People come to Teachers College to join a community dedicated to changing the world. Membership in that community never ends, thanks to a continuous feed­back loop. Our students are educated by our world-class faculty, become leaders in their fields and return to share their experiences, keeping TC on the cutting edge.

Nothing illustrates this “virtuous cycle” better than TC’s historic Campaign, Where the Future Comes First. The Campaign crossed the $200 million mark this summer, less than two years after public launch, because you — our extended TC community of donors and friends — are as creative and passionate as the faculty and students you support. You know TC’s work and anticipate and advance its evolution through your innovative gifts, savvy commen­tary and ongoing involvement.

In July you celebrated TC’s $200 million milestone with 47 Global TC Day events in 41 cities worldwide. As we soar toward our ultimate goal of $300 million — the most ambitious target ever for a graduate school of education — we’ve brought you into even closer partnership through a new Campaign website, www.tc.edu/future.

The new site features gifts, alumni, students you have supported — and you: your stories and opinions. In short, you’ll find our feedback loop humming and your TC mem­bership renewed.

With the Campaign’s total at $218 million as we go to press, I’d like to say “thank you” by sharing recent examples of your dollars in action.

Giving that is Transformative

We see it again and again at TC: transformative gifts from donors who “fund their passion” by connecting their interests and ideas to the breakthrough work of our faculty and students.  Take our longtime Trustee, Sue Ann Weinberg (Ed.D. ’97). In 1997, as a TC doctoral student in History of Education, Sue Ann dedicated her dissertation, “Lewis Mumford: Critic as Educator,” to her late mentor and friend, Lawrence Cremin. It was Cremin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and the College’s seventh presi­dent, whose teaching hooked Sue Ann on TC; Cremin who pointed Sue Ann to other courses; and Cremin who urged her to imagine a dissertation — “just for fun.”

Cremin transformed Sue Ann’s life — and this summer, she announced a truly transformative planned gift of $3 million that, with an earlier $2 million pledge, will create the Lawrence A. Cremin Professorship in the History of Education. The Cremin Professorship furthers an extraordinary legacy and ensures that future students will experience TC’s intellectual magic.

Sue Ann is hardly alone. A major gift from another alumna, who has chosen to re-main anonymous, honors Movement Sci­ences Professor Emerita Ann Gentile and funds a new Movement Science Clinic. This facility, headed by Professor Carol Ewing Garber, will enable everyone — not just serious athletes — to receive state-of-the-art guidance on their sports and exercise perfor­mance (see page 34).

Giving that Expands our Reach and Scope

At TC, the birthplace of comparative and international education, we believe all people benefit when nations educate one another. Since 2013, our partnership with Brazil’s Lemann Foundation has enabled Brazilian students to study at TC and return home to advance education in a nation undergoing profound development and change. TC’s first Lemann Fellow, Tonia de Souza Casarin, is now an executive at Abril Educação, Brazil’s largest publicly traded education services corporation. This year we welcomed our third cohort: Fellows Taisa Nunes Barros and Caroline Taveras da Silva, in Adult Learning & Leadership, and Ana Carolina D’Agostini, in Clinical Psychology. They further a partnership built to last for decades to come.

We’re also expanding our reach by hir­ing new faculty — more than 70 since 2007,  spanning virtually every TC department and program. Inspired by this wealth of new talent, Alberta (M.A. ’62) and Henry Strage cre-ated The Strage Junior Faculty Prize in 2009, recognizing younger professors whose work demonstrates originality, creativity and the potential for real-world application. Now, the Strages have established a discretionary fund that supports TC’s President and Provost in advancing new ideas or meeting critical needs.

Laying a Foundation for the 21st Century

The medium is the message, and our Campaign is speaking volumes by transforming TC’s historic buildings into dynamic new spaces for faculty-student collaboration. A challenge gift made in 2012 by Laurie M. Tisch, now Trustee Emerita, has provided a 3-to-1 match of capital gifts by other Board members. To date, Laurie’s challenge has yielded $16.6 million in Trust­ee support for our state-of-the-art class­rooms, creation of new cutting-edge learning spaces in the library, and enhancement of the International Center for Cooperation & Conflict Resolution and the Rita Gold Early Childhood Center.

Of course, “laying a foundation” isn’t just about bricks and mortar. The new Schools, Courts & Civic Participation Project of TC’s Campaign for Educational Equity (CEE), supported by education reformer and innovator Raymond Smart, equips high school students for civic engagement — a constitutionally mandated dimension of schooling that is ignored in most state budgets.

Scholarships: Our Top Priority

Most importantly, you are helping us attract the best students by ensuring that debt does not keep them from pursuing careers in public service. Since our Campaign first got underway, you have helped us create more than more than 100 new named scholarships. Scholarships we have recently established include:

• The Duquès Social Justice Scholarship Fund, established by Trustee Dawn Duquès (M.A. ’76) and her husband, Ric, to support stu-dents with a demonstrated interest in working for social change and educational justice in a school or community organization.
• The Andrew and Barrie Hananel Endowed Research Fellowship, supporting TC’s Center for Cerebral Palsy Research.
• The Barnett Family Scholarship, inspired by the TC experience of Sarah Bolson Barnett (M.A. ’09), Associate Vice President for Foundation  Relations at The New York Botanical Gar­den; and the Kenneth and Anna Zankel Scholarship Fund. Both gifts support students in Arts Administration or Art & Art Education.
• Donors are also increasingly combining an outright gift and a bequest, providing for TC in their wills while offering immediate support, particularly for scholarships.

As our Campaign nears completion, we are building on this amazing outpouring of support for TC’s students, who often arrive with ideas that shape the work of faculty and the College itself. Ultimately, our students envision tomorrow. They adapt TC’s cut­ting-edge knowledge and enduring traditions to the challenges and opportunities of each new era. If you’re a TC graduate, you know that, because you’ve done it yourself.

So keep the virtuous cycle in motion by sharing your knowledge and experience, and by enabling subsequent generations of TC students to do their best work. Visit www.tc.edu/future to join TC in creating a healthier, smarter and more equitable world. Fly with us as we soar to $300 million.

The future depends on it.

Suzanne M. Murphy
Vice President
Development & External Affairs

Published Wednesday, Nov 4, 2015