January Newsletter: Education Program
Gottesman Libraries
The Gottesman Libraries Education Program informs students, faculty and staff about the latest thinking in education, in ways that engage members of the community with one another and with a broad range of educational experts. The program also provides understanding of work being done throughout the College. Read more about offerings in January.
Tours
Welcome Spring Semester students! Please join us for a tour of the Gottesman Libraries to see the many beautiful spaces of Russell Hall, including the first floor information hub, second floor collaboration space, third floor quiet reading room, Offit Gallery, and Tower Stacks, complete with small tables and chairs and a view of the main campus. You'll learn about key resources and services, from instructional offerings to room reservations, scanning to printing, sponsored events to book displays and art exhibits.
All tours meet at the First Floor Library Services Desk and are open to current members and affilates of Teachers College.
Tuesday, January 21st, 12:00-12:45pm
Wednesday, January 22nd, 2:00-2:45pm
Thursday, January 23rd, 4:00-4:45pm
Friday, January 24th, 10:00-10:45am
Workshops
Regularly scheduled instructional offerings include workshops, tours, orientations, and course-specific instruction in coordination with staff and faculty of the College.
Your Research Journey is a five-part library workshop series to help guide you in your research throughout the semester, by providing you with manageable tools and resources to use along your journey. Whether this is your first time conducting research, or you are a well-seasoned researcher and looking for a refresher, each workshop introduces fundamental information to lay a foundation of knowledge on which you can build your scholarly work. While the workshops in this series are designed to build upon each other, you are welcome to attend any workshop individually. All are held on Wednesdays, 3-4pm.
Elevate Your Research builds upon the foundational series, Your Research Journey, by presenting valuable new topics, resources, and methodologies to make you an even stronger and highly proficient researcher. Held on Thursdays, 3-4pm, this series also invites deeper, collaborative work to strengthen academic research initiatives.
Charting Your Path, Wednesday, 1/22, 3-4pm
Graduate school research may feel daunting, but this foundational workshop will address the key concepts, strategies, and tools to help develop your research skills. Charting Your Path will start with a broad overview of what library research can look like, including the terms you may come across in your journey. We will also cover how to use Gottesman Libraries and the Columbia University Libraries to access physical and digital resources; discuss reference management tools; show how to create strong keyword searches; and end with a review of strategies for better search results. Attendees will leave this workshop with the information needed to be successful in Library research across all research disciplines.
Presenter: Ava Kaplan, Research and Instruction Librarian
Where: 101 Russell / Online
Searching Strategies, Wednesday, 1/29, 3-4pm
How do you know you are retrieving all the relevant information needed for your research topic? Do you find your catalog and database searches are not giving you the best results? This workshop will cover the strategies and concepts needed to give you confidence that you are finding the best results in your searches and take you beyond conducting simple searches by using tools to search in a variety of contexts. The workshop host will review how to use Educat+, the catalog of the Gottesman Libraries; CLIO, the Columbia University Libraries catalog; and database providers, like EBSCO and Proquest. We will then show how you can optimize your queries by using Boolean logic and punctuation to refine your search style and retrieve exactly the resources you seek.
Presenter: Ava Kaplan, Research and Instruction Librarian
Where: 101 Russell / Online
Course Resource Lists for Instructors, Thursday, 1/30, 3-4pm
Course Resource Lists is the Gottesman Libraries’ course reserves platform and collaborative tool for instructors and librarians to create and fulfill reading lists for degree-seeking students in courses taught each semester at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Course Resource Lists are available to instructors of all active, credit-bearing courses and can be found on the left navigation menu of their courses in Canvas.
Please join us for this workshop in which we will cover all you need to know to place a library course reserve request or create a list yourself, and to navigate the New User Interface of Course Resource Lists, implemented in Summer 2024.
Faculty, course assistants, and professional staff are all welcome to attend.
Presenter: Roshnara Kissoon, Reserves and Support Services Librarian
Where: Online
Highlighted Databases
Every month we draw attention to select databases that strengthen learning, teaching, and research in academic areas and their relevance to current offerings and programs.
In January we highlight research resources that are relevant to environmental education and support offerings and programs of the College with a view to sustainability and responsible stewardship of our planet.
Read more here.
Talks
We host a variety of talks, from book to guest to art, to encourage thinking , conversation, and action on a broad range of interesting and relevant topics and needs.
