Creating a College That Works

Grace G. Roosevelt

Description

In 1964 educational activist Audrey Cohen and her colleagues developed a unique curricular structure that enables urban college students to integrate their academic studies with meaningful work in community settings. