This past summer, Teachers College passed the $250 million mark in its historic Campaign, Where the Future Comes First, a landmark achievement that brings us within sight of our ultimate goal of $300 million. 

In fact, as of November 1, 2016, the Campaign raised $267 million, or 89 percent of our goal. Of course we’re thrilled about the numbers — but from the get-go, the Campaign has been about so much more than simply raising money. Building on the Col­lege’s rousing 125^th anniversary celebration in 2013, Where the Future Comes First has re-energized our extended TC community, reconnecting thou­sands of alumni around the world with their alma mater and each other. The Campaign has supported the development of new knowledge and practice by our world-class faculty and students, reaffirming our place at the forefront of education, health and psychology. And it is positioning us for continu­ing leadership by inspiring an ever-wider circle of supporters to create unprecedented new levels of scholarship backing for our talented students, who are our standard-bearers for the future. 

The bottom line: This is a Campaign in which everyone has participated because we all can see our dreams reflected in its goals. These are your accom­plishments, not mine nor even those of our dedicated administration and staff here at the College. We are facilitators — but the Campaign’s success is in every way the result of a community in which people are funding their passions.

I could fill this entire magazine describing the amazing work at TC fund­ed by our Campaign. (Two of our successful efforts — a unique new dance edu­cation doctoral program funded by alumna Jody Gottfried Arnhold, and the expansion of TC’s Cowin Financial Literacy Program, funded by Trustee Joyce Cowin — are featured on pages 26 and 10 of this issue.) For now, though, here’s a sampling of recent Campaign highlights that show­cases the extraordinary diversity of our donors and their ideas. Each gift also builds on longstanding TC strengths, speaks to a critically important need in our society and reflects our commitment to social justice.

Helping Students Now

Since 1914, when our founder, Grace Dodge, endowed a scholarship that is still paying dividends, TC’s supporters have planned for the College and its students in their wills. Today, with education costs rising for our increasingly di-verse student population, we are encouraging such future-minded donors to pay it forward by making gifts now to establish named, endowed scholarships. The reward is seeing their gifts supporting a current student, whom they can meet and even accompany across the stage at TC’s Convocation. The result is an astounding increase in new planned gifts, including the decision by four of our existing planned giving donors to make outright gifts establishing their schol­arships now. They are:

▪ Former TC Alumni Council member Joan Amron (M.Ed. ’76, M.A. ’70), who has created a need-based scholarship for a TC student interested in pursuing studies in Applied Science of Learning & Special Education and/or Intellectual Disabilities/Autism, in the department of Health & Behavior Studies.

▪ Drs. Lily E. Christ (Ed.D. ’67) and Duane M. Christ, who have structured their investment in the College’s Charitable Gift Annuity Fund and the Pooled In­come Fund to endow a new HI-TECH PREP Math Endowed Scholarship Fund for students in Math Technologies. The award is designed to “encourage, motivate, interest and award future elementary and secondary school teachers and administrators and professionals” to “influence education at all levels in a better understanding of mathematics.”

▪ Anne Gayles-Felton (M.A. ’47), Professor Emerita at Florida A&M University and recipient of TC’s 2015 Distinguished Alumni Award, whose generous gift will support a need-based scholarship for a doctoral student in the Curriculum & Teaching Department.

▪ Curriculum & Teaching alumna Thelma Shafran (M.A. ’54), who has endowed a need-based scholarship to support “students who do not come from privileged backgrounds,” with a particular focus on African-American women or graduates of majority African-American public schools who have demonstrated a sustained commitment to the education of African-American girls.

Improving College Odds for All Students

Quality college guidance is critically im­portant in helping young people make it to college — particularly students of color and those from low-income families. Yet research finds that counselors often spend as little as 38 minutes per year with each student. As of 2013, only 42 of the 466 master’s programs in school counseling in the United States offered an elective course in college advising.

With generous support from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, TC’s Department of Counseling & Clinical Psychology will launch a new online college advisement program aimed at professionalizing this essential field. The program will offer continuing education for high school counselors, college advisers, teachers and school paraprofessionals, with a particular em­phasis on increasing their multicultural and social justice competencies so that they can better serve high-achieving students with financial need.

