New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education has received a $10 million gift from Wall Street financier Michael Steinhardt and his wife, Judy, a Trustee of the NYU Institute of Fine Arts and co-chair of the American Friends of Israel Museum.
New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education has received a $10 million gift from Wall Street financier Michael Steinhardt and his wife, Judy, a Trustee of the NYU Institute of Fine Arts and co-chair of the American Friends of Israel Museum.
The donation matches their $10 million gift in 2001, when the school was named in honor of the Steinhardts. The combined $20 million is the largest gift in the history of the school, which was established in 1890 as the School of Pedagogy-the first professional school established at an American university devoted to the study of teaching and learning and the preparation of educators. The Steinhardts’ $20 million contribution is also one of the highest gifts to an education school in the United States.
“I am uniformly pleased with the progress and quality of the school stewardship under Dean Mary Brabeck,” Michael Steinhardt said. “I’m excited about its prospects.”
Brabeck became dean of the Steinhardt School in 2003. She had been dean of Boston College’s Lynch School of Education, beginning in 1996.
Under Brabeck’s tenure, the Steinhardt School has launched a range of initiatives:
- The opening of the Institute for Globalization and Education in Metropolitan Settings (IGEMS) to study immigration and globalization and their effects on urban education;
- An initiative with New York City’s Department of Education and the City University of New York to create The New York City Partnership for Teacher Excellence, which develops innovative designs for teacher education with an emphasis on teaching in New York City public schools and a commitment to support early career teachers on the job, especially in the shortage areas of math, science, special education, and English as a second language;
- The hiring of 56 tenured or tenure-track faculty;
- Increased minority representation among tenured and tenure-track faculty from 15 percent (23 faculty) in 2003 to 20 percent (34 faculty) in 2006;
- The creation of the Institute on Human Development and Contextual Change;
- More than $46 million in grants, including a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to support math teacher preparation and a $3 million grant from the New York State Department of Education to create a bilingual education center.
In March 2007, the Steinhardt School of Education will be changing its name to the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development.
“Adopting a new name that expresses the school’s unique mission was of prime importance to many members of the Steinhardt community,” said Brabeck. “Steinhardt’s new name, first and foremost, best describes its mission to advance knowledge, creativity, and innovation at the crossroads of human learning, culture, development, and well-being.”