Ed. Magazine, Fall 2011

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Ed THE MAGAZINE OF THE HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCA

FALL

accepting Wikipedia | the book doctor | Larsen’s quirkiness

How a one-room schoolhouseand a drafty old shanty ledto the college presidency.

David Wilson’s Path


http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/ed-magazine-fall-2011 2/44ED. • FALL 2011B

the appian way

Dean Kathleen McCartney may not be Zdeno Chara,

and the Sunken Garden may not have been the TD

Garden, but a cup nonetheless was raised to help

the Ed School community celebrate the Boston

Bruins victory over the Vancouver Canucks a week

after the hometown team won the Stanley Cup —

their first since 1972. And while the Bruins only had

ice, the Ed School had ice cream.

June 21, 2011

the big picture


http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/ed-magazine-fall-2011 3/44HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATIO



The Road TakenMorgan State University President

David Wilson, Ed.M.’84, Ed.D.’87,

goes home — to the red dirt roads,the one-room schoolhouse, and

the next generation with the same

urgent desire to learn.

f e a t u

r e s

Truce Be Told Just a few years after banning Wikipedia,

some educators are starting to make peace

with the popular online encyclopedia that

anyone can write and edit.

Ed. received bragging

rights and a gold circle

CASE award — the only

one given for cover

design — as the best

alumni magazine

cover for our fall

2010 issue!



4 Pushback

6 The Appian Way

30 Alumni News and Notes

40 Recess

41 Investing

www.gse.harvard.edu

events www.gse.harvard.edu/news_events/eventstwitter www.twitter.com/hgse

facebook www.facebook.com/harvardeducation

youtube www.youtube.com/harvardeducation

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foursquare www.foursquare.com/hgse

Called “poignant,”

“powerful,” and “one

of the best,” the Ed

School’s contribution tthe It Gets Better Proje

was a four-minute vide

that debuted in July. Th

video features students

staff, and faculty who share their stories of being

bullied, of coming out, or of feeling alone while

growing up — stories that, as Dean Kathleen

McCartney said, may move you to tears.

When Jim True-Frost

was preparing for his

character to switch ca-reers from cop to teach

on the HBO series, The

Wire, he didn’t immers

himself in every book o

movie about the profes

sion. He didn’t have to — the groundwork had

already been laid by years of conversations with h

wife, who had been a public school teacher. True-

Frost told the Harvard EdCast this past summer,

was vividly schooled by Cora.”

16

d e p a r t m e n t s

SENIOR WRITER/EDITOR

Lory [email protected]

PRODUCTION MANAGER/EDITOR

Marin Jorgensen

[email protected]

DESIGNER

Paula Telch Cooney

[email protected]

DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS

Michael Rodman

[email protected]

COMMUNICATIONS INTERN

Rachael Apfel

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Jill AndersonRachael Apfel

Chris Buttimer, Ed.M.’10

Mark Robertson, Ed.M.’08

Janet Sudnik

COPYEDITOR

Abigail Mieko Vargus

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Jill Anderson

Steve Barrett

Cheryl Gray

Tanit Sakakini

Martha Stewart

Robert Sutton

a click awaystories and links found only online

ILLUSTRATORS

Matt CooneyDavid Cutler

Daniel Vasconcellos

© 2011 by the President and

Fellows of Harvard College.

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Quiz KidsI enjoyed your article in the latest Ed.

My wife, Carol VanDeusen Lukas,

Ed.M.’71, Ed.D.’78, is a graduate. I

served as the state coordinator for the

Massachusetts Academic Decathlon for

25 years and actually began the contest

in the state back in 1984 at Cambridge

Rindge and Latin. The contest contin-

ues today with more than 35 schoolscompeting and sends a championship

team to the national contest each year.

One aspect of the contest that schools

like is that the nine-person team must

have students with B and C averages.

Thus, it is not just a contest for top

students to enter. This has proved very

successful. In addition, there is a special

curriculum prepared each year that

the students must study in order to do

well. It includes seven academic areas

plus preparing to write an essay, givea speech, and be interviewed. Often

the material in the study guides is not

something students would normally

study in the regular classes. One small

correction: Your spellchecker needs

checking. There is no second “a” in

Decathlon. This is a common mistake

and has even appeared in headlines

about our events.

— Henry Lukas

Hungry For ChangeI nd it odd that there is no mention

in this article (“Lunch Line,” summer

2011) of any initiatives or data from

the Boston Public Schools for whichthe author sits on the school commit-

tee. There are a few schools in Boston

working on this issue with programs

like Chefs in School or Farm to School

Thursdays. The real issue lies within

the more than 80 schools that are so-

called “satellite schools,” where the

district offers an RFP and gives the con-

tract to the lowest bidder, not necessar-

ily the best provider. We need to really

change the way we provide nutrition

and education about nutrition and

wellness as we are nearing a tragedy

concerning the health of our children

and young adults. We need to prepareour children for the future not only

academically, but holistically as well.

— Kenny Jervis

Caution: Speed Bumps AheadIn consideration of older readers with

less than 20-20 vision, would you

consider minimizing those artistic page

layouts where print is superimposed on

What an interesting article (“Quiz Kids,”

summer 2011). I just graduated from

Newton North High School, where I par

in a variety of academic competitions, al

of them science related. Our team had a

lot of success, and in relation to the res

of the state, we did far better than mo

athletic teams in the school. Neverthele

never felt as though we got nearly as m

attention as the athletic teams, wheth

from our peers or the school administra

which never helped fund the costs such

as transportation and study materials. I

nice to see that at some high schools, th

academic teams get more attention.

— Jazzkingrt



a darkened or colored background?

I was interested in the piece about a

“green” Harvard building. Reading the text, which threaded its way

through rugs and chairs and people,

was like driving on a country road and

having to slow down for mud puddles.

In one zone there was yellow print on

light brown background. I suppose

some people like to read articles this

way; for me, it interrupts the ow of

my thinking.

— Christian Melgard

A Return to Her Roots

Ms. Mosca (“A to B: Why Erica Mosca

Cares,” summer 2011) was by far the

best teacher ever. She inspired us to

do better, helped us out with anything,

and encouraged us to set bigger goals

for our lives. I feel lucky to have had

her as my fth-grade teacher.

— Natalie P.

Ms. Mosca was the best teacher I ever

had in my life. From the day I started

school until now, I have never met abetter teacher than Ms. Mosca.

— Brandon P.

I love my teacher Ms. Mosca, she

inspires me to do more!

— Linda L.

Good luck, Erica. They are cutting

education in Nevada. Excellent teach-

ers are leaving in droves to go to other

states. The people here do not need

education. They only need people

as hotel maids, servers, valet parkers,and “paid entertainers.” Just be sure

to bring with you loads of patience,

tenacity, and smarts. It will be a long,

hard ght.

— Tula6249

Soldier OnEvery word

written here

(“Not the War

Umesh Sharma

Expected,”

summer 2011)

compels us to move out of our

grooves and be a ghter. Place

doesn’t matter, be it the battleeld,

corporate grounds, or the ght for

humanity.

— Gilbert_cool11

Umesh, you are a brave man in-

deed — and ambitious. There are

American soldiers who become intel-

lectuals after they leave the militarylife, but not the other way. I wish you

success in your chosen career. It is

wonderful to think that you can still

continue to use your laptop.

— Bhuban Baruah

Nice article! Umesh is a living ex-

ample that proves hard work will reap

results! He has gone through difcult

times in his life but his determination

to succeed kept him following his

dreams. I have known him for the pastfew years because he was my house-

mate in Washington, D.C. I wish him

the best in all his endeavors.

— Saji

L.A.’s Finest We’ll be lucky and happy to welcome

this gentleman (“Study Break: Ryan

Shepard, Ed.M.’11,” summer 2011)

into the ranks of policymaker and

education advocate for our kids!

Congrats Ryan, and greatstory, HGSE team.

— Anthony Jewett, Ed.L.D.

candidate

I really like your response

for what motivates you.

I can truly relate to the

internal clock that indi-

cates our progression, and

I feel that in order to reach

your purpose, you must

be intimately in sync with

that clock. Good luck with

the Los Angeles move;

I know you will make a

signicant impact in the

community.

— Misgana

Parenting ProgressI attended HGSE from 1975–79. I

exited with a dossier two and half

inches thick asking for exceptions.

At the time, I had three childrenand served in the New Hampshire

legislature. Because I knew no excep-

tions would be granted for childcare, I

made all my requests for leniency rest

on professional obligations. It’s good

to see (“A Room With A View,” sum-

mer 2011) that the Ed School is nally

realizing that good parenting is part of

good education.

— Ruth Nemzoff, C.A.S.’76, Ed.D.’79

Corrections A couple of details about Jen Holleran

were incorrect in the last issue of Ed.

Holleran graduated in 1995, not 2005.

She also served as executive director

of Bay Area for New Leaders, not

CEO. In the same issue, we also iden-

tied Natasha Kumar Warikoo as an

associate professor at the Ed School.

She is currently an assistant professor.

pushback

D

A N I E L V A S C O N C E L L O S



B R I G E T G A N S K E

E L E N A G O R M L E Y



the appian way All of us a

professio

schools

are in the

‘knowled

and actio

business

What are the limits of the dream?

I identify four: that science cannot

settle questions of value, that experts

cannot settle questions of democracy,

that social science is epistemologi-

cally limited, and that social policy is

just one input on people’s lives. One

contention in the book is that we at

professional schools now know at some

level the original dream is awed,

and tell our students as much, but we

continue to act as if the old equation

is true because we don’t have much to

replace it with.

Can this be changed?

A goal for the latter part of the book

is to try to reconstruct a thicker view

of how to connect knowledge to public

action, one that recognizes the impor-

tance of values, welcomes democratic

decisionmaking, is aware of the limits

of different forms of knowledge, and

is not utopian in its aims but is still

hopeful about how we can make public

progress on a range of social problems.

What do you mean by connecting knowledge and action?

All of us at professional schools are

in the “knowledge and action” busi-

ness — we hope to develop knowledge

or teach students things that will help

people act for better in the world. The

question I’m interested in is what sorts

of knowledge actually enable people

to act more effectively. Sometimes in

the academy we act as if the only sort

of knowledge is scientic knowledge.

Effective practitioners possess what

Aristotle called phronesis, or practical

wisdom drawn from experience.

How did you get interested in all of this?

I grew up in Baltimore, which is a city

that is as divided as any I know by race

and class. Where in Baltimore you grew

up very likely determined what kind of

opportunities you were going to have in

life. That seemed very unfair to me as akid, and it seems just as unfair now. My

work is motivated by trying to remedy

that injustice.

And you think schools are an important

part of the equation?

I started by getting a Ph.D. in sociology

and social policy, and continue to be

interested in the range of social policies

and institutions that can be used to

remedy inequality, but have come to see

schools as potentially the most trans-formative lever for breaking cycles of

intergenerational poverty.

What about your own school

experience?

A big inuence on my work has been

my parents, who were both educators,

and my school, the Park School, which

prided itself on promoting critical

thinking and student inquiry. I believe

strongly that educational environ-

ments should be lively, interesting, and

challenging places. Schools are not

only places that help people get jobs,

they are also places that can potentially

transform who people are, what they

value, and how they think.

You joke about thinking too much in

your own life.

I love to think about things — you can

ask my wife, I’m terribly impractical —

and I think there is beauty and honor

in really thinking hard, which is partof what makes schools potentially such

special places. In that sense, all of the

projects I’m involved with are moti-

vated by the question of how we could

give the kind of education I had to all

of our fellow citizens.

You had a son, Alex, this year. Has

that changed your perspective on any

of this?

It reminds me that we don’t just want

our kids to be educated. We alsowant them to be happy. In theory, it

matters if he makes his developmenta

milestones; in practice, all I want

is to make him smile and hear him

laugh. He also has been very popular

with the students — they’ve already

recruited him for the “I’m Always Fo

Better” campaign.

— Lory Hough

tul Gawande’s book, Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance, became a favorite among

Jal Mehta’s students at the Ed School — they even made related t-shirts — because it

embodies an attitude Mehta has long admired: Make do with what you have, and try

to leave everything a bit better than you found it.

This is exactly what Mehta is trying to do for education reform through his various research projects, including The

Chastened Dream, a book-in-progress that has him on leave for the next year to be a fellow at Harvard’s Charles Warren

Center for Studies in American History. The book explores the idea — the dream — that social science can inform social

policy to achieve social progress. Institutions like the Ed School were started with this dream in mind. Mehta believes

in the dream, too, but he’s also a pragmatist: He knows that reality, especially the reality of fixing schools, is much

more complicated. Still, he remains optimistic. In July, he spoke to Ed. about the limits of the dream, what motives him,

and why being impractical isn’t such a bad thing.

