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The Graduate School of Education • University of Pennsylvania 

Spring 2006 

M A G A Z I N E 

ACTING 

LOCALLY 

Penn GSE sets the standard 

for involvement with the 

Philadelphia community 

Susan Fuhrman Steps 

Down As Penn GSE Dean

Education is a Destination 

Where do YOU want to go 

this summer? 

At Penn GSE, you can 

choose from a wide 

range of courses— 

everything from 

the Design of Learning 

Environments, to the 

College Presidency, to 

Literature for Children 

and Adolescents, to the 

Psychology of African 

Americans. 

Don’t miss out on this opportunity 

to learn in a small, intensive 

classroom environment. 

Sign up now for our second session, 

June 26 through August 4. 

For the entire summer course roster, 

go to http://www.gse.upenn.edu/ 

degrees_programs/summercourses.php 

For more information, call 215-898-6415. 

It’s never too early or too late to get started!

MAGAZINE 


F E A T U R E S 

8 

Acting Locally 

With its deep connections throughout 

Philadelphia’s educational community, 

Penn GSE sets the standard for 

involvement with the local community. 

16 

When Nurture Calls 

Ellie Kress Pacin CW’63 GEd’67 and Carolyn 

May Fink GEd’72 hear PLN’s call of nurture. 

By Leslie Palmieri 

By Nancy Brokaw 

On the cover: 

A detail from The Doors of Destiny are in 

Your Hands. Located at American and 

Somerset Streets, The Doors of Destiny 

is one of the approximately 2,400 murals in 

the city of Philadelphia, created by the 

Philadelphia Mural Arts Program (MAP). 

A public arts program, MAP works with 

community partners to design and create 

murals of enduring value while actively 

engaging youth in the process. Penn GSE 

Associate Professor Larry Sipe drew on 

MAP’s rich store of murals in designing an 

arts and literacy curriculum for the Penn 

Alexander School. 

“The Doors of Destiny are in Your Hands” 

was painted by Michelle Angela Ortiz 

(lead artist/design) and Jose Ali Paz 

(assistant), August 2004, and sponsored 

by the Department of Human Services. 

8 

18 

Hail and Farewell! 

A former GSE dean and interim University 

provost, Marvin Lazerson is retiring from 

the institution he’s served so well for the 

better part of two decades. Two other longtime 

GSE veterans—Jim Larkin and Norm 

Newberg—also bid farewell this year. 

18 

D E P A R T M E N T S 

2 Dean’s Letter 

3 Noteworthy 

20 Alumni Notes 

Spring 2006 | Penn GSE | 1

F R O M T H E 

D E A N 

© CANDACE DiCARLO 

I am writing to tell you that I will be stepping down as 

Dean of Penn GSE on July 31, 2006, to assume the presidency 

of Teachers College, Columbia University. After 11 

years as dean here at Penn, I am proud of the accomplishments 

of our School, but ready to move on to a different 

institutional setting for my work and to the excitement and 

challenge that the move will bring. 

I am certainly gratified to have been asked to lead my 

graduate alma mater—I earned my Ph.D. from Columbia 

in Political Science and Education, and it was there that I 

got my first taste of university teaching and scholarship. I 

do look forward to returning to an institution that has contributed 

so much to the field of education and that has 

meant so much to me personally. 

local and global engagements that GSE continues to forge 

and of the educational entrepreneurism that the School has 

embraced in recent years through many alternative degree 

and certification programs. I am deeply indebted to the 

entire GSE community for joining me in these efforts for 

more than a decade. To say that there is a touch of regret 

for me in leaving Penn would be a considerable understatement. 

I will miss you all a great deal. 

I have every confidence that the deanship I vacate will 

attract very talented applicants to Penn and that the 

School will soon see the beginning of another exciting era. 

President Amy Gutmann, Provost Ron Daniels, and my 

colleagues at Penn have my profound thanks and respect 

for aiming high at Penn and at GSE—this is an institution 

that richly deserves the eminence to which it aspires. 

“I hope you all know how very privileged I feel to have 

served as dean here at Penn for nearly two full terms.” 

With my warm regards and thanks to you all, 

But I hope you all know how very privileged I feel to 

have served as dean here at Penn for nearly two full terms. 

The impressive accomplishments of the school this year, 

some of which are described in the pages that follow, are 

representative of the quality of scholarship and academic 

programs that continue to make GSE a world-class school 

of education. I am enormously proud of the extraordinary 

Susan H. Fuhrman 

MAG AZINE 


The Penn GSE Magazine is produced bi-annually by the University 

of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, 3700 Walnut 

Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6216. Reproduction of these 

articles requires the written permission of the editor. ©2005 by 

the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania. Please contact the 

editor for references. 

Susan H. Fuhrman 

Dean 

Alexis Beshara Wolson 

Assistant Dean, Development 

& Alumni Relations 

Nancy Brokaw 

Editor 

Regina Vella 

Alumni Notes Editor 

Wayne Kobylinski 

Leslie Palmieri 

Regina Vella 

Contributing Writers 

Kathy Downey 

Production Assistant 

Nondiscrimination Statement 

The University of Pennsylvania values diversity and seeks 

talented students, faculty and staff from diverse backgrounds. 

The University of Pennsylvania does not discriminate on the basis 

of race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, color, 

national or ethnic origin, age, disability, or status as a Vietnam 

Era Veteran or disabled veteran in the administration of educational 

policies, programs, or activities; admissions policies; 

scholarship and loan awards; athletic, or University administered 

programs or employment. Questions or complaints regarding this 

policy should be directed to: 

Executive Director 

Office of Affirmative Action 

Sansom Place East, Suite 228 

3600 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6106 

voice: (215) 898-6993; TDD: (215) 898-7803; fax: (215) 662-7862. 

2 | Penn GSE | Spring 2006

N O T E W O R T H Y 

Teach for America Founder Speaks 

For years, education and policy leaders 

have debated whether schools can affect 

student achievement levels in the face of 

abject poverty. Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach 

for America (TFA), added her voice to the discussion 

in “Insights from the Frontlines of 

America’s Achievement Gap,” this year’s 

Gordon S. Bodek Lecture of Distinguished 

Educators, held on April 27. 

Speaking before a packed audience, Kopp 

explained that, when surveyed, the public lays 

responsibility for the achievement gap 

squarely at the feet of students and their families, 

citing lack of student motivation, lack of 

parental involvement, and home-life issues as 

the underlying causes for the disparities. 

But TFA alumni tell a very different story. 

Unlike the public at large, they lay blame for 

the achievement gap not on their students 

but on the quality of the education they’re 

receiving. Specifically, they point to teacher 

quality, school leadership, and expectations 

of students as determining factors behind 

the achievement gap. 

Having worked in classrooms that some 

consider hopeless, TFA corps members 

understand that, in Kopp’s words, “These 

kids don’t lack for potential. When given the 

opportunity to excel, they will.” 

Founded in 1989, TFA defines its mission 

as creating national leaders dedicated to 

eliminating educational inequity. To that end, 

it recruits recent college graduates who 

STUART GOLDENBERG 

Wendy Kopp (second from left) with Nancy Horwich Rothstein CW’75, a member of Penn GSE’s Board of 

Overseers; Dean Susan Fuhrman; and Judy Berkowitz CW’64, chair of the Board of Overseers. 

spend two years teaching in urban and rural 

public schools. More than half (63 percent) of 

all TFA alumni remain in the education field, 

with 37 percent remaining in the classroom. 

In her remarks, Kopp noted that the program 

serves not only as a training ground for 

classroom teachers but also as a pipeline for 

civic leaders committed to educational equity. 

“When our leaders know what you know after 

teaching in TFA,” she said, “we’ll have reached 

the point where we’ll be able to understand 

and address the achievement gap.” 

“At TFA, we want to bring our impact to a 

higher level,” Kopp added. To achieve that 

goal, TFA is increasing its recruitment efforts 

among graduating seniors, strengthening its 

training program for corps members, and 

encouraging ongoing leadership among 

alumni. In 2005, TFA entered into a partnership 

with Penn GSE to address its teacher 

preparation needs in Philadelphia. Today, 116 

TFA Philadelphia corps members are 

enrolled in the Penn GSE/TFA executivemodeled 

master’s degree program. 

Established in 1993 by Gordon S. Bodek 

C’42, a trustee emeritus and former member 

of the Penn GSE Board of Overseers, the 

Bodek lecture series provides a forum for 

educational leaders to discuss significant 

issues affecting the profession. 

Margaret Beale Spencer 

Spencer Named Fletcher Fellow 

Penn GSE Professor Margaret Beale Spencer has received a 2006 Alphonse Fletcher, Sr., Fellowship 

for her project, “Patterns of Resiliency and Resistance: Crafting Identities in a Post-Brown Era of 

Privilege and Risk.” 

Established by Alphonse Fletcher, Jr., chairman and CEO of Fletcher Asset Management, the Fletcher 

Fellowships support institutions and individuals working to further the goals of the landmark Brown v. 

Board of Education Supreme Court decision. Fellows receive a $50,000 stipend to fund work that contributes 

to improving race relations in American society. According to Henry Louis Gates Jr., chairman of 

the selection committee, “We think of these as Guggenheims of race issues.” 

Among the other artists, writers, and scholars selected for this year’s fellowships are Stanford 

Professor Lawrence Bobo, Actress and New York University Professor Anna Deveare Smith, and New 

York Times reporter Brent Staples. 



Penn GSE Hosts 27th Annual Ethnography Forum 

Participants Examine “Educators and Ethnographers Negotiating Ideological and 

Implementational Spaces” 

Penn GSE Professor and Conference Co-convenor 

Nancy Hornberger chats with two presenters at 

this year’s Ethnography Forum, Penn GSE Adjunct 

Associate Professor Rebecca Freeman Field and 

University of Waikato Professor Stephen May. 

It was standing room only at the Friday 

brown bag session at the 27th Annual 

Ethnography in Education Forum. In keeping 

with this year’s theme, the lunch hour session 

featured a lively discussion about the 

intersections of language policy and classroom 

practice. The special session was 

organized by Educational Linguistics Ph.D. 

students David Johnson and Francis Hult, cocoordinators 

of the Forum. 

Rebecca Freeman 

Field, an adjunct associate 

professor at Penn 

GSE, addressed what 

she called “the contested 

terrain of duallanguage 

education.” 

Citing a number of 

schools where duallanguage 

teaching had 

begun to flourish in the 

days before No Child 

Left Behind (NCLB), 

Freeman decried the 

chilling impact of that 

legislation and argued 

for “authentic accountability” 

that would 

consider more than test scores. Echoing 

Freeman’s concerns, Kate Menken C’91 

GEd’94, an assistant professor at City College 

of the City University of New York, described 

NCLB as “an implicit language policy that 

seeps into classrooms.” In her study of ten 

New York City high schools, she found that 

tests are now shaping policy—dictating what 

is taught, when, by whom, and how. Pointing 

to one school that had improved its academic 

standing while maintaining dual-language 

classrooms, she argued that achievement 

and dual-language learning don’t have to be 

oppositional. 

Shifting the focus to higher education, 

Arcadia University Associate Professor Ellen 

Skilton-Sylvester Gr’97 noted that, by and 

large, language policy at the university level 

CANDACE DICARLO 

is unreflectively English-only. That said, she 

found good news in at least one university 

writing program in which Korean-speaking 

tutors were actively encouraged to use 

Korean in their sessions. What Skilton- 

Sylvester found heartening was that, rather 

than representing an ad hoc arrangement 

depending solely on teacher initiative at the 

classroom level—like many of those 

described by Freeman Field and Menken— 

it had the official imprimatur of the college 

administration at the institutional level. 

