Class Notes
Language, Literature & Social Studies
Carol Frank (M.A.’74) is currently writing children’s book and traveling down the road toward publication.
Music and Music Education
Rabbi Arnold Saltzman (M.A.’76) was honored by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, D.C. for organizing the Vigil to Free Alan Gross, a prisoner in Cuba. In October 2013, Saltzman dedicated the performance of his second symphony, Rescue in Denmark, to the Danes’ protection of their Jewish population during World War II. Saltzman earned a doctorate in music, honoris causa, from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in June 2013.
Jessica Elkhatib (M.E. ’09) recently played cello on “Saturday Night Live” with British pop sensation Sam Smith
Teaching of English
Abbie Brown (M.A. ’88) received the 2014 University of North Carolina Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching. Brown is the first recipient of this honor who teaches entirely online
Chriselle Tidrick (M.A. ’95) is the Founder and Artistic Director of Above and Beyond Dance. She received a grant from Brooklyn Arts Council to create and produce DREAMSCAPES, her company’s most recent work of circus-infused dance. DREAMSCAPES incorporates dynamic stilt dancing, aerial artistry and dance theater choreography to carry the audience through a series of vignettes depicting the ethereal wonder of dreams and the surreal terror of nightmares. Learn more at AboveAndBeyondDance.com
TESOL
Kimberly Leimer (M.A.’95) is ELL Coordinator at Rhode Island’s Learning Community Charter School, an urban K—8 school where most students are English language learners. Leimer has two children, one in high school and one in middle school.
Curriculum & Teaching
Curriculum and Teaching
Sharon Feiman-Nemser (Ed.D. ’72) has for the past 12 years held a chair in Jewish Education at Brandeis. Her recently published collection of writings, Teachers as Learners, includes a chapter about her studies at TC in the late 1960s and early ’70s.
Margot Diekmann Edlin (Ed.D. ’07) is a Faculty Fellow at Queensborough
Community College CUNY in the Office of Academic Affairs. She has published articles on persistence and motivation in urban community college students.
Valerie Bang-Jensen(Ed.D. ’96, M.E. ’92, M.A. ’84) is now full Professor at Saint Michael’s College, in Colchester, Vermont. With colleague Mark Lubkowitz, Bang-Jensen co-authored
Books in Bloom: Discovering the Plant Biology in Great Children’s Literature (National Gardening Association).
Education Policy & Social Analysis
Politics and Education
Katherine Miller-Bains (M.A. ’12) has begun a doctoral program in Research,
Statistics and Evaluation at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education.
Health & Behavior Studies
Cross-Categorical Studies
Since graduating from Teachers College, Martha Harville (Ed.D. ’00) has continuedteaching and publishing articles and working, teaching and leading at Louis Armstrong Middle School, Alternative Schools and Programs and First Lego Robotics. She has served as Kappa DeltaPi Convocation Presenter and as an Ambassador for People to People International.
Special Education
Judith A. Jonas (M.A. ’65) has co-authored Deaf and Hearing Siblings in Conversation, the first book to consider both deaf and hearing perspectives on the dynamics of adult sibling relationships. Jonas, who is hearing, and Marla Berkowitz, who is deaf, used ASL and spoken English to interview 22 adult siblings. They analyzed the impact of isolation on deaf-hearing sibling relationships.
Human Development
Cognitive Studies in Education
Kara Carpenter (Ph.D. ’13, M.Phil. ’13, M.A. ’10), Dana Pagar (Ph.D. ’13, M. Phil. ’13),and Rachael Labrecque (M.A. ’08), a current Ph.D. student, founded Teachley, a New York-based educational technology company. Teachley won an Apple Design Award 2014 for Addimal Adventure, an app that helps children learn addition.