Assistant Professor Jal Mehtalecturehall“

A



the appian way

I remember watching Michael Douglas’

Gordon Gekko proclaim, “Greed is good”

in the TV trailer for Wall Street when I was in

middle school. I don’t think I ever saw the movie

until much later in life, but I remember being

attracted to the lifestyle portrayed on the TV

screen — the limos, the women, the ashing

computer screens, and just the overall frenetic

and exciting lifestyle that everyone who worked

on Wall Street seemed to be living.

When I graduated from college at the height

of a market boom, I decided I’d try my hand

at becoming the next Gordon Gekko. I worked

as a Wall Street trader in Boston rst, and then

in New York. What I found was a workplace envi-

ronment and overall lifestyle that I loathed. My

coworkers routinely withheld information from

each other, fudged numbers, stabbed friends in

the back for bonuses, and used their connections

to get ahead, undeservedly so in many cases. After

ve years in nance, I decided I had had enough.

Coming back to my hometown of Boston, I

fell into an assistant teaching position at a summer school

program, which I had only planned on doing to make a few

dollars while I applied to graduate school to do something

— anything — other than work on Wall Street. After about a

week of working with the students and seeing how amazingly

smart, funny, kind, and caring they were, I knew that teach-ing was what I wanted to do.

For two years, I worked part-time as an assistant teacher

in the Cambridge Public Schools, while I got my master’s

degree in teaching at night. When I graduated, I took over

for the English teacher at the middle school who was retiring.

I spent my all of my time, energy, and money (the district’s

as well as my own) creating an engaging literary environ-

ment in my classroom where we read great books, discussed

big ideas, and wrote until our hands hurt. In doing so, I was

able to reach about 75 percent of my students effectively;

however, I simply didn’t have the skill set to instruct students

who were three or more grade levels behind their peers andwho struggled with decoding and uency — areas that are

typically, yet erroneously, seen as being the purview of K–5

teachers only.

I came to the Ed School to gain the knowledge required

to teach every one of my students effectively. I gained these

skills in the reading specialist program under Lecturer

Pamela Mason, M.A.T.’70, Ed.D.’75, and I now feel like I

have the tools to either reenter the classroom as an effective

practitioner or to work with teachers to build their capacity

in areas that I was lacking when I began my teaching career.

However, given the school’s expertise in the policy arena,

my coursework exposed me to trends in education reform

that I nd extremely troubling, which is one reason why I

came back to learn more through the Ed.D. Program. Many

of the current reformers at the policy and administrator

levels are embracing neoliberal market-based, corporate-stylreforms, which promote practices that I saw lead to such

greed and corruption on Wall Street. With the advent of

competitive reforms such as merit pay, test-based account-

ability, and market-based systems like vouchers and charters,

we are already seeing unintended consequences in the forms

of cheating, competition for scarce resources, and a system

of winners and losers. These reforms are creating new tiers

in an already stratied education system, thereby threatening

the institution of public education and our nation’s demo-

cratic ideals.

When my time at the Ed School is up, I have a tough deci

sion to make in determining whether to ght for equity forstudents and teachers in the classroom or to take that ght to

policymakers at the state and federal level. Neither of these

roles will give me Gordon Gekko’s lifestyle or salary, but I’m

ne with that because the work I’ll be doing advocating for

kids, families, and teachers will be far more rewarding.

— Chris Buttimer, Ed.M.’10, is currently an Ed.D. student in the

Culture, Communities, and Education Program. He has not seen the

Wall Street sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps , and

doesn’t plan to.

Chris Buttimer Found That Greed Isn’t Gooda tob

DANIEL VASCONCELLOS



Part of Jewell-Sherman’s collection

Smartphones are used for everything

nowadays. To check our bank accounts

when standing in line at the coffee shop.

To search the web for a favorite recipe

or directions to a store when we’re lost. To lm our

kids playing soccer and to snag photos of celebrities

unexpectedly having dinner at the next table.

What about using one to take a course?

This is what three former students from the Ed School won-

dered. The alums, Heidi Larson, Ed.M.’04, Kirsten Peterson,

Ed.M.98, and Alex Dreier, Ed.M.’10, formed a mobile learn-

ing group at Education Development Center, Inc., where they

all worked in Newton, Mass. Along with their former professor,

Chris Dede, they started talking about the potential of mobile

technology, like the smartphone or a tablet, to teach a profes-

sional development course — something that, surprisingly,

hasn’t really been done before. They decided to send out

a pilot survey to school administrators in New England —

educators who were extremely busy, not often rooted at their

desks, and in need of information quickly. They asked them

if they used smartphones and if so, how.

“We received 92 responses and 70 percent had smart-

phones,” Larson says. However, most were still using them

like traditional cell phones to make calls and maybe send text

messages. “Only 33 percent were using them to keep up with

social networks. We wanted to explore the potential.”

They decided to pilot a small project: a professional devel-

opment course taught and taken using a mobile device andTwitter. (A blog was also set up, but mostly stored links and

discussions.) In March, 20 education administrators signed

on for a three-week course about using data to inform and

support instruction.

Larson, Peterson, Dreier, and Dede didn’t start the

project hoping to prove any point or vindicate any personal

beliefs — they simply wanted to see what the pros and

cons are of primarily using mobile devices to take a course.

(Participants were allowed, on occasion, to use a desktop

computer if necessary.)

“I’m very interested in learning about the limits of mobile

devices,” Dede says. “Too often, people get so excited abouta new technology but only focus on the strengths. It’s hard to

learn much from a project if you work around the limits.”

Using Twitter as their home base, for example, only al-

lowed students to weigh in on a topic using 140 characters.

And because the course was designed to be taken during

small bits of free time — waiting in line for coffee — the

group also wondered about learning in short bursts.

Dreier says, “I was interested in seeing, if participants only

have 10-minute chunks to participate and the conversations

are not overlapping, how deeply can they engage.”

This was a problem for Ellen

Peterson, now an assistant superinten-

dent for Manseld Public Schools in

Manseld, Mass., who was, at the time,

director of teaching, learning, and tech-

nology for Norwell (Mass.) Public Schools. “I like spending

longer chunks of time for professional development rather

than short, frequent contact because I think I can absorb and

reect more.”

She also found that because of Twitter’s character limit,

she didn’t pose as many comments as she might have, and

that she had to check in more often in order to keep up with

the quick pace of posts. Twitter did have one positive side

though: It forced people to be succinct.

“You had to put thought into your comment before post-

ing,” Ellen Peterson says. “It was also a timesaver to read

other posts that were short and to the point.”

Now that the pilot is over, the group is evaluating lessons

learned so that if future funding comes through, they can

run another course. Dreier says that given the variation in

Twitter knowledge, they would spend more time up front

getting everyone comfortable with the platform. Kirsten

Peterson says they would consider combining technology:

mobile devices for conversations and desktop computers for

reading longer pieces.

For future courses, they would also have to address accessissues: Some schools block certain sites, and certain phones

didn’t do well with the multimedia platform Flash or didn’t

have a lot of memory, limiting the ability to share video.

They’re also considering having different course levels, with

some geared toward beginning technology users and some

toward what they call the “super users.”

Ned Kirsch, superintendent of Franklin West Supervisory

Union in Vermont, is one of the super users from the pilot

course. He had already been active on Twitter before the

course started, even teaching his administrative team how to

use Twitter to create an online personal learning network.

After the course ended, Kirsch also developed a coursefor teachers in his district called Digital Personal Learning

Networks. Every teacher who signed on received a stipend fo

an iPad or smartphone. As far as he’s concerned, this is only

the beginning of using mobile learning in schools.

“I had a parent tell us at a board meeting last month, ‘I

love the newsletters I get from everyone at the school, but I

wish the information could come to us on Twitter. Say it in

140 characters. That is all I need.’”

— Lory Hough

Have Phone, Can Learn

ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/EXDEZ



When the classnote came in from Brian Buckley, Ed.M.’98,

saying that he and his wife, Kate Hunter, had recently

opened an independent bookstore devoted exclusively to

poetry — only the third in the country — there was a col-

lective “wow” in the ofce. For years, it has been a David

and Goliath battle for survival for small, brick-and-mortarbookshops trying to compete against discount chain stores,

Amazon, and, more recently, e-readers.

Even Buckley had his worries, showing up two hours late

for the lease signing because of nerves.

“Starting an independent bookstore is exciting and

daunting,” he says from Boulder, Colo., where the Innisfree

Poetry Bookstore and Cafe is located. “On the one hand,

you’re adding to something that isn’t alive and well in some

places. But people also said, ‘Brian, there’s a reason there

are only two.’”

As it turns out, Buckley’s timing may be just right as

the tables show signs of turning, at least a little. Earlier this

year, one of the big chains, Borders, announced that it was

closing all of its stores. At the same time, the Association

of American Publishers reported that book sales across all

platforms increased by 3.6 percent from 2009 to 2010. Lastsummer, Google announced that it would allow independent

to sell e-books from their websites. And, says Laura Ayrey,

executive director of the Mountains & Plains Independent

Booksellers Association, “Independent stores have been chal-

lenging e-fairness state-by-state by forming coalitions with

other local businesses to amend sales tax legislation, and have

had success in a number of states.” This levels the playing

eld when it comes to the collection and remittance of sales

tax, allowing independent stores to compete with online

vendors like Amazon.

Bricks, Mortar, and a Lot of Yeats

the appian way

Brian, Norah,

Kate, and Clare



For Buckley and his store, there’s one other critical factor:

the community. Although he and Hunter, who met in a poetry

class when they were both living in Boston, moved to Boulderfor the mountains and good schools for their two young

daughters, the city turned out to be fertile ground for a couple

thinking of starting a risky venture as their full-time paycheck.

“Boulder has a knack for supporting local businesses

and has a thriving art scene,” he says. “There’s even a Jack

Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics here.”

For this reason, and others, he and Hunter have worked

hard to make Innisfree, which is named after the W. B. Yeats

poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” egalitarian. Books by the

classic names in poetry mingle on the shelves with the lesser-

knowns. Twice-weekly in-store readings include beginning

writers as well as established ones. And Innisfree’s selection

isn’t just for academics or adults, unlike the other two poetry

stores (including Grolier’s in Cambridge, Mass., where

Buckley worked when he was an Ed School student). The

store devotes about 20 percent of shelf space to books geared

toward young children and adolescents.

Even poetry disbelievers are welcome.

“People will say to me, ‘I didn’t get poetry at all in high

school. It was too hard,’” Buckley says. “We want that wall

to go away.” Besides luring them in with the wide selection

of books, the shop also offers locally roasted coffee, baked

goods, and sandwiches. For those who don’t have time to

browse the store, ordering online is always an option, as is a

unique feature — a walk-up window that allows people tobuy coffee and books from the sidewalk. Buckley jokes that

it’s their “window into poetry.”

And then there’s the giant table in the middle of the

store. Measuring 10 feet long, it encourages interactions and

sometimes introduces people to new things.

“Someone will see someone else at the table reading

a book and a conversation will start,” Buckley says. “The

community table has brought many people together. Groups

reserve it and when not reserved, spontaneity rules the day.

[There’s] much talk of poets and poetry when readers pull

out their books. One day a poet, Jared Smith, was at the

table and he suddenly started reading a poem out loud atthe behest of the Colorado University students he met at the

table. Others end up conversing and then a poem is suddenly

being read aloud. We love it.”

Buckley was lucky: There was never a wall for him to

tackle when it came to understanding or appreciating poetry.

During junior high, his teacher, Ken Conn, introduced him

to major American writers like Whitman and Dickinson.

And long before that, his Boston community and his family,

particularly his father, an electrician for the MBTA subway

system, surrounded him with verse.

“For me, growing up in West Roxbury, in an Irish Catholi

neighborhood, the Irish pride of the area came out,” Buckle

says. “My father would recite Yeats and Heaney frommemory. The teachers would point with pride at what some

of the Irish poets had accomplished.”

Years later, when he was studying at the Ed School, he

realized poetry could, in fact, be a way to educate people.

“I took a class with Professor Donald Oliver,” he says,

referring to the professor who took a sabbatical from the Ed

School in 1978 to study at a beauty school in Lowell, Mass.,

because he strongly believed that real learning took place in

the real world. “He challenged us to think about education

outside school. That voice always stayed in my head. I feel

strongly that this store is going to be an education center.”

Today, as he is feeling good about the early success of the

store — “People are coming!” — he reminds the naysayers

of all the ways that poetry is used every day to mark mo-

ments in our lives.

“I tell them about the people who come in and say, ‘My

wife just passed away.’ They ask if there’s anything on the

shelves that they can read. Or someone comes in and doesn’t

say anything but has a need for poetry to guide them through

something,” he says. “I think there’s a reason poems are read

at weddings and funerals, at the president’s inauguration.

It hushes the moment. A poem comes with a posture or an

attitude that something special is about to happen.”

