Robert M. Frehse, executive director, The William Randolph Hearst Foundations, Inc., welcomes participants to the Foundation Conversation in New York City on March 19. Jim Wolf (middle), president, TIAA Retirement Services, and Richard Ekman, CIC president, opened the session.

More than 100 presidents met with a score of high-level foundation officers in New York City on March 19 for CIC’s annual "Conversation Between Foundation Officers and College and University Presidents." Originally scheduled for September 19, 2001, the meeting had to be rescheduled because of the events surrounding September 11. TIAA-CREF once again donated the use of its Conference Center/Wharton Auditorium.
    Participants explored the theme of "K-12 Institutions: The Liberal Arts College’s Role and Responsibilities." Topics included teacher preparation; intercultural awareness for both teachers and students; partnerships between schools and colleges; and national priorities and the core curriculum.
    Keynote speaker Daniel Fallon, chair of the education division of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, oversees the Corporation’s grantmaking efforts to improve educational achievement from preschool through the postsecondary level. He delivered a highly praised address exploring the links between student achievement and the quality of the learning environment the teacher provides. He described an extraordinary research project that showed the tremendous impact that a first-grade teacher, "Miss A," had on her students. Her teaching skills and methods led to measurably large increases in her students’ IQ scores and produced "high-status adults" who had more education, better jobs, higher income, and lived in more expensive houses than their peers in two other first-grade classes in the same school. He noted that this ground-breaking study in 1978 was disregarded because it "ran against the prevailing orthodoxy of the time," but that several recent studies on student achievement confirm that individual achievement gains can be linked with specific teachers. "If ever there was a paradigm shift in social science, we are seeing it now," Fallon said. "Today, because of value-added assessment studies, there is widespread consensus that the single most important factor in determining student performance is the quality of the teacher."
    Fallon stressed that this "new paradigm also puts a spotlight squarely on teacher education programs." He called on the education community "to ensure that we are doing everything we can to teach teacher candidates how to gain confidence in the quality of their teaching, and how to develop their skills to continue to improve their teaching throughout their careers." The full text of Fallon’s speech is available on CIC’s website at www.cic.edu/conferences_events/foundation/Miss A speech.pdf.
    Frank Murray, president of the Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC), in separate remarks, also focused on teacher preparation and provoked thinking about approaches to teaching. "What kind of undergraduate education would you provide to prospective teachers that will prepare them to work their way with their class through unusual problems and questions?" he asked. Teachers should be encouraged and given the freedom to approach provocative cases or questions in the classroom without the constraints of prescribed teaching methods, Murray said.
    Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College, Columbia University, spoke about the need for more foundation-funded partnerships between colleges and K-12 schools. The desperate need for teachers over the next decade, the lack of certified teachers in the poorest neighborhoods, the "gaping holes" in the governance systems of K-12 schools, and lack of common planning in curriculum across school systems, among other problems, could be addressed by committed partnerships with realistic expectations, Levine stated. He cautioned the presidents, however, not to join in a partnership "unless you have the capacity and commitment to make it work." He urgedfoundation participants at the meeting to "tell us what works, what partnership activities are effective, where the potholes are, and which activities you would be willing to support."
    Other topics discussed during the meeting included strategies for recruiting individuals into the teaching profession; teacher certification; national priorities and the core curriculum; the standards movement; alternative certification, especially in science and math; and inter-cultural awareness for both teachers and students.
    The annual meeting between presidents and foundation officers serves a dual purpose: it provides an opportunity for the philanthropic community to learn more about the interests of colleges and universities in the CIC sector, and for college and university presidents to hear about the interests and perspectives of philanthropic foundations.
    "The meeting is decidedly not a forum for the solicitation of funds, but rather is a context for the exchange of ideas. Topics are timely and the discussion is lively, honest, and illuminating," said conference co-host Richard W. Kimball, president of The Teagle Foundation, Inc. and a member of the CIC Board of Directors. "We are very pleased that this meeting continues to generate so much interest."
    Foundation participants included individuals representing AT&T Foundation, Bonner Foundation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, Buhl Foundation, Bush Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Edwin Gould Foundation for Children, E.M. Lang Foundation, Ford Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, James S. Kemper Foundation, J.P. Morgan/Chase, Pew Charitable Trusts, Teagle Foundation, and William Randolph Hearst Foundations.

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Last updated: April 15, 2002
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