Developmental Psychology
Amy J.L. Baker (Ph.D.‘89, M.Phil. ‘88) has written six nonfiction books, including Co- Parenting with a Toxic Ex (New Harbinger) and Surviving Parental Alienation (Rowman & Littlefield). The latter two books are about the practice of parental alienation, through which one parent tries to foster the child’s unjustified rejection of the other parent.
International & Transcultural Studies
International Educational Development
Diane Dobry (M.A. ’01, Ed.D. ’11) published an article, “Online Fan Groups Using Paranormal Reality Television Programs to Interpret Representations of Paranormal Phenomena and Their Relationship to Death and the Afterlife,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal Cultures
Matthew A.M. Thomas (M.A. ’09) completed a Ph.D. in Comparative and International Educational Development from the University of Minnesota in 2013 and is now an Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations /Comparative Education at the University of Wisconsin-La
Crosse.
Mathematics, Science & Technology
Instructional Technology & Media
Dilshad Dayani (M.A. ’08) published a new book titled Confrontation 9, which examines how people “passively embed” elements of their surrounding culture and view success to be a byproduct of conformity.
Supervision in Science Education
Iris Pagan Ed.D. ’01, M.A.’88) says of Gregory Anderson, her mentor at Teachers College, “Without him I would never have had the opportunity to affect the lives of the young people in the Westchester community.”
Organization and Leadership
Adult Education Guided Intensive Study, Adult and Continuing Education
David Zersen (Ed.D. ’98, M.A. ‘95), President Emeritusat Concordia University in Texas, recently published Concordia on the Move, a book on the university’s 87-year history. Zersen and his wife, Julie, spend their winters in Austin, Texas and their summers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Adult Learning and Leadership
Jo-Anne Mecca (Ed.D. ’10) is a Trustee of Bergen County Community College.
Lillian Rountree (M.A. ’06) has been hired by Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech as the Senior Development Officer.
Educational Administration
Lily’s Payback, a novel by Andrew Rose (Ed.D. ’91), received honorable mentions at both the London International Book Festival and the Great Midwest Book Festival.
Guidance
Jane Katz (Ed.D. ’78, M.E. ’72), aquatic fitness pioneer and swimming champion across six decades of worldwide competitions, has received the 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award from the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition. Katz has taught aquatic fitness and safety at the City University of New York since 1964 and at John Jay College since 1989. She is the author of 14 books on swimming, fitness and water exercise, including Swimming for Total Fitness (Random House). Katz’s Olympic career began with the 1964 Games in Tokyo where she is a member of the synchronized swimming performance team. She was recently named by Aquatics International magazine as one of the top 25 leaders in the aquatic industry along with Michael Phelps and Dara Torres. In April 2014, she received John Jay College’s Distinguished Teaching Award. Katz is also an All-American and World Masters Champion in aquatics and continues to compete.
Guidance in Secondary Education
Elizabeth J. Miller (M.E. ’77) has taken up painting in retirement and is delighted to be actively exhibiting and selling her art.
Higher Education
Carla Shere (Ed.D. ’93) has accepted a new position with Enreach, where she is Regional Director of College Counseling in Shanghai, China. Shere will spend six months in Shanghai and six months in New York City. She is counseling talented Chinese students who want to attend college abroad, primarily at institutions in the United States.
Higher & Postsecondary Education
Christine Farrugia a (M.E.’09, M.A. ’07) has received the prestigious Harold Josephson Award for Professional Promise in International Education from the Association of International Education Administrators for her doctoral research on cross-border higher education in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Farrugia is a doctoral dissertation candidate at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany and serves as the manager of the Open Doors project at the Institute of International Education.