Stephen May, a professor of education at 

the University of Waikato (New Zealand), 

focused his remarks on what education 

researchers need to do to inform the debate 

about language education. He emphasized the 

need for more critical ethnographic studies of 

actual multilingual classrooms. Given the 

public penchant for quantitative studies, May 

argued that ethnographic researchers need to 

widen their scope, engaging in quantitative as 

well as qualitative analysis. “It’s not enough,” 

he said, “to throw up our hands and say the 

debate is ill-informed. We need to use studies 

strategically to influence the debate.” 

Like the brown bag session, the two-day 

Forum focused on the gaps between overt 

policy and classroom practice. In addition to 

traditional paper sessions, the Forum offered 

Data Analysis discussions, in which participants 

brainstormed about analysis methods 

of sample data sets, as well as a wide array 

of Practitioner Inquiry presentations. 

Convened annually by GSE Professors 

Nancy H. Hornberger and Kathryn Howard, 

the two-day conference kicked off with a 

keynote address by Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, a 

professor of education at New York 

University. Suarez-Orozco spoke on forces of 

globalization and flows of change involving 

people, goods, and ideas—and their significance 

for the education of linguistically and 

culturally diverse populations in both the 

developed and developing world. 


TREVOR DIXON 

Lytle Joins GSE Faculty 

One of the region’s most highly 

respected educational leaders will be 

joining the Penn GSE faculty this year. 

James “Torch” Lytle, the one-time principal 

of West Philadelphia High School 

who’s been leading the turnaround in the 

Trenton, New Jersey, school district, will 

be joining the School’s Foundations and 

Practices of Education (FPE) division as a 

practice professor. 

“Torch Lytle has an extraordinary 

record of accomplishments as an educational 

leader,” says Penn GSE Dean Susan 

Fuhrman, “and we’re very excited to be 

welcoming someone who enjoys such 

widespread respect from the educational 

community.” 

Lytle has served as Trenton’s superintendent 

and chief school administrator 

since 1998. Under his leadership, the 

district, one of 30 urban districts in New 

Jersey operating under an education 

reform court order, has seen a marked 

improvement in student performance: 

during his seven-year tenure, the number 

of high school graduates has more 

than doubled, as has the proportion of 

elementary 

school students 

scoring at the 

proficient level 

on state reading 

assessments. 

Before taking 

James “Torch” Lytle 

over in Trenton, 

Lytle worked in the School District of 

Philadelphia. While in Philadelphia, he 

served as founding principal of the 

Parkway Program, an exemplary senior 

high school cited by the Pennsylvania 

Department of Education, the U.S. Office 

of Education, and the National Urban 

Coalition. In 1985, he moved into a variety 

of administrative roles, including a stint as 

executive director of the District’s Office of 

Planning, Research and Evaluation. 

In an uncommon career move, he left 

the central office to return to the trenches 

as principal of University City High 

School. During his tenure there, the lowincome 

urban school experienced a significant 

transformation, with graduation 

rates doubling. 

Professor Receives Fellowship to Study 

Civic Education Movement 

The Spencer Foundation and the National 

Academy of Education have awarded a postdoctoral 

fellowship to Penn GSE Assistant Professor 

Matt Hartley, who will use the funds to pursue 

research on the civic engagement movement in 

higher education. 

The dual aims of the civic engagement movement 

have been to enhance the civic education 

of a generation that many consider dangerously 

disaffected from political discourse and to 

encourage institutional efforts to serve surrounding 

communities. In his research, Hartley 

will investigate why and how the idea of civic 

engagement gained currency on college campuses, 

chart the trajectory of its growth, and 

Matt Hartley 

examine why so many American colleges and 

universities have responded to this call for change. 

Says Hartley, “During a time of intense competition and declining resources, the 

civic engagement movement has provided instructive examples of how institutions 

can navigate change on the basis of educational ideals rather than mere expediency.” 


GSE Awards Grants for 

Study of Race in Education 

More than a generation after the end of 

the modem civil rights movement, 

social critics, reformers and scholars remain 

concerned over the seemingly intractable 

racial divisions that mark American society. 

By all too many measures, minority children 

lag behind their white counterparts. In education, 

for example, half as many black students 

are placed in gifted programs as 

whites, African-American and Latino fourthgraders 

are approximately two years behind 

white peers in reading and math, and twice as 

many white students are earning BA degrees. 

To help ensure that Penn GSE’s research 

addresses the intersection of race and education, 

Dean Susan Fuhrman recently 

announced a Faculty Research Fund for the 

Study of Race in Education. The School is 

dedicating seed funding ($100,000 per year 

for the next three years) to collaborative faculty 

research projects that focus on teaching, 

learning, and the context of schooling for 

African-American and Latino students in 

American urban schools or institutions of 

higher education. Teams of Penn GSE faculty 

were invited to apply for grant funding in 

February and a selection committee of scholars 

external to GSE made the first annual 

awards in early April. 

This year’s grantees are Dr. Stanton 

Wortham (with Drs. Kathy Howard, Nancy 

Hornberger, and Vivian Gadsden) for 

“Imagining New Americans: Schooling 

Immigrant Mexican Youth in the Latino 

Diaspora,” and Dr. Marybeth Gasman (with 

Drs. Laura Perna and Susan Yoon) for 

“Increasing the Representation of African- 

American Women in Science, Technology, 

Engineering, and Math Education: The Role 

of Historically Black Colleges and 

Universities.” Grantees will begin their 

research projects this summer and will 

present reports on the ongoing research in 

open colloquia at Penn GSE next year. 

“GSE faculty, students, and staff share an 

intensifying concern about race-based issues 

in American schooling,” says Fuhrman. “This 

grant fund is one way that we can inform the 

issues and debates with high-quality 

research and foster increased dialogue 

across our school. The idea is to give promising 

lines of inquiry a sound starting point.” 



Teaching on the Job 

In a knowledge economy, organizations 

need executives who know how to develop 

and manage effective workplace learning 

programs. Indeed, workplace learning today 

dwarfs higher education, both in the number 

of students involved and the dollars allocated. 

Despite such demand, workplace programs 

are often uneven in quality. Small surprise, 

given that there is no program in the 

United States designed specifically to train 

corporate chief learning officers (CLOs). 

To address that need, Penn GSE and the 

Wharton School are joining forces on a 

degree program targeted specifically for 

CLOs. The Wharton Chief Learning Officer 

program is designed to round out the experience 

and knowledge of these executives and 

prepare them to better lead the full range of 

management development, talent management, 

and learning activities. 

Designed on the executive model, the 

Wharton CLO program has been structured 

with the working professional in mind. To earn 

an EdD, participants must complete five certificate 

programs, conduct research activities, 

and write a dissertation. The five certificate 

programs cover organizational leadership, 

technological leadership, business acumen, 

evidence-based decision-making, and learning 

strategies. Those not interested in the 

degree option may participate in individual 

pieces of the program, for instance, by attending 

one or more of the certificate programs. 

Students choosing that option will receive a 

Wharton certificate of completion. 

Debuting this fall, the program will be 

administered by Wharton, but the academic 

content will be jointly developed and controlled 

by faculty from both schools. 

According to Penn GSE Vice Dean for 

Graduate Admissions and Executive 

Education Doug Lynch, “this new program 

will enable GSE to develop standards and 

practices in an emerging field and to build 

connections with key organizational leaders 

interested in educational policy.” 

Vivian L. Gadsden, who was recently promoted 

to full professor status, has also 

been named the William T. Carter Professor 

of Child Development. In announcing the 

appointment, Penn GSE Dean Susan 

Fuhrman, said, “Previous Carter Professors 

like Lila Gleitman 

and Mort Botel certainly 

lived up to 

that mission of 

helping children, 

and now Vivian carries 

on that tradition 

with her tireless 

and dedicated 

work at Penn GSE.” 

Vivian Gadsen 

Since 1994 Gadsen 

has been the director 

of the National Center on Fathers and 

Families, a policy research center with a 

focus on child development, and her scholarly 

work has centered around family 

engagement, learning, and literacy. 

Kudos . . . 

Associate Professor Laura Perna was 

recently elected member-at-large of the 

Board of the Association for the Study of 

Higher Education.... Harris Sokoloff, director 

of GSE’s Center for School Study Councils, 

Susan Yoon 

was invited to serve on the Training 

America’s Teachers Commission, established 

by Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell to study teacher preparation 

programs.... Assistant Professor Susan Yoon has been awarded a 

Minority Junior Faculty Award by the Christian R. & Mary F. Lindback 

Foundation in support of her project, “Head Start to High School 

Science in West Philadelphia Schools.”... Penn GSE doctoral student 

Nana Ackatia Armah is the first recipient of the LeBoy-Davies 

Fellowship in Women’s Studies, for graduate student research that 

fosters women’s health, well-being, and educational equality around 

the world. Armah’s work is in Ghana.... Leah Gordon, a candidate for a 

joint degree in Education and History, has received a 2006 Spencer 


Dissertation Fellowship for Research Related to Education.... The 

Knowles Science Teaching Foundation has selected Danny Hahn and 

Alex Joujan, both students in the Secondary Education program, for 

its Mathematics Teaching Fellowships, which provide funding, mentoring, 

and other support for beginning high school teachers.... Joi Lewis, 

a student in the Executive Doctorate in Higher Education Management 

program, has received a Leadership Fellowship from the Bush 

Foundation in support of her work at the Spencer Foundation and of 

her dissertation research in South Africa.... Stacy Olitsky is the 2006 

recipient of the National Association for Research in Science 

Teaching’s Outstanding Dissertation award.... At this year’s NASP 

conference, Penn GSE doctoral student Heather Rouse accepted the 

School Psychology Review’s Article of the Year Award for “Early 

Childhood Experiences and Kindergarten Success: A Population-based 

Study of a Large Urban Setting.” Rouse co-authored the article with 

Penn GSE Professors John Fantuzzo and Paul McDermott, doctoral 

student Yumiko Sekino, and School District of Philadelphia staff 

Stephanie Childs Gr’91 and Andrea Weiss. 


Penn GSE in Sri Lanka 

In February, a delegation of six from Penn traveled to Sri Lanka on a 

fact-finding trip to explore ways in which the University might contribute 

to social and educational infrastructure rebuilding after the tsunami. 

Representing Penn GSE were Assistant Dean Tom Kecskemethy, 

Associate Professor Kathy Schultz, and Harris Sokoloff, director of the 

Center for School Study Councils. The School of Design contingent 

included Tom Daniels, acting chair of the Department of City and 

Regional Planning, and Harris Steinberg, executive director of Penn 

PRAXIS, the School’s clinical practice. Arancha Garcia del Soto represented 

the Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethno-political Conflict. 

Traveling under a grant from the U.S. State Department, the Penn GSE 

team met with the Minister and Secretary of Education, university vice 

chancellors, regional government education officials, university education 

faculty, representatives from teachers’ colleges and local school principals, 

teachers, and NGO workers with interests in education. 

“The result for us in GSE,” explains Kecskemethy, “is that we now 

have a good sense of the system of education in Sri Lanka and its 

needs at various levels. More important, we have a very strong sense 

of how, given our capacity and local needs, we might move forward 

with investments in Sri Lankan education.” 

