The Trustees of Teachers College, in their establishment of the Maxine Greene Chair for Distinguished Contributions to Education, have created a new way to honor outstanding members of the faculty for their accomplishments as educators and researchers. Once again, Professor Emeritus Maxine Greene leads the way.

Greene, who joined the TC faculty in 1965, served as Professor of Philosophy and Education since 1973 and the William F. Russell Professor in the Foundations of Education from 1975 to 1998. In 1976, she became the Philosopher in Residence at the Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education.

Throughout her career, Greene has brought her passion to the classroom, to her writing and to various symposia-including discussions on imagination, aesthetics in education, interdisciplinary thinking, and social change among many other concerns. Students fill her classes to have the privilege of listening to Greene's running commentary on issues. She is a frequent speaker at events, and is often requested to participate as a discussant on panels for conferences ranging from arts in education to educational reform to civil rights, multi-culturalism and more. Her signature philosophy has been "imagining things as if they could be otherwise."

The Chair was established through a resolution by the Trustees of the College in recognition of her many noteworthy accomplishments in the fields of Philosophy and Education, Social Theory and the Arts and Aesthetics, and the extraordinary contributions that she continues to make to Teachers College and her field.

Published Friday, Sep. 3, 2004