As our record-breaking Campaign, Where the Future Comes First, nears its historic goal of $300 million, a remarkable outpouring of support is positioning us for preeminence and impact for generations to come. Simply put: Our generous and savvy donors are transforming TC by funding their passions on every front.

Take Jody and John Arnhold, whose very generous gift will establish a unique Dance Education doctoral concentration preparing those who educate dance teach­ers, policy makers and leaders in the field. TC was the birthplace of dance education a century ago.

Jody Gottfried Arnhold (M.A. ‘73) is Founder of 92Y’s Dance Education Laboratory and Honorary Chair of the Board of Ballet Hispanico. She co-chaired the committee that drafted the New York City Department of Education Curriculum Blueprint for Teaching & Learn­ing in Dance.

She also leads PS DANCE!, a movement to provide dance education for every student, and is executive pro­ducer of a New York Emmy-nominated documentary, PS DANCE!, about dance education in five New York City public schools. “We know what dance does for the body, but it also feeds the heart and mind,” says Jody, whose gift with John establishes the Arnhold Chair in Dance Education and Arnhold Endowed Scholarship for full- and part-time students. “Dance education is the grass­roots effort for the arts and is good for children, schools and democracy. It builds good citizens with collaborative skills, creativity and imagination.”

Supporting TC’s Talented Students

Other donors are providing scholarship support so TC students can focus on building a better world. Their contributions include:

• The Donna E. Shalala Scholarship Fund, supporting students in education policy. Dr. Shalala, a former TC faculty member, is among our era’s most effective champions for public education and health equity. She has led three major universities, served as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration and is currently President of The Clinton Foundation. The Shalala Scholarship is endowed by Dr. Shalala’s former students, including TC President Susan Fuhrman (Ph.D. ’77) and Allan Odden (Ph.D. ’75), University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Emeritus, and his wife, Eleanor; and by faculty in TC’s Depart­ment of Education Policy & Social Analysis.
  
  
• The Roy and Deborah Lewicki Scholarship Fund. Roy Lewicki (Ph.D. ’69), double emeritus professor at The Ohio State University, is an authority on strategic nego­tiation. The gift honors TC Professor Emeritus Morton Deutsch, who launched the field of conflict resolution. The Lewicki Scholarship Fund supports students researching conflict resolution or social justice. Alexandra Da Dalt (M.A. ’16) typifies those who will become Lewicki Scholars. Alex’s study of women in conflict-ridden Timor-Leste was named Outstanding Graduate Student Paper on Social Justice by TC’s International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (ICCCR).
  
  
• The Debra A. Noumair Endowed Fellowship. Organizational psychologists believe in working together. At May’s five-year anniversary of TC’s Executive Master’s Program in Change Leadership, alumni created a new need-based scholarship named for Debra Noumair, Associate Professor of Psychology & Education. They have already raised $75,000.
  
  
• The Professor Frances Connor Endowed Scholarship Fund. The late Professor Connor (Ed.D. ’53) called for “hope, not preconceived limits” for children with disabilities, launching today’s inclusive education movement. A recent bequest from her estate significantly increased the Connor Scholarship’s value, ensuring funding well into the future for students like current Connor Scholar Christine Iturriaga. At TC, Christine, Special Education District Chair for Yonkers, New York, studies stress in parents of young children with autism.
  
  
• Two-year Jonas Nurse Scholarships. This fall, TC — the birthplace of nursing education — launches an online doctoral program for nurse educators. Four students will receive scholarships from the Jonas Center for Nursing and Veterans Healthcare — the first time the Center has funded students in an Ed.D. program. “Nursing education faculty have particularly demanding jobs that require excellent teaching skills,” says Professor Kathleen O’Connell, the program’s creator. Tom James, TC’s Provost and Dean, adds that the grant “confirms the growing impor­tance of nursing education in a time of great change in the field, and the role that schools of education — TC in particular — can play.”
  
  
• The Morse Fellowship. Former TC Board Co-Chair Enid (“Dinny”) Morse and her husband, Lester, have generously supported many TC initiatives — includ­ing the Enid and Lester Morse Chair, held by Professor Ruth Vinz, who directs the College’s Center for the Professional Education of Teachers (CPET). A new Morse Fellowship will support students in TC’s teacher preparation programs. “CPET provides rich, deep projects that support teachers in learning,” Professor Vinz says. “Dinny and Lester share that vision. They want to create citizens of the world who are not tied to one way of thinking, but who instead trust their own curiosity and capacity for thought and feeling.”
  
  

Supporting Faculty Programs

TC also has the Morses to thank for their daughter, Trustee Leslie Nelson, Vice Chair of our Campaign. Three years ago, Leslie and her brothers, Douglas and Andrew Morse, honored their parents by funding a music curriculum at the Teachers College Community School (TCCS), taught by Teaching Artists from Young Audiences New York and TC students. When TCCS Teaching Artists wanted to learn more about pedagogy, Leslie proposed a Teaching Artist professional development program tapping TC’s research-based understanding of students. Now she, Doug, Andrew, and family friend Kim Greenberg (mother of a TC alumna), are funding that program.

As TC Music & Music Education Professor Lori Custodero puts it, the program isn’t “selling a specific approach or answer, but instead bringing awareness to Teaching Artists about the need to understand students as learners — to know their dispositional strengths and their culture.”

Gifts to two other important efforts at TC share that stance.

One is alumna and Trustee Edith Shih’s support to establish the summer Xiamen Music Education Lab at China’s Xiamen University, uniting music education students from Xiamen University and Teachers College.

Edith, a longtime Chinese education advocate, is an ideal partner for the Lab, which is led by Associate Pro­fessor Randall Allsup (Ed.D. ’02). The top legal mind at Hutchison Whampoa — a Fortune 500 investment holding company based in Hong Kong — Edith has fostered a broader culture of learning and good gover­nance. She has also funded TC scholarships for Chinese students and — a talented singer — performed a moving rendition of “Over the Rainbow” at our College’s doctoral convocation this spring.

TC’s Campaign for Educational Equity (CEE), led by Professor Michael Rebell, similarly focuses on understanding learners’ needs. CEE’s Comprehensive Educational Equity Project seeks to identify, cost out and implement supports to level the playing field for under-served students. Now the Judith and James Dimon Foundation is funding the Project’s analysis of legal and policy perspectives on preparing all students (especially those from poverty back­grounds) for competitive employment and productive careers.

Education reformer and innovator Raymond Smart is supporting a new CEE project to advance understanding of the resources, services and sup-ports necessary to prepare students for civic par­ticipation. Many state courts have ruled that such preparation is an essential part of the right to a “sound basic education.” Yet financially strapped schools (particularly those serving many low-income students of color) have reduced or eliminated social studies courses and service-learning opportunities, and sur­veys show that high-school graduates remain ignorant of basic facts about our government and democratic political system.

Revitalizing Our Campus

Reflecting lessons learned at TC about context, an alumna is funding the creation of user-friendly 21st-century classrooms

TC ’s great education anthropologist Lambros Comitas has long argued that where something is learned influences how it is understood. Alumna and Trustee Emerita Patricia Cloherty (M.A. ’70) applied that idea in her enormously successful career in international finance, during which, at President Bill Clinton’s behest, she helped Russia establish its private sector. Now she’s applying it again with a generous gift, made in honor of Professor Comitas, to help TC create 21^st-century classrooms in which technology helps students realize John Dewey’s vision of actively exploring ideas and constructing understandings.

The College will begin work this fall to modernize six classrooms in Grace Dodge Hall (home to nearly two-thirds of all TC classrooms) with a goal of bringing them online by spring 2017. The effort follows a carefully planned run-up period during which TC built two prototype “smart classrooms” in Horace Mann and Zankel Halls and extensively tested them with a wide range of faculty and student users. As with those spaces, the new classrooms will offer conference tables of gleaming white board, video monitors and internet apps to enable real-time sharing of content from any smart device — but the technology will have a more user-friendly single-touch interface and a software base that makes the system more flexible.

“Our new classroom approach is to create a flexible modular space that provides a physical place where both faculty and students can have the freedom to incorporate new methodologies in support of their curriculum,” said Laura M. O’Connell, Director of Capital Projects, who is heading up the initiative. “We’re also providing a cost-effective option for the institution to address long-term capital needs.”

Get on Board

These amazing gifts eloquently demonstrate that at TC, everyone can find a match for the areas of inquiry and good works they feel strongest about. As our Campaign nears the home stretch, we invite you to play a part by funding your passion and extending our historic legacy of firsts in education, psychology and health. Your support will shape an even brighter future for TC and the world — so why not start right now?

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

More from Spring 2016 TC Today:

Launching Careers and Widening the Discourse

The Portrait of the Artist in the Digital Age

Art = Power: Through The Arts, Andrea Kerzner is Bringing Hope to Youth

Published Tuesday, Jun 14, 2016