. (psdance- education. Johnson has lived by those words. In the late 1970s, nyc.com/join-the-movement) she and a friend noticed that the Young Presidents Organi- Samson MacJessie- She has just generously funded zation, which their hus- a new dance education doctoral Mbewe (M.A. ’01) is now Director of Higher Education bands participated in, program at Teachers College included few women. (see page 46). at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in They launched an im- Malawi. porting and marketing Education Policy & company, Brenmer, that Social Analysis Health & Behavior became so successful that in 2005 Presi- EDUCATION POLICY Studies dent George W. Bush Travis Bristol (Ph.D. ’14) appointed Johnson HEALTH EDUCATION won the inaugural Teacher Di- U.S. Ambassador to Brenda Marshall (Ed.D. ’03, versity Award from the Ameri- Jamaica. Johnson had M.S. ’00) was inducted into the can Association of Colleges for no hesitations — “If National League for Nursing Teacher Education (AACTE) you’re not a career (NLN) Academy of Nursing for outstanding research and diplomat and are lucky Education (ANEF). advocacy for policies needed enough to be offered to enhance diversity in the International & the job, you accept it!” — but faced “a steep learning curve” nation's teaching force. At the as Jamaican voters seated three new Parliaments in four time, Bristol was a Research Transcultural years. Nevertheless, she built positive political relationships and Policy Fellow at the Stan- Studies and took a special interest in Jamaican schools. ford Center for Opportunity In recent years, Johnson has brought tutors to Policy in Education. Bristol has FAMILY & COMMUNITY the Madison Square Boys & Girls Club and served on the since been appointed Assis- EDUCATION boards of the Kennedy Center and Duke University’s tant Professor in English Ed- Evelyn R. Bohm (Ed.D. ’84, Nasher Museum of Art. She is active in the American ucation at Boston University. M.E. ’80) retired and serves Friends of Jamaica and has spearheaded the Board of The award was given by one on the Board of Directors of The Prince of Wales Foundation’s Rose Town Regenera- of AACTE’s Topical Action The Alzheimer’s Association. tion Project, which supports the impoverished Kingston Groups, dedicated to bringing As a volunteer for the organi- neighborhood. Through the latter effort, she met Prince more teachers of color into the zation, she also runs several Charles and his wife, Duchess Camilla, and subsequently profession. support groups for caregivers. the royal couple visited Jamaica. “I joke that I traded Dr. Bohm feels “very grateful the White House for Buckingham Palace,” she says. SOCIOLOGY & EDUCATION to be a graduate of TC as it has “Living in Jamaica was an incredible experience. My 10 Prudence Carter (M.A. ’95) prepared me well in working grandchildren visited 18 times and consider themselves was appointed Dean of the (CONTINUED ON PAGE 60) ‘Jamericans.’”— KELSEY ROGALEWICZ

Photograph: Courtesy of Brenda LaGrange Johnson tc today spring + summer 2016 59 { class notes}

with family and community.” [ CURRICULUM & TEACHING ]

INTERNATIONAL EDUCATIONAL PS DANCE!, a documentary film about DEVELOPMENT Colette Grace Mazzucelli public school dance education, execu- (M.E. ’11) was mentioned in a recent New York Times article, tive produced by dance advocate Jody “Extreme Study Abroad: The World Is Their Campus,” Gottfried Arnhold (M.A. ’73), received a partly about an international relations course taught for NY Emmy award nomination. undergraduates at LIU Global. In the pilot course this fall, Professor Mazzucelli uses nents. Mazzucelli’s article “The Matthew A.M. Thomas (M.A. in Australia. Google’s new Learning Man- Syrian Refugee Exodus Needs ’09) is now a Lecturer of agement System Classroom to a Civil Society Response,” in The Comparative Education and Mary (Masha) Turchinsky teach undergraduates engaged WorldPost, was published by Sociology of Education at the (M.E. ’12) produced #MetKids: in field work on several conti- The Huffington Post. University of Sydney Made for, with, and by kids,

“Teachers College was an essential contributor to my professional life, and my attendance was made possible through the G.I. Bill. Now, I feel a great satisfaction that I’m able to give back by including TC in my will and making a difference for the next generation of students.”

