The inauguration will be attended by hundreds of representatives from colleges and universities across the nation and from around the world. Fuhrman will be welcomed by a group of speakers that includes New York City Public Schools Chancellor Joel Klein; New York State Education Commissioner Richard Mills, who was a classmate of Fuhrman’s at TC during the 1970s; University of Miami President Donna Shalala, who was Fuhrman’s thesis advisor at TC before becoming U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services during the Clinton Administration; and Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation and former President of the University of Pennsylvania. Edmund W. Gordon, TC’s Richard March Hoe Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Education, who will present Fuhrman to the College’s Board of Trustees, and Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger will also deliver remarks.

Margaret Crocco, Professor of Social Studies Education, called the coming event “a celebration of ideas and values” that affirms the College’s longstanding commitment to excellence in education and research, helping poor and disadvantaged students, and a focus on education in all areas as the best means for sustaining and improving a democratic society. Crocco and Joseph Brosnan, Vice President for Development and External Affairs, co-chaired a 14-member inauguration planning committee that represented faculty and faculty emeriti, students, union and non-union staff, and alumni.

Other speakers will include TC’s Board of Trustees Co-Chairs John C. Hyland and William D. Rueckert; Lambros Comitas, Gardner Cowles Professor of Anthropology and Education (representing the TC faculty); Connie McQueen, Loan Counselor in the College’s Office of Financial Aid (representing union employees); Maureen Horgan, Head of Content Delivery Services for the College’s Gottesman Libraries (representing non-union staff); Albert Cousins, President of the Teachers College Student Senate; and Andre McKenzie, President of the College’s Alumni Council.

Fuhrman herself will deliver a keynote address in which she will review TC’s history and the challenges facing the College in the future.

On the previous day—January 30th—Fuhrman will chair an academic program titled “Living the Legacy,” which will focus on models for effective education research and ways of translating it into policy and practice. The program, to which all TC students are invited to attend, will be held at TC’s new Cowin Center and will run from 1:00 p.m. to 4:45 p.m., with a reception following.

Lee Shulman, Director of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, will deliver opening remarks. Next are two panels—“Promoting the Highest Quality of Research” and “Influencing Policy and Practice”—that will include speakers Professor Emeritus Edmund Gordon; Patricia Albjerg Graham, Professor Emerita at Harvard Graduate School of Education, former Director of the National Institute of Education and President of the Spencer Foundation (the nation’s leading funder of educational research); Sharon Lynn Kagan, TC’s Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Early Childhood Education and Co-Director of the National Center for Children and Families; Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, former Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, past President of both the Spencer Foundation and the National Academy of Education, and currently the Charles Warren Professor of the History of American Education at Harvard University; and others.

TC faculty members Aaron Pallas, Professor of Sociology and Education, and Lucy Calkins, Robinson Professor of English Education, will serve as moderators.

In addition to Crocco and Brosnan, the members of the TC Inauguration Committee are Marion Boultbee, Director of International Services; Student Senate President Albert Cousins; Scott Fahey, Assistant to the President and Secretary of the College; Professor of Education Celia Genishi; Alumni Council member Jane Herzog; Gottesman’s Maureen Horgan; Board Co-Chair John C. Hyland; Joe Levine, Executive Director of External Affairs; Loan Counselor Connie McQueen; Gary Natriello, Professor of Sociology and Education and Director of the Gottesman Libraries; Requel Russell-George, Assistant Director of Gifts and Records; Professor Emeritus of Education Frank Smith; Erica Walker, Assistant Professor of Math Education; and TC Board of Trustees member Sue Ann Weinberg. The committee is staffed by Jerima DeWese, Executive Administrator of Development and External Affairs; Laurie Dorf, Executive Director of Development Programs; and Karen Schnur, Director of Events Planning.

Published Monday, Jan. 22, 2007