- Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949) was an American psychologist who spent nearly his
entire career at Teachers
College, Columbia University. His work on animal behavior
and the learning process led to the theory of connectionism and helped lay the
scientific foundation for modern educational
psychology. He also worked on solving industrial problems, such
as employee exams and testing. He was a member of the board of the
Psychological Corporation, and served as president of the American
Psychological Association in 1912. In 1937 Thorndike became the second
President of the Psychometric Society. [Wikipedia]
- James Earl Russell (1864-1945) taught
preparatory Latin and Greek for three years and became headmaster of the
Cascadilla School, a private academy in Ithaca, New York. While in Ithaca
he became review editor of the School Review, an educational journal
established by Schurman. His first contribution as editor was a summary of
an article from the London Journal of Education on the education of
teachers in Germany. As a result of this publication and other similar
work on the Review, Russell began to be recognized as an authority on
European education. In 1897 Russell accepted an invitation to join the
faculty of Teachers College in New York City as head of the Department of
Psychology. He developed Teachers
College into the nation's leader in the advanced training of elementary
and secondary school teachers, administrators, and supervisors. [encyclopedia.com]
- John Dewey (1859-1952) is recognized as one of the founders of the philosophy of pragmatism and of functional
psychology. He was a major representative of the progressive
and progressive populist
philosophies of schooling during the first half of the 20th century in the
USA. Although Dewey is known best for his publications concerning
education, he also wrote about many other topics, including experience and
nature, art
and experience, logic and inquiry, democracy, and ethics. In his advocacy of democracy,
Dewey considered two fundamental elements—schools and civil society—as being major topics
needing attention and reconstruction to encourage experimental
intelligence and plurality. Dewey asserted that complete democracy was to
be obtained not just by extending voting rights but also by ensuring
that there exists a fully-formed public opinion, accomplished by
effective communication among citizens, experts, and politicians, with the
latter being accountable for the policies they adopt. [Wikipedia]
- Grace Hoadley Dodge (1856-1914) was an American philanthropist. She was involved in
forming the Kitchen Garden Association, which became the Industrial
Education Association. She was the main source of funds for the New York
College for the Training of Teachers, which became Teachers
College, and subsequently a school of Columbia
University. Dodge helped to organize a society for working
women that evolved into the Association of Working Girls' Societies. She
negotiated the merger of two opposing young women's groups into the Young
Women's Christian Association (YWCA) of the United States. She
also organized the New York Travelers' Aid Society to protect
migrants and immigrant women. She was a leader in the organization of the
National Travelers' Aid
Society, and she was a major force in the foundation of the international Travelers' Aid movement. The Grace H. Dodge Vocational High School,
named in her honor, is located in the Bronx, New York. [Wikipedia]
- Leta Hollingworth (1886-1939) was a psychologist
who conducted pioneering work on the psychology of women as well as on the
education of exceptional children. In 1911, she began graduate work in
educational psychology at Columbia under the supervision of Edward Lee
Thorndike. Having experienced impediments to personal
achievements as a result of her sex, Hollingworth was moved to empirically
investigate the factors that were thought to make women inferior to men.
Consequently, Hollingworth was a leading figure in the development of the
psychology of women. Along with the anthropologist Robert Lowie, Hollingworth published a
review of literature from anatomical, physiological, and cross-cultural
studies, in which no objective evidence was found to support the idea of
innate female inferiority. In 1916 Hollingworth accepted a position at
Teachers College where she continued research into the psychology of
exceptional children began by her predecessor at the college, Naomi
Norsworthy. [Wikipedia]
- Naif al-Mutawa (MA, 2000) is the
creator of THE 99-the first group of superheroes born of an Islamic
archetype. THE 99, has received positive attention from the
international media including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,
Time Magazine, Newsweek Magazine, Wired, Elle, The Washington Post and The
Guardian. Recently, Forbes named THE 99 as one of the top 20 trends
sweeping the globe. He has seen first hand the cancer that intolerance can
bring to any society. His direct contact with the horrors of prisons and
with people tortured because of their religious and political beliefs, led
to his writing a timeless children’s tale that won a UNESCO prize for
literature in the service of tolerance. He is also the recipient of The
Festival Internacional de Humour e Quadrinhos Comics Award presented at
Cartoons & Comics Festival in Brazil, The Ecademy Award from Columbia
University School of Business, The Eliot-Pearson Award for Excellence in
Children's Media from Tufts University, The United Nations Alliance of
Civilizations “ Marketplace of Ideas” Award and ‘The Schwab Foundation
Social Entrepreneurship Award’, 2009 presented at the World Economic Forum
on The Middle East, Dead Sea, Jordan. [www.al-mutawa.com]
- Margaret Mead (1901-1978) was an American cultural
anthropologist, who was frequently a featured writer and
speaker in the mass media throughout the 1960s and 1970s. She lectured at
Teachers College. She was both a popularizer of the insights of
anthropology into modern American and Western culture, and also a respected,
if controversial, academic anthropologist. Her reports about the
purportedly healthy attitude towards sex in South Pacific and Southeast
Asian traditional cultures amply informed the 1960s sexual revolution.
