Support our students. Make your mark on our Campaign – and on the future

A letter from Suzanne M. Murphy, Vice President, Development & External Affairs

The impact of Teachers College’s historic $300 million Campaign, Where the Future Comes First, has extended to every area of the College, creating new programs and strengthening existing ones; supporting groundbreaking research in education, psychology and health; and enabling us to bring our campus into the 21st century while preserving its beauty and historic legacy.

To all who have already contributed financially or given the gift of your time, energy and ideas: Thank you for standing with us and believing in what we do.

To those who may be pondering your involvement: The Campaign isn’t over, and there is a still a chance for you to put your mark on it. Teachers College is a place where you really can identify and implement ways of improving the world — and I invite you to do just that. Our faculty and students are advancing justice and serving humanity on so many fronts. They’re working to meet the needs of families displaced by the global refugee crisis. They’re fighting racism and other forms of intolerance. They’re closing the education achievement gap and reimagining schooling for an increasingly diverse student population. They’re working to mitigate the effects of poverty on physical and mental wellbeing, and on outcomes in education and life. They’re reducing gun violence by youth and improving nutrition in under-served schools and communities. They’re illuminating the importance of the arts for developing young minds.

And that’s just a small sample of the exciting and urgently needed work taking place at TC. Whatever your interest or issue, and whatever your cultural or intellectual background, you can help build a better world by joining forces with Teachers College.

Right now, though, there is one area where we need to step up our efforts: Creating scholarships to support our talented students, who represent the future not only for TC but the world. Regardless of how you want to “fund your passion,” the key to the success of any program is the students, who work side by side with our professors and then, as alumni, carry forth and build on their ideas. And thanks to a generous donor, we're offering a select number of dollar-for-dollar matches on $50,000-$250,000 gifts to create or enhance an endowed scholarship fund. So support TC students now!

Certainly we’ve made huge strides in assisting our students. The Campaign has created 150 new scholarships, including 47 during the past year alone. Overall, TC has increased financial aid by 108 percent over the past decade. To help you understand why, despite those are great numbers, we must do so much more, let me introduce just a few of the students who are benefiting from that support.

Ceren Sönmez grew up in Turkey and studied engineering as an undergraduate. She found that her real curiosity was about people — their motivations and feelings. A professor in Turkey told her that TC offered her the best chance to conduct and apply research that would make an immediate difference in people’s lives. She has since connected with Professor Lena Verdeli, Director of TC’s Global Mental Health Lab, who is the world’s foremost authority on using Group Interpersonal Therapy (IPT) to help people displaced by war, epidemic or natural disaster overcome paralyzing depression and anxiety. Now, as she completes her Ph.D. with the help of TC’s Jodi Lane Scholarship, Ceren is coordinating Professor Verdeli’s project to help restructure the entire mental health care system in Lebanon, which has absorbed a flood of refugees from Syria.

“With our funder in Canada, our partners at the University of Cambridge and, of course, the team in Lebanon, it can be very tricky to get something done within a day,” Ceren says. “But it’s a wonderful learning opportunity for me. I consider myself so lucky for being involved in this project.”

Edmund Adjapong’s mentor is Professor Christopher Emdin, who was his ninth-grade physics teacher. “Science is a really Eurocentric discipline — there are not many people of color,” says Edmund, who just received his Ph.D. in Science Education. “So in textbooks, I never really saw pictures that reflected who I was or things I identified with.”

Usama Javed Mirza was inspired to attend TC by his second-grade teacher in Pakistan, Hareem Atif Khan, an alumna and former Convocation speaker who is now a TC instructor and staff developer with the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. At TC, supported by several scholarships, Usama, who just received his master's degree in Curriculum & Teaching, worked with Professor Mary Mendenhall, a leader in studying and creating education for displaced young people around the world. Like Dr. Khan, he, too, spoke at Convocation. With his enhanced understanding of teaching, he’s launching a nonprofit that will teach villagers in remote areas of Pakistan to manage health crises and disasters.

Clearly investing in our students pays off — but we need to help more students like Ceren, Edmund and Usama. To show you how your fellow alumni and TC friends are doing that, we also introduce here a photo gallery of recent scholarship supporters. We hope that they — and other donors featured in ads throughout this issue of TC Today — convey our message that TC donors come in all shapes, sizes, colors, ages and income brackets, with interests that run the gamut.

A gift to support any student is a very special thing, because it helps launch a lifetime of good works that in turn may empower many others.

A gift to support a student at TC could very well change the world. So be there for tomorrow. Join our Campaign and invest in the future, today.

SUZANNE M. MURPHY (M.ED. ’99, M.A. ’96)
VICE PRESIDENT, DEVELOPMENT & EXTERNAL AFFAIRS

Published Tuesday, May 9, 2017