According to Kecskemethy, Penn GSE is investigating several opportunities 

to become involved in teacher preparation programs and academic/research 

partnerships. Rather than focusing on national interventions, 

the School aims to engage in work at the local level: in schools 

with teachers and in institutions of higher education. “In the best case 

scenario,” says Kecskemethy, “we will find a way to leverage our work 

in localized programs to achieve a potentially national impact.” 

Possible projects include teacher preparation in the hard-hit coastal 

town of Matara; development of a mixed-use community facility, with 

classrooms, library space, and rental space; and investment in English 

language education through a collaboration with Peradeniya Teachers’ 

College in Kandy. 

TOM KECSKEMETHY 

TOM KECSKEMETHY 

LEFT: One year after 

the tsunami struck, 

piles of debris remain 

at Mirisa Maha 

Vidyahya, Southern 

District, near Matara. 

BELOW: Members of 

the Penn GSE team 

meet with Sri Lankan 

educators at the 

University of Ruhuna, 

in Matara, left to right: 

Assistant Dean Tom 

Kecskemethy; Vice 

Chancellor Prof. R. 

Senaratne; WeCare 

Founder Manil 

Anandan; Associate 

Professor Kathy 

Schultz; and Adjunct 

Professor Harris 

Sokoloff. 

Penn-Assisted High School Approved 

The Philadelphia School Reform 

Commission gave the official okay to the 

Penn-assisted International Studies High 

School at its January meeting. 

The Commission, which oversees the 

School District of Philadelphia, passed a 

resolution empowering District CEO Paul 

Vallas “to authorize the search for location 

and planning for the creation of a new 

International Studies High School in collaboration 

with the University of Pennsylvania and 

the Asia Society.” 

The proposed school will teach all subjects, 

but with an emphasis on integrating international 

perspectives throughout the curriculum 

and on teaching world languages and cultures. 

According to Nancy Streim, associate 

dean for Educational Practice at Penn GSE, 

“The new high school is designed to prepare 

students with knowledge and skills to lead in 

our increasingly diverse and global society.” 

To plan the curriculum, Penn GSE has been 

working with the Asia Society, which is serving 

as an intermediary for the Bill and Melinda 

Gates Foundation. Part of the Asia Society’s 

network of international studies schools, the 

new high school will provide a small, collegeprep 

program designed to prepare students 

for citizenship in a global society. 

Also part of the district’s effort to introduce 

small, themed high schools into the city’s system, 

the school is slated to enroll its first 

group of students by fall 2007. Located in West 

Philadelphia, it will serve approximately 400 

students. Admissions will be citywide, but with 

preference for West Philadelphia students. 


Overset Teaching page 6

LEFT TO RIGHT, AMY SIANO, CANDACE 

DICARLO, CANDACE DICARLO, AMY SIANO, 


Acting 

locally 

By Nancy Brokaw 


President Amy Gutmann’s vision to propel the University from 

excellence to eminence, the Penn Compact, identifies local 

engagement as one of Penn’s guiding principles. With its deep 

connections throughout Philadelphia’s educational community— 

from partnerships in neighborhood schools to research collaborations 

with the school district—Penn GSE sets a high standard for 

involvement with the local community. 

Community engagement, both local and global, is 

one of the pillars of the Penn Compact. The document 

that outlines President Amy Gutmann’s 

vision for the University’s future, the Compact speaks of 

the power of collaborative engagement to advance the central 

values of democracy, strengthen neighborhood ties and 

economic development, and provide opportunities for 

service and learning. The faculty, students, and staff of 

Penn GSE know the wisdom of President Gutmann’s 

vision firsthand: they put their knowledge and experience 

to work by reaching out to communities around the globe. 

It is no surprise, though, that some of the School’s closest 

collaborations are with its next-door neighbors. 

GSE has a decades-long history of preparing teacher 

education students for work in the classroom and a roster of 

distinguished alums who dedicated their careers to teaching 

in Philadelphia’s schools. In recent years, Penn GSE’s 

teacher education program has deepened its commitment to 

the city by requiring all students in the master’s program in 

teacher education to spend at least one semester studentteaching 

in the Philadelphia public schools. 

Take Alison Berenback. One of the cadre of Penn GSE 

student teachers placed into the Philadelphia schools in the 

2005-2006 academic year, Berenback is teaching and 

learning all at once. The recent Brown graduate is studentteaching 

in the science classroom of Richard Staniec, the 

Penn Alexander teacher who’s the driving force behind 

that School’s annual science fair. 

When she first arrived at Penn Alexander, Berenback, 

who hopes to teach middle school science when she graduates, 

devoted much of her time to observing Staniec in 

action and helping students with lab work. Toward the end 

of fall, she had the opportunity to teach her own class: an 

eighth-grade, general science class that started out with 

physics and is now studying earth science. 

In the late January and early February, though, she 

found herself caught up in the preparations for the Penn 

Alexander Science Fair. “In the weeks leading up to the 

fair,” she explains, “I was pitching in whenever students 

needed help on their projects—I was assisting in the computer 

lab, advising kids on how to formulate hypotheses, 

on the right direction for their research. Whatever the kids 

were working on, I was helping out.” 

Reflecting on her experiences in the classroom, 

Berenback says, “It’s a lot of work. I thought I would be a 

little more used to it because of my workload in college”— 

she was a double major in geology and biology—“but 

being on stage all day can be exhausting.” That said, she 

adds, “I love being at Penn Alexander. It’s a great atmosphere, 

and every single one of those kids is a great person.” 

Penn’s Most Important Urban Move 

One of the highlights of the Penn Alexander school 

year, the Science Fair supplements the School District’s 

science curriculum and inspires students to get more 

involved in actively learning about their world. According 

to Richard Staniec, the fair is designed to get kids applying 

scientific method to questions they find perplexing—like 

why pickles are smaller than cucumbers or what effect 

temperature has on the bounce of a tennis ball. 

“It gives kids the chance to apply what they’ve learned 

about scientific method and experimental design to projects 

of their own design,” explains Staniec. Kids develop 

their own projects, some of which may be inspired by 

District topics. Other students, though, take the opportunity 

to pursue projects that reflect their personal interests—like 

sixth-grader Keaton Naff, a tennis player curious 

about heat and the bounce of his tennis ball. 

The ultimate goal, explains Staniec, is to get kids excited 

about learning. “When the science fair first started, kids 

grumbled about it,” he adds, “but this year I didn’t hear 

much of that. When they’re working on their projects, 

some of them stay after school until five or six o’clock— 

flying airplanes, sinking boats. You can always tell when 

it’s Science Fair time.” 

Established in 2001, Penn Alexander is the result of a 

one-of-a-kind partnership that brought together three powerful 

players—the School District of Philadelphia, the 

Federation of Teachers, and, of course, Penn. Their purpose? 

To draw on the collective resources and expertise of 

Winter Spring 2006 2004 | Penn GSE | 9

MAUREEN HELWIG 

Jeanne Vissa visits the 

playground at the Henry C. 

Lea Elementary School, at 

47th and Locust Streets in 

West Philadelphia. Along 

with Penn GSE Associate 

Dean for Educational 

Practice Nancy Strain, Vissa 

oversees the Penn 

Partnership School 

initiative. 

the university, school district, and teachers to create an outstanding 

urban public school for a population of students 

that had not, up until then, been on the receiving end of the 

best that the American educational system has to offer. 

Since the Penn Alexander School opened its doors, local 

civic leaders and national education experts have watched 

as the university-supported elementary school transformed 

its West Philadelphia neighborhood. Most recently, the 

Philadelphia Daily News, describing Penn Alexander as 

“Penn’s most important urban move in decades,” observed 

that “the university has shown ... that effective investment 

in a public school can quickly build value in even the most 

distressed urban neighborhood.” 

Penn subsidizes the school with an operating contribution 

of $1,000 per student—an amount that helps to keep 

the student-teacher ratio low (17:1 for kindergarten and 

23:1 for grades 1-8). University involvement is more than 

merely institutional, though, and Penn people from across 

campus are making a personal investment in the school. 

Penn vet students teach about animal care, Penn music 

students give instrumental lessons, undergraduates from 

Riepe College House tutor in math and literacy, and Penn 

law students lead a social justice seminar. 

For Penn GSE, curriculum development has been an 

important part of its contribution to Penn Alexander. 

Associate Professor Larry Sipe and doctoral student Susan 

Lea, for example, teamed up with five second- and thirdgrade 

teachers to design an arts and literacy curriculum. 

The teachers, who received academic credit from GSE for 

their work, learned how to draw on Philadelphia’s rich store 

of public murals as well as art-themed picture books to 

pique their students’ interest in art. In the classroom, they 

saw their students were getting excited by the artwork they 

studied, particularly when they got the chance to take a 

class trip to see some murals firsthand. And they learned 

about more than art. “The children had some remarkably 

sophisticated things to say—about tone and mood and 

color,” says Sipe. “And the teachers saw what great writing 

and thinking their students could do, and they also saw 

payoffs in terms of critical thinking and analysis.” 

It’s that kind of collaboration that has helped Penn 

Alexander students accomplish so much. Of the 18 Penn 

Alexander Science Fair participants who went on to the 

citywide George Washington Carver Science Fair, 12 came 

out winners. Two PAS students—sixth-grader Farzana 

Rahman and seventh-grader Lixia Deng—took home first 

prizes for a study on filtering pollutants out of drinking 

water and the pickle experiment, respectively. All told, 

Penn Alexander students performed impressively, with 

winners in every grade, including two first-place, four second-place, 

one third-place, seven honorable mentions, and 

four special awards. 

And the larger picture of academic performance at PAS 

is equally impressive. In 2005, 68 percent of eighth-graders 

scored at or above grade level in reading and 73 percent at 

or above grade level in math on the state assessments—this 

after only three years at Penn Alexander. Perhaps the most 

eloquent statistic, though, points to the powerful difference 

Penn Alexander has made for its students’ future educational 

opportunity: 72 percent of the school’s first eighthgrade 

graduating class has been admitted to one of 

Philadelphia’s selective public or private high schools. 


In the Neighborhood 

Penn Alexander is only part of the extraordinary investment 

that the University—with GSE very much in the 

lead—is making in its West Philadelphia neighborhood. 

As Jeanne Vissa, a practice professor at Penn GSE, 

explains, “We always envisioned that Penn Alexander 

would be the anchor in a network of schools affiliated with 

Penn.” That network includes two neighborhood elementary 

schools, Henry C. Lea and Alexander Wilson, and it 

is ushering in steady improvement to student performance. 

Penn GSE’s involvement with those two schools came 

about under an agreement with the state-mandated 

Philadelphia School Reform Commission (SRC). One of 

the Commission’s first acts after taking over operation of 

the School District of Philadelphia in December 2001 was 

to assign the administration of 45 low-performing schools 

to outside managers. Unlike the for-profit concerns that 

were selected to run many of those schools, Penn GSE is 

not operating its schools. Rather, its primary role is to 

assist in the areas of professional and leadership development, 

curriculum development, student academic support, 

and assessment. “Our goal” says Nancy Streim, associate 

dean for educational practice and director of the Penn 

Partnership Schools Network, “is to build the capacity of 

the school staff to achieve and monitor academic success 

without the need for an outside manager.” 

As with Penn Alexander, the University’s contributions 

to the Partnership Schools extend across campus. 