Mead was a champion of broadened sexual mores within a context of
traditional western religious life. A committed Anglican Christian, she took a
considerable part in the drafting of the 1979 American Episcopal
Book of
Common Prayer. She was a recognizable figure in academia,
usually wearing a distinctive cape and carrying a tall, forked walking
stick. [Wikipedia]
- Shirley Chisholm (PDIPLM, 1961) served in the New York General
Assembly from 1964 to 1968. During her tenure in the legislature, she
proposed a bill to provide state aid to day-care centers and voted to
increase funding for schools on a per-pupil basis. In 1968, after
finishing her term in the legislature, Chisholm campaigned to represent
New York's Twelfth Congressional District. Her campaign slogan was
"Fighting Shirley Chisholm--Unbought and Unbossed." She won the
election and became the first African American woman elected to Congress.
[essortment.com]
- Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommon
Professor of Education at Stanford
University, where she launched the School Redesign Network, the Stanford
Educational Leadership Institute, and the Stanford
Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. Darling-Hammond,
who taught for many years at Teachers College, is author or editor of more
than a dozen books and more than 300 articles on education policy and
practice. Her work focuses on school restructuring, teacher education, and
educational equity. She was education advisor to Barack
Obama's presidential campaign, and in that role debated at TC
in 2008 with Linda Graham Keegan, advisor to Republican candidate John
McCain. [Wikipedia]
- Paul Monroe Ph.D., LL.D. (1869 – 1947) was an American educator, born at North Madison, Ind. He graduated at Franklin College,
Franklin, Indiana
in 1890 and took his Ph.D. from the University of
Chicago in 1897. He became professor at Columbia
in 1899. Professor Monroe received the honorary degree of LL.D. from the University of
Peking in 1913. His contributions to the study of education
gave Dr. Monroe an international reputation, and his textbooks have helped
to give the subject a position of great importance in the United States. He was the President of
Robert College
of Istanbul between 1932-1935. His greatest contribution was as editor in
chief of the Cyclopedia of Education (five volumes, 1910-13).
[Wikipedia]
- Edmund Gordon (ED.D., 1957) is the Richard March Hoe
Professor, Emeritus of Psychology and Education Emeritus at Teachers
College, and Founding Director of the College’s Institute of Urban and
Minority Education (IUME). He also is John M. Musser Professor of
Psychology, Emeritus at Yale University, From July 2000 until August, 2001
he was Vice President of Academic Affairs and Interim Dean at Teachers
College, Columbia University. He held appointments at several of the
nation’s leading universities including Howard, Yeshiva, Columbia, City
University of New York, Yale, and the Educational Testing Service. He has
served as visiting professor at City College of New York and Harvard. As
Senior Scholar and Advisor to the President of the College Board, he
developed and co-chaired the Taskforce on Minority High Achievement. [gse.uci.edu]
- Thomas Sobol (ED.D., 1969) is an Adjunct Professor of
Education at Teachers College and former Christian A. Johnson Professor of
Outstanding Practice. During the 1990s, as New
York State's Commissioner of Education, Sobol allied himself with parents
and community advocates suing the state for more resources for poorer
schools. Yet Tom's greatest legacy is not that historic moment, but his
continuing insistence-'"to his students, his colleagues and
himself-'"on an alignment between professional and personal morality
and his belief that, in legislating school conditions for all children, we
give them nothing less than what we'd wish for our own. Tom honors TC with
the role he has played in our own history and with his continuing presence
in our classrooms. [tc.columbia.edu]
- Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922) was an American painter, printmaker, photographer, and
influential arts educator. Dow taught at major American arts training
institutions for 30 years including Teachers
College, Columbia University; the Art
Students League of New York; Pratt Institute; and his own Ipswich
Summer School of Art. His ideas were quite revolutionary for the period,
he taught that rather than copying nature, art should be created by
elements of the composition, like line, mass and color. His ideas were
published in the 1899 book Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art
Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers. He taught many of
America's leading artists and craftspeople, including Georgia O'Keeffe,
Charles
J. Martin, two of the Overbeck Sisters
and the Byrdcliffe Colony.
