Pursuing the Public Good

Focusing on work in higher education that aims to improve our world. A new podcast from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Listen to the trailer:

How can institutions of higher education commit to “Pursuing the Public Good” in education, health and psychology? Join Thomas Bailey, President of Teachers College, Columbia University, as he hosts conversations with scholars committed to tackling some of our most important challenges. Episodes will cover teacher education, mental health and wellness, digital innovation and play, and sustainability.

How can we collaborate across disciplines and beyond our institutions in efforts to address these important issues? Subscribe to hear about all this and more on Pursuing the Public Good, a new podcast from Teachers College, Columbia University. For transcripts and more information, visit our website.

Pursuing the Public Good is produced by the Office of the President, the Digital Futures Institute, and the Office of Institutional Advancement at Teachers College, Columbia University.

The views expressed in this podcast are solely those of the speaker to whom they are attributed. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the faculty, administration, staff or Trustees either of Teachers College or of Columbia University.

The Public Good at Teachers College

Pursuing the Public Good is connected to a broader initiative at Teachers College focusing on efforts to tackle crucial challenges in Teacher Education, Mental Health and Wellness, Sustainability, and Digital Innovation.

Learn More about the Public Good Initiative

Trailer Transcript

Music plays in background.

Thomas Bailey: How can research and scholarship help confront the most pressing challenges facing our world? That's the question at the center of our new podcast from Teachers College, Columbia University, Pursuing the Public Good. Our schools are facing teacher shortages, and educators need to be prepared for new and ever-changing realities.

Young people are facing mental health challenges at rates we've never seen. The rapid change of technology brings new possibilities, but also new concerns. And climate change presents a new threat on a global scale. We have an important role to play here. I'm Thomas Bailey, President of Teachers College, and I'll be your host for conversations with scholars who are centering their work on making real change with issues like these.

Celia Oyler: There's multitudes of ways that people access knowledge, so how do we make classrooms places of rich variety of ways to get knowledge in and ways to express knowledge?

Nathan Holbert: How can we invite young people to think about and design new societies, new future technologies, new relationships with one another by thinking about futures where they might be centered, where they might be represented in those spaces?

Douglas Mennin: The quality of how people engage technology matters. I think it's the idea like when you have an icy road and you turn into the skid instead of away from it. We're not going to go back to a different time where it's not here. The question is how we use it.

Oren Pizmony-Levy: What gives me hope is that I'm seeing growing numbers of parents, kids, colleagues, students, leaders, working together on advancing sustainability in society and in schools.

Thomas Bailey: Teachers College is a graduate school that sits at the intersection of health, psychology, and education. We're organizing our work around issues and working together across disciplines so that we can bring all of our strengths as researchers, educators, and practitioners together to make change for the better.

This is a podcast about how we are doing just that. It's a podcast for anyone who is interested in these issues and how higher education can connect our efforts with making change in the world. So subscribe wherever you listen.