The M.W. Offit Gallery, located on the third floor of the Gottesman Libraries, hosted the exhibition Teachers College: The First Forty Years, 1886—1926 throughout November and December. Through a collection of old journals, pictures, yearbooks and blueprints, the exhibition explored the beginnings of TC, from its founding by founder, Grace Hoadley Dodge through its rapid growth and expansion by the mid-1920s. Using Lawrence A. Cremin’s historical text A History of Teachers College, Columbia University (1954), the exhibit focused on three themes: the founders, the growth of TC and the students and faculty. TC’s founders were featured in a timeline and portraits. Master’s student Linnea Westerberg of the Art & Art Education Program curated the exhibition.

 

Thomas Bailey, Professor of Economics and Education, speaks to a crowd in December about a new book written by researchers at TC’s Community College Research Center, Defending the Community College Equity Agenda. Building on case studies of colleges in six states—New York, Texas, Florida, California, Washington and Illinois—the book offers a new examination of the challenges currently facing American community colleges. Drawing on new findings from their fieldwork, supplemented by data from the National Center for Education Statistics, the authors analyze how these challenges affect the community college’s mission of educational opportunity, especially for low-income students of color and other underserved groups, and how colleges are responding to a drastically changed environment.