[Wikipedia]
- Isabel Maitland Stewart (1878-1963), associated with Teachers
College, Columbia University from 1908 until her death in 1963, was the
pre-eminent international leader in education for nurses. Her outstanding
contribution was to promote open debates and consensus-building behavior
among nurses with the goal of democratizing the occupation in order to
move it nearer to professional status. As a scholar of nursing history,
Stewart understood that nurses had been controlled primarily by other
professions, and despite Nightingale's reforms, nurses continued to
function under the male hierarchical model. Because of her education,
Stewart realized that nurses must learn to assume responsibility for their
own affairs, if nursing was to be recognized as a true profession. She
taught that nursing must embrace the goals and aspirations of many
different individuals and cultures in order to move away from the
authoritarian model. [openlibrary.org]
- William Rueckert is Co-Chair of the Board of
Teachers College, Columbia University, has served as a TC Trustee since
1997, and is a descendant of Grace Hoadley Dodge, one of the college’s
co-founders. Mr. Rueckert is Managing Member of Oyster Management Group,
LLC, a fund that invests in community banks. He also serves on the Boards
of Chelsea Therapeutics, Inc., Novogen, Ltd. And of Glycotex, Inc. Among
his other non-profit activities, Mr. Rueckert is President and a Director
of the Cleveland H. Dodge Foundation; Trustee and Chairman of the
Executive Committee of International House; a Director of the YMCA of
Greater New York; Director of Wave Hill; and former Chairman of the Board
of Trustees of Fairfield Country Day School. Mr. Rueckert’s grandfather,
Cleveland E. dodge, served as a TC Trustee for 67 years, beginning with
his election to the board in 1915.
- Hamden Forkner (1897-1975) was an
American educator and writer who created Future Business Leaders of America, an
educational organization for high school and college students, and developed
the Forkner shorthand
system for taking dictation. Forkner, a graduate of the University
of California at Berkeley, was the head of the business and
vocational education department at Teachers
College, Columbia University from 1937 to 1958. During his
career, he was also president and permanent honorary vice president of the
International Society for Business and Economic Education, and directed
technical education surveys for the governments of the Dominican
Republic and Mexico. As an
author, Forkner wrote the books “20th Century Bookkeeping &
Accounting” (1940, co-authored with Alva Leroy Prickett), “Correlated
Dictation and Transcription: Pitman Edition” (1946, co-authored with Agnes
E. Osborne and James E. O’Brien), “Developing a Curriculum for Modern
Living (1954, co-authored with Florence B. Stratmeyer), and “Study Guide
for Forkner Shorthand” (1965, co-authored with Jean G. Hanna and published
by his Forkner Publishing Company). [Wikipedia]
- Zhang Boling (1876-1951)
was one of a remarkable group of Chinese students who enrolled at
Teachers College during the early part of the 20th century and
returned home to dramatically re-shape education in China. He organized funding
for a private college preparatory school, Nankai High
School, in Tianjin in 1904. In 1917 he briefly studied at the
Teachers College at Columbia
University in the United States, where he was influenced by the
American educator and reformer John Dewey. Afterwards, he expanded
his school into a full university, Nankai University
in 1919. Under Zhang Boling's leadership, Nankai University continued to
expand for the next few years and became one of the most prestigious
universities in China. Zhang Boling was noted for his emphasis on
athletics. He established a number of annual national athletic meets and
the forerunner to the modern Chinese
Olympic Committee, as well as several smaller institutions,
including a girls middle school (1923), experimental primary school
(1928), institute of economics (1927), and of chemistry (1932). In 1938,
Nankai University joined with Peking University
and Tsinghua
University to form the National
Southwest Associated University which continued to educate the
top students in China until the war ended in 1945. Afterwards, Nankai
University returned to Tianjin. [Wikipedia]
- Morton Deutsch is considered the founder of
modern conflict resolution theory and practice. He has written and
researched areas which pioneered current efforts in conflict resolution
and diplomacy. His books include: Interracial Housing (1951); Distributive
Justice (1985); and the Handbook of Conflict Resolution; Theory and
Practice (2000). In 1986, he founded the International Center for
Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (ICCCR) at Columbia University,
where he still holds emeritus professor status. Deutsch has been
recognized for lifetime achievement by many associations including the American
Psychological Association (APA) which awarded him both the APA
Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, and the Distinguished
Research Scientist Award. He has also been awarded the Kurt Lewin Memorial
Award, the G.W. Allport Prize, and the Carl Hovland Memorial Award. He has
served as president of several professional associations including the
Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, the International
Society of Political Psychology, and several Divisions of the APA. [Wikipedia]
- Charles Alston (MA, 1931), (1907-1977) was an
American artist, muralist, and teacher. He was influenced by Mexican
muralists, Diego Rivera,
in particular, who tied their murals into early twentieth century social
movements. Alston painted murals throughout Harlem, including depression-era
murals as part of the Works
Progress Administration's Federal Art
Project. The best known of his mural works is one of a series
of murals created by Alston and other Harlem
artists for the Harlem
Hospital Center. Alston was the first African-American
instructor at the Art
Students League of New York (1950-1971) and the Museum of
Modern Art (1956). He became a full professor at the City
University of New York (CUNY) in 1973. In addition to the
murals, some of his paintings, sculptures, and illustrations are held in
the permanent collections of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, and the Whitney
Museum of American Art. [Wikipedia]
- Albert Ellis (PhD, 1947) started a part-time private practice
in family and sex counseling soon after he received his master's degree in
1943. In the late 1940s he taught at Rutgers and New York University, and
was the senior clinical psychologist at the Northern New Jersey Mental
Hygiene Clinic. He also became the chief psychologist at the New Jersey
Diagnostic Center and then at the New Jersey Department of Institutions
and Agencies. By 1955 Ellis had given up psychoanalysis entirely, and
instead was concentrating on changing people's behavior by confronting
them with their irrational beliefs and persuading them to adopt rational
ones. He published his first book on REBT, How to Live with a Neurotic, in
1957. Two years later he organized the Institute for Rational Living,
where he held workshops to teach his principles to other therapists. The
Art and Science of Love, his first really successful book, appeared in
1960, and he has now published 54 books and over 600 articles on REBT, sex
and marriage. [rebtinstitute.org]
- Harold Rugg (1886-1960), a longtime professor of
education at Teachers College, Columbia University, was one of the
best-known educators during the era of Progressive education in the United
States. He produced the first-ever series of school textbooks from 1929
until the early 1940s. Rugg was a cofounder of the National Council for
the Social Studies and edited yearbooks for a number of respected
educational organizations. In 1922 Rugg assembled a team to create his
Social Science Pamphlets, a series of booklets that comprised the social
studies materials for junior high school (grades six to eight). These
materials were adapted and published by Ginn and Company starting in 1929.