Book Talk: The Rise of Knowledge Brokers in Global Education Governance, with Chanwoong Baek and Gita Steiner-Khamsi, Wednesday, 1/22, 8-9:30am
Please join editors Chanwoong Baek and Gita Steiner-Khamsi and contributors for a panel discussion of their latest book, The Rise of Knowledge Brokers in Global Education Governance (NORRAG Series on International Education and Development, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2024). Their work explores "how policymakers orient themselves in an era of surplus information and presents a multidisciplinary investigation into the growing influence of knowledge brokers, and how they utilize evidence to support education policy and planning. Contributors examine key actors’ roles and strategies, contextual influences, and implications for equity and inclusion in the education sector, giving voice to experts in academia, institutional think tanks, and intergovernmental organizations. Illustrating brokerage concepts through distinct cases, it demonstrates that institutional approaches are markedly different, and highlights the ways in which knowledge brokers have been repurposed to bring about social change, signaling a noticeable shift in the global discourse on education governance." (publisher's description).
Chanwoong Baek , TC Alumnus (Ph.D), is an Assistant Professor in the International Relations/Political Science Department, with a courtesy appointment in the Anthropology and Sociology Department. He is also UNESCO Co-Chair in Comparative Education Policy and Director of NORRAG. His current research critically assesses the claims made about “evidence-based policymaking” from a comparative and international perspective. In particular, he examines the social dynamics of legitimacy and power on the local, national and global levels, employing both quantitative and qualitative methods.
Gita Steiner-Khamsi is the William Heard Kilpatrick Professor of Comparative Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and UNESCO Chair in Comparative Education Policy of the Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. For ten years Dr. Steiner-Khamsi worked on multicultural and anti-racist education policies at the Ministry of Education in the Canton of Zurich in Switzerland. She then became involved in comparative education methods and theories, and in 1995, she joined the faculty of Teachers College, Columbia University. Her widely published research covers: Comparative Policy Studies; Global Governance in Education; and Comparative Methodology.
Following opening remarks and presentation by the editors, the program will include two panel discussions: "Institutional Logics and Efforts in Knowledge Brokerage" and "Local Contexts and Inequalities in Knowledge Brokerage", with Q&A for each part.
This book talk is organized by NORRAG, the Global Education Centre of the Geneva Graduate Institute, and is supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). Co-sponsors include: KIX EMAP and the UNESCO Chair Program of Comparative Education Policy at the Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland.
Where: Online
Register HERE.
Guest Talk: The Artist As an Educator, with Bisa Butler, Wednesday, 1/29, 4:30-6:45pm
Please join us for a talk with Bisa Butler, an award winning African American textile artist. Bisa is known for her vibrantly stunning larger than life sized quilted portraits that captivate viewers around the world. Through her dynamic, celebratory quilted portraits of people of African descent, Bisa Butler (b. 1973, Orange, NJ) investigates the purposes and potential of portraiture within the Black historical narrative. Butler's influences range widely from personal family scrapbooks to American folk traditions and AfriCOBRA philosophies. Although her finished works are made entirely of textiles, Butler approaches the medium from a painterly perspective. Sourcing imagery mainly from photographs, she uses layered fabrics and quilting to create unique compositions , psychological depth and detailed textures that she found missing from her paintings. By returning to textiles, Butler has reconnected with her family's history since it was her grandmother and mother who taught her to sew.
Be sure to see Bisa Butler's website, which includes an art portfolio, Educator's Resources, and much more.
BIO
Bisa Butler is the daughter of a college president and a French teacher. She was raised in South Orange as the youngest of four siblings. Butler’s artistic talent was first recognized at the age of four, when she won a blue ribbon in an art competition. Formally trained, Butler graduated Cum Laude from Howard University with a Bachelor’s in Fine Art degree. It was during her education at Howard that Butler was able to refine her natural talents under the tutelage of lecturers such as Lois Mailou Jones, Elizabeth Catlett, Jeff Donaldson and Al Smith Jr.It was at this time that she began to experiment with fabric as a medium and became interested in collage techniques. Butler went on to earn a Master’s in Art from Montclair State University in 2005. While in the process of obtaining her Master’s degree, Butler took a Fiber Arts class where she had an artistic epiphany and she finally realized how to express her art. “As a child, I was always watching my mother and grandmother sew, and they taught me. After that class, I made a portrait quilt for my grandmother on her deathbed, and I have been making art quilts ever since.” Butler was a high school art teacher for 10 years in the Newark Public Schools and three years at Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey.
