WOMEN SHAPING HISTORY: College Presidents
Inauguration of Columbia TC
President Susan Fuhrman
By Emily Sherwood, Ph.D.
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President Susan Fuhrman
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i(Photos by Ryan Brenizer/Teachers College) |
In a gala afternoon of grand academic discourse by top thinkers in the field of education, Columbia University’s Teachers College (TC) welcomed Susan Fuhrman as its tenth president (and first woman president) during a pre-inaugural convocation at its newly renovated Cowin Center last month. Fuhrman, a nationally recognized expert on public accountability and teacher excellence in education, most recently served as Dean of Penn’s Graduate School of Education (GSE), where she is credited with strengthening its programs in urban and international education.
Lee Shulman, distinguished President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Thinking, was first to lend his imprimatur to Fuhrman’s presidency. “In ancient times, one did not reliably go ahead with a coronation without checking the signs. One was interested in finding out whether it augured well…you brought together your most respected soothsayers…that’s what we’re here for. Susan wants to be sure that all the augurs are promising,” began Shulman with a touch of eloquent humor.
Shulman challenged TC to wrestle with finding the right balance between “disengagement”—the ability to step back from “the everyday world and its troubles” to undertake thoughtful research and problem solving—and “engagement” in real world problems. He urged TC to follow a path of greater engagement: “There is a change coming in American higher education, and that change is that [universities] are disengaging from disengagement…The engaged university… maintains the highest levels of academic and professional excellence without having to sacrifice its responsibilities to serve the greater community,” he exhorted.
Following Shulman on the dais, a panel of “augurs” offered expert opinions on how TC should promote the highest quality research, one of Fuhrman’s stated goals as TC president. Edmund Gordon, founder and director of TC’s Institute for Urban and Minority Education, urged Fuhrman to build a critical mass of scholars in both theoretical and real world disciplines: “Some will need to focus on the complementarities between teaching and learning that occur in school and some on the teaching and learning that occur in life,” he opined.
Ellen Lagerman, Professor of History and former dean of Harvard’s GSE, held out three practical recommendations for improving the caliber of educational research at TC: (1) TC should establish a core curriculum for all students encompassing a set of common readings, such as classic works by John Dewey; (2) masters students should take one required course built around a discussion of significant burning questions, which indeed might help establish a set of national priorities for study; and (3) doctoral students should be savvy users of qualitative and quantitative research methods to answer they questions they ask. She added, “I’d hope that all TC doctoral students are familiar with the wide range of outlets to disseminate the findings of their work. They should of course know how to write cogent articles, books and reports. But they should also know how to give talks, how to curate exhibitions, how to develop questions for the Web, and even give testimony.”
The second panel of the afternoon focused on how TC could best influence policy and practice. Pascale Forgione, Superintendent of the Austin School District which significantly raised its student achievement through partnerships with universities, threw out the gauntlet: “Can graduate schools of education impact school reform at the ground level? I believe they can and I believe they must,” he challenged the audience. TC professor Lucy Calkins queried, “Is there a way that schools of education can be reconstituted so that more faculty members can become [critical partners]?” Patricia Graham, educational historian and former dean of the Harvard GSE, responded that “schools of education need to [examine] the many resources that they bring to bear on these real world problems, which includes more than just faculty…The trick is to utilize in a much more imaginative way the intellectual resources that we have, including those of our graduate students. Graduate students are often more likely to be familiar with the realities of urban classrooms.”
While there was no shortage of ideas for ameliorating the plight of inner city education, most speakers agreed that TC needs to offer “dynamic thinking that looks at the American educational system from top to bottom,” in the words of TC Associate Dean Sharon Lynn Kagan. That’s no small task for new TC president Susan Fuhrman, but—if her augurs are accurate in their predictions—she is certainly up to the task that lies before her.#