Over the course of the next fifteen years Rugg and Ginn and Company would
sell over 5 million textbooks, and the pattern of creating textbook series
became a model in publishing still used in the early twenty-first century.
In 1928 Rugg cowrote his first major work, The Child-Centered School,
which described the historical and contemporary basis for "child-centered"
education. This work had a major impact on Progressive educators and
remains an excellent explanation and critique of this topic. It also was
one of the first treatises on the two major emphases within Progressive
education–child centeredness and social reconstruction. [education.stateuniversity.com]
- William Heard Kilpatrick (1871-1965), a stellar and long-time
faculty member during the early days of Teachers College was
a US American
pedagogue and a pupil, a colleague and a successor of John Dewey. He was at Mercer
University, 1897–1906, taught mathematics, was vice-president, 1900, and
acting president, 1904–06. He taught summers at the University of Georgia,
1906, 1908, and 1909; the University of the South (Knoxville), 1907; was
visiting professor, Northwestern University, 1937–38, and taught summer
sessions there, 1939, 1940, 1941; taught summer sessions, Stanford
University, 1938; University of Kentucky, 1942; University of North
Carolina, 1942; and University of Minnesota, 1946. His trips abroad
included school visits, lectures, and meetings with prominent educators in
Italy, Switzerland, and France, May–June 1912; Europe and Asia, August
1926-June 1927; and round the world, August–December 1929. He received
honorary LL.D. degrees from Mercer University, 1926; Columbia University,
1929; and Bennington College, 1938 (which he helped found in 1923 and
where he was president of the board of trustees, 1931–38); the honorary
D.H.L. degree from the College of Jewish Studies, 1952; and the Brandeis
Award for humanitarian service, 1953. After retiring from TCCU, 1937, he
was president of the New York Urban League, 1941–51; chairman of American
Youth for World Youth, 1946–51; chairman of the Bureau of International
Education, 1940–51; and on the board of directors of the League for
Industrial Democracy. [Wikipedia]
- Lawrence Cremin (PhD, 1949), one of the great American
education historians and President of Teachers College from 1974 to 1984, broadened
the study of American educational history beyond the school-centered
analysis dominant in the 1940s by advocating a more comprehensive
approach: examining the other agencies and institutions that educate
children, integrating the study of education with other historical
subfields, and comparing education across international boundaries. This
interest led to his major work, a three-volume comparative history of
education in the United States entitled American Education. The
second volume, covering the period from 1783 to 1876, won the Pulitzer
Prize for History in 1981. In addition to scores of articles, Cremin wrote
seven other books, including The Transformation of the School:
Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957, which won the 1962
Bancroft Prize in American history, and Popular Education and Its
Discontents (1990). He also played a leading role in many
professional, governmental, and philanthropic organizations, including the
National Academy of Education, the U.S. Office of Education's Curriculum
Improvement Panel, and the Carnegie Commission on the Education of
Educators. [c250.columbia.edu]
- Mary Adelaide
Nutting (1858 - 1948) graduated
from the first class of the Johns Hopkins Hospital School of
Nursing in 1891. After graduating, she was a head
nurse in the hospital for two years and then assistant superintendent of
nurses for a year. In 1894 she became superintendent of nurses and
principal of the school. She also began a professional nursing library at
Johns Hopkins, from which developed her later four-volume History of
Nursing (1907–12, with Lavinia L. Dock). She was an early member of
the American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools for Nurses of
the United States and Canada (later the National League for Nursing
Education; now the National League for Nursing) and twice served as
president.. In 1907 Mary Adelaide Nutting joined the faculty
of Teachers College, Columbia University and became the world's first professor of nursing. Nutting led
the Department of Nursing and Health at Teachers College from 1910 until
her retirement in 1925. [Wikipedia and biography.com]
- Ruth Westheimer (ED.D., 1970) is a pioneer in spreading what
she has labeled "sexual literacy." She has been twice named
"College Lecturer of the Year." Her television show aired on
Lifetime "The Dr. Ruth Show" has been syndicated nationally and
internationally. The National Mother's Day Committee has honored Dr. Ruth
as "Mother of the Year." In recent years,
Westheimer has made regular appearances on the PBS
Television children's show Between the Lions
as "Dr. Ruth Wordheimer" in a parody of her therapist role, in
which she helps anxious readers and spellers overcome their fear of long
words. [Wikipedia and wic.org]
- Nicholas Murray Butler (1862-1947) was an American philosopher, diplomat, and
educator. In the fall of 1885, Butler joined the staff of Columbia's
philosophy department. In 1887, he co-founded, and became president of,
the New York School for the Training of Teachers, which later affiliated
with Columbia University and was renamed Teachers
College, Columbia University, and from which a co-educational
experimental and developmental unit became Horace Mann
School. In 1901, Butler became acting president of Columbia
University, and in 1902 formally became president. Among the many
dignitaries in attendance at his investiture was President
Roosevelt.