According to Vissa, “GSE plays the role of a broker, bringing 

the resources of the University to improvement at 

these schools.” Those resources have come from, among 

others, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the Dental 

School, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the 

Annenberg Center, Kelly Writers House, and Penn 

Recreation. Student mentors from Riepe College House 

have stepped up to the plate as well by “adopting” Wilson: 

this year, freshmen fellows organized book drives to benefit 

Wilson’s understocked library—that, in addition to the 

three hours of one-on-one time they devote each week to 

Wilson students. 

But, again as with Penn Alexander, the heart of the 

work in Lea and Wilson lies with Penn GSE. Given their 

proximity, Penn GSE has had a relationship with these 

schools over the years, but the agreement with the SRC 

called for a much higher level of collaboration. GSE faculty 

work with the two principals in designing year-long professional 

development experiences that focus on improving 

student achievement and strengthening the schools’ learning 

climate. GSE doctoral students have proven an invaluable 

resource in supporting these efforts. Diane Santori 

and Jodi Duffy (from the Language and Literacy in 

Education division) along with James Poinsett 

(Foundations and Practices of Education) lead professional 

development seminars and work directly with teachers and 

students on actual classroom lessons. 

There are also special events where everybody works 

together. For example, this winter, both Lea and Wilson, 

with support from Penn GSE, held school-wide measurement 

festivals. The three-week festivals were designed to 

reinforce students’ skills in engaging and creative ways. For 

the students, an unexpected bonus was how much fun they 

had as they immersed themselves in the measurement activities 

developed by their teachers, in consultation with Vissa. 

“Since all of the work is driven by Pennsylvania content 

standards,” explains Vissa, “the Penn GSE staff researches 

extra books or activities to augment those provided in the 

school district’s curriculum. We provide a range of proactive 

and responsive interventions, including collaboration, 

coaching, and direct teaching. The aim has been to build 

each school’s capacity to reflect on progress and to structure 

continuous improvement on their own.” 

The work has more than paid off. When Penn GSE 

began working with Lea and Wilson, demonstrated student 

achievement on state tests was among the lowest in 

“I love being at Penn Alexander. It’s a great atmosphere, 

and every single one of those kids is a great person.” 

Philadelphia. At Lea only eight percent of students could 

read at grade level; at Wilson, the number was even lower, 

at six percent. Math scores were worse: three and four percent, 

respectively. After three years, those figures have 

soared. Wilson has seen an impressive fivefold increase in 

student achievement in reading (with 28 percent now reading 

at grade level) and more than sixfold in math (25 percent 

at grade level). Lea’s numbers are even stronger, with 

39 percent of students reading at grade level and 30 percent 

with similar math skills. In fact, with these showings, 

both Lea and Wilson can celebrate making Adequate 

Yearly Progress—a major achievement benchmark under 

the No Child Left Behind Act. 

Doing the Math 

Maria Palaitis Ottinger, a second-grade teacher at the 

Penn Alexander School, represents another kind of connection 

with Philadelphia’s public schools. A Penn 

Alexander teacher since 2003, she is currently a 

MetroMath Teacher Fellow at Penn GSE. 

Established as part of a three-university/four-school 


district partnership focused on helping urban students 

succeed in mathematics, MetroMath is led at Penn GSE 

by Associate Professor Janine Remillard. The MetroMath 

Center: The Center for Mathematics in America’s Cities, 

as it’s officially known, takes a three-pronged approach to 

its mission—with a vibrant research agenda, strong professional 

development offerings, and rigorous graduate 

program. 

At Penn GSE, the MetroMath research agenda focuses 

on math in the community. Remillard and colleagues from 

Mathematics, Cognitive Science, and Urban Studies have 

begun preliminary data collection on a project examining 

the connections between students’ everyday use of math 

and the math curriculum. Going to community-based 

organizations like the Enterprise Center (Wharton’s accelerator 

for minority entrepreneurship), the researchers hope 

to gain a better understanding of the relationship between 

what students can do contextually and the mathematics 

they can do in academic settings. Says Remillard, “Then 

we want to figure out how everyday math can inform how 

we teach math in the classroom.” 

For Maria Ottinger, it’s the linkages between what she’s 

learning in her MetroMath studies and what she’s teaching 

at Penn Alexander that make the program so rewarding. “I 

take what I’m learning to work everyday, and it’s like having 

a living lab, where I can see the things we’ve been discussing 

play out.” 

When she signed up for MetroMath, Ottinger—a onetime 

mathphobe—had already taken two on-site continuing 

education classes Penn GSE offers to PAS faculty. She 

found MetroMath’s MILE summer institute for professional 

development intellectually stimulating—“it caused 

me to rethink the way I teach problem-solving in the classroom”—and, 

in January 2006, began the even more rigorous 

µ-Seminar program. (µ, the Greek letter MU, stands 

for “math urban.”) A four-semester graduate-level seminar/practicum, 

that program introduces students to 

research as it relates to the everyday issues they face in 

their classrooms. 

Her class with Remillard, co-taught by Chris Massey, a 

researcher with the Institute for Research in Cognitive 

Science, looks at math learners and learning and addresses 

the learning theory as well as the psychological and social 

frameworks for math learning in urban settings. Ottinger’s 

first project for the class was a close observation of students 

as they worked on a lesson about symmetry. “Then we analyzed 

how kids learn this kind of concept,” she explains. 

“The curriculum we use at Penn Alexander,” she continues, 

“has a big hands-on component. And what we observed 

was that, while young kids know intuitively about symmetry, 

Exploring the Power of Shared Leadership 

With its deep local connections, Penn GSE is always looking for new ways to collaborate with its Philadelphia 

neighbors. In February 2006, the Penn Center for Educational Leadership received a major grant to launch 

another partnership with the school district—the Distributed Leadership Initiative. 

John DeFlaminis 

ike many districts, Philadelphia has 

“Lmade educational leadership a 

significant part of its improvement plans,” 

explains John DeFlaminis, executive director 

of the Penn Center for Educational 

Leadership (PCEL). 

And like many districts, it has been hampered 

by a high rate of turnover among 

school leaders. In a traditional model of 

leadership, such changes at the top disrupt 

entire organizations, making it difficult to 

maintain continuity and momentum for any 

beneficial practices or reforms. 

PCEL is working to help Philadelphia 

address this problem by providing an alternative 

model—one that explores the potential 

of shared leadership. Through a $4.9 million 

grant from the Annenberg Foundation, 

PCEL is launching the Distributed Leadership 

Initiative, a four-year project that will implement 

the idea that school leadership is a collaborative 

endeavor. 

As DeFlaminis explains, “Distributed leadership 

is an effort to create more leaders in 

complex urban schools to improve instruction 

and advance student achievement.” 

This initiative will build distributed leadership 

teams in 16 Philadelphia public 


“I take what I’m learning to work 

everyday, and it’s like having a living 

lab, where I can see the things we’ve 

been discussing play out.” 

the experience of making things is a powerful one for them 

and helps them understand the underlying concept.” 

According to Remillard, the professional development 

component of MetroMath seeks out practitioners interested 

in taking the next leadership step in their district. “And 

by that we don’t necessarily mean the next career move,” 

she says. “One of our Teacher Fellows is already a principal; 

she is leading the way in improving math teaching in 

her school.” 

A dedicated teacher, Ottinger admits to a growing interest 

in curriculum development. “As a graduate student,” she 

explains, “I had the eye-opening experience of having to 

relearn math—something I had never understood. It made 

me wonder, ‘Can we make this more accessible for kids?’ 

“What I really like about the curriculum we use,” she 

continues, “is that it puts kids in the position of being 

mathematicians. They’re solving problems and inventing 

Maria Palaitis Ottinger in her second-grade class. A full-time teacher at Penn 

Alexander, Ottinger is also studying for her graduate degree through Penn GSE’s 

MetroMath program. 


schools as models to show how instructional 

leadership is the shared work of 

everyone in a school. Instead of relying on 

a single administrator to be a director, an 

organizer, and a decision-maker, this 

structure recognizes that teachers can 

bring their expertise and leadership skills 

to bear on the issues faced by schools. 

To translate that theory into practice, 

the project plans to train more than 80 

teachers in the 16 partner schools to be 

instructional leaders who will work collectively 

with their principals. These distributed 

leadership teams will establish building-level 

learning communities that pool 

resources to identify and employ best 

practices in instruction, foster analysis 

of student data, and encourage further 

professional development. 

PCEL will select teachers to serve on the 

teams based on their exhibited leadership 

abilities, supply a stipend for all participants, 

and provide coaching and mentoring 

to help schools institute the changes in 

their leadership structure. Participants will 

also receive graduate continuing education 

and Act 48 credit for their training from the 

University of Pennsylvania. 

In partnership with Temple and Lehigh 

Universities, as well as the University of 

Pennsylvania and community organizations, 

PCEL also plans to create a regional leadership 

development center that will support 

distributed leadership schools and aid 

in disseminating effective practices. Once 

successful teams are established in model 

schools, those teachers and administrators 

can be a resource for sustaining current 

distributed leadership efforts and replicating 

the structure in other sites. 

With the frequency of changes in educational 

programs and personnel in today’s 

schools, maintaining effective leadership is 

a significant concern. By re-envisioning the 

role of school leadership in the overburdened 

and complex urban schools of 

Philadelphia, the Distributed Leadership 

Initiative aspires to prepare a new generation 

of leaders with the skills and strategies 

necessary to sustain high-performing 

standards-based schools. 

—Wayne Kobylinski 


A Kids-Eye View of the World 

Penn GSE’s local partnerships aren’t limited to the hands-on work of teaching. Rather, much of the School’s work 

focuses on the kind of academic study that you’d expect from a major research university like Penn. 

TREVOR DIXON 

John Fantuzzo 

One such partnership—created by faculty from 

GSE, the School of Social Policy and Practice 

(SP 2 ), and the School of Medicine working with the 

City of Philadelphia—has yielded a powerful new 

research tool called the Kids Integrated Data System 

(KIDS). The brainchild of Penn GSE Professor John 

Fantuzzo, SP 2 ’s Dennis Culhane, and Center for 

Mental Health Policy Director Trevor Hadley, KIDS is 

an archive that links the records of individual children 

maintained by separate municipal agencies. KIDS 

serves as a kind of uber database: instead of keeping 

information isolated in separate silos maintained by 

individual departments of different agencies, 

KIDS has the power to integrate information 

into one large-picture view. 

“What this project has done is to create a 

single mechanism,” explains Culhane, who as 

director of Penn’s Cartographic Modeling Lab 

provided the technical expertise behind KIDS. 

That single mechanism gives researchers 

and city officials a richly detailed picture of a 

particular cohort of children through their 

interactions with official Philadelphia. “In 

working with the City of Philadelphia to look 

at the data they have from the school district, 

the child welfare agency, the homelessness 

agency, and the public health programs,” he 

continues, “we can see if there are particular 

kids who are vulnerable and who are in multiple systems 

and being served by three or four case managers. 

And we can then look for ways to improve services for 

those kids.” 

To date, KIDS has enabled Fantuzzo’s team to look 

deeply into the effect of early childhood experiences 

on school success and to examine the impact of foster 

care on school adjustment, while researchers at SP 2 

have been studying which combination of city services 

provides the best educational benefit for special needs 

children. KIDS is playing a key role as well in another 

major GSE effort, a $5.8 million federal project to 

develop an integrated curriculum for Head Start 

preschoolers. This project, according to Dean 

Fuhrman, “builds on GSE’s considerable theoretical 

work in understanding the development of young children 

and how their cognitive skills get developed along 

with the affective and social skills.” 