— Virginia Lucas, M.E. Nursing Education Grace Dodge Society member since 2013

For more information on gift annuities, bequests or other planned gifts, please contact:

Louis Lo Ré Director of Planned Giving [email protected] | 212-678-3037 56 fall + winter 2014 TC.EDU/TCTODAY tc.edu/PlannedGiving Photograph: Courtesy of Thomas Rogers { class notes}

a new digital series launched Science Teaching and Learn- der-based inequity and build a Senior Vice President of Ad- by the Metropolitan Museum ing (CSTL) at Tanglewood safer, more inclusive and vancement for The Music of Art. (www.metmuseum.org/ Preserve, has helped tailor a economically mobile city for Center. The Center is the pre- metkids) first-ever STEM voyage to women and girls. mier performing arts center the Caribbean. This special in Los Angeles. Mathematics, Fathom cruise to the Domini- HIGHER & POSTSECONDARY Science & can Republic which will be EDUCATION Tenzin Sonam Gonsar (M.A. Technology held on July 17, 2016, will also Marta Elena Esquilin ’10) founded EduLift, a non- host the fifth annual interna- (M.A. ’04) has joined Rutgers profit in Kathmandu, Nepal COMPUTING IN tional Clean Tech Competi- University–Newark as Associate dedicated to empowering chil- EDUCATION tion for students ages 15-18. Dean of the newly established dren and youth through a new Anthony Clemons (M.A. (www.cstl.org) Honors Living-Learning Com- kind of holistic and experien- ’15) is completing his Ed.M. munity (HLLC), and Assistant tial-based education. in Teachers College’s Program SUPERVISION IN Professor of Professional Prac- (www.eduliftacademy.org) in Interdisciplinary Studies SCIENCE EDUCATION tice in American Studies. in Education. The program James M. Micik (Ed.D. ’86, PRIVATE SCHOOL LEADERSHIP explores the intersection of M.E. ’85), a former science Belinda Miles (Ed.D. ’00) Edmund McCarthy (M.A. ’13) adult learning and instructional teacher for the Greenwich, was inaugurated as the third is celebrating his fifth year technology. Connecticut Public School Sys- president of Westchester as Assistant Coach of Major tem, was appointed Assistant Community College. Many League Lacrosse’s Boston INSTRUCTIONAL Professor of Math and Science TC alumni were among her Cannons. “My preparation at TECHNOLOGY & MEDIA Education at Franklin Pierce honored guests, including Teachers College has fortified Heejung An-Chandler (Ed.D. University. Micik is now teach- Teachers College President my ability to listen, learn, and ’04) co-authored/edited Tablets ing in the M.Ed. program in the Susan Fuhrman (Ph.D. ’77) lead as a teacher and as a in K-12 Education: Integrated University’s College of Grad- and Marcia Keizs (Ed.D. coach,” he says. Experiences and Implications uate & Professional Studies. ’84), President of York Col- (IGI Global 2014). lege. Miles’ TC dissertation Other Areas of Organization & advisor, Sharon McDade, a Interest MATHEMATICS Leadership former faculty member in EDUCATION TC’s Higher Education pro- INTERDISCIPLINARY Elana (Epstein) Reiser AEGIS gram, also attended. STUDIES IN EDUCATION (Ed.D. ’07) authored Teaching Richanne C. Mankey (Ed.D. Anitra C. Hampton (Ed.D. ’10, Mathematics Using Popular ’07) was named President of ORGANIZATIONAL M.A. ’05, M.E. ’00, M.A. ’99) Culture: Strategies for Common Defiance College. Mankey PSYCHOLOGY has been named Director of Core Instruction from Film and is the first woman to serve as Elaine Davidson (M.A. ’05) Field Experience and Clinical Television (McFarland 2015). the college’s president in the is Founder and Chief Exec- Practices at Miles College in Organized on the subject institution’s 165-year history. utive Officer of Works4Her, a Fairfield, Alabama. Hampton strands of the Common Core, global consulting firm that is also Assistant Professor of the book explores math con- EDUCATIONAL aids organizations in enhanc- Education (Teacher Education) cepts that are featured in ADMINISTRATION ing the abilities of current and at Miles College. contemporary films and tele- Danielle Moss Lee (Ed.D. future female leaders and vision shows. The book also ’06), Chief Executive Officer working mothers. Davidson provides examples and outlines of the YWCA of the City of is also the creator of Working Share Your News high school math teachers can New York, was appointed one Mother Mentorship, a global use to design lessons using of seven new Commissioners coaching and consulting firm Like reading about your pop culture references. (www. to the Commission on Gender that offers innovative programs fellow TC alums? Let mcfarlandbooks.com) Equity by New York City in re-entry from maternity leave them read about you, too. Mayor Bill de Blasio. The Com- and mentorship of working Share your news at: SECONDARY SOCIAL mission is an advisory body mothers. Office of Alumni Relations SCIENCE EDUCATION that works across city agencies www.tc.edu/alumni/update Ray Ann Havasy (Ed.D. ’97), to help achieve the Mayor’s Valentine Kang Gelman or email [email protected] Director of the Center for commitment to reduce gen- (M.A. ’05) was appointed