Butler was president of Columbia for 43 years, the longest tenure in the
university's history, retiring in 1945. As president, Butler carried out a
major expansion of the campus, adding many new buildings, schools, and
departments. These additions included Columbia-Presbyterian
Medical Center, the first academic medical center in the world.
[Wikipedia]
- Cory Booker (a member of the Teachers College Board of
Trustees) is the
Mayor of Newark,
New Jersey. He earned a B.A. in
political science at Stanford
University in 1991, as well as an M.A. in sociology the
following year. After Stanford, Booker won a Rhodes
Scholarship and studied at The
Queen's College, Oxford,
where he was awarded an honors degree in modern history in 1994. While at
Oxford he became President of the L'Chaim Society,
the local chapter of Chabad, and brought together a diverse community
there. Booker obtained a J.D. in 1997 from Yale Law School, where he started and
operated free legal clinics for low-income residents of New Haven. He was
also a Big
Brother, and was active in the Black Law Students Association.
Booker lived in Newark during his final year at Yale and following
graduation served as Staff Attorney for the Urban Justice Center in New
York and Program Coordinator of the Newark Youth Project. Booker was
elected Mayor in 2006, becoming the 36th
mayor of Newark. [Wikipedia]
- William Henry
"Bill" Cosby, Jr. is an American
comedian, actor, author, television producer, musician and activist who
has made repeated visits to speak at Teachers College, where his late son,
Ennis, was a student at the time of his death. A veteran stand-up
performer, Bill Cosby got his start at various clubs, then landed a
starring role in the 1960s action show, I Spy. He later starred in his own
series, The Bill Cosby
Show, in 1969. He was one of the major characters on the
children's television show, The
Electric Company, for its first two seasons, and created
the humorous educational cartoon series, Fat
Albert and the Cosby Kids, about a group of young friends
growing up in the city. In 1976, Cosby earned a Doctor of
Education degree from the University
of Massachusetts. For his doctoral research, he wrote a
dissertation entitled, "An Integration of the Visual Media Via 'Fat
Albert And The Cosby Kids' Into the Elementary School Curriculum as a
Teaching Aid and Vehicle to Achieve Increased Learning". During the
1980s, Cosby produced and starred in what is considered to be one of the
decade's defining sitcoms, The Cosby Show, which aired eight
seasons from 1984 to 1992 and highlighted the experiences and growth of an
upper-middle-class African American family. He also produced the hit
sitcom, A
Different World. In the 1990s, he starred in Cosby, which aired from 1996 to
2000, and during the show's last two seasons, hosted Kids
Say the Darndest Things. His good-natured, fatherly image
has made him a popular personality and garnered him the nickname of
"America's Dad". He received Kennedy
Center Honors in 1998, was awarded the Presidential
Medal of Freedom in 2002, won the 2003 Bob
Hope Humanitarian Award, and was presented with the 12th annual
Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in
2009. [Wikipedia]
- Leonel
Antonio Fernández Reyna the current President of
the Dominican
Republic, visited Teachers College in 2007 and cemented an
alliance with the College that has helping to establish a new model of
schooling in the Dominican. He came to office vowing to end
political corruption, and toward this end one of his first acts as
president was to increase the salaries of elected officials, including his
own. Fernández maintained that public employees would be less inclined to
accept bribes if they were properly paid. He also planned closer oversight
of the judiciary, police, and military, and he promised greater scrutiny
of state-owned firms and reforms to strengthen manufacturing and
agriculture. In 1999 he announced an initiative to broaden the country’s
economic base by attracting high-technology firms to the Dominican
Republic. He attempted to improve the nation’s image abroad and in August
1998 served as host of a regional summit of Caribbean nations. In April
1998 he restored diplomatic relations with Cuba. Constitutionally barred
from running for reelection, Fernández left office in 2000. In 2004 he was
easily elected president, defeating President Hipólito Mejía Domínguez,
whose Dominican Revolutionary Party had altered the constitution to allow
the president to run for reelection. Fernández was reelected to a third
term in 2008. [britannica.com]
- Hafizullah Amin (1929-1979) was the second
President of Afghanistan
during the period of the communist Democratic
Republic of Afghanistan. He attended Teachers College and
worked on a doctorate here. Amin tried to broaden his internal base of
support and to bring the interest of Pakistan and the United States in Afghan security.