— Lory Hough

Innisfree’s top sellers in five categories

Poetry Speaks to Children

edited by Elise Paschen

Inferno of Dante

translated by Robert Pinksy

The Gift: Poems by Hafiz The Great Sufi Master

translated by Daniel Ladinsky

My Life

by Lyn Hejinian

Ludlow

by David Mason

HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATIO

Chin’

Casica

Fign

Cntempay

Clado wir



the appian way

Vanessa Beary, Ed.M.’11, Ed.D. student, has an unconven-

tional approach to her career: She’s never had a trajectory

in mind, and so, when interesting opportunities come along,

she goes after them, even if they don’t necessarily connect in an

obvious way. “I’m open to thinking about all opportunities. I don’t

want to close myself off,” she says. “I know I’m prepping myself

for something.”

That prepping has taken her all over the world: working

as a research assistant for an author in Venice, Italy;

getting a master’s degree in philosophy at the University

of Cambridge in England; helping on an archeological

dig of Ancient Tiberias in Israel, where she unearthed

a stack of ninth-century vases; working in Iraq as a

public diplomacy officer and conducting research

for generals; raising money for schools in Afghani-

stan for Congresswoman Jean Schmidt (R-OH);

traveling to China to learn about how children

of migrant workers access education;learning Arabic. Eventually, she’ll be

in Eastern Africa with her husband, a

foreign service officer.

But for now? Thanks in part to

a Fulbright fellowship, Beary has

grabbed another opportunity. This

past summer, she returned to the

mountainous country of Tajikistan to

study advanced Persian and Tajik in

the capital city, Dushanbe. In the fall,

she will move to Khorog, located onthe Afghan border. There, Beary will

start her dissertation research: look-

ing at the effect of entrepreneurship

education — a creative way of ap-

proaching learning — on students at

the University of Central Asia.

P r og r am: C ulture, C ommunand E ducationT ool f or C hang e: E ntrepreneeducationHomet ow n: C incinnati, Ohio

Vanessa Bearystudybreak



Your favorite Persian word and why.

Danesh-ju : University student. The word literallymeans knowledge-seeker. As a student of thisworld, it is my responsibility to always and unre-lentingly be in pursuit of knowledge.

Things from home you had to take to Tajikistan:

• My yoga mat• The two new mathematics books that my husbandpurchased for me to indulge my side-obsession withthe ordered beauty that underlies our seeminglychaotic world: one on the golden ratio and one onimaginary numbers

Country that you visited that has made the biggest

impact on your life:

r Israel

r China

r Tajikistan

r Iraq

Iraq was challenging because . . .

I was forced to deal with things I had not dealtwith in my life. The baseI lived at was gettingshelled; sirens weregoing off all the time.In the beginning, I slept

in my body armor.

Most nerve-wracking moment of your life.

Climbing down a60-foot temple inthe middle of a

jungle, an hour anda half drive outside

of Siem Reap,Cambodia. I am nota fan of heights.

What inspires you?

Really incredible leadership.

You’ll know you’ve settled down when . . .

My husband and I are living in the same country,

and our books are on shelves, not in boxes.3

I S T O C K P H O T O . C

O M

Koh Ker temple



the appian way

I

t is no coincidence that

librarian John Collins refers

to the back area behind

the circulation desk in GutmanLibrary as the “book hospital.”

It is where library assistant

Simon Demosthene has been

fixing broken spines, ripped

pages, and faded text for the

past dozen years. “It’s like a

patient,” Demosthene says of

his conservation work repairing

books and other printed pieces

for the library. “Once you consult

with it, you open it and decide,what can I do for this book?”

Demosthene, a native of

Haiti, learned his craft

at the North Bennet Street

School in Boston — the only

full-time program in North

America. He says he not only

loves conserving books, but

also looking through them

as he works, often learning

new things. “It’s a great

honor for me,” he says.

It looks like a drafting table, but it’s

actually an antique paper cutter used to

cut heavy materials, like thick cardboard, tha

Demosthene uses to construct new covers fo

books that are hardback — or casebound, as

they’re known in the book world.

Rare and fragile old books and publicatio

can be tricky. Demosthene has to decide

whether attempting a repair would further

damage the piece. If so, he opts instead to

“let it rest,” as he says. Recently, he chose

not to fix a crumbling newspaper from 1945

with the giant headline: “Nazis ordered to

strike on land, sea, in air.” Instead, the pape

was permanently stored in a phase box — a

corrugated, acid-free container that he makeon site. The boxes are kept in the special

collections room.

homeroom Mending Services



Tricks of the trade: bolts of

ribbon, runny paste, Cellugel,

pliers, tweezers, linen, casing

press, acid-free tape, Japanese

paper, gutters, cutters, book

plates, brushes, binder’s thread.

If the title of a hardback book

is fading, Demosthene uses

heat, razor thin sheets of gold foil,

and his AAmstamp Monogramming

Machine to recreate it. In an effort

to be authentic, he tries hard

to match the original font using

individual metal die pieces.

The wall of books waiting

for repair doesn’t daunt

Demosthene. He loves what

he does and wants to make

sure that physical books

are preserved, especially

in light of the recent shift

toward e-readers. “Books are

treasures,” he says. “Think of

all that would be lost forever if

we just had electronic books.”

Watch a video

about the art of

saving books.



the appian way

We asked our Facebook fans to tell us what one question they would

ask an Ed School faculty member if given the opportunity. The ques-

tion we chose for this issue was from Samantha Warburton, Ed.M.’10, a

research associate at Public Policy Associates in Washington, D.C.

Samantha Warburton As federal, state, and district

policies increasingly move toward performance-based

teacher assessment tied to student achievement, what

role can and should schools of education play in preparing

and supporting teachers for these evaluation models?

Want to see your question answered in a future issue of the magazine?

Visit the Ed School on Facebook and join the conversation:

www.facebook.com/HarvardEducation.

lesson plan

Senior Lecturer Katherine Boles The good news

is that education policymakers are finally recognizing

that teacher assessment should be performance-

based. The bad news is that teacher performance-

based assessment too often rests on limited student

achievement data. What can schools of education do?

• We must attack this problem head on, arming our students with a

deep understanding of what is currently transpiring in the evaluation

policy world that directly affects their work.

• We must introduce our students to new models of teaching based

on meaningful collaboration that can dramatically reform the current

isolated culture of teaching in which teachers rarely (if ever) observe

each other teach, discuss each other’s teaching, or learn about

best practices from one another.• We must combine our students’ academic coursework with fieldwork

in well-functioning teacher teams that demonstrate how “real”

teams can collaborate, analyze, and improve instruction and student

learning using a wide range of professional development tools.

• We must train our students to be savvy consumers of data — under-

standing how to analyze standardized test scores and use the

scores to improve instruction. At the same time, we must encourage

our students to personally advocate for an emphasis on measuring

achievement beyond the easy “evaluation by test score.”

• We must teach our students to use new assessment tools that docu-

ment records of practice — tangible artifacts such as teachers’ jour-

nals, student work, videotapes, and well-crafted collaboratively-assessed lesson plans.

• We must convince our students that when they enter the world of

practice, they must observe their teaching colleagues’ expertise

using well-developed observation tools, and make use of supportive

mentors, coaches, and professional development providers.

brieflyKatherine BolesThree new

assistant

professors

joined the

staff this semester: David Deming, a former

assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon

University; Gigi Luk, a former postdoctoral

fellow at the Rotman Research Institute at

Baycrest in Toronto; and Felipe Barrera-

Osorio, a former economist at the World Bank.

In May, Professor Kurt Fischer,

director of the Ed School’s

Mind, Brain, and Education

Program, and Ed.D. student

Christina Hinton, Ed.M.’06

spoke to the Swedish

Parliament about connecting

brain science with education.

Meira Levinson was promoted to associate

professor of education. She joined the faculty

in 2007 as an assistant professor. Jon Star

was promoted to associate professor in human

development and education. Star also joined

the school as an assistant professor in 2007.

Professor Catherine Snow

was given the Distinguished

Contributions to Research

in Education Award from

the American Educational

Research Association

this past spring. Snow also received a 2010

National Awards for Education Reporting first

prize from the Education Writers Association

for her Science journal piece, “Academic

Language and the Challenge of Reading for

Learning about Science.”

Professor Howard

Gardner is headed to

Spain in October to

receive the 2011 Prince of

Asturias Award for Social

Sciences. The foundation,

headed by Spain’s Crown

Prince Felipe, gives eight

Asturias Awards annually.

http://www.facebook.com/HarvardEducation

http://www.facebook.com/HarvardEducation



Assistant Professor Jenny Thomso

Currently reading: The Fiddler in the Subway by

Gene Weingarten, an anthology of Weingarten’s

feature writing for The Washington Post.

The thing that drew you to it: My nonacademic

reading time is so precious that I have come to

rely on recommendations from two good friends

— one reads largely nonction and the other will

only read prize-winning ction. So this recom-

mendation came from my nonction friend.

First impressions: Very, very thought-provoking,

in the truest sense of the word. I’m not sure how Ed. magazine feels about product placement, but

I would denitely recommend this book!

Last great read: Talking Heads by Alan Bennett.

Being British, I need my regular dose of dark,

satirical humor.

Book you’ve read over and over: For me, it’s

largely poetry that gets the repeated-reading

treatment: Wislawa Szymborska, Elizabeth

Jennings, Simon Armitage, Rumi. I love the

density of poetry and how much can be saidwith just a handful of words.

Favorite spot to curl up with a good book: A bus,

train, or plane. The escapism experience has to

be complete for both mind and body.

How you find the time: It is tricky. I note that all

my recommendations consist of self-contained

chapters, or are poems. This is perhaps not a

coincidence.

Next up: Confession of a Buddhist Atheist by

Stephen Batchelor.

onmybookshelf

J I L L A N D E R S O N



the appian way

I

t is a deceivingly simple task — to define the concepts of

truth, beauty, and goodness — yet one which humans have

struggled to accomplish. In his latest book, Truth, Beauty,

and Goodness Reframed, Professor Howard Gardner explores

the meaning of these three timeless virtues and describes the

challenge of making sense of them.

Although uncertainties about the nature of these virtues have

been raised since classical times, Gardner reveals that in an

age defined by vast technological advancement and relativistic

attitudes toward human nature, current trends are largely a

product of postmodern thought and digital media. Thus, the

book — which grew out of a series of three lectures — draws

on a range of contemporary science and knowledge as Gardner

reframes both the teaching and practice of old virtues within the

constraints of a modern society.

Gardner encourages readers to think clearly about their own

conceptions of truth, beauty, and morality, as well as the current

status of these virtues in society. In three consecutive chapters

he sets forth his own definition of each and then, in light of this

reframing, offers suggestions on how to strengthen these core

ideas through formal education and nurture them going forward.

For example, Gardner presents beauty as a virtue that is person-

alized and fragmented, molded by individual experiences, and

subject to constant reevaluation. In the realm of formal school-

ing, he suggests that instead of focusing on preferences — ask-

ing students to declare that one piece of work is superior, more

valuable, or more beautiful than another — teachers should first

emphasize and cultivate a student’s ability to distinguish andarticulate differences that matter.

Tackling some of mankind’s most perplexing and enduring

questions, Gardner highlights the foundations of ethics and

virtue in the modern age. While he acknowledges that the

concepts of truth, beauty, and goodness are changing faster

than ever, he emphasizes that they are — and will remain — the

cornerstones of our society. In a thoughtful and enthusiastic

view of human possibilities, Gardner encourages readers to

embrace the dynamism of these virtues rather than giving up on

them altogether.

Truth, Beauty, and

Goodness Reframed By Howard Gardner

E

xperience: While it may be one of the most relentless

and unforgiving teachers, it provides what may be the

most effective and enduring lessons. In an effort to

exemplify this, I Used to Think … And Now I Think …, a volume

of reflective essays compiled by Professor Richard Elmore,

C.A.S.’72, Ed.D.’76, presents a variety of testaments from

several top educators as they look back upon their profes-

sional experiences.

The book shares its name with an exercise Elmore uses to

conclude courses and teacher professional development ses-

sions, in which participants are asked to reflect on what they

learned and how their thinking changed over a certain period

of time. The notion of utilizing the exercise as the foundation

for an entire book came a little more than a year ago when

Elmore wrote a short piece for the Harvard Education Letter

using the guidance of this very protocol. The essay, which is

now featured as a chapter in the book, not only reveals how

his own thinking changed over the course of his 40-year

career as a teacher and researcher, but ultimately encouraged

Elmore to seek similar reflections from others.

The resulting volume consists of 20 chapters that represent

the individual reflections and musings of 20 different educa-

tional professionals. By compiling these varying perspectives

into a single book, Elmore hopes to both “make learning vis-

ible” and provide a testimonial to the broader value and power

of reflection. “My fellow contributors and I hope to model, in a

small way, what professional discourse might look like if pro-

fessionals were expected to learn over the course of a career,”Elmore writes. “It strikes me as ironic that in a field nominally

devoted to the development of capacities to learn, there is

so little visible evidence of what those who do the work have

actually learned in their careers.”

Through this compilation, Elmore presents current educa-

tors with the opportunity to change the way they think about

improving school reform without making the same mistakes

as their predecessors and without spending years of their

careers learning the crucial lessons highlighted by the fea-

tured contributors.

I Used to Think …

And Now I Think …

By Richard Elmore



A Cord of Three Strands: A New Approach to ParentEngagement in Schools

Soo Hong, Ed.D.’09; 2011

Humanizing Education: Critical Alternatives to ReformKristy Cooper, Ed.M.’07, Ed.D.’11, and Ed.D. CandidatesGretchen Brion-Meisels; Sherry Deckman, Ed.M.’07; ChristinDobbs, Ed.M.’06; Chantal Francois, Ed.M.’08; ThomasNikundiwe, Ed.M.’07; and Carla Shalaby, Ed.M.’09; 2010

Key Elements of Observing Practice: A Data Wise DVD andFacilitator’s GuideLecturer Kathryn Parker Boudett; Lecturer Elizabeth City,Ed.M.’04, Ed.D.’07; and Ed.D. Candidate Marcia Russell,Ed.M.’09; 2010

Strategic Priorities for School Improvement

Caroline Chauncey, editor in chief, HEPG; 2010

The Differentiated Instruction Book of ListsJenifer Fox, Ed.M.’95, and Whitney Hoffman; 2011

Educating for Global Competence: Preparing Our Youthto Engage

Veronica Boix Mansilla, Ed.M.’92, Ed.D.’01, and AnthonyJackson; 2011

Introduction to Renewable Energy Vaughn Nelson, Ed.M.’62; 2011

The Promised Cookie — No Longer Angry StudentsDavid Sortino, Ed.M.’81; 2011

The Same Thing Over and Over: How School Reformers GetStuck in Yesterday’s IdeasFrederick Hess, Ed.M.’90; 2010

Teaching Children to Write: Constructing Meaning andMastering MechanicsDaniel Meier, Ed.M.’84; 2011

HARVARD EDUCATION PRESS

OTHER BOOKS

Sacred Trust: A Children’s

Education Bill of Rights

By Peter Cookson Jr.

A

lthough the United States is considered one of the richest

countries in the world, it ranks first in the percentage of children

living in poverty. Of the 20 percent of American children that live

in poverty, more than 1 million go hungry every day and more than 1.3

million children are homeless on any given night. According to Peter Cook-

son Jr., C.A.S.’91, it is such poverty and inequality that are the sources

of unequal education. In his latest book, Sacred Trust, he proposes an

education bill of rights for American children that, he argues, will address

these issues and ensure greater integrity and improved opportunity for all.

While Cookson occasionally sprinkles in many of his own proposals

and propositions, the book is organized with the reader in mind. It is

overflowing with ideas, inspiration, and stimulating questions intended

to engage the reader and act as a sounding board for education policies.

By including a wide range of illustrative examples, quotes, stories, and

statistics, Cookson helps readers grasp the living conditions of children

today, allowing them to become informed and involved in the national

dialogue surrounding the future of public education.

Cookson concludes each chapter with relevant study questions, pos-

sible action steps, and suggested further reading in an effort to ignite

conversation and invite readers of all capacities — parents, early child-

hood educators, legislators, librarians, foundations officers, and commu-

nity members — to participate, whether they agree or disagree.

In the book, Cookson also outlines 10 fundamental rights to which he

thinks all students are entitled. For example, Cookson asserts that every

American youth has the right to a distinguished and committed teacher;

a relevant and engaged curriculum; and fair, honorable evaluations.

While Cookson acknowledges that these suggestions are “basic,” he

stresses that they are intended to act as a foundation for future progres-sion, not as established laws or administrative solutions.

“The mission of this book is to awaken our generous spirit of fairness

and to provide teachers, support staff, guidance counselors, and ad-

ministrators at every level with ideas to spark conversation and to offer

some suggested action steps,” Cookson writes. “When enacted, this

Children’s Education Bill of Rights will be the legislative and administra-

tive framework for a socially healthier and more economically productive

United States.”

—Briefs written by Rachael Apfel



Taken Working okra and cotton felds three days a week in

his tiny town o McKinley, Ala., David Wilson didn’t

attend school ull time until he was in the seventh

grade. But he grew up with an urgent desire to learn.

Now president o Morgan State University in Baltimore,

Wilson travels home to pay tribute to the places and

the people who helped make him who he is.

The Road BY JANET SUDNIK

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROBERT SUTTON





t is a hot spring

day in Marengo

County, one of the

most rural and poor

Black Belt counties in

Alabama. David Wilson,

Ed.M.’84, Ed.D.’87,

pulls over and steps out, his

14-year-old son, Nyere, in tow. The

esteemed academic, currently serving

as president of Morgan State University in Baltimore, is

ooded with memories of hot summer days walking the

long miles between the school and his home (often barefoot

to save his shoes), of early classroom lessons taught by a

strict but caring teacher, of his beloved family members

who reside here in great number. David Wilson is home.

Earlier that morning, Wilson was a guest of honor at the

University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, a few hours north. He

was the keynote speaker at a gathering of the university’s

Center for Community-Based Partnerships, a cause that is

close to his heart.

“I don’t think we’ve scratched the surface of what this

speaker will do before he is done,” said Samory Pruitt, vice

president of community affairs, as he introduced Wilson.

For the next 45 minutes, Wilson captivated the audience

with his passion for education and collaboration between

institutions of higher learning and their environments. He

told stories of his own humble upbringing, his determina-tion to receive the best education possible, and his ght to

give students with similar struggles access to the same. As

he recounted a memory of his father handing him a $5 bill

on the morning he departed for Tuskegee University — all

he had saved for several years — the audience at the Hotel

Capstone ballroom was more than a little choked up.

Wilson’s impressive academic resume boasts both a bach-

elor’s and master’s degree from Tuskegee and master’s and

doctoral degrees from the Ed School. His career path has led

him to several distinguished positions, including as chancellor

of the University of Wisconsin Colleges and the University

of Wisconsin-Extension, associate provost and vice presi-

dent at Auburn University, and associate provost at Rutgers

University. He has been at his current post as president of

Morgan State University since 2010 and was appointed by

President Barack Obama to an 11-member board of advisors

on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

His speech this day was to encourage relationships be-

tween colleges and the cities and towns they inhabit, and for

the students who benet from their education to nd ways

to give back and offer others like them the same educational

opportunities. But his visit also offers him the chance to pay

a visit to his beginnings, to connect with his spirit.

Home for Wilson is a few hours down a two-lane road,

to the small community of McKinley, Ala. Growing up, th

town was home to scarcely more than 30 residents. Along

the way, he makes several stops that are cornerstones in

his upbringing. His elementary school, a modest well-kept

brick building where he spent rst and second grades, is

rst. Immediately noticeable on the front sign is a largegap between the words: “Uniontown” and “Elementary

School.” Chiseled off is the word “Negro,” an omission tha

Wilson says isn’t all bad, as long as it makes children ques-

tion why, and if they learn from it.

“Five people in my family didn’t even nish elementary

school because it was just so hard, it was just so difcult to

have that kind of access to school,” he says, as he glances up

at the building, where his youngest sister, Minnie Wilson

Early, currently teaches.

“I have mixed feelings [being here] because on the one

hand, I’m very proud of what the school is trying to do

to make education possible for so many students in this

community who come from similar backgrounds as I camefrom,” he says. “I’m very proud of the fact that my sister is

so committed to quality of education. She has dedicated he

life to being a phenomenal teacher.

“I do, however, come away from a physical standpoint,

from a capital standpoint, that the buildings are not what you

want to see in a high-performing school. I have to come back

here constantly to make sure that I’m grounded and that I un

derstand that this is where the huge jump started, from here

all the way to Harvard initially, and other points from there.”

The journey continues on, and after a while he pulls the

rental car over to a wide, well-kept lawn upon which a smal

church building rests, anked by a few rows of headstones to

one side. Hebron Baptist Church is what much of his family

still considers their home church, and its cemetery where

many of their descendants are buried.

Wilson makes a path toward one of the most elegant

headstones, his mother’s.

“She was really the educator in the family,” he says. “She

had an eighth-grade education. At the time, that was pretty de

cent for blacks. My mom could read and she could write. My

dad was illiterate; he couldn’t read the headstone right now.”

I



His parents, Minnie and Henry Wilson, receive much of

the credit for instilling in Wilson an urgent desire for learning.

“My dad was the most intelligent man I have ever

known and my mom was the most loving, caring, and

nurturing woman I have ever known,” he says. His father’s

headstone is engraved with a birth year of 1915, though it’s

a guess, as he never knew his true birthday. As he pushes away pine straw and dead leaves from

their plots, he recalls how they were the glue that held their

large family of seven sons and three daughters together.

“They raised the 10 of us in a way that created this incred-

ible bond,” he says. They were loving, but strict, forbid-

ding curse words, teaching respect for the elderly and one

another, and regularly attending church services at Hebron,

which often were hours long.

He happily remembers all-night barbecues, celebrations,

religious skits performed, and hymns poorly sung by him and

his siblings. It was this church community, he says, that helped

solidify the family’s foundation, offering structure, support, and

guidance. Wilson and many of his far-ung relatives are still onthe books as members and regularly keep up with donations to

ensure that the building and grounds are kept.

Many of Wilson’s kin are buried here, including his

grandfather, Deacon Henry Spencer. Wilson pauses at

his grave, remembering when the crate transporting his

headstone arrived when Wilson was just a young child. It

was a nice, well-made box, and the family kept it for Wilson

to use as a stool.

Though Wilson was too young to have memories of

his grandfather, Spencer’s legacy was proudly narrated to

the family, who learned that the patriarch grew up in the

1800s amid unfathomable adversity. In the face of poverty

and strained race relations, he maintained an unshakable

entrepreneurial spirit and refused to remain in a subservi-

ent sharecropping situation. To that end, he grew his own

produce to feed his family and sell at market. He diversied

into other industries, such as coal mining, to become a self-

made man. He also pushed the importance of family and

togetherness, concepts Wilson believes he would be proud

to see carried on.

In 1991, the family began a reunion tradition, held

every other year in a different location. Anywhere from 150

to 200 family members regularly attend. “It’s our way of

saying to my son and to our grandnieces and -nephews tha

you do have a legacy and you need to know that, you need

to be proud of that. No matter what the challenges, don’t le

those things break your spirit.”

His grandfather, he says, “would be proud of the fact that

our family has maintained a deep sense of what it means to

love each other and what it means to support each other, and

that we really understand what it means to be a family.”

As he continues walking, a single crow caws in the

background as the sun begins to set through the trees. The

cemetery is silent, peaceful and serene.

“I have to come here to get centered as well,” Wilson

says, his voice catching. “I come here when I feel that some

thing is not going right to be recentered and realize what a

good life lived is al l about.

“I think I’ve been able to achieve the things that I have

achieved because I have never, ever forgotten the humblebeginnings, and I will never, ever forget that. Some people

kind of run away from the fact that they didn’t grow up

with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouths, but for me

if I ran away from that, I think I would be like a feather

oating in the air with no sense of purpose, no sense of

groundedness, with a whole lot of emptiness.”

The road continues on, and after a few turns, the now-

vacant site of the one-room schoolhouse with the potbel-

lied stove appears, the walls inside which Wilson received

his rst formal education now just a memory. It was not

required that black children go to school at the time, so the Wilson children went in shifts, working the okra and cotton

elds three days and attending school two, and reversing it

the next week. “I was literally in the seventh grade before I

attended school ve consecutive days,” he says, as he shake

his head and turns around, marveling that an open eld is

all that remains of such an important place.

Wilson’s impressive academic credentials are all the

more extraordinary considering the seemingly insurmount

able barriers he overcame. A good education was not easy

to achieve growing up in a sharecropping family, facing

extreme poverty, racial inequality in the rural South, and

living in a home with 12 mouths to feed.

Twenty to 30 children representing six grades would

pack into the building, with benches borrowed from the

church and work done in their laps. Here, children were

taught the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, with

different blocks of time set aside for each grade. Wilson can

remember struggling to keep up because of the many missed

lessons when he was working the elds to help his family.

At home, the imsy, holey walls were patched with a

homemade plaster of boiled water and our spread on

pages of back issues of Look and Life magazines, brought

to the house by the landowners, and which Wilson would

David and Nyere visit the cemetery. Deacon Henry’s headstone.



read. “That shanty was [our] elementary school on those

days that I wasn’t there [at school],” Wilson says. “It was

the library that was nonexistent at McKinley.”

For the most part, he and others were not aware they

were receiving anything less than white students were in

other areas; they simply were not exposed to it. It wasn’t

until high school that he had to pass a white school to get to

his own, and saw how it was furnished. “It was so shocking

to go past this campus that was well-manicured — new

buildings, new gymnasium,” he says. “The message that I

got from that was that someone didn’t think I was equal to

the investment. That was very disturbing.”