In 2022, Bisa Butler was awarded a Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship and will be exhibiting in Switzerland during Art Basel this coming June with the Jeffrey Deitch Gallery. She was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Bloomfield College this past May. Butler’s work was the focus of a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, the second stop of a traveling exhibit which began at the Katonah Museum of Art. Many institutions and museums have acquired Butler’s work including: The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Perez Museum of Miami, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The Nelson-Atkins Museum, 21cMuseum Hotels, The Kemper Museum of Art, The Orlando Museum of Art, The Newark Museum, The Toledo Museum of Art, The Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Hunter Museum of American Art and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
This event is organized by the Teachers College Edmund W. Gordon Institute for Advanced Study and co-sponsored by the Gottesman Libraries.
Register HERE.
Where: Milbank Chapel / Online
Live Music
The Everett Cafe Music Program sponsors performances by TC student and affiliated musicians. Come enjoy a variety of genres and styles! Please contact us if you are interested in playing!
We welcome solos, duets, and trios.
Nicholas DiMaria Duet, Tuesday, 1/28, 4-5pm
Nicholas DiMaria is a trumpeter, teacher, and composer based in New York City. He draws inspiration from multiple genres and art forms in his compositions and is continuously inspired by expressing visual art in a musical medium. His music is described by audiences as introspective, passionate, and eclectic; influenced by jazz, hip-hop, and classical music.
Nicholas has lead groups at Carnegie Hall, The Northeast Wine and Jazz Festival, The Syracuse Jazz Festival, The Central New York Pride Festival, and restaurants and clubs across New York State. He has also performed at The Great New York State Fair, The CNY January Jazz Festival, the Disneyland All-American College Band, and opened for Grammy-Winner Lalah Hathaway. Nicholas is well-adapted to playing with jazz ensembles, wedding bands, and funk groups. He currently holds a weekly performance residency at Oliva Tapas, NYC (Thursdays and Fridays from 6-8pm). Nicholas is also a faculty member at Larchmont Music Academy, where he teaches trumpet and a jazz ensemble. In 2020, he received his Bachelor's in Jazz Arts from Manhattan School of Music where he studied with Scott Wendholt, Ingrid Jensen, Jim McNeely, and Jon Faddis.
Book Displays
Book displays are curated and designed by library staff to share the joy of books and reading, while encouraging greater awareness of available resources and their significance to the Library and College.
Everett Cafe: Melting Ice, Rising Water
As a result of the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gas emissions produced by industry, transport, deforestation, and burning fossil fuels, the Earth's temperatures are rising. With overheating of the planet's surface, ice is melting; glaciers, shrinking; and sea levels, rising. As ocean currents slow down, extreme weather events, including flooding, speed up. While global efforts are underway to reduce CO2 emissions, climate change is becoming more and more concerning, particularly when short-term political and economic interests override longer term care and preservation of the planet.
Melting Ice, Rising Water takes a look at rising sea levels, as well as flooding -- particularly in urban areas where population is dense and lives are at greater risk. It asks us to consider the wider topic of climate justice in which water, land, and human life are affected by the climate crisis. While spreading educational awareness of the importance of finding solutions and taking measures to better protect our planet, it explores environmental politics and policies; concepts for smart and sustainable design; and adaptive ways of living.
This book display builds upon others in Everett Cafe on the topic of climate and the environment, among them: Eco Fashion: Sustainability, Ethics, and Education (June 2023); Carbon and Climate (January 2022); Digging the Earth, Tending the Soil (September 2021); What Trees Tell Us (July, 2021); Oceans of Plastic (May 2020); Climate S.O.S (February 2020); and Teaching About Species (March 2019).
At Everett Cafe, you'll find a new book collection every few weeks that relates to current events, education, or learning environments.
Staff Picks: Interwoven Identities: A Celebration of Intersectionality
Interwoven Identities: A Celebration of Identity invites exploration of the complexities of identity through the lens of intersectionality. This selection of books will examines how race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and other social categories intersect to shape individual and collective experiences. Featuring a diverse range of narrative stories, personal memoirs, and children's books, this collection challenges conventional paradigms and fosters nuanced discussions. Delve into the intricate interplay of identities in a global context, and enhance understanding of how these intersections inform social dynamics, cultural production, and advocacy. Join us in this vital exploration of identity, empowerment, and social justice.
-- Anthony Phagoo, Library Associate
Where: Second Floor
Staff Picks is curated and designed each month by the Gottesman Libraries' staff to highlight resources on educational topics and themes of special interest.