During the 104 days of his rule, except for one failed military rebellion,
no major uprising took place. Amin also pursued the policy of Pashtunization of the country. On
December 27, 1979, members of the Russian KGB
OSNAZ (Alpha Group) killed him and Babrak Karmal became President.
[Wikipedia]
- Mary Swartz Rose (BS, 1906) (1874-1941) was a former president
of the Institute of Nutrition. Two years as
student and assistant at Teachers College, with further study of food and
nutrition in the Columbia department of chemistry, resulted in her
decision to make the science and teaching of nutrition her life work. To
perfect her preparation for such a career she studied two years with
Professor Mendel at Yale, receiving its Ph.D. degree in 1909. Directly
upon the completion of her work with Doctor Mendel she was appointed
instructor in Teachers College, Columbia University, and became its first
faculty member to devote full time to the teaching of nutrition and
dietetics. Her public lectures and her writings combine interest, practicality,
and scientific soundness, and linked the findings of the nutrition
laboratory with the daily lives of the people. She carried the message of
what nutrition can mean for health and welfare into the public schools and
the nursing and health centers of her community; she was long a member of
the editorial board of The Journal of Nutrition, and was president of the
Institute of Nutrition in 1937-1938; she served as a member of the Council
on Foods and Nutrition of the American Medical Association; and of the
nutrition committee of the League of Nations. She was chosen by the
international quarterly "Nutrition Abstracts and Reviews" to
write a comprehensive account and interpretation of the college and
university teaching of nutrition and dietetics in the United States. She
served as deputy director of the bureau of conservation of the Food
Administration in 1918-1919; and in 1940 was chosen one of a national
group of five to serve as advisors on nutrition to the Council of National
Defense, and consultants to the committee on food and nutrition of the
National Research Council. [jn.nutrition.org]
- Solon Kimball was Professor of Anthropology and Education at
TC from 1953 until 1966. Kimball did groundbreaking anthropology work
concerning family and community in rural Ireland (with Conrad Arensberg)
and on the Navajo reservation in the American Southwest. Over the years,
he was on the faculty of a number of universities, including the
University of California, Columbia University (GSAS and Teachers College),
the University of Alabama, and the University of Florida. He served as an
Advisor for The Anthropology Curriculum Study Project, which intended to
integrate Anthropology in high school classrooms. The project was
undertaken from 1962-1969 by a Personnel Project Committee headed by
Malcolm Collier with the partnership of the American Anthropological
Association Advisory Committee, Associates, Consultants and Authors.
- Susan Fuhrman (PhD, 1977) is President of Teachers College,
Columbia University, and President of the National Academy of Education.
She previously served as Dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate
School of Education, as well as the school’s George and Diane Weiss
Professor of Education. She is founding director of the Consortium for
Policy Research in Education (CPRE) and is also a former Vice President of
the American Educational Research Association. Dr. Fuhrman received
bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from Northwestern University in
Chicago, and a Ph.D. in political science and education from Columbia
University.
She has written widely on education
policy and finance; among her edited books are The State of Education Policy
Research (with David K. Cohen and Fritz Mosher, 2007); The
Public Schools (The Institutions of American Democracy Series, with
Marvin Lazerson, 2005); Redesigning Accountability Systems for
Education (with Richard Elmore, 2004); From the Capitol to the
Classroom: Standards-Based Reform in the States (2001); and Rewards
and Reform: Creating Educational Incentives that Work (with Jennifer
O’Day, 1996).
Her many
professional involvements include membership on the Board of
Trustees of the
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and as a
non-executive Director of Pearson
plc, the international education and publishing company.
- Patty Smith Hill (1868-1946) was an American
nursery school and kindergarten
teacher, one of the leaders of the Kindergarten Movement in the United
States. In 1910, Hill became head of the Columbia
University Teachers College’s Department of Kindergarten
Education and a full professor in 1922. In 1924, she helped create the
Institute of Child Welfare Research at Teachers College. Hill followed
John Dewey’s principles of education,
especially theories of progressive
schools and moral education. She believed that children needed
free play and socialization
to develop their full potential. She introduced the "Patty Hill
blocks," building blocks large enough for children to construct a
structure and enter inside it to play. In her classroom, children played
with cars, trucks, money, pots
and pans, everything that is used in everyday life, helping them to learn
about life in society. Together
with psychologist
Agnes Rogers, Hill developed a “Tentative Inventory of Habits,” which
consisted of 84 kindergarten
habits toward which instruction should be directed. The Inventory was
successfully used first at the Horace Mann School at Teachers College, and
then at the University of
Chicago and other schools around the United States.