Designed to address the academic challenges 

faced by disadvantaged children, the Evidence-Based 

Program for the Integration of Curricula (EPIC) will 

bring together literacy, numeracy, and both school 

and social readiness skills into one unified curriculum. 

EPIC’s design has been based on empirical 

research in early literacy and language, early numeracy, 

and social/emotional adjustment. At work since 

spring 2004, the GSE team, led by Fantuzzo, has completed 

the first two phases of the experimental study 

and will be ready to roll out the fully integrated curriculum 

in six Head Start classrooms next year, with 

some classes assigned as a control. To ascertain the 

longer-term impact of the curriculum, the final two 

years of the project will follow the progress of the 

young participants from pre-kindergarten into 

kindergarten. 

Throughout the complex evaluation process, access 

to KIDS is enabling researchers not only to study the 

impact of the curriculum on individual children, tracking 

their progress through the system, but also to control 

for what happens outside the classroom—in the 

family and around the neighborhood. The database 

gives researchers a kid’s-eye view of the world, 

revealing such influences as parental characteristics 

(ages, education level) and environmental factors (the 

level of gang activity in the neighborhood, crime and 

drop-out rates, etc.). This information should demonstrate 

the impact of environment on the effectiveness 

of the curriculum. 

It is that kind of detailed analysis that will reveal just 

how well EPIC plays out in the real world of 

Philadelphia classrooms. If it succeeds, preschoolers 

enrolled in Head Start and comprehensive day care 

programs throughout the city will reap the benefits of 

a program designed to address all their developmental 

needs—academic, social, and behavioral. 

—Nancy Brokaw 


strategies for doing computations. And I would like to 

spend more time thinking deeply about curriculum and 

how it can help students to think like mathematicians.” 

Teach for America 

As a first-time teacher, Wilson Boyd pulled an assignment 

in one of Philadelphia’s most troubled high schools: 

Olney West, a place so marked by violence and academic 

failure that this fall the district hired an ex-Marine to 

restore order in the beleaguered school. The challenges 

confronting Boyd—kids with reading skills that lag far 

behind their grade level, kids with disengaged parents, kids 

who’ve given up on school—are typical for urban schools 

like Olney East. Boyd, on the other hand, is something of 

an anomaly. 

A Teach For America (TFA) corps member not long 

out of college, Boyd is also a master’s student at Penn GSE. 

During the day in his 10th- and 11th-grade English classes, 

he works hard to improve his students’ reading skills: 

“I’ll have made my measure of success,” he says, “if I’ve 

moved the student averages up two grade levels.” 

“In the near term, I’ll be a classroom 

teacher, but eventually I’d like to dig 

deeper into the larger field.... I’m 

hoping to use my connections at Penn 

GSE to learn about new models of 

schooling.” 

But one night every week, Boyd joins 115 fellow TFA 

corps members for an inquiry seminar offered as part of a 

new Penn GSE master’s degree program. The latest addition 

to the School’s work in the Philadelphia school district, 

the program is the product of an unconventional 

partnership designed to bring high-quality professional 

development to a group of young teachers brand-new to 

the classroom. In summer 2005, Penn GSE entered into an 

exclusive contract to provide in-service learning to qualified 

members of Teach for America serving in the School 

District of Philadelphia. 

“Now everybody who works for TFA in Philadelphia 

comes to Penn,” says Dina Portnoy CW’69 Grd’98 

GEd’01, director of the Penn GSE/Teach for America 

Program. (The only exceptions are special ed students, 

who take courses conducted by Chestnut Hill College but 

HARVEY FINKLE 

held at GSE on the same schedule.) The program offers 

two tracks: certification only, which is required of all TFA 

corps members, and the MSEd degree. According to 

Portnoy, more than three quarters of this year’s TFA 

teachers in Philadelphia chose to pursue the master’s. 

Based on the executive-education model, the Penn 

GSE/TFA program gives people like Wilson Boyd the 

opportunity to hone their teaching skills while working full 

time in the classroom. The curriculum includes two summer 

sessions, the weekly seminars, and monthly weekend 

methods courses that address pedagogical skills such as 

curriculum design, assessment, literacy, and technology. 

Founded in 1989, Teach For America is a national corps 

of recent college graduates who commit two years to teach 

in low-income urban and rural public schools. But like 

Penn GSE itself, TFA aims to do more than prepare firstrate 

teachers. Both organizations are dedicated as well to 

producing education leaders for the national stage, people 

with the passion and knowledge to be lifelong activists for 

educational equity. 

Wilson Boyd exemplifies both those objectives: “In the 

near term,” he explains, “I’ll be a classroom teacher, but 

eventually I’d like to dig deeper into the larger field— 

whether from an ed school perspective or even a business 

school perspective, I’m not sure. Schools are filled with wellmeaning 

people who care about kids, but the educational 

bureaucracy is a mess. And as I become more and more efficient 

in the classroom, I’m hoping to use my connections at 

Penn GSE to learn about new models of schooling.” ■ 

Wilson Boyd, in his first 

year as a Teacher For 

America corps member, is 

working toward his MSEd 

through the Penn GSE/TFA 

graduate program. 


when 

nurture 

calls 

PLN has logged 25 years worth of experience in 

nurturing educators with workshops and mentoring 

programs. No surprise, then, that when two Penn GSE 

alumnae met up with PLN Director Bonnie Botel- 

Sheppard, they too heard the call of nurture. 

By Leslie Palmieri 

“ 

Nurturing must be experienced, it seldom can be 

taught.” says Dr. Bonnie Botel-Sheppard, director of 

the Penn Literacy Network (PLN). “So we nurture our participants, 

we teach them, we feed them, we listen to them.” 

Every summer, for more than 20 years, approximately 

70 literacy specialists have been gathering for one week to 

meet or to reconnect with fellow members of the PLN 

family of learners. The Summer Leadership Workshop 

(SLW), conducted by PLN, is an opportunity for educators 

to be nurtured—and to learn how to nurture their own 

colleagues and students. “The week of SLW is the center 

of our work,” says Botel-Sheppard, “and the heart of 

everything at PLN.” 

Founded in 1981 by Mort Botel, a Penn GSE professor 

emeritus, PLN offers credit-bearing, graduate-level, continuing 

education courses, workshops, and mentoring programs 

which are taught on-site for teachers and administrators 

throughout the United States and Ireland. While 

the aims of PLN have shifted over the years, the core of its 

programs still centers on introducing educators to handson, 

research-based approaches, along with the training and 

support of PLN facilitators and mentors. 

PLN’s over-arching mission is to empower teachers by 

opening lines of communication and creating inquirybased, 

collegial environments. Teaching can be a solitary 

occupation, and to redress the sense of isolation many 

teachers feel, PLN encourages participants in its programs 

to interact with colleagues in a common language around 

research-based frameworks in reading/writing and math 

literacy. Those who have completed PLN training can go 

on to become facilitators of learning or instructors. Some 

may even become mentors, returning to the classroom and 

training others at the grass-roots level. 

Towards that end, the annual Summer Leadership 

Workshop prepares participants to facilitate, with support 

from PLN staff, in a credit-bearing PLN course, workshop, 

or mentoring program. A yearly retreat for potential faculty, 

SLW encompasses both educational and professional development. 

Participants first learn “the big concepts” and then 

focus on how to put them into practice. They apply these 

concepts in a mock setting, then step away, and discuss what 

happened and what they learned from the experience. 

Throughout the Leadership Workshop, the guiding 

question is “How do students learn best?” With so much 

public school curricula dominated by testing, PLN 

encourages participants to think about one of their own 

students and consider how that particular child really 

learns. According to Botel-Sheppard, educators have good 

instincts: “Who can imagine what a student’s learning 

looks like? The teacher is most able to do that.” 

The Summer Leadership Workshop serves as a touchstone 

for educators to reconnect to their discipline, its 

principles, and to one another. Says Botel-Sheppard, “I 

learn something every year. We have some participants 

who have been attending for more than 20 years and there 

is always something new to learn. 

PLN Goes West 

This summer, two Penn GSE alumnae heard the call 

to nurture. After meeting Bonnie Botel-Sheppard at 

regional alumni events last year and hearing about the 

Penn Literacy Network, Ellie Kress Pacin CW’63 GEd’67 

and Carolyn May Frank GEd’72 decided to return to the 

classroom as students and attend the Summer Leadership 

Workshop in early July 2005. 

For Carolyn Frank, it was a long road back to teaching. 

After graduating from Beaver College (now Arcadia 

University), she worked as a Title I reading specialist 

before entering Penn GSE’s master’s program in reading. 

There, she was shocked to discover that her professor, 

Mort Botel, was the Botel of the Botel Reading Series— 

which she had learned about as an undergraduate and used 

as a teacher. Botel, the professor, had a powerful influence 

on Frank’s graduate studies and on her expectations for 

herself and her students. 

After graduating from Penn GSE in the mid-1970s, 


Frank entered the Peace Corps and was assigned to a 

teacher training program in Malaysia designed to help prepare 

native Malay children for primary education. Frank 

and her fellow Peace Corps volunteers developed training 

materials and teacher-training courses. 

To bring their ideas to the people, the Peace Corps 

trained Malay women, who had themselves dropped out of 

school, to develop preK programs in their villages. While 

Frank is still proud of the program, calling it an example of 

how best “to teach to the child” as well as “to the teacher,” 

it was her last teaching experience until she returned to the 

classroom three years ago. Currently a part-time kindergarten 

teacher, she is about to take on gifted third-, fourth-, 

and fifth-grade students. 

In June 2004, she received an invitation to a Penn GSE 

alumni dinner in Phoenix and saw Bonnie Botel- 

Sheppard’s name. Her interest was piqued. Frank, who has 

spent most of the last 25 years working as a financial consultant, 

attended the event, largely out of curiosity, but 

found herself re-inspired by the Botel charm. Since then, 

she’s been instrumental in helping PLN find new audiences 

in Arizona school districts. But her role has grown 

beyond networking for PLN. Frank attended SLW this 

summer with the hope of becoming a classroom mentor for 

PLN in Arizona. 

Student Services at the Greater Miami Hebrew Academy, 

an agency of CAJE. 

Like Frank, Pacin got her first introduction to PLN during 

a Penn GSE alumni visit to her home state. In August 

2004, Bonnie Botel-Sheppard traveled to Miami to introduce 

area alumni to PLN’s program and its outreach efforts. 

PLN in the Sunshine State 

A Philadelphia native, Ellie Pacin attended Penn as an 

undergraduate in the College of Women, studying English 

and art history. She liked Penn so much that, on graduation, 

she decided to stay on and enrolled in Penn GSE’s 

master’s program in school nursing. After graduating, she 

returned to her high school alma mater, Northeast High 

School—a plum assignment for Pacin and the kind of positive 

experience that often eludes newly minted graduates 

of schools like Penn GSE. 

When her husband was transferred to Florida, Pacin 

decided it was time to return to school. She enrolled in the 

graduate program at the University of Miami, where she 

received a dual-degree Ph.D. in Reading and Learning 

Disabilities. In the mid-1980s, she co-wrote the college 

text Passports to College Success. A few years later, in 1989, 

she became co-director/owner of Educated Options, 

which provided literacy assistance and test preparation for 

students. Her current full-time practice is Educational 

Assessments and Strategies Unlimited, Inc. 

In addition to her own practice, Pacin is currently working 

with the Central Agency for Jewish Education (CAJE) 

in Miami in the hopes of collaborating with them on a literacy 

program. Pacin is no stranger to CAJE, which supports 

Jewish continuity and renewal through formal and 

informal Jewish education; she served as director of Special 

Again, like Frank, Pacin found what Botel-Sheppard had 

to say inspiring. After making the PLN connection, Pacin 

has become interested in expanding literacy work in her community. 