tc today spring + summer 2016 61 In Memoriam

[ THE HALL OF FAMER ] the company it is today without the influence of Metropolitan Opera, died in December at age Susan G. Gordon Bill Campbell, and my guess is Apple wouldn’t 90. A coloratura soprano perhaps best known be, either,” said Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman, as an interpreter of Schubert lieder, she was in the New York Times obituary about Campbell. widely hailed, according to the New York n Campbell received Columbia’s 2015 Alumni Times, for the “crystalline purity and supple Medal. In 2009, the National Football Foundation agility” of her voice. n Early in her career, and College Hall of Fame renamed its award for Dobbs — who earned her M.A. at TC in 1948 — top scholar-athletes for him. became the first black principal singer at La Scala in Milan. She debuted at the Met as Gilda in Verdi’s “Rigoletto” in 1956 and became the first black woman to be offered a long- ediatrician Susan Gordon, wife of Teachers [ THE PRINCIPLED VOICE ] term contract there. n Though well known, College Professor Emeritus Edmund P Mattiwilda Dobbs Dobbs commanded less popular attention Gordon, died in January. n “Dr. Susan,” pediat- during her long career than the more flamboy- rics professor at Columbia University’s College ant black artists Marian Anderson, who preced- of Physicians & Surgeons, and Fellow of the ed her to the Met stage, and Leontyne Price. American Academy of Pediatrics, served from She was, however, known for her steadfast 1978-81 on The National Panel on the Measure- refusal to sing in segregated concert halls. ment of the Program Effects of Head Start. She sang only once in Atlanta, her home city, n The Gordons led school integration in East until 1974, when she performed at the inaugu- Ramapo, New York; founded Harlem’s Harriet ration of Maynard Jackson, the city’s first Tubman Child Health and Guidance Clinic and attiwilda Dobbs, one of the first black black mayor. And on that occasion she had created a Psycho-Educational Diagnostic Clinic principal singers with New York City’s extra incentive: Jackson was her nephew. at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center’s M Ambulatory Pediatrics Division. Susan Gordon received the Children’s Champion Award of the Early Child Consortium of Rockland County, New York, in 1999. In 2006, the Gordons en- [ THE EQUITY CHAMPION ] tered the Rockland County Civil Rights Hall of Fame. n Susan Gordon never attended Teach- ers College, but, TC President Susan Fuhrman Quantifying Desegregation’s Benefits said, “her spirit and influence is woven into the fabric of our institution.” Robert L. Crain’s studies showed that school integration improved lives

eachers College sociologist Robert Crain, whose large-scale quantitative studies [ THE COACH ] demonstrated the positive impacts of school and neighborhood desegregation, William Campbell T died in March at age 82. n Crain, along with Jomills Braddock, James McPartland and Willis Hawley, was among a small group of pioneering sociologists who worked to convince the federal and state governments not to roll back racial protections accord- ed blacks through the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Much of his work advanced Perpetuation Theory, which predicts that young people who attend racially segregated schools are likely, as adults, to ill Campbell (M.A. ’64), a Silicon Valley B legend, former Chairman of Columbia Uni- hold jobs in segregated workplaces and live in versity’s Board of Trustees and a former Columbia segregated neighborhoods. n Crain also gave football star and coach, died in April at 75. expert testimony on desegregation, including n Campbell joined Apple in 1983 as Vice Presi- on behalf of plaintiffs in Connecticut’s famous dent for Marketing. He later worked closely Sheff v. O’Neill case, who charged that the with Steve Jobs during the revamping of the state’s system of separate city and suburban company’s Mac computer line and introduction school districts had created racially segregated of its iPod, iPhone and iPad. Campbell also informally advised Google’s two founders, Sergey schools and violated their children’s rights to Brin and Larry Page. n “Google would not be equal opportunity. — JOE LEVINE

