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16 COLLEGES & GRADuate Schools ■ EDUCATION UPDATE ■ NOVEMBER 2007Leadership in Museum Ed Program Keeps Pace with Changing TimesBy Elisabeth JakabBank Street’s leadership in museum educationprogram is designed for individuals already workingin museums or cultural organizations. Thestudents call it an “MBA for museum educators.”The program prepares them for leadership rolesor to assume more responsibility in the leadershiproles they already play.“There is an increasing need for our programbecause museums, and the role of museum educationwithin them, have changed enormously overthe past twenty years, and continue to do so,” saysLeslie Bedford, the Program Director. Museumeducation is no longer simply a variation on, or achallenge to, school based teaching and learning,but a separate field with a growing professionalliterature and research agenda. Concurrently, themuseum educational leader has evolved frombeing a master teacher to occupying a position atthe center of the museum’s mission and strategicagenda.Bank Street’s program has evolved as well.Some changes had already been instituted underthe leadership of Rima Shore, Director of BankStreet’s Adelaide Weismann Center for InnovativeBANK STREET COLLEGE OF EDUCATIONLeadership. “We changed the ‘ExhibitionDevelopment’ course from focusing entirely onthe educational aspects of exhibition design tounderstanding the role of exhibitions in furtheringa museum’s overall mission,” Bedford says.“We also decided to take a hard look at ourcurrent course of study to see how well we weremeeting the needs of today’s museums and educationalleaders,” she continues. “In June 2006,we convened an all-day formal Program Reviewwith twelve distinguished experts (five werealumnae) to determine further changes we neededto make in our curriculum. The session was aneye-opener!”The Program Review experts agreed that “education”was too narrow a term for what MuseumLeadership graduates do. As “master strategists,”they are responsible for articulating and implementingchange both internally and externally. Animportant area is “civic engagement,” the term forthe field’s increasing focus on attracting a widerand more diverse audience, especially from communitieswhose members may not regularly visitmuseums. “This more outward-directed visionrequires a sophisticated set of skills in advocacy,Education UpdateOctober 2007 IssueP.O. #: 19818collaboration and conflict resolution, communication,politics, and management,” says Bedford.Besides thinking and working strategically,these educators must also be aware of the public’sinterest in the customized programming that newtechnologies can provide. As alumna Shari Werb,Director of Institutional Outreach at the U.S.Memorial Holocaust Museum in WashingtonD.C., remarks, “Museum education now alsohappens on websites and podcasts; audiencesare both virtual and onsite. The potential for newaudiences is huge and challenging.”The Program Review experts also encouragedBedford and three of her senior faculty advisorsto embrace a more diverse set of theoreticalframeworks. Human development and learningtheory should be just one of the perspectivesgiven students. Anthropology, communicationstheory, aesthetic education (as articulated byLincoln Center Institute), the growing field of“imaginative education” (which highlights stagesin the development of the imagination’s contributionto learning), and even social work andcommunity development—all offer insights toenrich students’ understanding of the place of theOutstanding Alumni Awards at Teachers College5 5 ⁄8 x 7 1 ⁄4museum in contemporary society and the meaningof their own work as educators.Classes are held on weekends from Septemberthrough May, with one full week of classes inJune. This two-year Program attracts an increasinglyaccomplished and outstanding group ofprofessionals from all over the country. Recently,students from California (six), Florida (three),Georgia (three), as well as individuals fromDenver, Chicago, and Nashville have joinedthose from cities along the East Coast, includingNew York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore,and Washington. With the support of New YorkCommunity Trust, the program has been able tobuild on Bank Street’s tradition of welcomingdiverse candidates—in the past four years, it hasattracted between twenty-five and forty percent ofstudents of color in each two-year class.