A similar awakening took place when his high school

shop teacher drove a group of students to Tuskegee

University for an agricultural conference. On the way,

the teacher purposely drove them through afuent areas,

exposing them to a new world of possibility. “My chin wason my chest,” he says. “I could not believe that black people

in these United States lived that way. I had never seen that

kind of middle class existence, all professors and lawyers

and doctors, wonderful homes and well-manicured lawns.

It just made me feel so proud.

“So when I came back … , I came back ying. I knew I

wanted to go to Tuskegee because I wanted to experience the

whole sense of black intellectual superiority and black success

at a level that was almost unmatched in this country.”

As the hot breeze begins to blow and the sun begins to

melt away, Wilson talks about how he left the area with a

few scars. “I was angry because I was not special — that

there were so many other people in this community whocould have been the surgeons, who could have been the

senators, who could have been the leading educators,

who could have been the leading authors — but they

were never, ever given that chance.

“And that was really what angered me, that through

this insidious system we had in place, we have lost so many

minds. And that’s why I’m hell bent on working with young

people when I come here now, so we don’t continue to loseour best talent.”

Arriving at the family homestead, a party is brewing. Gravel driveways leading to a row of houses each owned by

a Wilson family member are lling up with cars. Children

of all ages spill out of trucks and SUVs, arms laden with

preparations for the night’s catsh fry. Nearly 50 brothers,

sisters, nephews, nieces, and spouses are suddenly every-

where, lling what they jokingly call the family compound

with bear hugs, laughter, and chatter. Wilson shares a hug

with all of them, showing off how much Nyere has grown.

Every niece and nephew he greets is questioned abouttheir schooling — how are their grades, will they attend

college, what are their future plans. They expect it from

Uncle David, and the answers are impressive, from degrees

already or nearly earned at college to middle-schoolers

declaring they will attend Harvard, just like him.

His own son also answers without hesitation when asked

that he, too, will attend the Cambridge institution. “I often

say to my son, ‘You have your pick of the l itter. You can go

to school any place you want to in the entire world. That

choice is clearly up to you — but you have a choice.’”

It is the choice, he says, that is most signicant. A family

once struggling to survive is now full of college scholars,

professionals, and students, each with dreams they knowthey will achieve. Niece Kiara Nicole Wilson is preparing

to receive a degree from the University of Alabama.

Nephew Kalen Early is a ninth-grader in the gifted

program at Robert C. Hatch High School. Nephew

J o h n h e n

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1 9 3 8 – 1 9 9

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F r a n c e s W i l s o n 1 9 4 8

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W ilson’s Family Tree



E

Jamaal Hunter, who is the mayor of nearby Uniontown,

says, “Without education, I could not be in the position I’m

in today. Education can serve as the great equalizer.” He

remembers watching Wilson excel academically and drew

upon him as an example. “I looked up to him; if Uncle

David can do it, I can do it.” Wilson picks up a tiny family member, infant Jeremiah,

perhaps the newest addition in attendance, and says, “This

is the future, here.”

Inside, the family is busy laying out a feast of fresh fruit,

coleslaw, baked beans, corn on the cob, and potato salad.

Tray after tray of golden fried catsh is carried in, and the

family joins in prayer before digging in. The main house

is a urry of activity, as plates are lled and relled, older

children chase smaller ones as they happily shriek and

thread through the tables.

Lapolean Peterson, the principal of Marengo County

Training School for 34 years, where Wilson attended high

school, and a friend of the family, shows up to the party. Heand Wilson reminisce about former teachers and students

as if it were yesterday. Wilson was a recent commencement

speaker at the school, and Peterson says he is referenced

often as an example to students today. “He would always

come back, and we’ve always been just like brothers,”

Peterson says. “[Students see that] they can do the same

thing — he was one guy that was totally determined.” The

school has other success stories, too, in the many profes-

sionals, teachers, doctors, lawyers, and others who passed

through. “It’s a good feeling to know you touched a life in

some positive way. It’s my biggest reward.”

Wilson’s youngest sister, Minnie Wilson Early, seconds

the emphasis on education. As a teacher at Uniontown

Elementary, she often steps beyond her role as teacher,

getting to know the parents of her pupils and ensuring that

they understand learning is a partnership. “We all buy into

their education,” she says. “I follow up on my students.” It

warms her heart when they come back years later and

thank her, and a good many do. But most impor-

tant, she says, is that after the students move out of

their environment, better themselves, and become

whatever it is they choose to be, that they bring

back what they have learned for the next generation.

This is precisely how Wilson has dedicated his career —

to stressing the importance of education, making sure stu-

dents have access and opportunity and following through t

their success. He says he got into the system to ght the red

tape and clear the way for students and educators.

“I certainly see as a part of my success removing thatwhich is unnecessary, that will stand in the way of progress

in the way of a good-quality education, and that will stand

in the way of innovation and creativity,” he says. “And

that’s personal.”

He vividly remembers the day Martin Luther King Jr.

was assassinated, and the realization of what he stood for.

It was 1968. He was 14 and in the eighth grade. There

was sudden confusion and sadness. His family went across

the street to his uncle’s place, where they watched King’s

funeral on television. “I think that was a huge awakening

for me,” he says. “A social awakening.

“It really, really brought into focus why he was out there

marching and advocating and ghting for equality. Becaus

I looked around and I realized all of a sudden, I’m not

equal, in terms of the way we are living, in terms of the way

we are being schooled.”

He continues to further his mission, putting out the call

to arms one college at a time. “I see my work as purposeful

It’s about transforming lives, it’s about putting students in

a position where they realize potential that sometimes they

don’t think they have, and coming back here is a good con-

nection to try to make that happen.

“I can’t forget about these communities, because these

communities are so much a part of me,” he says. “How can

you forget that? It’s so special.”

— Janet Sudnik is the editor of Tuscaloosa Magazine in

Tuscaloosa, Ala., a few hours north of David Wilson’s hometown.

The name says it all: The Five Dollar Scholarship

Fund. David Wilson started the fund to support

students at Morgan who have potential but few

resources. It is dedicated to his parents. For more

information, go to www.givetomorgan.net/fivedolla

Standing with his nephew, Richard Van Wilson, David holds baby Jeremiah. Later, he talks to his

sister-in-law, Ruby Wilson. His oldest brother, John Henry, and various cousins are in the background.

http://www.givetomorgan.net/fivedollar

http://www.givetomorgan.net/fivedollar





n July 31, 2006, Stephen Colbert did a seg-

ment on his show, The Colbert Report , mocking

the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. The site

was ve years old at the time and starting to

become hugely popular. But it was also greatlydebated. Bloggers referred to it as “wicked-pe-

dia” and “irresponsible scholarship.” Headlines

called for a “stand against Wikipedia” and pro-

claimed, “Wikipedia: more dangerous than crack.”

A year after the Colbert episode, Senator Ted Stevens

(R-AL) even introduced legislation that would have

banned Wikipedia from public schools. By far, the

biggest criticism — and the biggest jokes — revolved

around trustworthiness. What makes the site unique

is also what makes it potentially problematic: Anyone

can anonymously create entries about anything and,with some exceptions, can also anonymously edit en-

tries created by other “wikipedians,” as they’re called.

There is no hierarchy of expertise. As a 2006 New

Yorker article pointed out, it is “a system that does not

favor the Ph.D. over the well-read 15-year-old.”

Colbert, with his laptop in front of him, jumped

on this.

“Who is Britannica to tell me George Washington

had slaves?” he said, referring to another encyclope-

dia, the oldest in the English language still in print

and one that is often pitted against Wikipedia. After

logging on to the Wikipedia site, Colbert continued,

“If I want to say he didn’t, that’s my right. And now

thanks to Wikipedia,” (he clicks the keyboard) “it’salso a fact.”

At the time, this kind of random contribution —

by a regular Joe who was having fun, or at least who

wasn’t backing up his claim with scholarly research

— was exactly what educators were worried about

when it came to students using the free site for

research. Teachers, librarians, and professors starte

discouraging Wikipedia. Others outright banned

students from using the site as a resource for projec

and papers.

But now, ve years after Colbert’s segment, thereare signs that attitudes about Wikipedia may be

slightly shifting. There are fewer heated debates

online about the site’s evils, and headlines are more

likely to focus on Wiki leaks than Wiki tweaks. As on

blogger noted last January, marking the site’s 10th

anniversary, “A reporter told me the other day that

mocking Wikipedia is so 2007.”

Even educators, it seems, are starting to throw ou

olive branches.

A look at why some educators are starting to accept the

online encyclopedia that anyone can write and edit.

BY LORY HOUGH ILLUSTRATION BY MATT COONEY



ibrarian and media specialist Linda O’Connor is one

of them. In the fall of 2007, news spread fast and far

about her “Just Say No to Wikipedia” posters, which she

had hung above every computer in the library at

Great Meadows Middle School in New Jersey.The local newspaper ran a story about her actions, as did The

Inquirer in London and The New York Times. She appeared on

FOX & Friends morning show. Library listservs lit up.

“Kids just take it for gospel, they really do,” she said in

interviews about Wikipedia. “That’s my concern about it.”

A year later, though, new posters carried a slightly softer

message: “Wikipedia-Free Media Center.”

“It too led to many good discussions and I used it as a

teaching tool throughout the year,” O’Connor says, including

putting up a bulletin board with the sign, “Using Wikipedia

as a research tool.” On the board, she posted examples of

incorrect Wikipedia entries for students to read, and presum-

ably learn from, such as a piece about the death of Senator

Ted Kennedy (D-MA) during President Obama’s inaugu-

ration. (Kennedy actually collapsed at the inauguration

luncheon and was released from the hospital the next day.)

More recently, O’Connor went one step further: She took

down the anti-Wikipedia posters.

“Omitting my Wikipedia posters from the media center

bulletin board this year was an easy decision,” she says.

“Students are using answers from Wikipedia on other web-

sites without realizing it. I decided to concentrate on website

evaluation in general,” such as teaching eighth-graders how

to validate sources.

The same transition happened to Beth Holland, Ed.M.’02. When she started working at a small independent school in

Newport, R.I., in 2006, as director of technology, she also

told her students not to use Wikipedia.

“During my rst year, I really struggled with teaching on-

line research,” she says. In particular, she felt like Wikipedia

was tricky for her elementary-aged students to navigate, es-

pecially when it came to recognizing the difference between

opinion and fact-checked research. This became apparent

when the fth-graders had to do a project on a famous artist.

“One student used Wikipedia when looking up Andy

Warhol,” she says. At the time, the site had fewer safeguards

than it does now, such as not allowing unregistered users frommaking edits. “Essentially, this 11-year-old had information

about Warhol as a sex maniac and off-color lm producer.”

While that information may not have been totally cti-

tious, Holland says, it also wasn’t scholarly research, and

it wasn’t appropriate for someone that age. So she started

steering students away from Wikipedia.

And then she began using other research sites like

Answer.com, which gathers information from various

sources, including Wikipedia, and allows users to com-

pare sources. Over time, she realized that “sometimes,

[Wikipedia] is the best, and fastest, way to get information

in a manageable format.”

These days, what has Holland, now with EdTech Teacher

more concerned is another site: Google.

“I think that Google is more detrimental to the researchprocess than Wikipedia,” she says. “At least Wikipedia is an

actual source, with documentation and a means to cite in-

formation. On the other hand, students feel that Google is a

source. I can’t count the number of times that I have asked a

student where they found their information and the response

is ‘Google.’”

Google, they believe, is the only place to get information.

“Kids expect research to be a ll-in-the-blank answer

sheet rather than a process,” she says, “and frequently

want to switch topics because they claim that they ‘can’t

nd anything.’”

or many educators, what this has prompted in

recent years is less of a focus on just saying no to sites

like Wikipedia, and instead saying: Can we use this

as a teachable moment? Starting in 2010, for example,

dozens of college professors (including at Harvard) as-

signed students to write Wikipedia entries for credit

about public policy issues as part of a project launched by

Wikimedia. This past academic year, the students had

contributed almost 5,800 pages worth of fact-checked

information. Other educators, like O’Connor and Holland,

are training students how to do research effectively in the

digital age so that they make better decisions. As one bloggewrote about Wikipedia, “Educators shouldn’t allow students

to simply use the site at will, without ltering. Educators can

use the site to teach about online credibility, fact checking,

primary and secondary sources, crowd sourcing … rather

than simply banning it.”

This is exactly what is now happening in Burlington,

Mass. Librarians in the elementary schools begin the process

teaching basic research skills and Internet safety. By middle

school, teachers show students how to check sources. And

then in the ninth grade, says Amy Mellencamp, Ed.M.’81,

principal of the high school, there is a required, semester-

long course that looks more deeply at Internet safety, researcstrategies, and appropriate resources.

