Nine members of the TC faculty will be retiring by the end of the academic year. They are: Professors William G. Anderson, Lois Bloom, Ann E. Boehm, Harold Cook, Harvey A. Hornstein, Ann Lieberman, Margaret Jo Shepherd, Marvin Sontag, and Richard M. Wolf.

William G. Anderson, Professor of Education in the Department of Health and Behavior Sciences, will be retiring after 37 years of service to the College. Anderson received his Ed.D. from TC in 1961 and began his teaching career at TC during the same year.

Anderson has coordinated the Program in Physical Education for many years; and served as the chair of the Department of Physical Education throughout the 1970s and as chair, for three years, of the Department of Movement Sciences.

During his tenure, Anderson directed the Physical Education Program Development Center, a collaborative relationship that developed and maintained effective physical education programs in seven school districts in Westchester County. The Center is credited with saving teachers from "burnout."

"We tapped the resources already in teachers, allowed them to share their expertise with others, and provided the outside stimulation needed to generate new ideas," Anderson said.

Professor Anderson was the recipient of the W.G. Anderson Commemorative, which was presented jointly by the International Association of Physical Education in Higher Education and Adelphi University. The award was given for outstanding achievement and sustained leadership in promoting physical education and sport professions. Anderson's pioneering work in research on teaching physical education was noted as one of the major factors in his selection.

Anderson is the author of more than nine books and monographs and more than 30 published articles.

Lois Bloom is the Edward Lee Thorndike Professor of Psychology and Education in the Department of Human Development. Professor Bloom received her Ph.D., with distinction, from Columbia University and became an Assistant Professor at TC in 1969. Her dissertation, Language Development: Form and Function in Emerging Grammars, was published by MIT Press in 1970.

Bloom has taught courses in language development and language disorders in children and adults. She served as Director of Division 2 from 1990 through 1996.

While Coordinator of the Program in Developmental Psychology, she led a group of TC researchers who studied the emergence of language over a 20-month period with a group of children from the New York City area. Bloom, who was credited by The New York Times for pioneering efforts in "pyscholinguistics," said her research showed that existing theories about language development made incorrect assumptions about the role of infants' expressions of emotion in language acquisition.

Bloom said "we have found that language does not replace emotional expression. Language and emotional expression develop side-by-side." The results of her reseach were published in the journal Child Psychology.

Contrary to the findings of Piaget, Bloom found that children appear to have an early understanding of cause and effect. According to research conducted by Bloom and Lois Holzman of the New York Institute of Social Therapy and Research, "one of the earliest kinds of relationships that children talk about spontaneously at the age of two is cause and effect."

Bloom is the author of more than six books and 60 periodical publications. She received the G. Stanley Hall Award of Division 7 of the American Psychological Association, the highest honor that can be bestowed by colleagues in the field of Developmental Psychology.

Ann E. Boehm, Professor of Psychology and Education in the Department of Health and Behavior Studies, received her Ph.D. from TC in 1966 and has been a faculty member at TC for 30 years. She specializes in psychoeducational assessment, observation, and concept acquisition in young children. She is also interested in issues relating to young children's developing successful literacy skills.

Boehm has served as Chair of the former Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology.

She led an intergenerational literacy project at TC's Literacy Center. Her publications include her now famous Boehm Test of Basic Concepts, A Parent's Handbook on School Testing, and The Classroom Observer: Developing Observation Skills in Early Childhood Settings. She is the author of more than ten texts and numerous articles.

Boehm also headed a research team, funded by a grant from the Fisher-Landau Foundation, to study bright children who have learning problems. The major goal of the study was to aid in the identification and education of such students while they were still young.

For that reason, the study focused on children in preschool through the third grade. Bright children who have learning problems are frustrated, Boehm said, and many feel they have failed their parents because they are not learning as quickly as their peers. "The focus of the project was the training of teachers to deal with special students," the professor said. "When a teacher is well-trained, all children in the class benefit."

{Please see the article on Boehm's retirement party, this issue. Inside TC was unable to cover Professor Wolf's and Professor Sontag's retirement parties, as they took place after this issue went to press.}

Harold Cook, Professor of Psychology and Education in the Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology, received his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1967 and joined the TC faculty in 1969.