She too attended the Summer Leadership Workshop 

and received training as a literacy mentor. Exactly one year 

after Botel-Sheppard introduced Pacin to PLN, the pair 

teamed up with two PLN staffers to introduce the Penn 

Literacy Network to Pacin’s contacts at the Central Agency 

for Jewish Education. They're hoping to launch a long-term 

partnership with CAJE—and launch a new literacy program 

to nurture the next generation of teachers. ■ 

© JIM FRAZIER/IMAGES.COM 


As three long-time GSE 

veterans step down, Penn 

GSE News pays tribute to 

their exceptional service to 

the School. 

Marvin Lazerson began his academic career in 

1972 as a professor at the University of British 

Columbia. From there, he spent three years at 

the Harvard Graduate School of Education before signing 

on as the dean at Penn GSE in 1987. He held that position 

for six years, then served the University for one year as 

interim provost. 

Lazerson’s time as an administrator brought some 

remarkable accomplishments. He arrived at Penn GSE 

when it was on shaky footing—the School was in the red 

when he took over the reins. By the time he stepped down as 

dean, GSE was not only in the black, but a model among 

Penn’s schools for financial and academic management. 

Before Lazerson showed up, fundraising and indeed the 

whole notion of diversification of revenues were largely 

unknown at GSE. Again, he changed that situation, establishing 

a development operation for the School and recruiting 

GSE’s first Board of Overseers. As a result of those 

efforts, the School was able to add to the number of its 

endowed chairs, including the Constance Clayton Chair in 

Urban Education. Two years into his tenure, the deanship 

itself was endowed and Lazerson became the first Diane and 

George Weiss Professor of Education at Penn GSE. 

Hail andFarewell 


This year, Penn GSE says farewell to two other 

faculty members who, between them, represent 

more than 60 years of service at the School: 

Jim Larkin and Norm Newberg. 

As anyone familiar with Lazerson’s devotion to scholarship 

might expect, his concerns as dean extended well 

beyond the administrative. He addressed the 

issue of minority and gender equity in the faculty 

and attended particularly to high-quality 

junior faculty hires and promotions. 

Moreover, he created the administrative context 

and academic standards that have enabled 

Penn GSE to become the premier research ed 

school that it is today. 

In 1993, during a tumultuous time in Penn’s 

history, Lazerson took on the challenging role of 

interim provost. At the end of his one-year 

term, the University’s Board of Trustees voiced 

its collective appreciation of his service to Penn, 

citing his “warmth, style, and candor” as key to 

his success in helping restore an atmosphere of community 

on what had been a fragmented campus. 

His many achievements notwithstanding, in 1994, 

Lazerson decided to leave the administrative realm and 

settle back into the life of the scholar. Since then, he has 

served as a professor at Penn GSE, where his 

scholarship, teaching, and attention to student 

and faculty mentoring have been second to 

none. An educational historian and expert in 

higher education management, Lazerson has 

written numerous books, not to mention a host 

of articles in publications ranging from 

Educational Researcher to The Chronicle of 

Higher Education and EdWeek, from the History 

of Education Quarterly to the Civil Rights Digest, 

from Daedalus to Urban Education. In 2001, he 

was instrumental in the establishment of Penn 

GSE’s Executive Doctorate Program in Higher 

Education Management, an executive-format 

program for senior-level higher education professionals. 

In a tribute to Lazerson, Penn GSE Dean Susan 

Fuhrman said, “With Marvin, it’s all about perspective: he 

has the ability to blend his scholarship on higher education 

and K-12 schooling into a comprehensive social critique. 

He has the ability to bring his knowledge of education history 

into topical discussions of policy in the most pragmatic 

and helpful ways. He has the imagination to write a book 

on vocationalism in U.S. education with prescriptions that 

account for open-market capitalism and social justice in 

the same breath.” ■ 

Jim Larkin joined the Penn GSE 

faculty in 1971 to work in the School’s 

teacher education program. Larkin 

brought his experience teaching middle 

school and high school students to 

his work in preparing others for the 

classroom. His firsthand 

knowledge of the classroom 

proved invaluable at GSE, 

where he served as director 

of Teacher Education for 22 

years and as director of the 

Independent School Masters 

Program for 10 years. 

Dean Fuhrman said, 

“Between his deep experience 

in running one of the 

School’s most important 

Jim Larkin 

programs for years and his 

personal acquaintance with 

almost every educator in the city and 

surrounding area, Jim has acquired a 

wealth of knowledge. He’s been an 

important resource for anyone with 

questions about what’s happening in 

education.” 

In addition to his work in 

the teacher education program, 

Larkin focused his 

attention on teacher education 

programs in the United 

States and participation in a 

variety of school 

reform/restructuring efforts 

in Philadelphia and New 

Jersey. He is especially concerned 

with academic learning 

within schools and 

Norm Newberg 

issues of equality and 

minority access to teaching 

in urban education systems. 

Early in his career, Larkin did a stint 

with the Job Corps as a teacher/ 

supervisor in Edison, New Jersey, 

before matriculating at the University 

of Maryland for a doctoral program in 

Social Science Education. In the summers 

of 1965 and 1966, he participated 

in the American History Institute at 

Princeton University. 

Norm Newberg began his career 

teaching English in urban public 

schools, followed by a two-year stint 

teaching English literature and composition 

at Rutgers University, 

Camden. In 1967, he returned to the 

K-12 world, joining the School District 

of Philadelphia’s Office of Curriculum 

and Instruction as the director of the 

Affective Education program. With a 

focus on the role of students’ emotions 

and attitudes in their mastery of academic 

subjects, that program trained 

teachers and principals, produced curricula, 

and spawned several alternative 

schools. 

A faculty member at Penn GSE 

since 1980, Newberg has served as 

executive director of the Say Yes To 

Education Foundation since 1987. A 

last-dollar scholarship for minority 

students from low-income families, 

Say Yes was the brainchild of George 

Weiss and his wife, Diane, who promised 

112 underprivileged sixthgraders 

from Belmont Elementary 

School, in one of Philadelphia’s 

toughest neighborhoods, that if they 

could make it through high school, he 

would pay for college. 

In 2005, Newberg published his 

account of what happened to 12 of the 

original Say Yes students in The Gift of 

Education: How a Tuition Guarantee 

Program Changed the Lives of Inner- 

City Youth. Newberg has received high 

praise for the book, with the TC 

Record reviewer observing that his 

sobering book “should be required 

reading for every citizen.” 

Reflecting on Newberg’s retirement, 

Dean Fuhrman remarked recently, “It 

is difficult to thank Norm enough for 

his service to GSE and to the wider 

education community in Philadelphia. 

His work with Say Yes to Education has 

been an extraordinary undertaking 

and his stewardship of the Weiss’s 

commitment to local youth has been 

inspiring.” 


A L U M N I N O T E S 

1940s 

Joe Rhile GEd’41 received the Outstanding 

Service Award from the American Accounting 

Association on August 9, 2005, at its annual 

meeting in San Francisco. In 1980, Joe started 

The Two-Year College Accounting Faculty 

Directory, a comprehensive gathering of data 

from more than 1,700 community, junior, and 

technical colleges in the United States and 

Canada. Professors supply name, certificates, 

school from which the highest degree was 

received, and subjects taught. 

1970s 

Ronald D. Klein C’69 GEd’70 recently edited 

Silverfish New Writing Anthology Edition 5, a 

collection of English-language short stories by 

Malaysian writers. He is a professor of English 

at Hiroshima Jogakuin University, where he has 

been teaching for 16 years. 

Irving Pressley McPhail GrEd’76 has co-edited 

Teaching African American Learners to Read: 

Perspectives and Practices with Bill Hammond 

and the late Dr. Mary Eleanor Rhodes Hoover, a 

former Penn GSE professor. Published by the 

International Reading Association, this collection 

of original, adapted, and previously published 

articles provides examples of research-based best 

practices and programs that successfully teach 

African-American learners to read. The articles 

emphasize the significance of culture in the 

acquisition of literacy skills. 

1980s 

Leslie Day Meeder C’80 GEd’80 has moved 

to Muncy, Pennsylvania, with her husband, 

Matthew, and four children (Jesse, Benjamin, 

Bethany, and Jordan). Matt is pastor of 

Evangelical Free Fellowship Church there. 

Leslie teaches Spanish full-time at Lycoming 

College in Williamsport, after homeschooling 

and teaching part-time for many years. The 

family moved from Long Island, where Matt 

had served as pastor and Leslie developed a program 

of cooperative classes for homeschooling 

families. She has contributed chapters to several 

books on homeschooling. 

Robert Schiller GEd’84 GrEd’84 has been 

appointed director of consulting for the educational 

services division of Maximus, a provider 

of government services based in Reston, 

Virginia. He is a former Illinois state superintendent 

of education and Michigan state superintendent 

of public instruction. 

James M. Ellis GrEd’89 is retired but volunteering 

in the curatorial department at the 

Brandywine River Museum, assisting the cataloguing, 

cleaning, and restoration of N.C. 

Wyeth artifacts. 

1990s 

David A. Weiman GEd’91 writes, “I am in 

private practice as a management psychologist 

in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, and the name of 

the firm is Weiman Consulting. I do pre-hire 

and pre-promotion assessments and work with 

senior executives on professional development. 

I published a book this year, The Stress 

Solution (Executive Essentials Press), a guide 

to reducing stress for executives and professionals. 

I was also a guest this year on WTXF 

Philadelphia FOX 29’s morning news program 

about work-related stress. My website is 

www.weimanconsulting.com.” 

Sharyn Cohen-Colon C’91 GEd’92 and 

Michael Colon C’91 W’91 belatedly announce 

the birth of their third son, Brett Evan Colon, 

who celebrated his first birthday on January 4. 

He joins older brothers, Matthew Jared Colon (6) 

and Ryan Scott Colon (4), at home in Chatham, 

New Jersey. Michael is chief operating officer for 

Deutsche Asset Management Americas & 

Scudder Investments, and Sharyn continues to 

enjoy her time at home with the boys. They can 

be reached at sharyncolon@optonline.net. 

Carladenise Armbrister Edwards C’92 

GEd’93 recently started her own consulting 

firm called the BAE Company, L.C. The firm 

has been contracted by The Children’s Trust to 

write a strategic business plan for implementing 

a comprehensive school health program in 

Miami-Dade County. This is an innovative program 

based on national best practices and standards 

for school health. 

Amy Van Ham Hayes C’92 GEd’93 and her 

husband, John Hayes, are happy to announce 

the birth of their third child, Caroline Alexis 

Tia, on July 1, 2005. She joins brothers Everett 

(5) and Aidan (3). All are doing well and live 

just outside of Rochester, New York. 

Erica Klein Erignac C’92 GEd’95 writes that 

she and her husband, Dr. Charles Erignac 

GEng’98 Gr’01, “and big brother, William, are 

very happy to announce the arrival of the latest 

addition to the family: Clio Catherine Isabelle 

Erignac, on August 13, 2005. We are still living 

in Seattle, where Charles is a computer researcher 

for Boeing and Erica is a full-time mom.” 

Zac Hunter C’94 GEd’97 writes, “I just wanted 

to share that Christmas came early to my wife, 

Tara, and me when Arianne Elise was born on 

December 2. She was almost a whole month 

premature, weighing only five pounds, five 

ounces, but she is growing quickly (almost 

seven pounds now) and everyone is doing well.” 

