Teachers College President Arthur Levine Named to American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Internationally known educator and champion of educational equity is honored along with former U.S. Presidents Bush and Clinton
NEW YORK, NY, April 25, 2006-'"Teachers College, Columbia University, President Arthur Levine is among 195 scholars, scientists, artists, civic, corporate and philanthropic leaders just named as Fellows or Foreign Honorary Members of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Levine -- who this summer will end a 12-year run as President of Teachers College to become the sixth President of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation -- is a part of a group of new Academy Fellows that includes former Presidents George H.W. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton;
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts; Nobel Prize-winning biochemist and Rockefeller University President Sir Paul Nurse; the chairman and vice chairman of the 9/11 commission, Thomas Kean (a Teachers College alumnus and trustee emeritus) and Lee Hamilton; actor and director Martin Scorsese;
choreographer Meredith Monk; conductor Michael Tilson Thomas; and New York Stock Exchange chairman Marshall Carter.
An advocate of educational equity and improving teacher quality, Levine, as a young man, decided on a career in education after reading a pamphlet by the late Teachers College professor George Counts, entitled "Dare the Schools Build a New Social Order?"
"As a product of the 1960s, I wanted a job that could bring about social change," he has said.
Levine has written many books, including When Hope and Fear Collide: A Portrait of Today's College Student (with Jeanette S. Cureton); Beating the Odds: How the Poor Get to College, Higher Learning in America; Shaping Higher Education's Future; When Dreams and Heroes Died: A Portrait of Today's College Students; Handbook on Undergraduate Curriculum; Quest for Common Learning (with Ernest Boyer); Opportunity in Adversity (with Janice Green), and Why Innovation Fails. His many opinion editorials have appeared in such publications as The New York Times; The Los Angeles Times; The Wall Street Journal; Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education and Education Week.
A Guggenheim Fellowship winner, Levine has also been listed in Change magazine as "One Of The Most Outstanding Leaders in the Academic Community" and received numerous awards. The latter include the Academic Leadership Award of the Council of Independent Colleges, the American Council on Education's "Book of the Year" award, (for Reform of Undergraduate Education), the Educational Press Association's "Annual Award" for writing three times, and 16 honorary degrees. He has served as
consultant to more than 250 colleges and universities, and currently sits on the boards of Blackboard, Inc., and the N.Y.S. Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities (cIcu).
Prior to serving as President of Teachers College, Levine was chairman of the Institute for Educational Management at Harvard University; President of Bradford College in Massachusetts; and Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Foundation and Carnegie Council for Policy Studies in Higher Education.
Levine currently is working on a five-year study of the nation's schools of education. The findings will be released as four reports, the first of which, Educating School Leaders, was made public in March 2005.
Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences annually elects individuals who have made preeminent contributions to their disciplines and to society at large. The Academy will welcome this year's new class at its annual Induction Ceremony on October 7, at the Academy's headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Teachers College is dedicated to promoting equity and excellence in education and overcoming the gap in educational access and achievement between the most and least advantaged groups in this country. Through scholarly programs of teaching, research, and service, the College draws upon the expertise of a diverse community of faculty in education, psychology and health, as well as students and staff from across the country and around the world.
For more information, please visit the college's Web site at www.tc.columbia.edu.
Educational equity -- a moral imperative for the 21st century
Published Saturday, Jun. 17, 2006