Curiosity Cabinets: Portraying Faculty: Eclectic Views
Fitting for the Curiosity Cabinets this Spring is a selection of publications by and about leading members of the Teachers College faculty who are featured in the Offit Gallery black and white photographic exhibition, Faculty Portraits: An Historic View. Due to the breadth of their individual and institutional impact, we can only offer a limited example of their scholarship. In so doing, we hope to shed light on our institutional history and spark curiosity into areas that demonstrate innovative research and thinking in their represented fields: history, philosophy, and religion; educational administration; international and comparative education; anthropology; economics and sociology; adult education; and psychology.
Interestingly, tenure, or the right to indefinitely hold a position of office, was introduced into American universities in the early 1900s – partly to limit the dismissal of faculty members who held unpopular views. Tenure is historically linked to defending the principle of academic freedom which benefits education and society over time, provided academics are free to hold and express a variety of views. Tenure typically mandates faculty to publish, and becoming published requires fresh ways of thinking through learning at high levels.
Portraying Faculty: Eclectic Views takes us as far back as Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Teachers College, 1889-1891, then President of Columbia University, 1902-1944, and as far ahead as the noted historian Lawrence Cremin, who earned his doctorate from Columbia University; began teaching at Teachers College shortly thereafter; served as President from 1974-1984; and taught until his death in 1990. Twenty-three faculty members, including the eminent philosopher of education John Dewey, are showcased, with insight and inspiration for continuing research and maintaining the record of scholarly achievement to help safeguard freedom of inquiry, in teaching, and of thought.
Where: Third Floor Reading Room
The Curiosity Cabinets showcase interesting and insightful material from the historical collections to inform and enhance concomitant art exhibitions and book displays.
News Displays
Need to keep current, look to the past, teach a topic? The Everett Cafe features daily postings of news from around the world, and also promotes awareness of historical events from an educational context. Be sure to check the Cafe News postings on the library blog.
Remembering Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Friday, 1/3
No Child Left Behind Act, Wednesday, 1/8
Benjamin Franklin Is Born, Friday, 1/17
Inauguration Day, Monday, 1/20
Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice Is Published, Tuesday, 1/28
Exhibits
Educational exhibitions are mounted in partnership with the Teachers College community and others with an interest in displaying unique and innovative educational materials, while also regularly showcasing Teachers College's Historical Art Collections.
The library has several spaces in Russell Hall to exhibit diverse materials, and also features digital and web-based exhibitions when possible.
Growth, Part Three: Select Works from the Ziegfeld Collection of International Children's Art
The Ziegfeld Collection of International Children's Art is comprised of 361 paintings, drawings, prints, and collages made by adolescents aged 10 to 18 from 32 countries across the world. The Collection was first shown in 1967 at the High Museum in The Hague, the Netherlands. It was assembled by Professor Edwin Ziegfeld, then Chair of Art and Education at Teachers College. Columbia University, who was also President of the International Society for Art Education, an organization he helped found in 1954 under the auspices of the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.
Under the direction of Macy Professor of Education Judith Burton and in collaboration with the Library, the Ziegfeld Collection was first shown at the Macy Art Gallery, Teachers College in 1999. Wrote Professor Emerita Maxine Greene, "this exhibition opene[d] new possibilities for those dedicated to the growth of children and, particularly, to enabling the adolescents of our time to find their way through the entangled forests of a difficult moment in history."(Catalog Introduction, The Ziegfeld Collection: International Artworks of Adolescents from the 1950s: A Celebration). Created after the Second World War, the artworks spoke to the significance of adolescents who would continue the adult work of reshaping the world, its values, aspirations, skills, and behaviors, over the coming decades.
Drawing upon inspiration from nature, particularly trees, Growth, Part Three: Select Works from the Ziegfeld Collection of International Children's Art focuses on adulthood and social conditions. On one level there are workers; refugees; earnest, sad and stationary figures; on another, portrayals of hope, fantastical dreams, and aspirations. They illustrate the dichotomy of lived experiences that affect human growth in the entangled forests of time, place, memory, and our subconscious.
Growth: Part Two focused on representations and interpretations of social activity, celebrations, rituals, and work – showing aspects of human development from influences and contexts additional to school and family. Growth: Part One explored the family, school, and friendships, also portrayed from the perspective of children and adolescents.