Lost & Found Recovered memories in the lives of TC’s extended family
By Joe Levine
ERICK GORDON (ED.D. '13), Senior Research Fellow at TC’s Center for the Professional
Education of Teachers, and his wife spotted a goat standing on a cow’s back, pulled over and found a trail of old letters by the highway. How that inspired Gordon’s teaching is the focus of an oft-aired story on NPR’s Radio Lab. radiolab.org/story/91518-goat-on-a-cow/
SINGER AND VOICE TEACHER Jennifer Eyges (M.A.’83) returned to TC in August to reclaim her 33-year-old wallet, discovered during renovations in Zankel Hall. She got a new I.D. card. “TC opened doors for me,” says Eyges, who recently recorded with Russian composer Margarita Zelenaia. “It was great to reconnect.” http://bit.ly/1yb5iIX
LAST SPRING, Tom Rock (Ed.D. ’02), Associate Dean for Enrollment Services, received a copy of The Improvement of College Worship, a 1932 TC doctoral thesis by Paul N. Elbin. Rock’s friend Alexis McHenry McLaughlin had found it in a general store in West Virginia. Elbin was President of West Liberty University and authored The Bible Question Bee: 1,000 Questions and Answers, 300 Spelling Words. He published his thesis through TC’s Contributions to Education series, which aired doctoral graduates’ work from 1905 to 1951.http://bit.ly/1yb5iIX
BLANCHE SCHWAMM’S treasured 1938 TC diploma, signed by Nicholas Murray Butler, TC’s and then Columbia’s President, now adorns the office of John Allegrante, Associate Vice President of International Affairs. “I can’t think of anything nicer I could do for her,” says Blanche’s daughter Henrietta Katzev. http://bit.ly/1yb5iIX
Alumni Focus: Nick List
By: Kelsey Rogalewicz
What do teachers have in common with corporate CEOs? Not salary, obviously- but for Nick Ip (M.A. ’06) there is one key area of overlap. “As a teacher, much like the CEO of a company, you’re on your own and completely in charge,” says Ip, who worked in finance for 15 years, until the 9/11 attacks prompted him to search for more meaningful work. “While you have total control, you’re also very isolated. So you have to be able to share your ideas and learn from one another.”
As a fourth grade teacher in southern California, Ip asked colleagues to describe their five most effective teaching strategies. “New and seasoned teachers could learn from one another,” Ip
says. “It really was an exchange of ideas.”
The exchange soon evolved into a full-fledged research project. Over the course of three years, Ip asked more than 100 U.S. educators, all of whom had earned distinguished teaching titles at the state or national level, to share their Top 5 lists and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of their schools’ policies.
The result was Ip’s breakout 2014 book, Teacher Top 5, which shares the top strategies of America’s best teachers across regions, grade levels and subjects.
The book has resonated with teachers, administrators and parents, winning Ip speaking invitations nationwide. Now he is revamping the Teacher Top 5 website (teachertop5.com/community), an online community where teachers can rate, recommend and comment on other Top 5 categories related to teaching.
“We often hear the bad aspects of education,” Ip says. “I wanted to inspire others and help people realize that individuals teach not for social status, not for financial rewards, but for something bigger than themselves. They are truly special.”
The Best Medicine
“One of the great lessons I learned from the life of my grandfather
is that if you have a gift, it’s your role to share it with the world,” says Harriet Fields (M.Ed. ’71, Ed.D. ’81). Fields’ gift for passing on traditions links her two great passions: nursing education and spreading her grandfather’s gospel. Well, maybe not his actual advice (sample: “Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite, and furthermore, always carry a small snake”) so much as the spirit that informed it.
“If I can make them laugh, and through that laughter make this old world seem just a little brighter, then I am satisfied,” was another saying of Fields’ grandfather, the iconic, self-styled misanthrope W.C. Fields, who rose from international vaudeville acclaim to Hollywood stardom in the 1930s and ’40s.
Harriet Fields, born after her grandfather’s death, studied health and nursing education at TC, where she is now an Alumni Council member, and worked as Margaret Mead’s research assistant in graduate school. She has taught at universities across the country, including online doctoral courses for SUNY Buffalo, and fought to change health care policy.
