Fifty Years at the Center Book - CUNY Graduate Center

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Graduate Center has always been located in the grit, grime, and noise of midtown Manhattan, a barbaric yawp that the faculty and students have set to melody. “It is my firm belief,” Proshansky once said, “that a public graduate school should be committed to providing service to the New York City community by way of research, consultation, and teaching.” The Center began by granting degrees in the classical disciplines: chemistry, economics, English, and psychology. Today, it ranges over thirty-four subject areas, including on-theground fields like urban education, physical therapy, and nursing. The Graduate Center was created in the hope that it would provide teachers for the baby boom children growing up in the sixties. It has evolved into an institution that uses New York City as a laboratory and a client; it studies the urban scene and puts its knowledge to practical use, both as an adviser to government and as an intellectual emporium for the general public. “I feel very strongly that public education has a different mission than private education,” says Kelly. “CUNY has a public mission to be responsive to the people of New York.” It has been a delicate balance between the rigors of intellectual pursuit and the needs of the surrounding society. Perhaps the most significant triumph of the Graduate Center’s first fifty years has been its devotion to scholarly integrity. Never has it wavered in its belief that its truest service would be achieved through adherence to the highest standards. It never has seen itself as the vocational training ground for the children of the poor; rather, the Graduate Center has committed itself to serving as the escalator for the talented. In the words of its founding president, Mina Rees: “Education is not designed to prepare people to do whatever work flows from the blind and predestined imperative of technology; rather, it is intended to educate people of vision and 6
sensitivity, who will be motivated to direct technology into humanly constructive channels.” From its inception Rees insisted that the Graduate Center draw upon the best the CUNY system had to offer. She devised a unique system of faculty procurement that mixed and matched components from the entire university to create a graduate program that, with astonishing rapidity, won recognition as one of the finest in the country. (“I never cease to experience a little thrill,” Rees once commented, “when I am attending a national educational or scientific meeting to find that the CUNY Graduate School is so highly regarded.”) Her legacy was a rigorous dedication to accomplishment. Rees’s success was the creation of a place and atmosphere whose quality might be best measured not in the repeated encomia of evaluation committees or placement on “Ten Best” lists, but rather in her assessment of her tenure as president, one whose spirit has been echoed by those who followed her: “I have had the rare privilege of working with people whom I greatly respect and enjoy.” 7
Page 1: FIFTY YEARS AT THE CENTER
Page 4 and 5: © 2011 The Graduate Center 365 Fif
Page 6 and 7: Introduction It is the fulfillment
Page 10 and 11: Origins The decision to offer docto
Page 12 and 13: Her unusual synergy of brains and c
Page 14 and 15: Welfare Medal “in recognition of
Page 16 and 17: universities had many colleges with
Page 18 and 19: THE FIRST FOUR It was an ambitious
Page 20 and 21: ALBERT BOWKER mind, intellectual hi
Page 22 and 23: With Bowker’s aggressive support,
Page 24 and 25: separate college in 1971, and she b
Page 26 and 27: Unlimited, an effort to recruit edu
Page 28 and 29: Survival For the Graduate Center, t
Page 30 and 31: discipline for doctoral study at th
Page 32 and 33: Notwithstanding this administrative
Page 34 and 35: austerity measures. City taxes were
Page 36 and 37: NYU. Would he not agree that it is
Page 38 and 39: course, a student’s scholarly int
Page 40 and 41: and images, the Gotham Center’s w
Page 42 and 43: years later, with Computer Science,
Page 44 and 45: and Hubert Humphrey, of Americans f
Page 46 and 47: herence to political orthodoxies. A
Page 50 and 51: 48 The elegant, landmarked building
Page 52 and 53: 50 Gracing the library with touches
Page 54 and 55: The Empire State Building looms ove
Page 57 and 58: Homes of Our Own “What cuts the d
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“MIRACLE ON 42ND STREET” scienc
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a composer—I frequently hear musi
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esurfacing. . . . Above a projectin
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SAVING BRYANT PARK covered with hun
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that the upcoming summer “is the
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Students suffered even more. They d
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including alertness, motor maturity
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verse. My hero is Emily Dickinson.
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case, the New York Public Library.
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Union Square to Fifth and 37th. The
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From historic department store to m
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Work is never finished when promise
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The Graduate Center Foundation Tax
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A New Century In 2002, the New York
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Pathfinder and of the Random House
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AN ERA OF INTERDISCIPLINARY INNOVAT
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categories emerge, and how useful a
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Academic Programs and Initiatives D
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Centers and Institutes American Soc
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HONORARY MEMBERS Richard D. Parsons
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Fifty Years at the Center Book - CUNY Graduate Center

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