January

TC inaugurates Susan Fuhrman as its 10th president and the first woman to hold the job. Fuhrman speaks of the great thinkers in TC’s history who have “asked fundamental questions that have taken us beyond the rhetoric of the moment” and of her vision for building on their efforts.

February

TC hosts a forum on Pledging Allegiance: The Politics of Patriotism in America’s Schools, published by Teachers College Press and edited by Joel Westheimer of the University of Ottawa (son of TC alumna “Dr. Ruth” Westheimer). Westheimer and five of the volume’s contributors—including TC Professor Emerita Maxine Greene—discuss the meaning of patriotism and its implications.

March

Thomas James is named TC’s Provost, with the accompanying titles of Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs.

U.S.News and World Report names Teachers College the nation’s top graduate school of education.

Dawn Duques, a TC alumna who has directed a continuing education school and a network of school-age childcare programs, joins TC’s Board of Trustees.

April

The annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), held in Chicago, features 154 presentations by TC faculty, students and staff.

May

TC launches a new online master’s degree program in Computing and Education.

At Convocation, the College awards its Medal for Distinguished Achievement to Professor Emeritus Thomas Sobol; Shirley Jackson, President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and former head of the Atomic Energy Commission; and Lee Shulman, Director of the Carnegie Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

June

Harvey Spector joins the College as Vice President for Finance and Administration.

July

A group of students from TC’s Speech and Language Pathology program visit Bolivia, where they work with children and families at three different sites, earning course credit in the process.

TC mourns the death of R. Thomas Zankel, a member of its Board of Trustees and the son of late Board Vice Chair, Arthur Zankel.

August

Eleven public school teachers from Jordan spend six weeks at TC improving their English language skills and learning new methods of teaching English as a foreign language, the first step in a burgeoning educational exchange between TC and the Jordanian government.

Nancy Streim joins the College in the newly created position of Associate Vice President and Special Advisor to the Columbia University Provost.

September

The College launches “Teaching The Levees: A Curriculum for Democratic Dialogue and Civic Engagement,” a 100-page teaching tool developed by TC faculty, students, staff and alumni cued to the four-hour HBO documentary by Spike Lee, “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.”

TC deploys its first cohort of Zankel Fellows—35 students at the College who receive $10,000 each in return for working as interns in TC’s Reading and Math Buddies programs, the College’s Student Press Initiative (SPI), the Heritage School, Columbia Secondary School, InsideSchools.org and other New York City-focused organizations.

TC’s Center for Educational and Professional Services is rededicated as the Dean-Hope Center, marking a sweeping renovation that will bring new technologies to the Center’s mission of serving the community and teaching the next generation of care-givers.

A new Provost’s Investment Fund awards TC faculty $20,000 seed grants for proposals to add value and stimulate growth in the College’s academic programs.

Multicultural expert James A. Banks delivers TC’s annual Tisch lecture, titled “Diversity and Citizenship Education in Global Times.”

October

In her annual State of the College address, President Fuhrman outlines community-building initiatives both inside and outside the College, including partnering with New York City public schools; “self studies” in which visiting scholars will help TC’s academic departments look for better internal alignments and connections; and plans to address functional and cultural issues at TC, including minority hiring and classroom discussion of racial issues.

Time-Warner Inc. honors four alumni of TC’s Cahn Fellows program with its New York City “Principals of Excellence” award.

Teachers College honors five alumni with awards for service to education. Early Career Awards are given to Sharon Ryan (Ed.D., Early Childhood Education, 1998), a faculty member at Rutgers Graduate School of Education, and Michael Lowry (M.A., Educational Administration, 2005), a science teacher at the McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Distinguished Alumni Awards are given to feminist sex educator Leah Schaefer (Ed.D., Family and Community Education, 1964); Fordham University professor and trauma-therapy specialist Anie Kalayjian (Ed.D., Nursing Education, 1986); and Susan Fuhrman (Ph.D., Political Science and Education, 1977), President of Teachers College.

Suzanne M. Murphy, who previously headed institutional advancement at Sarah Lawrence College and Marymount College of Manhattan, is named TC’s new Vice President for Development and External Affairs.

TC alumna Marla Schaefer, former co-CEO of Claire’s Stores, joins the College’s Board of Trustees.

November

TC mourns the passing of professors Leslie Williams, Robert Bone, Kenneth Herrold and Elizabeth Maloney. Williams was an active faculty member and the others were retired. All were leaders in their fields.

December

The African Diaspora Film Festival, founded by the TC husband-and-wife team of alumnus Reinaldo Barroso-Spech and Diarah N’Daw Spech, financial director for the College’s Center for Educational Outreach and Innovation (CEO&I), ran for its 15th consecutive year, showing more than 100 films over a 17-day period in New York City. Over the years, the festival has drawn over 100,000 attendees. Barroso-Spech teaches a course at TC in which students, who use films in the festival to create lesson plans, not only watch the films, but also meet the filmmakers.

Published Tuesday, May. 20, 2008