Jennifer Wong GEd’98 reports that the 2005 

PSSA test results showed that 70 percent of her 

students were proficient or advanced in reading 

and more than 60 percent scored the same in 

mathematics—that in a school where more than 

90 percent of the students qualify for school 

lunch. Jen, a 2004 recipient of a Milken 

National Educator Award, also tells us that her 

students achieved those results without receiving 

any test prep drill. 

2000s 

Deborah A. Wilson GEd’01 became vice president 

of academic services, Germanna 

Community College in Fredericksburg/Locust 

Grove, Virginia, on July 1, 2005. 

Leigh M. Gardner C’00 GEd’02 is thrilled to 


announce her engagement to Thomas E. Tolley, 

an archaeologist. “Our first date was in the middle 

of a snowstorm in January, and the proposal 

occurred on October 28. We are planning a wedding 

for March 24, 2007, with a honeymoon in 

Ireland. I have been teaching in the Philadelphia 

suburbs for the past four years and was named 

to Who’s Who among America’s Teachers twice. 

Tom and I are both thinking about pursuing 

doctoral degrees, possibly at Penn. We can be 

contacted at dgardner@stwing.upenn.edu.” 

Shira Alpert Hammerman C’01 GEd’02 and 

Barry Hammerman W’01 are thrilled to 

announce the birth of their daughter, Ariel 

Tehila Hammerman, on October 10. She 

weighed seven pounds and measured 19.5 inches 

at birth. They happily live in New York and 

would love to hear from all their Penn friends at 

shirahammerman@hotmail.com. 

Fellow. She is completing her fellowship with 

President M. Lee Pelton of Willamette 

University. 

Vincent M. Maniaci GrEd’03 was recently 

named president of the American International 

College in Springfield, Massachusetts. He left a 

vice presidency at Bellarmine University in 

Louisville, Kentucky for the top job at AIC. His 

article, “A Taxonomy Based on Revenue 

Dependency for Private Master’s Universities,” 

appeared in the November 2005 issue of the 

International Journal of Educational 

Advancement. 

Jane Rosenthal GEd’03 GEd’04 is currently 

a faculty member at New York University 

College of Dentistry and Nursing, where she 

does student counseling and advisement and 

teaches classes on memory and learning topics. 

Larry Schall GrEd’03, president of 

Oglethorpe University, penned an op-ed piece 

entitled “Happily Exhausted” for the January 

13, 2006, issue of The Chronicle of Higher 

Education. 

Mary Yee GCP’90 GEd’03 GEd’05 works 

as the director of the Office of Family engagement 

and Language Equity Services in the 

School District of Philadelphia. Her responsibilities 

include district-wide parent involvement 

initiatives and translation and interpretation 

services for non-instructional matters. 

Mark Campbell GrEd’04 recently started his 

own company, Campbell & Campbell 

Campaigns, Inc. Before beginning this endeavor, 

Mark served as Senior Vice President for 

Strategic, International and Governmental 

Affairs and Executive Associate Dean of the 

Julie Filizetti GrEd’03, Associate Provost for 

Academic Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate 

School, has been selected as a 2005-2006 ACE 

Executive Doctorate 

Exec Doc Grads Come Home to Penn GSE 

On January 19-21, 2006, students and alumni from Penn GSE’s 

Executive Doctorate Program gathered on campus for an 

event filled with engaging experiences and valuable professional 

development—not to mention a warm homecoming. 

Designed around this year’s theme of “Leadership and Civic 

Engagement,” the weekend kicked off with a reception at the 

Sweeten Alumni House. In her welcoming remarks, Dean Susan 

Fuhrman spoke about the Exec Doc program’s contributions to 

the Penn GSE community. 

The next day, participants heard from two of Penn GSE’s finest. 

Alan Ruby, former senior vice president of the Atlantic 

Philanthropies and now a senior fellow at the School, reflected on 

his experiences in educational systems and non-profits and challenged 

alumni to “give voice” to critical issues in the leadership of 

their organizations. And Penn GSE Professor Bob Zemsky led a 

Dean Susan Fuhrman welcomes alumni for the Exec Doc Alumni 

Weekend in January. 

lively discussion of current issues in higher education. Through 

the day, breakout sessions focused on civic engagement, education 

for the public good, board membership and responsibilities, 

writing for publication, and using executive search firms. 

Not all was serious, though. Participants got the chance to 

socialize with fellow grads, current students, and program faculty 

throughout the weekend. Among the highlights of the social 

calendar were two all-class dinners—at Bistro St. Tropez on 

Thursday evening and at Maggiano’s on Friday. 


Anthony J. Petrocelli College of Continuing 

Studies at Fairleigh Dickinson University. 

Gail DiSabatino GrEd’04 was recently named 

Vice President for Student Affairs at Clemson 

University. Gail was formerly the Dean of 

Students/Assistant Vice President at the 

Georgia Institute of Technology. 

David Paul GrEd’04 recently published an article 

in The Journal of General Education (Volume 

54, Number 2) entitled “Higher Education in 

Competitive Markets: Literature on 

Organizational Decline and Turnaround.” 

Alumni Profile 

Margaret Phillips / GEd’52 

Kathe Munz Shinham GrEd’04 was named 

the new Vice President for Administration and 

Finance at Northern Arizona University. Before 

moving to this position Kathe was Vice 

President for Business and Finance at the 

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

Thalia Brownridge GEd’05 is teaching at Bill 

Cosby’s old West Philadelphia school, Thomas 

E. FitzSimons School. That posting is especially 

appropriate because Thalia was a recipient of 

Penn GSE’s Puente-Forchic Scholarship, initiated 

by Cosby in 2002. 

The early 1950s marked the beginning of the assimilation of women into the mainstream 

of Penn’s academic and institutional life. More women faculty were advancing 

within the university, even gaining tenure, and, for the first time, a woman was elected to 

the University’s Board of Trustees. 

Reminiscing about her time at GSE, Margaret Phillips GEd’52 remembers that “first 

integration,” and, like many women who attended Penn during those years, recalls the 

euphoria of being part of Penn’s efforts to encourage its women students. As a young 

Wellesley graduate, Phillips completed her master’s at Penn GSE and received a quality 

education that was rich in theory and strong in writing and literacy. 

Today, Phillips lives in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, in a home filled with pictures and 

mementoes of her life as an educator. Living proof of a time of important changes at Penn, 

she recalls how her experience at GSE inspired her to pursue a teaching career far from 

the reaches of Philadelphia. After graduating from GSE, Phillips returned to Newtown 

Friends, in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, where she enjoyed years of classroom teaching. 

But Phillips was eager for challenges and, unlike many women educators at the time, 

pursued a career that would influence children around the world. She worked as an 

international educator, first in South Africa and later in Steamboat, Arizona, where she 

taught on a Navajo reservation. On her return, she brought four Navajo students with her 

to give them a better academic opportunity in Philadelphia. 

Asked how she developed her educational philosophy, Phillips cites her early studies 

with Drs. Gruber and Preston in the old GSE building, where students spent hours in the 

“miserable and dark” reading clinic. Aesthetics aside, Phillips credits the School with helping 

shape her career and influencing her decision to work in schools around the world— 

from suburban Philadelphia, to a remote Indian reservation, to sub-Saharan Africa. 

—Regina Vella 

Meg Conboy GEd’05 is currently teaching 

sixth-grade English at the Montgomery County 

Public School in Marlyand. 

Paul Hennigan GrEd’05 was named president 

of Point Park University in January 2006. He 

has served as the university’s Vice President for 

Finance and Operations since 2000. 

Luther Tai GrEd’05 writes that Oxford 

University Press has accepted his dissertation, 

titled “Corporate E-learning: How E-learning Is 

Created in Three Large Corporations,” for publication 

in book form. An in-depth look at how 

three corporate giants have created their e-learning 

programs, this case study fills an important 

gap in the literature by describing how GE, 

IBM, and Verizon developed, implemented, and 

evaluated their e-learning programs. Topics covered 

include the decision criteria used to determine 

the appropriate level of e-learning; the 

development and implementation of the programs; 

the extent of e-learning applications at 

the three companies; and methods of measuring 

program effectiveness. Luther also writes that he 

has been appointed to the board of directors of 

WebCampus.Stevens, the online learning unit of 

the Stevens Institute of Technology. 

OBITUARIES 

1920s 

Etta May Pettyjohn Ed’29 G’32 Gr’51, 

April 15, 2005, Southampton, Pennsylvania. 

A native of the Kensington neighborhood of 

Philadelphia, Etta May Pettyjohn spent much 

of her career with the School District of 

Philadelphia not far from her home turf. 

After graduating from Kensington High 

School for Girls in 1925, Pettyjohn received her 

bachelor’s degree in education from Penn in 

1929. She went on to earn a master’s degree 

from Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences in 1932 

and a doctorate, also from Penn GSE, in 1951. 

She began her career in the Philadelphia 

schools as a biology teacher at Overbrook High 

School and later served as vice principal at 

Frankford High School. In 1956, she came 

home to her alma mater as principal of 


We want to hear from you! 

Please send your news to: Editor, Penn GSE News, University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School 

of Education, 3700 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6216. Or you may send them via e-mail 

to editor@gse.upenn.edu. Please include your degree and year of graduation. The deadline for 

Alumni Notes submissions for the fall 2006 issue of the Penn GSE Magazine is August 30, 2006. 

Kensington High. She held that position until 

her retirement in 1971. Throughout her career, 

she pursued innovative methods, including 

alternative education for the disadvantaged, 

team teaching, bilingual instruction, and programs 

to boost students’ self-image. 

On her retirement, she remained active in her 

local community. She lobbied for the restoration 

of Penn Treaty Park, the Kensington park 

where William Penn is said to have signed a 

peace treaty with the Lenni Lenape Indians. In 

1978, Pettyjohn was awarded the American 

Educators Medal for her advocacy of the park. 

She was also honored for her community service 

by the Kensington American Legion Post. 

Kensington High School named her its 

Alumnae of the Year in 1956. 

1930s 

David Cohen Ed’34 L’37, October 3, 2005, 

Philadelphia. 

A longtime Philadelphia City Council member 

and liberal activist, David was born in 1924 

in South Philadelphia. After graduating from 

Penn in the middle of the Great Depression, he 

began his career as a New Deal lawyer in 

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 

Department of Agriculture. During World War 

II, he served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps in 

the Pacific theater. 

He became involved in Philadelphia politics 

in 1954, when he became a Democratic 

Committeeman. In 1967, he was elected to represent 

Northwest Philadelphia’s 8th Council 

District and resigned in 1971 in an unsuccessful 

bid to wrest the Democratic mayoral nomination 

from Frank Rizzo. In 1979, Cohen was 

elected to Council as an at-large member, a 

position he held until his death. He served as 

chair of the rules committee, which controlled 

legislation connected with development and 

zoning, until 1992. 

A staunch champion of the poor and minorities, 

he used his Council seat to fight against 

SEPTA fare increases, police brutality, and racial 

discrimination in housing practices. He advocated 

campaign-finance reform, an assault weapons 

ban, and wage-tax reduction for poor families. 

According to his daughter, Sherrie Cohen 

CW’75, “He was a powerful fighter against 

powerful interests. He was feisty, fierce, fearless, 

and ferocious. Nothing would give him greater 

joy than being in the middle of a good fight." 