Unfortunately, says Megan Birdsong, Ed.M.’94, a teacher

librarian for the Santa Clara United School District, while

this kind of training in critical thinking is more needed than

ever for students, it’s not always a priority everywhere.

“The credentialed librarians in my school district have …

been pink-slipped,” she says. “Less than 25 percent of

California schools have credentialed librarians … and yet the

skills that we teach seem more important than ever as discus-

sions of new types and sources of information evolve.”



Looking at the numbers, Wikipedia has more than

evolved. Today, it consistently ranks in the top 10 visited sites

on the Internet. As of August, there were more than 19 mil-

lion available articles written in 280 languages. In interviews

and during speeches, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Walesstresses that the site tries to be accurate, but also should only

be used as a stepping stone when doing research, especially

by students.

“For God’s sake, you’re in college,” he said, speaking to

students at the University of Pennsylvania in 2006. “Don’t

cite the encyclopedia.” A year later, answering a question

from a Time magazine reader who complained about a pro-

fessor who badmouthed Wikipedia as a legitimate research

source, Wales no doubt surprised the reader by answering, “I

would agree with your teachers that that isn’t the right way

to use Wikipedia. The site is a wonderful starting point for

research. But it’s only a starting point because there’s always

a chance that there’s something wrong, and you should check

your sources if you are writing a paper.”

Clint Calzini, Ed.M.’04, a former teacher and principal,

and current doctoral student at the College of William &

Mary, says he uses Wikipedia occasionally in his doctoral

research “to get a snapshot of something.” He advises his

undergraduate students to do the same.

“I have always told students that Wikipedia is ne to start

with to get an understanding of something, but due to its

open source, it should not be quoted directly and that they

need to verify information from a qualied source.”

He acknowledges that the site has gotten better over the

years, especially with footnotes.“A recent example is [the entry on] daylight savings time,”

he says. “It has a stunning level of detail and 121 footnotes!”

There’s evidence that students, at least at the post-second-

ary level, may actually get this. A 2010 report, How College

Students Evaluate and Use Information in the Digital Age, found that

while nearly 75 percent of students reported using Wikipedia

for school research, almost all of them said they turn rst

to course readings and consulted more with instructors and

scholarly research than with Wikipedia.

Of course, not all educators have entirely jumped on the

Wikipedia bandwagon. Matt Shapiro, Ed.M.’10, a secondary

science teacher who wrote two op-eds in 2010 in support of students using Wikipedia — one for Education Week , one for

Ed. — says he still sees some resistance from other teachers.

Often, the level of acceptance depends on the subject matter.

Anthony Parker, Ed.M.’93, principal of Weston High School,

just outside of Boston, says his school doesn’t have a uniform

policy regarding Wikipedia, but some teachers feel more

comfortable with the site’s information than others.

“One math teacher thinks it is very good in computer

science classes,” he says. “As you might imagine, English and

history teachers tend not to use it as much. In history, for

example, it might be a decent starting place for a research

project — with the caveat that you must check the Wikipedia

source — but it is not counted as a source when the research

project is turned in. As a former history teacher I am in the

‘Wikipedia is not a great source and should be treated withgreat skepticism’ camp.”

Chris Kyle, a history professor at Syracuse University

and an early critic of the site who has banned students from

citing Wikipedia in papers since 2003, agrees.

“History is about being able to evaluate a number of

sources, so it’s important to know who wrote the piece: wha

viewpoint they’ve come from, what their rel igion is, etc.,” h

says. “I still feel like Wikipedia is an anonymous departmen

store with no name, which is one-stop shopping. History, as

a discipline, is about being able to shop around to a variety

of specialists.”

Luckily, Kyle says, students at the college level tend to use

the site less as they move up in grade and get more sophisti-

cated in their critical thinking. This may be why the librar-

ians at the Ed School, who work primarily with master’s and

doctoral students, rarely use Wikipedia.

“All of us agree that Wikipedia never even comes up

when we are discussing research strategies,” says Gutman

librarian Kathleen Donovan. “Students don’t ask us

about it, and we do not include it in our research strategy

recommendations.”

s the 10-year anniversary of Wikipedia comes to

an end, where do educators go from here whenit comes to their students and the site? A recent

uproar on Wikipedia may provide one answer:

This past summer, former vice presidential

nominee Sarah Palin offered an alternative theory about

Paul Revere’s famous midnight ride. Many historians publicly

disagreed with her, and immediately, suspected Palin support

ers rushed to the Paul Revere Wikipedia page and changed

information to better t with Palin’s version of history.

And here’s where the answer, and lesson, come in: The

truth, in a sense, won out. Not only did Wikipedia editors in-

stantly swoop in to delete misinformation, but the entry also

ended up with more information and footnotes than beforePalin’s comments. It also got people talking, thinking, and,

perhaps best of all, laughing. As Stephen Colbert said of the

controversy, just before he donned a Paul Revere–type hat

on his show while ringing a bell, ring a musket, and riding

a coin-operated kiddie ride, “That doesn’t mean Palin wasn’t

raising awareness of history. Without her, no one would have

checked into what really happened. And more importantly, i

did happen.”

Note: Wikipedia was used in the writing of this article. Ed.



W

hen the U.S. Department of Educationopened the competition in 2010 for the firstround of Promise Neighborhood Grants, it

didn’t take long for Irasema Salcido, Ed.M.’89, to decideto apply. She knew it might be a long shot, but the workthat was being done at the Cesar Chavez Public CharterSchools for Public Policy in Washington, D.C., whereshe serves as CEO, was already in line with the goalsof the initiative: creating educational opportunities forchildren in distressed communities by offering “cradle-to-college” services.

The long shot paid off when Chavez Parkside,the school’s campus in the Parkside-Kenilworthneighborhood of D.C., was announced as a recipient.

“I actually cried when we found out. I was so

overwhelmed with joy and a sense of accomplishment,”Salcido says. “It was an acknowledgement of the needsin this community and a beginning to sustainablesolutions to meet those needs.”

As CEO, Salcido oversees the three ChavezSchools — the original campus at Capitol

Hill, Chavez Prep, and Parkside — butit was only when Parkside’s principal

stepped down and she becameacting principal that she trulybegan to understand the depth of the school’s day-to-day issues.

“I got a firsthand look at thechallenges that the students,families, teachers, and staff faced,” she says, “and I

started to look for solutions.”

oneonone Irasema Salcido



alumni news and notes

What are some of

the Chavez Schools’challenges?

Our major chal-lenges are the same

as those that face

many schools that

serve similar popu-

lations across the country: Helping our

students get to grade-level prociency

and to pass standardized tests. Parent

involvement and engagement has been

a challenge, as well as recruiting and re-

taining effective staff that can bring our

students and schools to where they need

to be. We have been successful in many

ways and have had strong results acrossour three campuses, but our staff still

struggles to overcome the challenges

that our students face academically as

well as socially.

Why did you choose Parkside-Kenilworthfor a Chavez School?

I saw that there was limited opportunity

for the children in Wards 7 and 8, and

I wanted to change that. The reaction

of the parents and residents was so

positive. Parents couldn’t believe that

someone wanted to start a school in

their community with a focus on getting

their children to college. They were

so excited to have Chavez come to the

Parkside-Kenilworth community, and

we were excited to be a part of the

community.

Were you working on a plan for Parksideprior to the Promise grants?

Yes. Two and a half years ago, a small

group of people and I convened and

spoke about what was happening atChavez Parkside. The low test scores

and the number of students who were

not prepared for high school urged us

to research and connect with the two

local elementary schools. We discovered

that they were facing similar challenges

as the students as young as three and

four years old were coming to school

without the basic knowledge needed to

begin school. At that point, we created

the foundation of an organization that

would target these problems.

We concluded that academic solu-

tions were only one part of the successof each child. Factors such as early

childhood development and commu-

nity safety were also important factors

to guarantee that each child would

reach [his/her] full potential. The

group — now called the DC Promise

Neighborhood Initiative (DCPNI) —

evolved over the months prior to the

announcement of the federal Promise

Neighborhood Grant.

Your model is the

Harlem Children’sZone (HCZ). Why?

We felt that its

holistic approach

to improving the

education and

lives of children in

Harlem was something that could work

for the children in Parkside-Kenilworth.

Parkside-Kenilworth is an isolated com-

munity with some of the highest rates

of poverty, academic failure, crime,

and HIV/AIDS [in Washington, D.C.].

There is a high concentration of chil-dren, and 38 percent of [its] children

live below the poverty line. The HCZ

model provided a template for us to

target the more unique challenges.

How will DCPNI meet its goals? We will collaborate with community

members, charter and traditional public

schools, experts, service providers,

government ofcials, and funders to

ensure a continuum of services and

wrap-around supports will be madeavailable to the children and families of

the Parkside-Kenilworth community.

Our academic goals include chil-

dren entering kindergarten ready to

learn and students graduating from

high school and going on to obtain a

postsecondary degree or certication.

Students being healthy and feeling safe

at school are among our family and

community goals.

These goals will not be achieved

overnight. However, we have made a

commitment to this community for the

long term, and we will do whatever ittakes to achieve our goals.

How involved is the community now?

We cannot do this work without strong

support and trust from the community.

DCPNI hosts monthly community din-

ners … to inform residents about [our]

goals, hear directly from residents what

they feel are the most pressing needs in

the community, and encourage resi-

dents to become actively involved with

this initiative. To ensure the voice of th

community informs everything we do,one-third of DCPNI’s advisory board

members are residents. Additionally,

our 10 results-driven work groups . . .

which are tasked with recommending

solutions for achieving [each of our 10]

goals, have at least one resident cochair

as well as varying numbers of resident

members. We are fortunate to have

such strong support and involvement

from the community.

You were honored

by Oprah’s AngelNetwork in 2001.Being on the show

gave me added

motivation to con-

tinue my life’s work.

Receiving recogni-

tion and praise from

someone who is so

well-respected gave me an

even greater sense of pride and

determination to continue my mission.

It helped to strengthen the commitmenof our school’s teachers and staff and

lifted the aspirations and determina-

tion of our students. While I’ve always

believed in the importance of my life’s

work, to [be recognized by] someone

who has also dedicated herself to im-

proving the lives of others is humbling.

— Marin Jorgensen






commencement2 0 1 1

Complete with flash mobs (above), Sesame

Street picture books, pomp and circum-

stance, and a funny lady named Amy

Poehler, 673 students from 23 countries and 41

states graduated on May 26. (They joined the 27who graduated in November and March.) One

member of the new class of 2011 even had a

double celebration: a graduation and a birthday.




1952NaN SteveNS, Ed.M., writes,

“At 80, I’m glad to be uprightand ambulatory. Are there anyother members of the 1952

Ed.M. class stil l out there?”

1962vaughN NelSoN, Ed.M.,

returned as director of the

Alternative Energy Institute at West Texas A&M University

for one year starting in July2009. While there, he used pre-

vious courses in wind energyand solar energy to develop aprogram for renewable energy.

He used the material from hisonline course in renewable en-ergy to write the 2011 textbook,

Introduction to Renewable Energy.His previous book, Wind En-

ergy, was published in 2009.

1963Peter limaN, M.A.T., com-pleted a major art exhibition at

the Stable in Ridgewood, N.J.,titled “Oil and Water Do Mix.”He actively shows his oil land-

scapes in numerous galleries,hospitals, and colleges. His Big Hollow Art Studio is located in

Windham, N.Y.

DoN akeSoN, Ed.M., wrote

a trilogy on the history of Irisheducation, which has been

selected as one of the 300 booksin the new Routledge Educa-tion Classics reprint series.

1966eve SullivaN, M.A.T.,founder of the Parents Forum,

received credentials as a repre-sentative to the United Nations

for the International Federa-

tion for Parenting Education.She spoke at the April meeting

of the New York NGO Com-mittee on the Family.

1967elliot Seif, M.A.T.’65,

C.A.S., launched a new educa-tion website for administrators,teachers, parents, and “anyone

interested in creating an educa-tion that prepares students to

live in a rapidly changing, Era3, 21st-century world.” Visit thesite at www.era3learning.org .

1974 JaNe CoNDoN, Ed.M., wasthe 2011 commencement

speaker at Wellesley College onMay 27. This spring, she hadan extended run in New York

of her Off-Broadway show, Janie Condon: Raw & Unchained .

1978truDy hall, Ed.M., headof school at Emma WillardSchool in Troy, N.Y., was one

of four graduates honored bySt. Lawrence University withthe Alumni Citation, awarded

during reunion weekend.

larry Stybel, Ed.D, hasbeen elected to the board of governors for the Institute for

Career Coaching Internation-al. This is a global fellowshipof career coaches selected for

inclusion by professional peers.He is executive in residence at

the Sawyer Business School atSuffolk University and presi-dent of the global career man-

agement rm Stybel PeabodyLincolnshire.

