If you ride the New York City buses, you may start seeing some familiar faces around town.  Such as John Dewey, Shirley Chisholm, Mary Swartz Rose, Carl Rogers and Albert Ellis.

Each of these eminent figures either taught at or attended Teachers College. Each broke new ground either through their teaching and research, or through their work in the field. Now, all grace a series of new ads at bus shelters on the city’s Upper West Side.

“Hands-on learning, before the touchscreen,” proclaims the ad featuring Dewey (located at Broadway between West 78^th and 79^th Streets), the iconic education philosopher and TC faculty member who famously argued that life is education and vice versa.

“Courage to run, first to win,” says the ad about Chisholm (M.A. ’52) who was the African American woman elected to Congress and the first to run for a major party’s presidential nomination. (Check it out on Amsterdam Avenue between 79^th and 80^th Streets).

“The Dynamics Duo” headlines the ad featuring Rogers (Ph.D. ’31) and Ellis (Ph.D. ’42), who, respectively, shaped the fields of humanistic psychology and rational emotive therapy. The two are ranked as the most influential American psychologists of the 20^th century. (They’re at Broadway between 75^th and 76^th Streets.)

And an ad about Mary Swartz Rose, the TC faculty member who launched the field of nutrition education, says, “She went green before it was cool.”

“It’s a fun way to bring the spirit of our 125^th anniversary and TC’s enduring legacy and impact on society to the rest of New York,” says James Gardner, Associate Vice President of External Affairs, of the ads, which all bear TC’s 125^th anniversary icon and the tag line “Celebrating a tradition for tomorrow. The ads also flag “Teachers College: Pioneering Education, Celebrating 125 Years of Innovation in Learning,” an exhibit about the College that is running at the New York Historical Society through March 31^st.

But not all the ads feature a face. Fittingly, for an ad campaign mounted at bus shelters, one shows a yellow school bus, with the headline “He gave everybody a ride to school.” The ad is about alumnus and faculty member Frank W. Cyr (Ph.D. ’30), who chaired the conference at TC in 1939 that produced plans for the yellow school bus – a major step in making public education accessible to students in remote rural areas.

As both the ads and the exhibit at the New York Historical Society make abundantly clear, - the ride continues – and TC continues to set the standard.

Published Tuesday, Mar. 12, 2013