Publications: TC Today
The Alumni Magazine of Teachers College, Columbia University
Volume 31, No. 1 ♦ 9/2006
A Math Olympian
George Lenchner, Ed.D., 1972, an accomplished math teacher who founded Math Olympiads, an international organization sponsoring math competitions for middle and elementary schoolers, died in San Francisco last spring. He was 88.
Published: 9/28/2006Alumni Council President's Message
Dear Fellow Alumni, I am pleased to have the opportunity to extend warm greetings on behalf of the Alumni Council. As Teachers College alumni, we share a common thread in our professional lives. Whether our focus is public policy, health care, psychology or education, we are all actively engaged in serving the public interest.
Published: 9/28/2006
Amicus, Not So Brief
When Bruce Baker and Preston Green met in Professor Craig Richards' dissertation conferences at TC in 1995, neither suspected they were beginning a conversation that would last for years--let alone a collaboration that would help change school financing in the U.S.
Published: 9/28/2006
Building Oz in the Projects
Ira Weston, Principal of Paul Robeson High School for Business and Technology on Albany Avenue in Brooklyn, sees his glass as half full. While "at risk" might be the term others would use to describe the 1,500 primarily African American students who attend Robeson - a forbidding-looking fortress of a building in one of the City's poorest neighborhoods - Weston prefers to call them "at promise." _ "It's just a way you define your own reality," he says. "I would rather be a principal of a school with 1,500 'at promise' students than 1,500 'at risk' students. I look for the good in kids. I look for the majesty and talent rather than the deficits."
Published: 9/28/2006Class Notes
Published: 9/28/2006
Equity's Elephant In the Room
It doesn't get the historical attention of Brown v. Board of Education, but 32 years ago, in Lau v. Nichols, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that "students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education." Since then, school districts have tried many new ways to teach English to English-language learners, including the development of bilingual education programs.
Published: 9/28/2006
High-Impact, Low-Profile
Anyone with money can give it away. Making it count takes work--and among heads of private family foundations, few have worked harder or more effectively than John Klingenstein.
Published: 9/28/2006In Memoriam
This section is a tribute to recently deceased alumni. Listed by class are those whose names were provided through family notices or newspaper clippings. Please contact TC Today to submit information to the editors. This edition covers January 2006 through June 2006.
Published: 9/28/2006
Publish & Flourish
On a warm day this past spring, a group of young authors was rehearsing for an upcoming reading at a Barnes and Noble bookstore in Co-op City in the Bronx. Like anyone soon to face a live audience, they were nervous. But these writers--11th graders at Millennium Art Academy, a small public school housed within the vast Adlai Stevenson High School--were particularly anxious to do justice to their material.
Published: 9/28/2006
TC Mourns Barbara Goodman
Barbara Goodman, longtime TC Trustee and former Board Chair of the College, passed away in June. A philanthropist and former teacher, Goodman, 74, earned a master's degree from TC in childhood education in 1954. In 1992 she received the College's Distinguished Alumna Award.
Published: 9/28/2006The Alumni News Director's Message
DEAR ALUMNI, WELCOME TO A NEW ALUMNI SECTION
Published: 9/28/2006
50 Zankel Scholarships Established
In June, Teachers College received a gift of $10 million from the estate of Arthur Zankel, the late philanthropist and Vice Chair of the College's Board of Trustees, who passed away in July 2005. The funds are being used to establish the Arthur Zankel Urban Fellowships--50 one-year scholarships of $10,000 each that will be given to both master's and doctoral students with demonstrated financial need. TC has also renamed Main Hall the Arthur Zankel Building.
Published: 9/26/2006
A "COLLECTOR OF OBJECTS" JOINS TC FACULTY
The internationally known artist, who has had more than 150 solo exhibitions around the world, has joined the TC faculty in the Art and Art Education Program.
Published: 9/26/2006
An Urban Partner
As I am quoted saying elsewhere in the issue, I believe very strongly that no school of education in the 21st century has an ivory-tower privilege. That is particularly true of Teachers College, situated as it is in the greatest city in the world. Our privilege--and our obligation--is to partner with City schools and improve their ability to do their jobs, in any way we can.
Published: 9/26/2006
Equity Update
It was a busy spring for The Campaign for Educational Equity. At a debut event on Capitol Hill in March, hosted by the office of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Campaign Board Chair Laurie Tisch and Executive Director Michael Rebell called for Congress to significantly retool the federal education law, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which is up for reauthorization in 2007, and to precede that work with a national study of the true cost of providing children with a quality education.
Published: 9/26/2006
Farewell to Darlyne Bailey
Darlyne Bailey, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Teachers College, left TC at the end of the summer to become the founding Dean of the University of Minnesota's College of Education and Human Development (CEHD).
Published: 9/26/2006
New TC Trustees
TC has added two new Trustees to its Board, Pat Green and Christopher Williams.
Published: 9/26/2006
Rising Tide, Not Enough Boats
Which era's reforms produced better results? The 1960s and 1970s, the high-water mark for desegregation in U.S. public schools? Or the 1980s and 1990s, when "excellence" became the watchword of an effort to counter a reported decline in American schools, and policymakers turned to market forces and individual choice? In Bringing Equity Back: Research for a New Era in American Educational Policy, edited by TC Professor Amy Stuart Wells and the Ford Foundation's Janice Petrovich, a group of authors examine the evidence.
Published: 9/26/2006
Second Time's a Charm
TC Trustee Cory Booker was elected Mayor of Newark, New Jersey in May, besting his strongest opponent by a voting margin of 3 to 1.
Published: 9/26/2006The Go-To Site for Latino Research
The Teachers College Web site is now the source for the latest research, academic papers and policy news relating to the Latino populations of the United States.
Published: 9/26/2006
The Power to Change the World
TC 's convocation exercises, held in Riverside Church in May, included two ceremonies for 722 master's degrees candidates, one ceremony for 230 doctoral candidates and a range of different speakers and honorees, yet the message throughout was the same: make that degree count.
Published: 9/26/2006
The State of Equity
In three successive Tisch lectures last winter, former Visiting Professor Richard Rothstein outlined his vision for a Teachers College Report Card on equity in education that would consider a wide range of indicators in assessing the fairness of America's educational system.
Published: 9/26/2006
Weighing In on Our Unfit Youth
TC Professor of Health Education John Allegrante, an outspoken advocate for children's physical fitness, has co-authored what he describes as an "action text book" on health that's aimed at teenagers.
Published: 9/26/2006
Steady As She Goes
Susan Fuhrman, who took office on August 1 as the 10th President of Teachers College (and the first woman to hold the job), has made a career of uniting and leading high-powered but frequently contentious groups of thinkers.
Published: 9/14/2006