1981riCharD SChwab, Ed.M., is

the neighborhood team leaderof Glendale Organizing For America Community Team in

Ohio. Formerly, he was associ-ate head of school and middleschool head of Cincinnati

Country Day School.

1982 Julie liNeberger, Ed.M.,

is owner of LineSync Archi-tecture in Wilmington, Vt. InMarch, the rm was awarded a

2010 Public Space Award for itdesign of Wilmington’s RiverBank Park. The park design

was also awarded the 2009Honor Award by AIA Vermon

and the 2009 Green Mountain Award for Most ImprovedPublic Space by the Vermont

Division of Historic Preserva-tion Downtown Program.

1987

bill

haDDaD

, Ed.M., con-tinues as assistant branch chiefat the Defense Intelligence

Agency, where he has servedsince 2009. He continues in hisrole at the Applicant Screening

Branch and also has assumednew responsibilities at the De-

fense Readiness Center preparing intelligence professionalsfor overseas assignments.

1989DaNiel ryaN, Ed.M., isfounder and head of The

Children’s School in Berwyn,Ill. He is planning a nationaleducation conference with the

Progressive Education Networin Chicago in November 2011.

C O U R T E S Y O F J U L I E L I N E B E R G E R

1982 Julie Lineberger’s firm,

LineSync Architecture,

designed River Bank Park

http://www.era3learning.org/





O

ne thousand, six hundred eighty minutes .

That is the average amount of time that children

watch television each week according to Nielsen via

TV-Free America. Devon Tutak, Ed.M.’04, knows this is a lot. Still,

she thinks we need to stretch beyond the debate of how much,

and begin concentrating more on what.

“No one is going to convince enough children or their parents

to turn off the television and computer,” says Tutak. “But you can

provide them with quality content that provides a larger benefit

than just entertainment.”

Tutak was a public television devotee at a young age: “My earli-

est memories of children’s television are mash-ups of Muppets

and John Cleese [on Fawlty Towers],” she shares. She became

further convinced of its value when she worked first as a teacher,

then with the lobbying group, the Association of Public Television

Stations. “Those two experiences were very important because

they made [it] clear to me that a) we need to be doing more to

educate America’s children, and b) public television is uniquely

capable of supporting that issue.”

Now, as project manager at Ready To Learn, a five-year, U.S.

Department of Education initiative running through September

2015, Tutak works with partners such as PBS, local public televi-

sion stations, and the National Summer Learning Association to

use public media to combat the effects of poverty on children’s

math and literacy skills. Along with television programming, the

initiative works on multimedia classroom tools, augmented real-

ity games, and transmedia gaming suites.

But in the cluttered children’s entertainment landscape, it’s

difficult to catch — and keep — kids’ attention.

“Producers [must] step up to the challenge. Shows that have

a meaningful lesson, that connect with a child to give them the

‘Aha!’ moment when they learn something for the first time or

finally grasp a concept that seemed so fuzzy up until that mo-

ment, are the best ones,” Tutak says, naming Sesame Street

and The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! as examples of

programs that do this effectively.

Supporting the “best ones” is what Ready To Learn is about.

The financial support, Tutak says, allow producers of public tele-

vision to create “more robust” programming with demonstrated

educational benefits. It also allows for more extensive audience

testing, market research, and product development that help th

shows compete with commercial networks with larger budgets.

Having previously worked at PBS, marketing such popular

shows as Super WHY!, Dinosaur Train, and The Cat in the Hat,

Tutak is enjoying coming at the material with broader goals in

mind, thanks, in part, to her Ed School training.

“This new job is a lot closer to my educational roots,” she says

“I’m not just focused on getting kids to watch our shows or go

to our websites; I want to make sure that they’re learning and

increasing their chances for success by doing so.”

— Marin Jorgensen

Quality Control: Devon Tutak

1993ShelDoN bermaN, Ed.M.,Ed.D., has been named super-intendent of Eugene School

District 4J in Eugene, Ore.

SuzaNNe SCallioN, C.A.S.,was appointed superintendentof schools in Westeld, Mass.

1995 Julie aNNe mCNary,Ed.M., was given the Conway

Award for Excellence in Teach-

ing Writing from HarvardExtension School.

PhylliS gimbel SChNit-maN, Ed.M., is associate profes-sor of educational leadershipat Bridgewater State Univer-

sity (Mass.), where she is alsoassistant coordinator of the

Writing Across the Curriculumapproach. She recently won theDiNardo Alumni Award for

Excellence in Teaching.

1996moNa abo-zeNa, Ed.M.,

coauthored — with ChriStiNa tobiaS Nahi, Ed.M.’03 — thechapter “Testing the Courage of

their Convictions: Muslim Youth

Respond to Stereotyping, Hostil-ity, and Discrimination” in the

2009 book Muslim Voices in School: Narratives of Identity and Plural-

ism. The volume was the winner

of the National Association for

Multicultural Education 2010book award.

1997Nita Sturiale, Ed.M.,was recently promoted to full

professor at the MassachusettsCollege of Art and Design

where she teaches in the Studiofor Interrelated Media.

1999ChriStiNe “CeCe” Cama-Cho, Ed.M., is vice presidentof Sustainable Health Enter-

prises. The organization is a

nalist for the INDEX: Award2011, the world’s largest mon-etary prize for design.

PhilliP hayNeS, Ed.M.,recently opened Crimson

Academy in Rwanda, a

school serving about 180 chil-dren. (See prole page 37.)

lyNDa blair verNalia,Ed.M., has been cast in a

leading role of “Mother” for




an August production of the

Boston-originated Monsters! the Musical . An actress, amateur

playwright, and published poet,Vernalia is also an acting coachat the Academy of Performing

Arts New England in Chelms-ford, Mass.

matt walker, Ed.M., joined Denver’s oldest law rm,

Sherman & Howard, as anassociate in the ERISA andEmployee Benets Practice.

2001 JoShua Starr, Ed.M.’98,Ed.D., has been named superin-

tendent of Montgomery CountyPublic Schools in Maryland. Hewas previously superintendent

in Stamford, Conn.

2002alexaNDer DiPPolD,Ed.M., and his wife, Jean, wel-

comed baby Edward EmmettDippold on July 14, 2011. He

says that Genevieve is adjusting to her new status as a big sister.

aNthoNy herNaNDez,Ed.M., is director of strate-

gic planning at Happy KidsPediatrics in Arizona. He wasquoted recently in The Arizona

Republic voicing his opposi-tion to Arizona Governor JanBrewer’s proposed budget cuts

for the poorest populations.

timothy kNowleS,Ed.M.’96, Ed.D., is a mem-

ber of Chicago Mayor RahmEmanuel’s education transitionteam and director of the UrbanEducation Institute at the Uni-

versity of Chicago. He was therecipient of the 2011 Alumni

Council Award at the EdSchool’s convocation in May.

DeNiSe tioSeCo, Ed.M.,and her husband, Christian,announce the birth of their son,

Westley Tioseco Roehl. He wa

born March 9, 2011, at 5:34p.m., weighing 7 lbs.11 oz., and

measuring 20 inches in length. Westley was named after theisland where Denise and Chris

tian got married, Key West.She says his initials, WTR, areperfect for a Pisces baby.

2003george alaN Smith,Ed.M.’98, Ed.D., was named

chief of staff of the U.S. De-partment of Education’s Ofceof Vocational and Adult Educa

tion. Previously, he worked forthe Ofce of the State Super-

intendent of Education withinthe Ofce of the Mayor for theDistrict of Columbia.

ChriStiNa tobiaS-Nahi,Ed.M., has joined the Joint

Council on International Chil-dren’s Services as their directo

of orphan nutrition. With

moNa abo-zeNa, Ed.M.’96she coauthored the chapter

“Testing the Courage of their

Convictions: Muslim YouthRespond to Stereotyping,

Hostility, and Discrimination”in the 2009 book Muslim Voices

in School: Narratives of Identity and Pluralism. The volume was thewinner of the National Associa

tion for Multicultural Educa-tion 2010 book award.

2005SuSaNa Claro, Ed.M.,cofounded Enseña Chile — the

Chilean version of Teach For America and the rst South American organization to bea part of the Teach For All

network — and worked as theadvisor of the ministry of edu-

cation. Although Claro recentlleft Chile with her husband, shremains a member of the board

of Enseña Chile and is thinkinof pursuing a Ph.D. at Stanfordin the fall.

2005Kate Barr y, Becca Schendel, Kelley Curtin, Susan Cohen Davidson, and

Michelle Hoover, all 2005 graduates of the Higher Education

Program, at Schendel’s wedding in Barre, Mass.

2002Denise Tioseco’s

son Westley

STUDIO ATTICUS PHOTOGRAPHY

2002Alexander Dippold’s

son Edward

C O U R T E S Y O F A L E X

A N D E R D I P P O L D



Phillip Haynes, Ed.M.’99, had no direct connection to Africa.

But, in 2009, he was persuaded by Mark Maynard from

the How Far Foundation to go on a mission trip to Rwanda,

where, unexpectedly, he discovered the next step in his career.

“When I arrived I was very surprised,” he says. “[People were]

begging for education. [Seeing that,] I resolved within myself that

I could provide educational opportunities to Rwandans by build-

ing schools.”

Having successfully established two schools in the United

States — Crayon Academy and Crimson Academy, both in Geor-

gia — Haynes knew how to build a school from the ground up. He

completed a grant plan, schedule, and budget, but it soon became

evident that things could not be done in Rwanda as they are done

in the United States.

“I quickly realized that I could not ask the local Rwandans to

adapt to a modern project planning methodology, nor hold them

to comply [to one],” he says. “There is a phrase that comes to

mind, ‘This is Africa.’ I had to conform my temperament and ex-

pectations to the way they get things done. … Every agreement

is essentially verbal, and you have to build a solid relation-

ship with local leaders to get everything done.”

It is Haynes’ hope that, by providing stable education to th

children in Rwanda, he will be helping the country as a whole

“Within East Africa, there are minority groups within

the broader country population that are in dire need and

distress. The chance for upward mobility is nonexistent,” he

says. “The local governments understand the needs but lack

the resources to service these groups. My goal is to educate

children and give them greater opportunities to provide for

their families and lead the country.”

Unfortunately, there has been some resistance to Haynes’

plans, primarily from the older generations who question the

necessity of a formal education. The school is often competing

with families, he says, who feel children’s time is better devoted

to labor than to education.

Despite the challenges — including a six-month building sched

ule that turned into two years — Crimson Academy of Gihara,

Rwanda, opened in January 2011, welcoming 180 students. The

English-language instruction is led by a local faculty and staff,

with Haynes making frequent visits.

Since its opening, Haynes has noticed that a shift in mindset

among the community has begun, with more parents now choos-

ing education for their children. Even one of the local leaders —

who, when the school was initially being built, told Haynes that he

had never been to school and was fine — had a change of heart.

“When the school was completed and his child attended the

school for two weeks,” Haynes says, “the same local leader

returned and said, ‘I will sell every thing I have to make sure

he can attend the school. He is learning things I could never

dream about.’”

— Marin Jorgensen

Into Africa: Phillip Haynes

Haynes (baseball hat) demonstrates to teachers how to use

one of the new computer s at Crimson Academy in Rwanda

CamSie matiS mCaDamS,

Ed.M., was named directorof STEM initiatives for theDistrict of Columbia Public

Schools. She will be respon-sible for shaping the vision and

strategy around STEM educa-tion for the K–12 system. Shewrites, “I would welcome any

advice, reading suggestions,professional contacts, or words

of wisdom as I begin this excit-ing new position!”

louie roDriguez,Ed.M.’99, Ed.M.’01, Ed.D.,was selected as a faculty fellow

by the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education

for 2011. He was one of sevenfaculty fellows selected this year

to participate in the associa-tion’s annual conference in San

Antonio last March.

rebeCCa SCheNDel, Ed.M.,married Andrew Koleros on

September 18, 2010, in Barre,Mass. Other 2005 Ed School

alums at the wedding were

kate barry, SuSaN CoheN

DaviDSoN, miChelle hoover, and kelley CurtiN. The couple has been

living and working in Kigali,Rwanda, since 2008, where she

was the director of programsat Generation Rwanda. The

couple now resides in London,where she is working towardher Ph.D.

2006 Jim larSoN, Ed.M., has beenappointed Indiana’s new direc-

tor of school turnaround andimprovement.

2007ethaN gray, Ed.M., wasnamed to Splashlife.com’s listof 30 Under 30: Innovative

Educators, due to his work withIndianapolis’ The Mind Trust

and its Cities for EducationEntrepreneurship Trust (CEE-Trust) initiative.

kriStiN miChaelSoN,Ed.M., recently launched

Advantage Development( advantagedevelopment.webs.com ),

an educational consulting rmspecializing in guiding parents

C O U R T E S Y O F P H I L L I P H A Y N E S




W

hen Rena Upitis, Ed.D.’85, asks adults about their

passions, it is rare that they had developed these

passions at school. One reason, she believes: The

design of school buildings often lacks the physical spaces that

encourage that kind of learning.