Meanwhile, through W.C. Fields Productions, Inc. and www.wcfields.com, Fields and her brothers engineered the naming of W.C. Fields Drive at Universal Studios in 2012 and mounted a recent display at New York City’s Midtown Community Court, where the actor was once family act “One of the great lessons I learned from the life of my grandfather is that if you have a gift, it’s your role to share it with the world.” Harriet Fields tried for inhumane treatment of a canary. (Allegedly he pulled it from someone’s mouth during a skit about a dentist.) Harriet Fields’ inherited memorabilia are part of the W.C. Fields Collection at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Margaret Herrick Library. The W.C. Fields Exhibit aired at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in 2010.
In 2012, Fields screened two of her grandfather’s films in Rwanda, where she works with the Mama Project, an NGO founded by Samantha Basile (M.A. ’11). “It was magical,” Fields says, adding — perhaps of all her work — “we have no business giving up.”
The School of Sharp Elbows
By: Patricia Lamiell
Artesius Miller (M.A. ‘11) learned economics at Morehouse College, finance on Wall Street and education leadership at Teachers College. His political education has come in Clayton County, Georgia, one of the nation’s poorest, most dysfunctional districts, where he recently won a four-year battle to open a public charter school, the Utopian Academy of the Arts.
Miller and his supporters had to secure and win a statewide ballot initiative for Utopian to receive its charter in spring 2013. Yet twice this August, the school’s 200 sixth and seventh grade students were turned away on the first day of class because of Utopian’s alleged failure to obtain building permits that had, in fact, already been issued. Miller, who responded by leading marches to City Hall and the local board of education, chalks it up to a local turf war that, as elsewhere, pitted those who feel charters divert resources from traditional public schools against those who believe children living in poverty can’t wait around for the system to fix itself.
“They’re tired of failing schools,” Miller says. “Charters are seen as places of hope.”
Miller’s own great-grandmother ran a school in rural Mississippi. Both his grandmother and uncle were teachers. “I studied theater in high school, and it gave me a means of expressing myself I didn’t know was possible,” says Miller, who is also a Screen Actors Guild member.
Utopian offers an extended school day and year, plus optional before-and after-school programming and a bimonthly Saturday School. Students attend single-sex classes in math, English, social studies, foreign language and science, and receive instruction in the culinary, media and dramatic arts.
“You’re pioneers,” Georgia’s Governor, Nathan Deal, told a capacity crowd in Utopian’s auditorium after the school finally opened for good. “Your school has been born out of a struggle, and because of that your school will be stronger. This is your opportunity to show that this idea can work.”
In Memoriam
Gene Maeroff:
Gene Maeroff, founding Director of Teachers College’s Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, died in July at age 75.
As national education correspondent for The New York Times during the 1970s, Maeroff revealed a decade-long decline in scores on the SAT exam. He helped launch the school reform movement and prompt the federal government’s1983 report “A Nation at Risk.”
Maeroff subsequently authored more than a dozen books, including — in 2011, as president of the school board in Edison, New Jersey —School Boards in America: A Flawed Exercise in Democracy.
Through the Hechinger Institute, which provides seminars, workshops and primers for beat reporters, “Gene did more to shape an entire generation of education journalists than anyone,” recalled Mark Fisher, a longtime reporter for Ohio’s Dayton Daily News who attended several Hechinger seminars.
Roy Goodman
Roy M. Goodman, former New York State Senator and husband of the late Teachers College Board Chair and Trustee Emerita Barbara Goodman (M.A. ’54), died in June at age 84.
Goodman, a liberal Republican, represented Manhattan’s East Side for 33 years, supporting legal abortion, rent regulations and gay rights and opposing the death penalty. At TC, the Goodmans were early supporters of technology advancement and established the Barbara Goodman Scholarship Fund.
Clarence Pearson
Clarence Pearson former Senior Advisor to the World Health Organization Office at
the United Nations and recipient of TC’s Medal for Distinguished Service to Education, died in May at age 89. He was founding President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Center for Health Education and also served as Vice President of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management and Vice President and Director Health and Safety Education for Metropolitan Life. Pearson’s feasibility study established the MetLife Foundation, which promotes innovative funding in health, education and human services.
