Alumni

In April, when TC President Thomas Bailey said the College’s 2019 Academic Festival “captured the essence of TC at its best,” he was only partly referring to the amazing assortment of panels and guest speakers.

During an entire year when the top priority on West 120^th Street was to build a more unified and interconnected Teachers College, the College’s signature homecoming event showed that alumni were leading the way by reaffirming old ties with one another and TC, forming new ones and gathering together across the United States and around the world.

In keeping with TC’s track record of innovation, the College’s 11^th annual Academic Festival — themed “Creating Pathways for All to Flourish” — included several “firsts.” During the Opening Ceremony, attendees watched Academic Festival’s first-ever film screening of Personal Statement, a documentary about America’s college guidance crisis. Afterward they listened to a panel discussion featuring the film’s director, Juliane Dressner; TC College Guidance Initiative Director Riddhi Sandil; Liz Willen, Editor-in-Chief of The Hechinger Report; and Christine Rodriguez and Enoch Jemmott, two students featured in the film.

The afternoon brought the inaugural Innovation Awards Showcase, developed to recognize and celebrate student excellence in innovation at the intersection of learning, design, research, and technology. TC’s new EXerT Clinic and Applied Physiology Lab also opened its doors to Academic Festival attendees and offered free wellness check-ins.

Academic Festival will continue to grow and evolve in 2020 as the event moves from the spring to the fall. Alumni, family and friends are invited to come home to TC on October 24^th.

Read more. Watch the Academic Festival Playlist.

From Baltimore to San Francisco and from Boston to Orlando, TC’s Alumni Relations team hosted receptions at professional conferences across the country in 2019. These venues enabled graduates, students and faculty to connect with colleagues in their fields, share insights and experiences from the conferences, and strengthen their TC networks. Stay tuned for more of these receptions in 2020!

Summer 2019 was highlighted by Global TC Day, a biennial celebration of TC communities around the world and a wonderful reminder that no matter where they live and work, graduates are always a part of Teachers College. With the help of 27 alumni volunteers, Alumni Relations hosted 21 Global TC Day events in 12 domestic and nine international cities. Celebrations ranged from dinners to museum tours to baseball games, with each event full of TC spirit.

Celebrating 15 years of the Eisenhower Leader Development Program, jointly taught by TC’s Social-Organizational Psychology program and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Alumni Relations hosted its first-ever tailgate at West Point. TC President Thomas Bailey and Professors Sarah Brazaitis (Ph.D. ’97), Gina Buontempo (Ph.D. ’05) and Warner Burke joined alumni, family and friends for this special event on a beautiful fall day at West Point’s Daly Field. Afterwards, guests headed to Michie Stadium to cheer on Army’s football team as it faced Tulane.

Stephanie Rowley, TC’s new Provost, Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs, is meeting with alumni across the country during her 2020 Provost on the Road tour. So far, she has visited Boston, Chicago, Miami and Pittsburgh and will also be stopping in Rochester, Los Angeles, Bethlehem (Pennsylvania) and San Francisco to field questions and share her vision for positioning the College to achieve great things.