“Our students comprise a fabulous and inspiringgroup,” says Bedford. “They embody my visionfor this program: to provide leadership trainingfor educators, who are the people most likely tounderstand the potential of cultural organizationsfor serving our communities. We want to excel athelping them do so.”#the 1980s, she helped form the Consortium for PolicyResearch in Education—the nation’s first federallyfunded education policy center. Fuhrman then servedas Dean of the Graduate School of Education at theUniversity of Pennsylvania, leading an effort to bringthe university into partnership with neighboring lowincomecommunities in West Philadelphia. As the tenthpresident of Teachers College—and the first woman tolead the nation’s premiere school of education—she isworking to replicate those efforts on a broader scale inNew York City and more generally to position the institutionas an education partner to the world.#President Susan Fuhrman, center, flanked by the awardeesRecently, Teachers College honored fivealumni with awards for service to education.The Early Career Award was given to SharonRyan (Ed.D., Early Childhood Education,1998), a faculty member at Rutgers GraduateSchool of Education, and to Michael Lowry(M.A., Educational Administration, 2005),a science teacher at the McCallie School inChattanooga, Tennessee. The DistinguishedAlumni Award was given to folk singerand feminist sex educator Leah Schaefer(Ed.D., Family and Community Education,1964); Fordham University professor andtrauma-therapy specialist Anie Kalayjian(Ed.D., Nursing Education, 1986); andSusan Fuhrman (Ph.D., Political Scienceand Education, 1977), President of TeachersCollege.Ryan was a classroom teacher in Australiabefore moving to the U.S. and attending TC.After graduation, began working at Rutgers,investigating preschool restructuring in poordistricts. She has taken the lead in creatingnew standards for early childhood teachercertification and studying other key variablesof early childhood education reform.Lowry, a graduate of TC’s KlingensteinLeadership Academy, gives students at TheMcCallie School a hands-on groundingin education, letting them determine thescope of their own projects and presentationsand with selecting the texts and videosfrom which they will learn. Lowry has wongrants and other support from the NationalEndowment for the Humanities, the NationalScience Foundation, the Woodrow WilsonNational Fellowship Foundation and theFulbright Association. He has also beenhonored with the Presidential Award forExcellence in Science Teaching and NationalBoard Certification in science.Before coming to TC, Schaefer was ajazz and folk singer who recorded with theWayfarers, the Barries and as a soloartist. She achieved a different sort offame when she adapted her TC dissertationinto a book titled Women and Sex(Pantheon Books, 1973). A compendiumof some 30 firsthand stories that anticipatedthe women’s movement by severalyears, it was one of the very first booksthat enabled the public to hear the voicesof women discussing their sexuality.Schaefer also was a founding memberof the Society for the Scientific Studyof Sex, among the first national organizationsdedicated to sex education andresearch, and later served as its president.Schaefer also did pioneering research ontranssexualism, and her ideas becamethe basis for Holistic Psychotherapy, thetreatment approach encouraging genderdysphoric people to focus on the selfin its entirety, rather than simply on thegender aspects of their lives.Kalayjian, an expert on the psychologicalimpact of trauma, has treatedand studied survivors of manmade disasters—theGulf War, the war in Vietnam,the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide,the World Trade Center attacks—as wellas survivors of natural disasters. Shewrote about these experiences in the landmarkpublication Management Disasterand Mass Trauma: Global Perspectivesin Post-Disaster Mental Health (VistaPublishing, 1995)—a practical guide forothers in her field. Kalayjian has taughtat Fordham, Columbia, Pace, HunterCollege and other institutions.Throughout her career, Susan Fuhrman,new President of Teachers College hasdeveloped a reputation as an educationleader and scholar who acts upon thebasis of evidence rather than ideology.As an education scholar at Rutgers inGraduate School Open HouseThursday, October November 11, 15, 5:15PMBank Street College Graduate School of Education610 West 112th Street, New York, NY 10025-1898www.bankstreet.edu 212.875.4698Explore ourprogramsfor teachersand leaders.Learn howto bring outthe best inall children.INNOVATION INTEACHING AND LEARNING