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School for International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
www.sipa.columbia.edu
Columbia University’s School of International Affairs was
founded in 1946, in the aftermath of World War II. It origi-nated
in dynamic regional institutes that, with an interdisci-plinary
vision bold for its day, drew on Columbia’s renowned faculties
in history, economics, political science, linguistics, and other
traditional fields. The mission of the School was to foster understanding
of regions of vital interest and to prepare diplomats, officials,
and other professionals to meet the complexities of the postwar
world.
By 1950, three regional institutes were in operation—the Russian
(now Harriman) Institute, the East Asian Institute, and the European
Institute (now the Institute for the Study of Europe). During the
1950s and 1960s, SIA developed a national and international profile
as a leading center for educational and research programs in area
studies, security, and international relations. By 1967, the School
was home to eight regional institutes, covering nearly every part
of the globe. In 1981, the School was renamed the School of International
and Public Affairs (SIPA).
Over the past decade, our faculty has expanded with the addition
of a first-rate SIPA-based faculty, among them practitioner-scholars
who bring their professional experi-ence into the classroom. We
continue to strengthen links to Columbia’s professional schools
and academic departments and to find new ways to engage the enormous
resources and challenges of the nation’s largest and most internation-al
city. To accommodate the needs of working professionals, we have
added two mid-career programs: the Executive MPA Program—the
first offering of the Picker Center for Executive Education—and
the Program in Economic Policy Management, a cooperative effort
of SIPA, the Department of Economics, and the Graduate School of
Business.
Teachers College, Columbia University
www.tc.columbia.edu
Teachers College was founded in 1887 by the philanthropist Grace
Hoadley Dodge and philosopher Nicholas Murray Butler to provide
a new kind of schooling for the teachers of the poor children of
New York, one that combined a hu-manitarian concern to help others
with a scientific approach to human development. From its modest
beginnings as a school to prepare home economists and manual art
teach-ers for the children of the poor, the college went on to be-come
the leading intellectual influence on the development of the American
teaching profession.
The founders early recognized that professional teachers need reliable
knowledge about the conditions under which children learn most effectively.
As a result, the College’s program from the start included
such fundamental subjects as educational psychology and educational
sociology. The founders also insisted that education must be combined
with clear ideas about ethics and the nature of a good soci-ety;
consequently programs were developed in the history of education
and in comparative education. As the number of school children increased
during the twentieth century, the problems of managing the schools
became ever more complex. The College took on the challenge and
instituted programs of study in areas of administration, economics
and politics. Other programs developed in such emerging fields as
counseling, curriculum development and school health care.
Today, Teachers College is providing solutions to the dif-ficult
problems of urban education, and reaffirming its original mission
in providing a new kind of education for those left most in need
by society or circumstance. The College continues its collaborative
research with urban and suburban school systems that strengthen
teaching in such fundamental areas as reading, writing, science,
mathematics and the arts; prepares leaders to develop and administer
psychological and health care programs in schools, hospi-tals and
community agencies; and advances technology for the classroom, developing
new teaching software and keeping teachers abreast of new developments.
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