“Strong college advising programs are critical to achieving educational equity and oppor­tunity,” says Riddhi Sandil, Assistant Professor of Prac­tice in the Depart­ment of Counseling & Clinical Psychology, who is spear-heading development of the program. “This program is also squarely aligned with Teachers College’s work toward achieving social justice in education and in society.”

A Learning Library

Since TC’s Gottesman Libraries opened its doors in 2004, it has led the way in incorporating technology and interactivity into the library experience. In spring 2017, the College will open the Smith Learning Theater, a new multi-purpose teaching and exhibition space on the Gottesman’s fourth floor. Created with an $8 million gift from education philanthropists Camilla and George Smith, “the Learn­ing Theater represents our continuing efforts to reimagine the role of the academic library,” says Gary Natriello, Ruth L. Gottesman Professor in Educa­tion Research, and Gottesman Librar­ies Director. “It will be an experimental and demonstration space that positions students to become sophisticated, self-directed learners and supports TC faculty in their most imaginative and am­bitious teaching.”

Talk about someone funding her passion: Camilla Smith who earned her TC master’s degree in Language, Literature & Social Studies, is Director of the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library and a member of the Advisory Board of the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley, where she edits Bancroftiana, the library’s newsletter.

Teen sexual/reproductive health literacy

The United States has the highest teen birth rate in the industrialized world, with roughly one in four girls becoming pregnant at least once by age 20. Teen pregnancy results in 400,000 births annually. More than half of teen mothers fail to graduate from high school, and a quarter become pregnant again within two years. African-American and Hispanic girls are more than twice as likely as their white peers to become pregnant and to give birth.

Through the generosity of alumna Mary Edlow (M.A. ’67) — a New York City psy­choanalyst and board mem­ber of Sanctuary for Families, which provides assistance to victims of domestic violence — TC is launching a new Sexual/Reproductive Literacy Project. Over the next three years, faculty leaders of our Sexuality, Women & Gender Initiative, based in the Department of Counseling & Clinical Psychology, will cre-ate a platform to train current and future health educators in shaping and evaluating comprehensive sexuality/reproductive curricula. The effort will combine resources from different TC de­partments and include partnership with New York City schools and other nonprofits.

Research shows that school-based sex educa­tion is effective in reducing teen pregnancy, and that comprehensive programs — which initiate a lifelong process of acquiring information and forming attitudes, beliefs and motivations about identity, rela­tionships and intimacy — are more effective than those that are abstinence-based. TC’s new program will be unique in focusing on the graduate-level train­ing of sex/reproductive health educators. Currently, even teachers in middle and high school who sub­scribe to a Comprehensive Sex Education curriculum are unsupported in developing and implementing accurate, age-appropriate holistic courses. TC’s program will also include an emphasis on psycholog­ical/mental health aspects of sexual/reproductive health, helping teens gain insight into their own attitudes and experiences.

“We all have a psycho­logical relationship to our re­productive experiences, and the more we can explore that, the more we can make decisions about pregnancy and parenting based on an understanding of our own readiness,” says TC faculty member Aurelie Athan, whose research and teach­ing focuses on the transition to parenthood.

Or as Mary Edlow so eloquently puts it: “Every pregnancy and every child, a wanted one.”

Strengthening our historic connection with China

Since the early 20^th century, when a group of remarkable Chinese students came to the Unit­ed States to study at TC, the College has forged a powerful connection with China that has profound­ly benefitted both nations. The flow of ideas has included the fields of economics, higher education, music and the visual arts, and education technology.

This past summer, the China-America Friend­ship Association launched a $3 million fundraising drive to rename TC’s Center on Chinese Education as the Tao Xingzhi Center on Chinese Education, for the TC alumnus who was perhaps the greatest of China’s education architects. The effort is aimed at ensuring that the Center’s work — which has included helping to ensure free public education for mil­lions of rural students in China — will continue after the retirement of its founding director, Mun Tsang, Professor of Economics & Education Policy.

Building a Community of Music Educators

The great arts educator Elliot Eisner wrote that the arts “are among the most powerful ways we become human, and that is reason enough to earn them a place in our schools.”

Teachers College’s long and proud tradition of leadership, innovation and teaching excellence in the arts includes a remarkable legacy in music educa­tion. TC offered the first graduate-level course in the nation to include jazz, taught by renowned educator Robert Pace. Our current faculty have forged school collaborations with symphony orchestras, developed programs for young children at Lincoln Center and in Head Start, and developed music education part­nerships with universities in China.

