“Even as our nation ponders the recent Presidential election, TC faculty, students and alumni continue to make the world safer, healthier, better educated and more equitable.”

Teachers College has historically embraced inclusion and diversity; supported and de­fended intellectual integrity and courage; and encouraged respectful disagreement and debate. Above all, we have pursued social justice, placing our teaching, research and practice on the side of human rights and on the front lines against racism, intolerance and growing inequities in educa­tion, health and economic opportunity.

These values guide our steps at moments of great uncertainty. Thus even as our nation ponders the recent presidential election — among the most divisive and surprising in its history — TC faculty, students and alumni continue to make the world safer, healthier, better educated and more equitable.

In this issue, you will read about our contributions to what we call the new psychology of adversity. TC psychologists, who represent more than a quarter of our full-time faculty, are making great advances in addressing both the external social forces that create adverse conditions and the internal abilities of individuals to cope with adversity. Their work spans post-traumatic stress disorder in children, emo­tional and psychological abuse, microaggressions and racial discrimination, psychological resilience, and the intersection of genes and the environment.

These efforts are part of a broader ferment that is producing a wealth of new programs at TC that also draw on our remarkable past. Take dance education, a field begun at TC a century ago when Margaret H’Doubler, a doctoral student from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, came here to research new physical education venues for wom­en. Studying with faculty members John Dewey and Gertrude Colby and Carnegie Hall dance instructor Alys Bentley, H’Doubler reconceived the teaching of dance — then focused on performers — as a creative pathway for all learners.

Fast forward to 2016. Through the vision and generosity of TC alumna Jody Gottfried Arnhold (M.A. ’73), dance education is returning to our stage. We will prepare teachers of those who will teach dance at all levels (K-12, privately, in colleges and through community and arts organizations), as well as policymakers, leaders, researchers and others who will advocate for dance education and contribute to its evolution. As Jody puts it, dance fosters collaboration, creativity, problem-solving and citizenship — skills never more needed than right now.

In short, it’s a time of promise and hope here at TC. At our founding, too, the nation seemed pulled in contrary directions, with vast ex­pansion in industry and wages accompanied by the poverty of new immigrants. Yet then as now, TC thinkers were reshaping old fields and inventing new ones. Both literally and metaphorically, then, TC’s dance has been going on all this time. The performers sometimes choreograph and sometimes improvise, but they always astound us with new moves and ever more elegant footwork. It gets better to watch, every single day.

Susan Fuhrman (PH.D. '77) 

Published Wednesday, Nov 30, 2016