Hill also visited Russia and helped establish
kindergarten education there. Hill continued to serve in the International
Kindergarten Union and write on the topics of early education. During the
Great Depression, she became involved with the Federal Emergency Nursery
Schools, and started to work on her Manhattanville Project. The project
was a joint plan by Teachers College, Union Theological Seminary, Jewish
Theological Seminary, and Julliard School of Music, to revive the
Manhattanville area of the New York City.
One part of the project was the establishment of a nursery school, called
Hilltop, which ran from 1932 until 1938. [newworldencyclopedia.org]
- Rollo May (PhD, 1949) is the best known American existential
psychologist. In 1958, he edited, with Ernest Angel and Henri
Ellenberger, the book Existence, which introduced existential psychology
to the US. Much of his thinking can be understood by reading about
existentialism in general, and the overlap between his ideas and the ideas
of Ludwig Binswanger is great. He also discusses certain “stages”
(not in the strict Freudian sense, of course) of development. May’s books
include The Meaning of Anxiety
(1950), Man’s Search for
Himself (1953), Psychology
and the Human Dilemma (1967), The Discovery of Being (1983), Love and Will (1969), and The Cry for Myth (1991). [Wikipedia]
- Donna Edna Shalala has served as president of
the University of
Miami, a private university in Coral Gables,
Florida, since 2001. Prior to her appointment as University of
Miami President, Shalala became a professor of politics and education at Teachers
College, Columbia University, a job she held from 1972 until
1979. Concurrently, from 1977 to 1980, she served as the Assistant
Secretary for Policy Development and Research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
during the Carter administration.
Shalala's first experience with academic administration came in 1980 when
she became the 10th President of Hunter College, serving in this
capacity until 1988. She next served as Chancellor
of the University
of Wisconsin–Madison. Shalala served for eight years as Secretary of Health and Human Services
under President Clinton
and was awarded the Presidential
Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, by
President George W. Bush
in June 2008. [Wikipedia]
- Thomas Kean (MA, 1963, and a recipient of TC’s Medal for
Distinguished Service to Education), chair of
the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, is
former governor of New Jersey (1982-1990) and, since 1990, the president
of Drew
University. Kean also served for
ten years in the New Jersey Assembly, rising to the positions of majority
leader, minority leader, and speaker. As governor, he served on the President's
Education Policy Advisory Committee and as chair of the Education
Commission of the States and the National Governor's Association Task
Force on Teaching. While president of Drew, Kean has served on several
national committees and commissions. He headed the American delegation to
the UN Conference on Youth in Thailand, served as vice chairman of the
American delegation to the World Conference on Women in Beijing; and
served as a member of the President's Initiative on Race. He also served
on the National Endowment for Democracy. He is chair of the Newark
Alliance and the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and former
chair of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Educate America, and the
National Environmental Education and Training Foundation. Kean is on the
board of a number of organizations including the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation and the National Council of the World Wildlife Fund. [9-11commission.gov]
- Raphael Ortiz (82 ED.D., 75 ME). Co-Founder of
New York City’s El Museo Del Barrio. In the late 1950s, Ortiz was a
central figure in the international art movement of Destructivism,
producing significant “destroyed” works in recycled cinema, performance,
and sculpture. Ortiz also co-founded El Museo del Barrio (1969), the first
Latino art museum in the United States, and was an active member of the
Artist Worker’s Coalition (1970-71). In the 1980s, Ortiz turned to digital
art. His work has been exhibited around the world, including a
retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1996.
- 41. Maxine Greene (PhD, 1955) explores living in awareness and
"wide awakeness" in order to advance social justice. Her
thinking about existence and the power of imagination have been brought to
life through her study, academic appointments, essays and books. In her
teaching, she desires to educate those who speak, write, and resist in
their own voices, rather than mimic her ideas and language. She is
currently the William F. Russell Professor in the Foundations of Education
(emerita) at Teachers College. In 2004, the Teachers College Trustees
created the Maxine Greene Chair for Distinguished Contributions to
Education. She has been Philosopher-in-Residence of the
Lincoln Center Institute
for the Arts in Education (LCI) since 1976 and founded the Maxine
Greene Foundation for Social Imagination, the Arts, and
Education in 2003. She is also past
President of the American Educational
Research Association (AREA), Philosophy of Education
Society, American Educational
Studies Association (AESA), and the Middle Atlantic
States Philosophy of Education Society. She is the recipient of
numerous, Honorary Degrees, was awarded the Medal of Honor
from Teachers College
and Barnard College;
Educator of the Year Award from Phi Delta Kappa; the Scholarly Achievement
Award from Barnard College;
AERA's
Lifetime Achievement Award; and received a Fulbright fellowship, which
took her to New Zealand. [maxinegreene.org]
- Georgia O’Keefe (1887-1986) was an American artist.