62 spring + summer TC.EDU/TCTODAY Photographs: Clockwise, from left, TC Archives, Gyenes © 1957, Courtesy of Nan Guptill Crain, Columbia University Athletics / Gene Boyars [ THE PRIME MOVER ]

She Got Them Thinking on Their Feet Antoinette Gentile launched a new era in rehabilitation of neurologically-based movement disorders

rofessor Emerita Antoinette Gentile, TRIGGERING CHANGE a leader in movement sciences “The perspective (kinesiology) and neuromotor re- we were bringing, search, died in February at age 79. P that unless the Gentile, who taught for 44 years at TC, was a pioneer in applying theories of patient actively brain function to treatment of patients with moves on his own movement disorders, ushering in a new era there will be no in rehabilitation from strokes or neurological reorganization in the conditions affecting movement. She estab- lished the world’s first program of study in nervous system, motor learning and mentored many of the was quite radical.” field’s current leaders. In 2008, she received TC’s Medal for Distinguished Service to Education. “Ann Gentile was an international leader who changed the way many scholars thought about the skill learning processes and variables that influenced motor control of complex, coordinated physical activity,” said Richard Magill, Helen “Bessie” Silver- teaching or treatment. In her now ubiquitous “The physical therapists would get berg Pliner Professor Emeritus in Kinesiolo- “Taxonomy of Tasks,” she grouped tasks ac- these poor stroke patients down on the gy at Louisiana State University. cording to the structure of the environment floor, doing very simple tasks, because the “Ann’s ideas remain an accepted com- in which they are performed. For example, idea was that you had to regress back after ponent of virtually all curricula in physical a person on flat ground can learn walking a stroke and re-learn as though you were an and occupational therapy and influence the by rote, whereas walking on varied terrain infant,” Gentile said in 2009. “The therapist training of new rehabilitation therapists,” requires the creativity to produce different would move the individual on the assump- said Andrew Gordon, TC Professor of Move- kinds of movements. tion that passive movement was going to ment Sciences. Gentile also fleshed out theories that facilitate their recovery. So the perspective Prior to the 1970s, treatment of stroke skills involve both “explicit” processes (ones we were bringing, that unless the patient patients and those afflicted by conditions the performer is aware of, such as braking actively moves on his own there will be no like Parkinson’s had been determined for a red light) and implicit ones that lie reorganization in the nervous system, was largely by defining the extent of damage to beyond conscious awareness — for example, quite radical.” patients’ brains. Gentile focused instead on balancing on a bike. the impact of environment on brain function Gentile applied this conceptual and the potential to exploit “neuroplasticity,” framework to physical rehabilitation, the brain’s ability, following trauma, to shift arguing that while much early learning The A.M. Gentile Scholarship functions to new regions. occurs in the implicit realm, a patient’s Fund in Motor Learning In a 1972 paper, Gentile argued that cognitive abilities determine treat- neuromotor skills are acquired in distinct ments’ success. Again, her message To contribute to the A.M. Gentile Scholarship stages, each stage having implications for contradicted received wisdom. Fund in Motor Learning, call Linda Colquhoun at 212-678-3679 or visit tc.edu/campaign.

Photograph: TC Archives tc today spring + summer 2016 63 NON-PROFIT ORG. US POSTAGE PAID 525 West 120th Street I Box 306 I New York, NY 10027 I tc.edu TEACHERS COLLEGE

See yourself in our Campaign — no matter who you are To support student scholarship at Teachers College — the top priority of Where the Future Comes First, our historic $300 million campaign — you can:

„ Pledge $50,000 to create a new endowed scholarship in your own name or that of someone whom you wish to honor „ Contribute to an existing tribute fund „ Support a TC Fund Scholar

And if you don’t see something that reflects your interests — or your budget — there is another way. Find some like‑minded fellow alumni or friends and create your own new endowed scholarship fund! PHOTOGRAPH: DEBORAH FEINGOLD DEBORAH PHOTOGRAPH:

Make a TC Campaign gift today to find out more, contact: Linda Colquhoun at 212-678-3679 [email protected] or visit tc.edu/future