2009: The Year in Review
The College builds a partnership with public schools in Harlem, creates a range of new initiatives abroad, wins new funding to support urban teaching and initiates an ongoing series of conversations among faculty aimed at identifying major global challenges that TC is uniquely positioned to address through cross-disciplinary collaboration.
October (2008)
TC’s Office of School and Community Partnerships secures a three-year $3.2 million grant from the New York State Department of Education for the College to work with New York City community-based organizations to create after-school programs in science, technology, engineering and math at public schools in Central Harlem, Morningside Heights, Washington Heights and Inwood.
On the eve of the Presidential election, TC hosts a debate in its Cowin Conference Center between Linda Darling-Hammond (pictured), education advisor to Barack Obama, and Lisa Graham Keegan, education advisor to John McCain. Thousands view a Webcast of the event by the publication Education Week.
The College’s Office of School and Community Partnerships convenes leaders of higher education institutions, public school districts and government entities throughout New York State for a working meeting on the creation of university-assisted schools as an important component of the state’s pre-K–16 education strategies. Linda Darling-Hammond and Johanna Duncan-Poitier (New York State Senior Deputy Commissioner of Education for P–16) deliver keynote addresses.
November (2008)
TC joins a new consortium of universities, funded by Microsoft, which will study the potential of computer and video games to teach math and science to middle-school children. Charles Kinzer, TC Professor of Education and director of the Communication, Computing, Technology and Education program, will direct the College’s participation in the new consortium, known as the Games For Learning Institute (G4LI).
TC’s Campaign for Educational Equity holds its fourth annual Symposium, “Comprehensive Educational Equity: Overcoming the Socio-economic Barriers to School Success,” which includes a first-ever effort to quantify the actual costs of providing meaningful educational opportunities (including health, after-school and other supports) to children from birth through age 18. Speakers (pictured above) include Geoffrey Canada, Arne Duncan, Carl Hayden and Helen Ladd.
TC President Susan Fuhrman becomes President-elect of the National Academy of Education (NAEd). At a NAEd forum in Washington, D.C., Fuhrman moderates one of six panels presenting recommendations for education reform to advisors for President-elect Barack Obama and Congress.
TC enters into partnerships with the governments of Bhutan and the Dominican Republic. These alliances are among many the College has made with other countries, including Iceland, India, Jordan, Tanzania and Turkey.
January (2009)
Liyana (pictured above), an Afro-fusion band from Zimbabwe whose members all have physical disabilities and all make their own instruments, performs at TC before an audience of visiting New York City public school children.
February
In an address to TC’s Cahn Fellows (exemplary New York City principals who convene at the College over a 15-month period to work on shared challenges in their institutions), Dennis M. Walcott, New York City’s Deputy Mayor for Education and Community Development, calls for the renewal of a 2002 state law that established mayoral control of the city’s public schools.
March
TC’s Office of School and Community Partnerships hosts 60 Harlem public school educators to the kick-off of the Harlem Schools Partnership (HSP), an ambitious $5-million initiative funded by the GE Foundation to be conducted in collaboration with Columbia University’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. At the meeting, teachers take part in breakout sessions led by TC faculty members Felicia Moore Mensah, Ellen Meier, Susan Lowes and Ann Rivet designed to explore the educators’ professional development needs and draw out key themes that could become elements of the partnership over the next five years.
April
On its 100th anniversary, TC’s Nutrition Education program—the nation’s oldest—hosts “Restoring Balance: New Visions for Food and Activity,” a major conference that brought together nutritionists, food activists, healthcare professionals, scholars and others to rethink the national diet and promote the development of regional “food sheds” that would ensure a steady supply of locally grown produce for all Americans. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer delivers the keynote address.
At the last in a series of five “domain dinners” begun in the fall, TC faculty members from various departments and fields gather to examine overlapping interests and the rich potential for collaboration. The themes discussed have included policy across the human lifespan; creativity and the imagination; learning, cognition and technology; schools as hubs of communities; global
citizenship; and health and education.
citizenship; and health and education.
May
At its 2009 Convocation ceremonies (pictured above), the College presented its Medal for Distinguished Service to:
- Newark Mayor (and TC Trustee) Cory Booker, under whom Newark has led the nation in reduction of shootings and murders; doubled its production of affordable housing and expanded special-needs housing; and launched a major charter-school initiative that expands offerings for high-performing students and protects students at risk;
- Former Barnard College President Judith Shapiro, who achieved early fame for her pioneering work on social theory and gender differentiation among the Tapirapé and Yanamamo peoples in South America and later guided the college in refocusing its curriculum with “Ways of Knowing,” a nationally praised model that, through nine linked areas of inquiry, explores the cross-disciplinary construction of human knowledge;
- Antoinette Gentile, TC Professor Emeritus, an internationally recognized leader in movement sciences and neuromotor research who retired in spring 2008 after 44 years of distinguished service on the TC faculty.
June
TC bids farewell to a member of the Board of Trustees and four longtime professors, a group whose combined service to TC totals more than 120 years. Those retiring are Leslie Beebe, Professor of Linguistics and Education; Dennis Mithaug, Professor of Education; Frances Schoonmaker, Professor of Education; and Robert Taylor, Professor of Computing in Education; as well as TC Trustee Enid “Dinny” Morse.
TC reopens its historic Aquatic Center (pictured above), one of the oldest functioning indoor pools in the country, following a nine-month, $1-million upgrade.
TC’s Peace Corps Fellows and Summer Principals Academy are awarded $256,000 in AmeriCorps grants to place teachers and volunteers in schools in New York City and elsewhere. The grants will fund 38 Peace Corps Fellows, returning Peace Corps volunteers who will teach full time in high-need schools in New York City, and 55 experienced educators who will become school leaders in high-need public schools through the Summer Principals Academy.
The College receives $1 million from the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund in support of its Office of School and Community Partnerships (OSCP) and Teachers College Partnership Schools Network, a group of public elementary, middle and high schools in Harlem that serve students most at risk of dropping out.
August
Peter Coleman, Associate Professor of Psychology and Education and Director of TC’s International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, receives a joint appointment to Columbia University’s Earth Institute, headed by economist Jeffrey Sachs.
Published Thursday, Apr. 1, 2010
