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Video Highlights from TC's Other Curriculum

Video Highlights from TC's Other Curriculum
Video Highlights from TC’s Other Curriculum
It was a busy spring at the College, with an array of lectures, panels and presentations that was dizzying even by TC standards.  Check out video of major events on campus, including the Sachs, Tisch and Blackman Lectures, the presentation of the annual Morton Deutsch Awards for Social Justice, a panel discussion on the New York State Dream Act, a screening and discussion of the documentary film “Wham! Bam! Islam!”, and the national launch of the TC-developed curriculum “Understanding Fiscal Responsibility.”


The Sachs Lecture

Pamela Grossman, Nomellini Olivier Professor of Education at Stanford University’s School of Education and faculty director of the Center to Support Excellence in Teaching at Stanford, discussed “Reimagining Teacher Education in a Shifting Landscape.”  Grossman has published extensively on teacher education, professional education, teacher knowledge and the teaching of English in secondary schools. She is a principal investigator on the Pathways Project, one of the largest-ever studies of teacher preparation and performance in New York City, which seeks to identify the characteristics of teacher education programs that produce high-performing students who sustain that learning over time.

Grossman called the current moment in education analogous to past periods in surgery and cancer research, when new advances were suggesting multiple strategies rather than the primacy of a single approach or treatment. While the proliferation of data may be “a mixed blessing” when some of that data ends up in the New York Times, Grossman said, the Data may be a mixed blessing when it gets into the New York Times, more data has been beneficial to teacher education.  She declared herself “optimistic about the future of teacher education and the role of the university in this changing landscape.”

The Blackman Lecture

Part of the “When Worlds Collide: Ongoing Challenges of Special Education” sponsored by the Center for Opportunities and Outcomes for People with Disabilities of TC’s Health and Behavior Studies Department the Blackman Lecture was delivered this year by Catherine Lord, Director of the Center for Autism and the Developing Brain, which is affiliated with the Columbia University Medical Center, New York Presbyterian Hospital, and the Weill-Cornell Medical Center. Lord, who is also affiliated with TC’s program in Clinical Psychology, served as a member of the Neurodevelopmental Disorders Committee of DSM-5, the newest edition of the American Psychological Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders. Her talk focused on the politics of DSM-5 and sought to clarify the thinking behind the committee’s recent controversial proposal to change the 1994 diagnostic criteria for autism and pervasive developmental disorders.

The College has presented the annual Leonard and Francis Blackman Lecture, endowed by the family of TC Psychhology Professor Emeritus Leonard Blackman, since 1999.   

The Tisch Lecture

Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand and current administrator of the United Nations  Develop Program (UNDP), spoke on “Education and International Development.” Clark is the first woman to lead UNDP, and also chairs the UN Development Group, a committee comprising the heads of all development  funds within the UN. Clark said that she is “passionate about the power of education to transform individual prospects” as well as those of families, communities and nations, arguing that “in our world, knowledge is power” and therefore “an indispensable part of the development equation. For more than two decades, UNDP has been guided by the paradigm that, beyond mere growth in gross domestic product per capita, successful development is about human beings living longer, healthier lives, with dignity and with access to education. The world has made great strides toward that goal since 1990, with the number of people worldwide living in extreme poverty having been reduced by half, and with deaths from tuberculosis and malaria cut by 40 percent and 30 percent respectively. But “aggregate figures disguise  the inconvenient truths that ending extreme poverty and hunger is an unfinished agenda,” Clark said – and education remains one of most powerful tools (and one of society’s best investments) for completing the job.

The 8th Annual Morton Deutsch Awards for Social Justice

Morton Deutsch is TC Professor of Psychology Emeritus, founder of the College’s International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, and widely regarded as father of the modern field of conflict resolution. The Deutsch Awards, presented by ICCCR, recognize both a Columbia University doctoral student and a distinguished scholar/practitioner who embody Deutsch’s ideals and commitment to social justice. Past scholar/practitioners who have received the Deutsch Award include Geoffrey Canada, founder and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone, and Claude Steele, pioneering psychologist and former Provost of Columbia University.

This year’s scholar/practitioner recipient of the Deutsch Award was Gene Sharp, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, and founder of the Albert Einstein Institution, which is devoted to studies and promotion of the use of non-violent action in conflict worldwide. Sharp’s books – particularly From Dictatorship to Democracy, which proposes 198 methods of non-violent resistance, have guided protesters and revolutionaries in the Arab Spring uprisings, the Ukraine, Serbia, Thailand, Burma/Myanmar, Tibet and the Baltic states.

The Columbia student recipient of the Deutsch Award was Kate Cronin-Furman, a Columbia Law School graduate and current Ph.D. student in political science whose dissertation is titled “Accountability After Mass Atrocity.”

Economics of Education Colloquium: “Dropping Out,” presented by Russell Rumberger of the University of California-Santa Barbara

Rumberger, who is also the Vice Provost for Education Partnership within the Office of the President of the University of California, spoke about his recently published book, Dropping Out: Why Students Drop Out and What Can Be Done About It.

Panel on the proposed New York State Dream Act

Presented jointly by TC’s Institute for Urban and Minority Education and Latino Faculty Working Group, the panel focused on the New York State Dream Act (S.4179/A.6829), which would allow undocumented students who meet in-state tuition requirements in New York to access state financial aid for higher education. The bill, originally championed by the New York State Youth Leadership Council, was introduced in March 2011 by New York State Senator Bill Perkins and New York State Assemblyman Guillermo Linares (Ed. D., International and Transcultural Studies, ’06). Perkins and Linares both spoke at the panel, along with Ernest Morrell, Professor of English Education and Director of IUME; Kevin Dougherty, Associate Professor of Higher Education; Regina Cortina, Professor of Education; and Kenny Nienhusser, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Higher Education.

Third Annual Maxine Greene Society Event: “Wham! Bam! Islam!”

At its annual event, the Maxine Greene Society, which honors donors whose annual participation exemplifies the great TC philosopher’s  ideal of deep engagement, offered an exclusive film screening screening of the documentary film “Wham! Bam! Islam.” The film, by award-winning directorIsaac Solotaroff, tells the story of how TC psychology alumnus Naif Al-Mutawa created his pioneering comic strip, “The 99,” about superheroes who embody the 99 virtues of Allah, and won backing and acceptance for it around the world.  Al-Mutawa  and Solotaroff fielded audience questions afterward, moderated by Peter Coleman, Associate Professor of Psychology and Education and Director of TC’s International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution.

Engaging Students in the Nation’s Fiscal Challenges

Published Friday, May. 11, 2012
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