He is survived by his wife, Florence H. Cohen 

GEd’65, sons Mark B. Cohen C’70, a state representative, 

and Denis P. Cohen C’73, a Common 

Pleas Court judge; daughters Sherrie and Judy 

Cohen Minches; and five grandchildren. 

1940s 

Mary E. Wright G’49 GEd’59 GrEd’71, 

October 2005, Fort Washington, Pennsylvania. 

The first African-American teacher at 

Philadelphia High School for Girls, Mary 

Wright was born in Surry County, Virginia. 

The daughter of a sharecropper, she graduated 

from high school at the age of 15 and earned 

bachelor’s degrees 

in English and 

mathematics from 

Virginia Union 

University in 

1935. 

After teaching 

high school in 

Virginia for two 

years, she married 

Jeremiah Wright., 

in 1938, and moved with her husband to 

Germantown when he was named pastor of 

Grace Baptist Church. 

In 1944, she began working in the 

Philadelphia school system as a math teacher, 

first at Sulzberger Junior High School, then 

at William Penn High School, and later at 

Germantown High. In 1961, she joined the faculty 

of the select Philadelphia High School for 

Girls and was appointed vice principal in 1968. 

Throughout her career, she continued her 

own studies. She earned two master’s degrees 

and a doctorate from Penn: an M.A. in mathematics 

from the School of Arts and Sciences in 

1949, a master’s of science in education in 1959, 

and a doctorate of education in 1971. In 1949, 

she was one of only two women in the graduate 

math department and the only African- 

American woman. 

In 2005, Penn GSE honored Mary as one of 


its 13 Women Pioneers, distinguished alumni 

selected for their outstanding contributions to 

the education community and for their work to 

promote educational and professional advancement 

for future generations of women. 

She is survived by her daughter, Mary 

LaVerne Miner; a son, Jeremiah Wright Jr.; six 

grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. 

1950s 

Loretta Esposito Scuderi Ed’51 GEd’63 

GrEd’77, September 29, 2005, Glen Mills, 

Pennsylvania. 

A longtime educator and administrator in the 

Philadelphia school system, Loretta began her 

career as a teacher in Sharswood Elementary 

School in South Philadelphia. She was principal 

of Powell and Harrington Elementary Schools 

and designed the district’s math curriculum 

before being named superintendent of District 3 

in 1974. She was superintendent of Districts 7 

and 8 before retiring in 1992. 

“Loretta was extraordinarily gracious, kind, 

and compassionate,” said Connie Clayton 

Grd’81, former superintendent of the 

Philadelphia school district. “She had high 

expectations for herself and others…. Her final 

outcome was always what was best for students.” 

During the course of her career, Loretta 

wrote math books, produced a television series 

on math, and lectured at several universities. 

She received numerous honors, including being 

named Woman of the Year in 1975 by the Sons 

of Italy. 

A former president of the Penn GSE 

Education Alumni Association, Loretta also 

served on the Garnet Valley School Board. 

1980s 

Patricia O. Wachholz GEd’80 GrEd’00, 

September 19, 2005. Wayne, Pennsylvania. 

For several years Patricia taught English at 

Henderson High School in West Chester before 

becoming a human resources specialist at 

Rosenbluth Travel Agency in Philadelphia. She 

was then a human resources consultant until 

retiring in 2004. She was an adult literacy tutor 

and a volunteer with the Orphan Grain Train, 

an organization that distributes materials to 


C A L E N D A R O F 

E V E N T S 

areas in the U.S. and developing countries that 

have been hit by natural disasters. She was a 

board member and choir member of Christ 

Memorial Lutheran Church in Malvern. 

Steven Goldberg Gr’85, February 1, 2006. 

Philadelphia. 

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Goldberg 

earned his B.A. from the State University of 

New York, Binghamton, his M.A. in politics 

and education 

from Columbia 

University, and his 

J.D. from Brooklyn 

Law School. In 

1985, he earned his 

Ph.D. in educational 

leadership 

and policy from 

Penn GSE. 

A professor of education and the coordinator 

of the Educational Leadership Program at 

Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, 

Steven worked during his career both as an education 

professor and as an attorney practicing 

education law. His research included civil rights 

issues in education, due process for disabled 

students, and alternative dispute resolution. He 

served as a lecturer at Penn GSE from 1990 to 

2004. He also held teaching positions at Rutgers 

University Law School and the University of 

North Dakota. In the late 1970s, he served as a 

lawyer for the Education Law Center in 

Philadelphia and recently sat on the board of the 

Education Law Association. 

According to his wife, Jolley Bruce 

Christman, the founder of Research for Action, 

“He wanted them [educators] to understand 

the legal rights of parents and children…. He 

encouraged teachers and school administrators 

to collaborate with families for the benefit of 

the child….” 

In addition to his wife, he is survived by 

stepchildren Katherine, Sarah, and Andrew 

Christman; a brother; and a grandson. 

Faculty 

Mary Eleanor Rhodes Hoover, July 29, 2005. 

Mary was the first African-American tenuretrack 

professor in the Language in Education 

Division at Penn GSE. The author of more than 

25 books and articles, she pioneered research 

and practice in African-American literacy and 

developed the field of culturally appropriate 

teaching and the study of inner-city public 

schools where African-American learners 

excelled in literacy. The founder and past president 

of the National Association of Black 

Reading and Language Educators, she was professor 

of Literacy Education at her alma mater, 

Howard University, at the time of her death. 

Family and friends have established the Mary 

Eleanor Rhodes Hoover Scholarship Fund/ 

Howard University to support university students 

who teach or tutor children. 

Contributions may be mailed to Howard 

University, University Administration, 2225 

Georgia Avenue, NW, Room 829, Washington, 

DC 20059. 

Students 

Caroline Yoon, March 3, 2006. 

A first-year graduate student in Penn GSE’s 

TESOL program, Caroline died from injuries 

sustained in a motorcycle accident while visiting 

friends at the University of Illinois. She was 22 

years old. 

Caroline received her B.S. degree in psychology 

from the University of Illinois at Urbana- 

Champaign in 2005. Her career goal was to 

teach English as a second language. She planned 

to spend a year teaching in Korea before working 

at a U.S. high school. 

A devout Christian, she was active in her 

church group. In her spare time, Caroline loved 

ice-skating, tennis, and all things Korean. 

She is survived by her parents, Sun Sil and 

Won Yoon, and a brother, William. 

September 28, 2006 

Arthur E. Levine 

President, Teachers College, Columbia 

University 

President Designate, Woodrow Wilson 

National Fellowship Foundation 

Dr. Levine’s lecture will draw on a forthcoming 

report on the quality of teacher preparation 

in American schools of education. That 

report, due in September, is being issued by 

the Education Schools Project, which is 

engaged in a critical assessment of the ways 

in which the nation’s 1,200 schools of education 

prepare teachers, administrators, and 

education researchers. Dr. Levine will step 

down as president of Teachers College this 

summer. 

October 10, 2006 

Arjun Appadurai 

Provost and Senior Vice President for 

Academic Affairs and John Dewey Professor 

in the Social Sciences, The New School 

University 

Universities as Actors in a Global Civil Society 

Drawing on his experience with non-governmental 

organizations devoted to research on 

urban global issues, on his role as provost of 

The New School, and on his own writings, 

Dr. Appadurai will reflect on the impact of 

globalization on universities and the opportunities 

and issues that arise as universities 

recast their relationship to democracy in a 

new global world. 

October 27-28, 2006 

Homecoming 2006 

Save the date for Penn’s Homecoming 

weekend! 


From excellence 

to eminence— 

With these words, Penn President 

Amy Gutmann articulated her vision 

for the University’s future. 

Called the PENN COMPACT, President Gutmann’s vision 

is built on principles integral to the mission of the Graduate 

School of Education— 

‰ increasing access to education 

‰ integrating knowledge across disciplines 

‰ engaging locally and globally 

A GIFT TO THE PENN GSE ANNUAL FUND HELPS FUND 

‰ access for students through needs-based financial grants 

‰ faculty research that cuts across disciplines and schools 

‰ engagement with partners across the street and 

around the globe 

MAKE YOUR GIFT TODAY and help Penn GSE 

rise from EXCELLENCE TO EMINENCE 

1. Charge your gift to Visa, American Express or 

MasterCard. 

2. Send a check or money order made payable to: 

Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania. 

3. Give appreciated securities. For details about how to 

transfer securities to Penn GSE, call the Office of the 

Treasurer at (215) 898-7254. 

4. Matching Gifts: If you or your spouse/partner is affiliated 

with a company that has a matching gift program, 

you can obtain a matching gift form from the personnel 

office and include the completed form with your gift. 

FOR MORE INFORMATION: 

Office of Development and Alumni Relations 

Penn Graduate School of Education 

Office of Development 

3700 Walnut Street, Suite 223 

Philadelphia, PA 19104-6216 

(215) 898-6962 

www.gse.upenn.edu

3700 Walnut Street 

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6216 

Nonprofit Organization 

U.S. Postage 

PAID 

Permit No. 2563 

Philadelphia, PA 

We Invite You to Invest 

in the Future of GSE . . . 

. . . and create your legacy. 

Throughout the years, alumni and friends have 

left tremendous legacies to the Graduate School of 

Education through their estates. These thoughtful 

gifts endow fellowships, support faculty, and 

strengthen our innovative educational programs. 

Please consider planning your legacy for GSE 

with a bequest in your will or living trust. 

. . . and keep income 

for yourself. 

The University of Pennsylvania offers several 

charitable giving arrangements that can 

pay you or your loved ones income for life, 

then support the Graduate School of Education. 

These planned gifts provide vital support for GSE 

today and build our financial strength for the future. 

Eugene (GM’50) and Letitia (CW’49 GEd’76 GGS’01) Principato 

As members of the Harrison Society, Gene and Tish are building brighter futures through Planned Giving. 

Call Penn Gift Planning at 

215-898-6171 or 1-800-223-8236. 

E-mail inquiries: planned_giving@ben.dev.upenn.edu. 

Written inquiries: University of Pennsylvania 

Office of Gift Planning, 619 Franklin Building 

Philadelphia, PA 19104-6285. 

www.alumni.upenn.edu/plannedgiving

3700 Walnut Street 

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6216 

Nonprofit Organization 

U.S. Postage 

PAID 

Permit No. 2563 

Philadelphia, PA 

We Invite You to Invest 

in the Future of GSE . . . 

. . . and create your legacy. 

Throughout the years, alumni and friends have 

left tremendous legacies to the Graduate School of 

Education through their estates. These thoughtful 

gifts endow fellowships, support faculty, and 

strengthen our innovative educational programs. 

Please consider planning your legacy for GSE 

with a bequest in your will or living trust. 

. . . and keep income 

for yourself. 

The University of Pennsylvania offers several 

charitable giving arrangements that can 

pay you or your loved ones income for life, 

then support the Graduate School of Education. 

These planned gifts provide vital support for GSE 

today and build our financial strength for the future. 

Eugene (GM’50) and Letitia (CW’49 GEd’76 GGS’01) Principato 

As members of the Harrison Society, Gene and Tish are building brighter futures through Planned Giving. 

Call Penn Gift Planning at 

215-898-6171 or 1-800-223-8236. 

E-mail inquiries: planned_giving@ben.dev.upenn.edu. 

Written inquiries: University of Pennsylvania 

Office of Gift Planning, 619 Franklin Building 

Philadelphia, PA 19104-6285. 

www.alumni.upenn.edu/plannedgiving

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