Jack Mezirow, whose theory of transformative learning transformed adult education, died in late September. A full story will appear in spring TC Today.
Abraham Tannenbaum
TC social psychologist Abraham Tannenbaum (M.A. ’48, Ph.D. ‘60), who developed the groundbreaking five-point “Sea Star” model for identifying potentially gifted children and adolescents, passed away in June at age 90.
The author of Gifted Children: Psychological and Educational Perspectives (1983), Tannebaum believed giftedness was “the result of a complex web of innate characteristics and environment,” said his former pupil, James Borland, Director of TC’s Gifted Education program.
Tannenbaum, a one-time Brooklyn public school teacher, also readily acknowledged the role of chance in the development of giftedness. “He wasn’t going to wait for a kid to have a random encounter with a drum set,” said Lisa Wright, Director of TC’s Hollingworth Center. “He wanted an enriched curriculum for every child.
Elaine Sturtevante
Elaine Sturtevant (M.A. ’11), known as “the mother of appropriation art,” died in May at age 89. Works by Sturtevant so deliberately mirrored those of major 20th century artists that lines of authorship could blur. According to The New York Times obituary of Sturtevant, by Margalit Fox, when Andy Warhol was once asked about his silk-screening technique, he is said to have replied, “Ask Elaine.”
In 2011, a Sturtevant reworking of Roy Lichtenstein’s “Crying Girl” sold for nearly 10 times the price of an original Lichtenstein print just four years earlier. Yet Sturtevant used her method, which she called “repetition,” to shed new light on terms like “icon” and “authentic.” “As a replicator, Ms. Sturtevant was an original,” Fox wrote, adding that each of her works is “in its own way. A deliberately inexact likeness of its more famous progenitor.”
Sturtevant received a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement from the Venice Biennale in 2011. A major exhibition of her work opened this fall at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Alumni Focus
Bringing Success to Scale
By: Joe Levine
How does majoring in biochemistry launch a career in school leadership? “My undergraduate degree wasn’t much good for policy, but it did prepare me for analytic work,” says Thomas Rogers, Superintendent of Schools for Syosset, NY. “My first job was as a legislative staffer in Albany, looking at school aid formulas.”
As District Superintendent of BOCES (Board of Cooperative Educational Services) for Long Island’s Nassau County from 2010 until this summer, Rogers created economies of scale across 56 districts on everything from special education services to school supplies. He partnered with Harvard to help districts diagnose instructional needs, helped replicate a high school that taps the resources of IBM and the City University of New York, and secured a state grant for an online library of Advanced Placement courses.
“As the county’s only educational organization with no internal boundaries, we could think big about overarching problems,” he says. Rogers thinks BOCES and similar entities in other states can best meet three challenges facing all U.S. schools: closing achievement gaps while improving outcomes for all students; operating cost-effectively; and harnessing technology. Success on the latter front could help schools meet the first two challenges.
“We need to put much better data tools into the hands of our teachers,” he says.
At TC, Rogers worked with former New York State Commissioner of Education Tom Sobol and connected with current Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch (Ed.D. ’05) and current Commissioner John King (Ed.D. ’08). He also met his future wife, New
Jersey independent-school Teacher of the Year Lisa Mulhall (M.A. ’99, Ed.D. ’05).
In Syosset, known nationally for its academic success and arts emphasis, Rogers has more problem-solving resources at his disposal..
“Syosset is a wonderful opportunity to ask ‘How would one of the highest-performing districts simultaneously approach the challenges of higher standards, new technologies and constrained resources?’”
Whatever the answers, Rogers will likely keep influencing state policy. Politics can be unpredictable, but as he himself might once have said, the chemistry seems right.
Published Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2015