When Cook came to TC, the late Miriam Goldberg, who was the Principal Adviser in the Educational Psychology area, said "Dr. Cook's research and teaching interests will help fill the existing gap in 'learning' and thus provide an important resource to the [then] Department of Psychology."

Cook came to TC from Syracuse University, where he taught courses and seminars in the psychology of learning.

His research interests have been in mood disorders, socialization processes, disorders in emotional communication, effects of trauma on self-esteem, psychotherapy supervision, interpersonal relations, and career, educational and work-related inhibitions. He developed the post-doctoral respecialization program in Clinical Psychology.

Cook was a visiting scholar at the International Center for Educational Evaluation at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria in 1977. He collected data on the effect of instruction in a mother tongue on subsequent English language facility.

From 1994-96, Cook was the President of the Psychoanalytic Society. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association.

Cook is the author of nearly 50 publications.

Harvey A. Hornstein, Professor of Psychology and Education in the Department of Organization and Leadership, received his Ph.D. from TC in 1964 and joined the TC faculty in 1966.

Hornstein's recent scholarly interests have focused on psychological violence in the workplace, factors affecting self-awareness on learning, and the formation of in-group/out-group boundaries.

He is the author of Sympathy, Altruism and Helping (1979), Social Intervention: A Behaviorial Science Approach (1971), Cruelty and Kindness: A New Look at Aggression and Altruism (1976), Managing Human Forces in Organizations (1982), Managerial Courage (1986), A Knight in Shining Armor (1991), and Brutal Bosses (1996).

Hornstein served as Director of Division 2 for nine years.

In a Fortune magazine review of Brutal Bosses, the reviewer Kenneth Labich says that Hornstein's work is "a disturbing study of managerial abuse" and that the "book effectively documents the spread of some undeniably monstrous behavior."

Besides authoring numerous other publications, Hornstein was on the editorial board of the Journal of Applied Behaviorial Science and a consulting editor of the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Ann Lieberman, Professor of Education in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching, received her Ed.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1969 and came to TC in 1973. She left in 1986, then returned to the College in 1990.

Lieberman was the coeditor with Lynne Miller of the 1979 book, Staff Development: New Demands, New Realities, New Perspectives. The book brought together the writings of teachers, researchers, staff developers, project workers, and unionists from around the country in an attempt to develop new and varied perspectives to guide school improvement.

Lieberman worked with Professor Gary Griffin in the late 1970s on attempts at a new, classroom-relevant methodology called Interactive Research and Development on Teaching (IR&DT). Lieberman and Griffin also sought federal funds to continue the IR&DT strategy under the aegis of the then Horace Mann-Lincoln Institute. At the time, Lieberman was Associate Director of Field Studies of the Horace Mann-Lincoln Institute at TC.

When Lieberman was Acting Director of the Division of Educational Institutions and Programs at TC in the early 1980s, she was the guest editor of the Teachers College Record edition devoted to School Improvement: Research, Craft and Concept.

The issue took a hard look at the problems inherent in reforming schools and contained guidelines for teachers and administrators who have the task of carrying out the reforms. The guest editor and her colleagues rejected the notion that staff development is simply a matter of giving courses and workshops to individual teachers in isolation from their peers and their schools.

In her 1985 article, "School Improvement: Themes and Variations," Lieberman wrote that "We need maps to guide our efforts toward improved schools, and it is through teachers and through working with teachers that we have our best hope of succeeding."

Lieberman was Chair of the Department of Curriculum and Teaching from 1982-86 and named Co-director of NCREST in 1990.

In a 1990 article in Kappan, Lieberman addressed the curriculum debate in terms of its interrelationships among the process of change, the culture of schools, the context of classrooms, and the content of curriculum. She called it the "four C's."

In 1991-92, Lieberman was elected the President of the American Educational Research Association on a platform calling for the building of community between researchers and practitioners to define and work through problems of restructuring and renewal in the schools in the schools.

Again in Kappan in 1995, Lieberman wrote about the "Practices That Support Teacher Development." She said that "To make reform plans operational, teachers must be able to discuss, think about, try out, and hone new practices."

