In spring 2020, when The Public Matters, a Teachers College-based public opinion survey, asked whom Americans trusted most to shape the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the answer, overwhelmingly, was frontline health care providers — the people fighting the disease day in and day out.

It was another reminder of our society’s dependence, especially during a crisis, on its “quiet professionals” — essential service providers whose allegiance is to their work and those whom they serve.

From the pandemic’s first days, TC faculty, trustees, students and, perhaps most of all, alumni have worked on the frontlines in education, health and psychology, sometimes putting their lives on the line.

Here are some of their stories.

• In the Belly of the Beast
• Redefining “The Building”
• Making Mental Health a Priority