Born near Sun Prairie,
Wisconsin, O'Keeffe was a major figure in American art from the 1920s. She
studied at Teachers College under Arthur Wesley Dow. She received
widespread recognition for her technical contributions, as well as for
challenging the boundaries of modern American artistic style. She is
chiefly known for paintings of flowers, rocks, shells, animal bones, and
landscapes in which she synthesized abstraction and representation. Her
paintings present crisply contoured forms that are replete with subtle
tonal transitions of varying colors. She often transformed her subject
matter into powerful abstract images. O'Keeffe played a central role in
bringing an American art style to Europe at a time when the majority of influence
flowed in the opposite direction. This feat enhanced her art-historical
importance given that she was one of few women to have gained entry to
this level of professional influence. She found artistic inspiration in
the rural Southwest,
particularly in New Mexico,
where she settled late in life. [Wikipedia]
- Marion Thompson Wright (BS, 1916), (1902 -
1962), was among the nation's first professionally trained female
historians and a pioneer in African- American historical scholarship in
New Jersey. During the Great Depression, she was a social worker for the
Newark welfare department. During that time, she also was a doctoral
student at Columbia University Teachers College where she studied under
intellectual historian Merle Curti. Her most significant achievement
during that time was her doctoral dissertation, "The Education of
Negroes in New Jersey," completed in 1941, which is among the most
important studies of New Jersey race relations and African-American
history. The first black historian to receive a doctorate at Columbia, she
was a pioneer in the study of race relations in the state, laying the
foundation for future study that influenced two generations of scholarship
on democratic rights and race relations. [tc.columbia.edu]
- James Comer M.D., M.P.H. , (
a member of the Board of Trustees of Teachers College) is the Maurice
Falk Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Yale University School of
Medicine's Child Study Center, and has been a Yale medical faculty member
since 1968. During these years, he has concentrated his career on
promoting a focus on child development as a way of improving schools. His
efforts in support of healthy development of young people are known
internationally. Dr. Comer, perhaps, is best known for the founding of the
Comer School Development Program in 1968, which promotes the collaboration
of parents, educators, and community to improve social, emotional, and
academic outcomes for children that, in turn, helps them achieve greater
school success. His concept of teamwork has improved the educational
environment in more than 500 schools throughout America. In addition to
his writing, teaching and research activities, Dr. Comer has served as a
consultant to several educational committees and associations. He has also
chaired the Roundtable on Child and Adolescent Development Research and
Teacher Education, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development (NICHD). He served on the Association for Supervision and
Curriculum Development's Commission on the Whole Child and contributed to
the 2007 report, The Learning Compact Redefined: A Call to Action: A
Report of the Commission on the Whole Child. Dr. Comer has served as
Director or Trustee for several Boards, including Teachers College,
Columbia University since 1999. For his work and his scholarship, Dr.
Comer has been awarded 46 honorary degrees and has been recognized by many
organizations. [med.yale.edu]
- Marcia Lyles (ED.D., 1992) served
as an educator in New York City for 30 years. She began her career as an
English teacher at Curtis High School in Staten Island, and then moved on
to positions as Assistant Principal, Principal, Deputy Superintendent, and
Instructional Superintendent. In 2004, Dr. Lyles was named Regional
Superintendent for Brooklyn’s Region 8, and in June 2007, she was selected
to replace Dr. Andres Alonso as Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and
Learning. In May 2009, Dr. Marcia V. Lyles was announced to be leaving the
New York City Department of Education to become the Superintendent of
Christina School District, which encompasses the cities of Wilmington and
Newark, and is the largest public school district in Delaware. [http://schools.nyc.gov]
- Gyaltshen Penjor. In 1999, he was awarded a
scholarship to study economic policy management at Columbia University,
and he also took classes at Teachers College – with which his country, the
Republic of Bhutan, now maintains an educational alliance, thanks to his
efforts. While there, he deepened his understanding of policy analysis,
development and administration, he says, opening the way to an influential
role on education policy in his home country of Bhutan. Given the small
size of his country—it has a population of less than one million—such
specialized learning experiences are not available at home. Penjor is now
Director of the Royal Education Council in Bhutan, and attributes his role
as “a decision-maker entrusted with formulating public policy” to a
scholarship he earned through the JJ/WBGSP. Mr. Penjor spoke about his
experience at a recent conference of scholarship alumni. He noted that the
graduate degree, while critical, is not the only advantage he gained. “The
contacts I have maintained with Columbia faculty, staff of the World Bank,
and fellow PEPM students have been most helpful,” he said. [wbi.worldbank.org]
Published Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2009