Margaret Jo Shepherd, Professor of Education in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching, received her Ed.D. in Special Education from TC and in 1968 joined the faculty of the College.

Shepherd's primary research interests have been teacher education and learning-disabled children.

She was the Coordinator of the Learning Disabilities Program at the College and the Co-founder and Director of the Child Study Center in the former Department of Special Education.

In the early 1990s, Shepherd began a project through the Child Study Center with a dozen children who were showing signs of reading disability in grades one and two. Those children were tutored at the Child Study Center.

She also participated in a project on learning disabilities at St. Jerome's College at the University of Waterloo. She prepared a series of videotapes and related curriculum materials for the college.

Since 1988, Shepherd has been a steady presence in TC's Professional Development School.

Shepherd is credited with developing the special education curriculum for the school system of Puerto Rico. She also worked on the task force in the State of Virginia to study the use of neurological assessment procedures and delivered papers at NATO seminars on dyslexia.

She is credited with writing more than 30 publications and monographs.

At her retirement party, which was held several weeks ago, James Borland, the Chair of the Department of Curriculum and Teaching, spoke of her impact on the Department. He said, "Jo's influence in the two years she has been in C&T has been considerable. The proactive, instead of reactive, stance that TC is taking to the State's plan to mandate dual certification for special education teachers . . . is a testament to her foresight and her ability to effect true collaboration across departments and programs at TC."

Marvin Sontag, Associate Professor of Psychology and Education in the Department of Human Development, received his Ph.D. from New York University. He came to TC in 1966 and officially began his faculty appointment in 1967.

Before coming to TC, Sontag taught research design and measurement at New York University and at City College. He left the Bureau of Educational Research of the New York City Board of Education to join TC's Department of Psychology.

On arriving at TC, Sontag taught methods of empirical research and participated in the work of TC's Head Start Evaluation Center. His scholarly interests include testing, evaluation and multinational research.

He has been involved on a continuing basis in numerous evaluations of educational programs in areas such as physician's training, computer-assisted instruction, and minority youth services programs. This work has been carried out in conjunction with school systems, hospitals and national youth service organizations.

Sontag has authored or co-authored papers and publications as varied as "Attitudes Toward Education and Perception of Teacher Behaviors" to "Workers' Tolerance for Bureaucratic Structure: The Development and Validation of a Scale."

He is a member of the National Council on Measurement in Education.

Richard M. Wolf, Professor of Psychology and Education in the Department of Human Development, received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1964 and joined the faculty at TC in 1968.

Wolf served as Chair of the Department of Measurement, Evaluation and Statistics for 12 years prior to reorganization, and as Chair or member of the Ed.D. committee for many years. He has done extensive research in the area of testing, evaluation and multinational research.

He has been involved in a wide variety of research projects. Recently, he compared exam-taking speed and exam grades in more than 1,000 cases. According to Wolf, test takers can take comfort--there is no relationship between the speed in which one takes an exam and how well one does.

In response to President Clinton's call for standardized tests to ensure that all fourth graders have learned to read and all eighth graders are proficient in math, Wolf, who worked on the Third International Math and Science Study (TIMSS), argued that a national test would end up telling educators what they already knew. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, he said, "Kids in well-to-do, suburban areas are going to do well and kids in poor urban areas are going to do poorly. A national test is just going to throw another set of failures in the faces of those students."

Wolf has also commented on achievement tests and their value. He told The New York Times in 1996 that "Many schools give these tests but they've forgotten why. They have no consequence for individual children's lives. They're given and looked at and put away, but they're usually not looked at to make serious decisions about children."

In other research, Wolf maintains that in mathematics there is virtually no difference in results between boys and girls in virtually all countries. In the past, Wolf found, boys used to do much better at math than girls, "but those differences have almost evaporated, whereas in the sciences, they persist."

Wolf has authored more than 50 publications and has been a consultant to various local, county, state, national and international public and private organizations in education, nursing, medical education and physical therapy on matters of measurement and evaluation, as well as data analysis.

He also was a Fulbright Fellow, a member of the American Psychological Association, a member of the National Council on Measurement in Education and a member of the editorial board of Research in the Teaching of English.

Published Friday, Jun. 7, 2002