Most recently, at the Teachers College Com­munity School (TCCS) in West Harlem, Associate Professor Lori Custodero has created an innovative new music curriculum that takes a developmental view of music communities. In pre-K, activities offer the freedom to explore; in kindergarten, the program responds to children’s emerging interest in patterns and form; and in first grade, children begin learning about music’s symbolic nature.

Now a generous gift from Evalyn Milman (M.A. ’64) is supporting the expansion of Dr. Custodero’s curriculum to other northern Manhattan schools in the College’s REACH partnership. The new Eva­lyn Edwards Milman Music Education Fellowship allows TC to advance music education at TCCS, expand its work in REACH schools and support rich, hands-on field learning experiences for a dedicated and talented contingent of TC Music & Music Edu­cation students whose ranks will grow over time. 

The Milman Music Fellowship — modeled after the successful Milman Literacy Fellowship — is facilitating the REACH expansion by enabling TC to pilot its music program at PS 154.

Dr. Custodero envisions shaping that program with PS 154 faculty and the aid of a hands-on Milman Music Education Fellow to meet the needs of the school and reflect the culture and values of its families. Through Dr. Custodero’s connection to the NY Phil­harmonic, the program may include trips to Friday dress rehearsals for the Very Young People’s Concerts.

The inaugural recipient of the Milman Music Education Fellowship is Ayanda Dalamba, a first-year M.A. student and Toronto high school music teacher. Ayanda, whose TC adviser is Dr. Kelly Park­es, is passionate about social justice and the ways in which music education can foster community and empathy among students of all ages and backgrounds.

Again, this gift is close to the donor’s heart. Evalyn, a former early childhood teacher, curator and televi­sion producer, is deeply passionate about the arts.

The Bucks Start Here

There is no clearer sign that an institution is pursuing a mission of profound relevance and importance than when faculty step forward as donors. 

At TC, faculty support of our Campaign has never been stronger, particularly through the Grace Dodge Society, whose members provide for TC in their wills or trusts or through other planned gifts.

As Grace Dodge Society member O. Roger Anderson, Professor of Natural Sciences and Chair of TC’s Math, Science & Technology Department, puts it, “As a faculty member, I see every day the talent and enthusiasm of TC students who are dedi­cated to improving society and the lives of those who they serve professionally. There’s no greater satisfaction than knowing that my gift to TC might make the difference in enabling a student to come here and to realize life-long professional goals.”

On page 41 we list current and former faculty and staff who are Grace Dodge Society members.

To sum it all up, the gifts to our Campaign range from eight-figure contributions that have remade the face of the College to general support from those who just want to help. The common thread: All of our donors share the desire to con­tribute, by being part of a larger enterprise that is making a positive impact on so many lives.

You, too, can make a difference though TC’s Campaign. Join us as we set our sights on our final goal — and as we shape the future, today.

Suzanne M. Murphy (M.ED. ’99, M.A. ’96)
Vice President, Development & External Affairs

Grace Dodge Would Be Proud

As members of TC’s Grace Dodge Society, the following current and former faculty and staff provide for the College through planned gifts:

O. Roger Anderson, Professor of Natural Sciences and Chair of the Department of Mathematics, Sci­ence & Technology;

Ann Boehm, Professor Emerita of Psychology & Education;

W. Warner Burke, Edward Lee Thorndike Profes­sor of Psychology & Education;

Judith Burton, Professor and Program Director of Art & Art Education;

Katie Embree, the College’s Vice Provost;

John Fanselow, Professor Emeritus of Language & Education;

Celia Genishi, Professor Emerita of Early Childhood Education;

Debra Noumair, Associate Professor of Psychology & Education and Director of Executive Education Programs in Change & Consulta­tion;

Kathleen O’Connell, Isabel Maitland Stewart Professor of Nursing Education, and Program Director of the Nursing Educa­tion Program;

Janice Robinson, Vice President for Diversity & Community Affairs;

Marie Volpe, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Adult Learning & Leadership; and Lyle Yorks, Professor of Adult & Continuing Education and AEGIS Program Director.

Robert Crain, Professor Emeritus of Sociology & Education, who passed away in March 2016, was also a Grace Dodge Society member, and his wife,

Nan Guptill Crain, continues to support the College. 

Published Wednesday, Nov 30, 2016