Though Upitis’ areas of research have spanned computer

technology, math, music, and the arts, this former dean of

education, and current professor of arts education at Queen’s

University, Kingston, Ontario, is now focused on the power of

school architecture.

Author of the 2010 book, Raising a School: Foundations of

School Architecture, Upitis explores school architecture and how

the physical environment can either enable or constrain learning.

“I realized that a lot of teachers want to do more work in the

arts and recognize the importance of the arts, but don’t have the

physical capabilities, meaning the schools don’t encourage that

type of work in the spaces,” she says. A teacher might want to of-

fer dance, for example, but does not have the space to do so.

Intrigued by the notion of architecture and the role it plays in

education — a more active one than most would think — Upitis

earned a diploma in architecture technology five years ago. She

is a believer in the Reggio Emilia Approach, which suggests that

the physical surroundings in which students are taught are piv-

otal to their learning. It’s important, Upitis says, to pay attention

to the look and feel of a building because it sends messages to

its inhabitants.

“We go into some buildings and they tell us the world is wel-

coming, whereas others tell us it is stiff and constrained,” she

says. Historically, Upitis believes, schools haven’t been designed

to enhance education.

“If school architecture is a typical box classroom with few

windows and narrow hallways in soundproof walls [with] hideous

aesthetics, then we tell children that school is a container,” she

says. “Kids want comfortable furniture, light, air, and to hear a

bird outside the window.”

In a day when a lot of schools are both renovating and being

built, Upitis thinks it is an ideal time to reconsider the schools of

today and beyond.

“If we take seriously the notion that school buildings present

students with powerful messages about what society values,

then school architecture needs to be radically rethought,” shesays. “For a century and a half, we have built schools that lack

adequate light, good furniture, inviting entryways, and green

spaces. This is the time to do it.”

— Jill Anderson

If You Build It: Rena Upitis

David A. Greene, Ed.M.’91, Ed.M.’94, Ed.D.’02, Chair

Jiraorn Assarat, Ed.M.’04

Marilyn Barber, Ed.M.’83

Barbara Brown, Ed.D.’90

Tara Brown, Ed.M.’01, Ed.D.’05

Anthony Cipollone, Ed.D.’90

*John Jackson, Ed.M.’98, Ed.D.’01

*Mieko Kamii, Ed.M.’73, Ed.D.’82

Ellie Loughlin, Ed.M.’06, C.A.S.’07

Will Makris, Ed.M.’00

Rebecca Mannis, Ed.M.’85

Tanya Odom, Ed.M.’98

*Judith Pace, C.A.S.’90, Ed.M.’95, Ed.D.’98

Christine Pina, Ed.M.’99

*Karl Reid, Ed.D.’07

Sam Robinson, Ed.M.’88

*Samona Joe Tait, Ed.M.’96, Ed.D.’00

*Emiliana Vegas, Ed.M.’96, Ed.D.’01

Douglas Wood, Ed.M.’96, Ed.D.’00

* denotes a new council member

HGSE Alumni Council, 2011–2012



James Goodwin, GSE’33

Ruth Frankel Smullin, GSE’37

Rose Depoyan, Ed.M.’38

William Stimson, M.A.T.’39

George Filion, M.A.T.’40

Gardner Williams, GSE’41

Anna Pavlatos Leontis, M.A.T.’44Philip Sweeney, GSE’46

William Hubbard, M.A.T.’47

Robert Reynolds Rathbone, M.A .T.’47

Trevor Robinson, M.A.T.’51

John Clougherty, M.A.T.’53

Harold Finegold, M.A.T.’53

W. Ray Rucker, Ed.D.’53

William Gardner Blount, C.A.S.’54

Bernard Stanley Cayne, Ed.M.’54

Edwin Lyle, C.A.S.’54

Marianne Ockerbloom, M.A.T.’57

Adele Alper, Ed.M.’58

Martin Reno, Ed.M.’58

Theodore Mayo Atkinson Jr., Ed.M.’59

John Moran, M.A.T.’59

William Stuart, M.A.T.’47, Ed.D.’59Boit Brannen, Ed.M.’44, Ed.D.’60

Francis Gilmour, Ed.M.’60

Marcia Harper, GSE’61

Paul Edward Kelly, Ed.D.’61

John Anthony Mierzwa, Ed.M.’58, Ed.D.’61

William Cone, Ed.D.’62

Rhoda Spangenberg Lederer, M.A.T.’62

Malcolm Marshall, Ed.M.’62

Hamish MacEwan, Ed.M.’63

Thavisakdi Srimuang, Ed.M.’65

Joseph Franklin McBrine, C.A.S.’67

Rodney Mansfield, C.A.S.’68

Herbert Ryan Adams, Ed.D.’72

Roberta Maras, M.A.T.’73

Margaret Logan, C.A.S.’77

Chandler Parker, C.A.S.’77Jackson Felsman, Ed.M.’75, Ed.D.’82

Gail Johnson, Ed.M.’82

Frances Ruff, Ed.M.’79, Ed.D.’89

Landon Tracy Archer Summers, Ed.M.’83

Ed.D.’91

Nelson Treece, Ed.D.’91

Kevin Charles Marshall, Ed.M.’09

Laura Rose Kavazanjian, Ed.M.’10

In Memory

through the rst ve

years of their children’slives, with a particular

focus on parenting consultations and schooladmissions guidance in

New York City.

2008matt breNNer,Ed.M., has written the

essay “The Four PillarsUpon Which the Failure

of Math EducationRests (and what to doabout it).” It can be read

at www.k12math.org/ doclib/4pillars.pdf.

SuSaN eNfielD,Ed.M.’02, Ed.D., was

named interim superin-tendent of Seattle publicschools. Previously, she

was the district’s chief academic ofcer.

2010rhoNDa baylor,

Ed.M., works in Wash-ington, D.C. as an edu-cation research analyst

for the U.S. Departmentof Education. In thefall, she will teach two

classes at the Communi-ty College of the Distr ictof Columbia.

mary Carroll,

Ed.M., is engaged toChristopher Cole. She iscurrently a second grade

teacher at the Mastery

Charter Program’sMann Elementary

School in West Philadel-phia, Pa.

martyNa SarNowSka,Ed.M., works at the

education center in theRoyal Baths Museumin Warsaw. She is the

editor of a museumeducation blog: www.

edukacjamuzealnaeng.blogspot.com.

Alumni event in Nashville, Tenn., hos ted by Daniel and Jessica Viner, Ed.M.’97,

and alumni council member Christine Pina, Ed.M.’99, Februar y 2011

Recent Alumni Circle at

Charles River Cleanup, Apr il 2011

HGSE Alumni Events

http://www.k12math.org/

http://www.edukacjamuzealnaeng/




http://www.k12math.org/



No Dragons Behind the MoatIf you’re new to the Ed School, by now you’ve seen the

unusual brick tower at the end of Appian Way called Larsen

Hall and wondered what it’s supposed to be. (Even if you’re

not new, you’re still probably wondering.) Since the build-

ing rst opened in 1965, it’s been called everything from a

concrete bunker to a genial robot,

an IBM card in 3-D to a medieval

castle. It’s been likened to the

Ronchamp Chapel in France and to

the Whitney Museum in New York.

It’s clear from articles written

about the building and comments

from those involved in the planning

that the Houston-based archi-

tects, Caudill, Rowlett, and Scott,

weren’t necessarily trying to create

a type of building — a castle or a

card — but were trying to build

something interesting while alsobeing attentive to lots of needs: a

city council concerned with historic

preservation, faculty and programs

with varied requirements, and very

limited space. In a letter written to

Roy Larsen in 1964 after learning

that the building would be named

for Larsen, the lead architect, William Caudill, wrote, “You

might like to know that one of the main design premises of

the building was to make it as exible as a glass Manhattan

ofce building, still have the feeling of permanency that will

allow it to ‘dwell together in unity’ with other Harvard build-ings, yet retain its individuality. Now if it does these things

— and I think the building will — we must have anticipated

that it would be called Roy Larsen Hall. Like the man, the

building should be dynamic, should have a timeless quality,

and should be a distinctive and distinguished individual. If

not, re the architects — after the dedication.”

The architects weren’t red, and the building received

many accolades over the years, particularly for some of the

unusual features, such as a glass-lled sunken courtyard built

with one-way mirrors that allowed researchers to observe

fth- and sixth-graders from

Cambridge as they took classes.

“New and stimulating,” wrote one

architect in The Boston Globe. “Active,

ingenious,” wrote the authors of

Harvard: An

Architectural

History. In

1967, the building won an award from

the Texas Society of Architects.

But there was also criticism of the

building’s quirkiness. Windows were

few and far between, in part because

the architects wanted to draw the eye

to a small number of stunning views.

Which they did — at the expense of

natural light (very little) and window-

less ofces (very many). Interestingly,

more windows were added on thestreet side after the Harvard Cor-

poration threatened in 1963 to veto

the original design.

Interior space also became an

issue. One of the design intentions

was to make the space as exible as

possible by placing all of the im-

movable building parts — ventilation shafts and stairs, for

example — along the outer walls, leaving center areas open

and allowing inner walls to be moved as needs changed.

But, as James Ackerman, then-chair of Harvard’s Fine Arts

Department, wrote in 1965 in Connections, spaces were even-tually subdivided using xed materials. Part of the problem

he wrote, was the committee approach to building a build-

ing. “Without an autocrat,” Ackerman wrote, “everyone

gets more or less what he wants, and that makes chaos.”

It seems that Caudill had a sense of humor about the crit

cism, saying at the dedication ceremony in 1966, “The new

structure may have a strange form, but it will wear a familiar

Harvard tweed.” And nally, “What’s wrong with castles?”

— Lory Hough

recess

Phil and P

D A V I D H U N S B E R G E R

DAVID HUNSBERGER

HARVARD ARCHIVES



What began last spring with a simple question over

lunch with Dean Kathleen McCartney became the

inspiration for a major fundraising effort by a group

of first-year Ed.D. students.

“We were speaking about all of the behind-the-scenes work that

goes into making this [Ed School] experience possible for doctoral

students and the challenges of fundraising for research-oriented

degree programs,” explains Ed.D. Candidate Beth Schueler. “So

we asked if there was anything we could do to help.”

McCartney told them that if every student and graduate of

the school contributed $25 each year, the school would meet

its annual fund goals. So, with that bit of information — and a

shared gratitude for their own doctoral funding — Schueler and

classmates Janine de Novais, Liz Hale Rozas, and Lisa Utzinger,

Ed.M.’10, began to brainstorm.

Although among the group only Utzinger had any prior fund-

raising experience, they decided to issue a “cohort challenge” to

their Ed.D. peers with the goal of convincing every member of the

first-year cohort — 32 in total — to contribute to the HGSE Fund,

which seeks to raise resources for many areas of the Ed School

including financial aid, Gutman Library, and faculty and student

support services. Immediately, their classmates were intrigued.

“The challenge to get 100 percent participation was met with

enthusiasm, largely because it was a homegrown idea and it would

be a cohort effort,” says de Novais. “A few people weren’t sure at

first, but we emphasized this as a chance to show appreciation for

what we were receiving and that got everyone on board.”

(Hale Rozas suspects that her promise to host a dinner party

for the cohort if everyone contributed probably also helped.)

Within a matter of weeks, all of the first-year Ed.D. students

had made gifts.

“I think it’s a testament to our cohort’s willingness to support

each other’s initiatives, whether it is the giving challenge, the

Student Research Conference, or our independent research

projects,” Utzinger says.

Having found success with their cohort challenge, the four

students decided to reach out to a much larger group — Ed.D.

alumni. Working with the Development & Alumni Relations

Office, they crafted a letter encouraging alumni to join them in

supporting the program now and into the future.

Going forward, the foursome aims to achieve 100 percent

participation during each year of their time at the Ed School and

hopes to inspire future Ed.D. cohorts to do the same.

“My hope is that future cohorts, by our example, will see giving

as a something they do as part of the HGSE community,” says Ut

zinger. “And something they do together rather than individually.”

— Mark Robertson, Ed.M.’08

investing

Giving 100 Percent

(L to R) Bet

Utzinger, Ja

and Liz Hal



Harvard Graduate School o Education

Ofce o Communications

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Cambridge, MA 02138

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Permit No. 300

Trust your instincts — animal or not — and

email us a picture of yourself (or someone

in your family) reading Ed. and you may find

yourself on the back cover, too.

[email protected]

Clockwise from top left:We know it’s a bit fuzzy, but smart dog Azit,

owned by Abraham Shimoni, Ed.M.’79, is

too cute not to publish. Douglas Channell,

Ed.M.’95, on his mule-wagon pulled by Rose.

Where’s Ed.?





Documents

Ed. Magazine, Fall 2011