As the academic year ended, the physical threat of global warming dominated the headlines. As educators, we must broadly consider “climate change” as a metaphor for creating a healthier environment for confronting a range of issues.

Our cover story spotlights one of society’s best hopes for doing so: America’s dedicated teachers. You’ll meet alumni nationwide who apply their creativity, resilience and Teachers College preparation toward engaging students as citizens in the making. You’ll also meet TC faculty and alumni in school leadership positions with ideas for restoring a noble profession to the standing it deserves. As Jeffrey Young, Professor of Practice in Education Leadership and a former teacher and school superintendent, puts it: “Teachers are heroes who help create and shape lives.” On behalf of our teachers, our children and ourselves, TC is helping teachers to excel and flourish.

In our “TC Heroes” profile, we introduce another champion for a healthier, more equitable society: alumna Sayu Bhojwani (Ph.D. ’14). Sayu’s nonprofit, New American Leaders, prepares first- and second-generation Americans to seek elective office and works to ensure that immigrants are no longer seen as “not quite American.” Speaking for millions of fellow immigrants, Sayu says, “It’s our country, too.”

We also introduce two new senior leaders who promise to strengthen TC’s own climate. Stephanie Rowley, our new Provost, Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs, joins us from the University of Michigan, where she convened diverse minds on major research projects. JoAnne Williams, our new Vice President for Finance & Administration, is a skilled administrator and legal mind who recently oversaw fiscal planning, administrative services and other functions at Rutgers University. Happily, another great shaper of TC’s climate, Tom James, remains a Professor of History & Education after 12 distinguished years as chief academic officer.

Finally, all of us at TC are saddened by the passing of three stellar alumni. Pearl Rock Kane (Ed.D. ’83), longtime head of our Klingenstein Center for Independent School Leadership, launched a new era of intellectually rich preparation of independent school heads. Professor Emeritus and former dean Harold Noah (Ph.D. ’64) introduced quantitative methods that enabled the field of comparative and international education to predict and explain rather than merely describe. And alumna Olivia Hooker (M.A. ’47), a survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, helped integrate the U.S. Coast Guard and became an eminent psychologist and educator.

These three giants embodied TC’s ideals of open-mindedness, courage and dedication to a better world. We honor them by striving to meet the high standard they set.

Thomas Bailey