Growth: Select Works from the Ziegfeld Collection of International Children's Art is on display in three parts through the Fall of 2024. Growth is funded through the continuing generosity of the The Myers Foundations and is designed by Ashley Wang, Library Associate for Art and Design, in collaboration with Jennifer Govan, Library Director and Senior Librarian.
Where: First Floor
When: through January 31st
Foundational Touchstones, by Aimee Ehrman
“I have been entering the Teachers College campus through the gate and passageway between the Zankel and Thompson Hall buildings for over 11 years. I can say this passage has acted as a kind of portal to my experiences at TC as a student, a fellow, an educator, a researcher, and an artist. For many years, I have walked through knowing and understanding that I was surrounded by structures with long enduring histories, and encountered the textures, shadows, smells, of the stones and the concrete. I would occasionally stop and pause to bask in the sunshine that would sneak through the openings before proceeding to take or teach my courses.
Then, in May of 2022, everything changed when I endured a horrific family tragedy. In one instant my engagement with the world around me shifted. Suddenly, in one sense, I engaged with the world disconnected, disoriented, and fragmented. At the same time, I became increasingly attuned to the tiny details of the world around me – the leaf falling from the tree, the heart shaped hole in the sidewalk I pass every day, the sounds and smells of my environment stronger and more abrupt than ever before. I began to depend on these small details to help me keep putting one foot in front of the other. As I continued to enter through my pathway every day, I also became more attuned to the foundational stones of the buildings. I found myself stopping to examine them, to take in their strength, to feel their history, to see their beauty, to feel comforted by their support. These incredible old stones became my touchstones, both metaphorically and literally.
Ever since, I have felt compelled to explore these stones more deeply. Since clay is my language, my means of expression when words fail me often these days, it not only feels natural, but also needed, to physically explore these stones in my language.”
– Aimee Ehrman
Bio
Aimee Ehrman is a ceramic artist-educator who examines the intersection of embodied learning and ceramics, and how the embodied practices of ceramics can be explored in higher education. She is deeply interested in exploring what happens during the moments of making with clay, and how we think and learn with and through our engagement with clay. Through constant exploration with the material, and as an active artist and educator, she brings her movement and ceramics practices to the classroom, where she challenges students to both experiment with the material and consider the role of the body as a tool. Aimee’s individual art works and installations are held in private collections and exhibited in galleries nationwide. Aimee, is part-time faculty at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she is also a doctoral candidate for an Ed.D.C.T. in Art and Art Education, and has also earned an Ed.M. She has a M.F.A. from SUNY New Paltz and a B.A. from Baldwin Wallace University.
Foundational Touchstones, by 2024 Myers Awardee Aimee Ehrman, is funded through the continuing generosity of the Myers Foundations. This exhibit is supplemented by the Everett cafe book display, Sticks, Stones, Clay, and Bones: Embodying Tradition and Learning, which continues in Offit Gallery.
The art exhibition and curated book display are a collaboration between artist Aimee Ehrman; Library Associates for Art and Design, Soeun Bae and Ashley Wang; and Jennifer Govan, Senior Librarian, who pooled their energy, expertise, and experience.
Where: Offit Gallery
When: through January 17th
Faculty Portraits: An Historic View
Represented in Offit Gallery is an eclectic mix of faculty who served at Teachers College, some also in administrative roles – from the presidency of Nicholas Murray Butler (1889-1891) to the progressive teachings of John Dewey (1904-1930), through to the educational histories written by President Lawrence Cremin (1961-1990). The subjects were photographed from the early to mid-twentieth century, prior to the advent of digital photography, likely by numerous skilled photographers – who, through monochrome, evoke a certain import and nostalgia in covering over 100 years of education. The framed portraits are being shown collectively for the first time in Offit Gallery, and they are supplemental to the Historical Photographs of Teachers College, as well as Historic Portraits of Teachers College Faculty in the Teachers College Digital Collections.
While the portraits do not present a comprehensive picture of the extraordinary and wide-ranging achievements of our faculty across many academic departments and programs, they reflect teaching, scholarship, and commitment in the fields of history, philosophy, and religion; educational administration; international and comparative education; anthropology; economics and sociology; adult education; and psychology. And true to their medium, the portraits speak volumes about their subjects, capturing personality, identity, and essence of character through lighting, composition, and pose.
Paired with the black and white portraits are faculty book publications, necessarily selective due to their large volume of research. The book pairings provide a snapshot of scholarship, with additional historical materials on display in the adjoining Curiosity Cabinets of the Third Floor Reading Room.
Where: Offit Gallery
When: January 27th - March 27th
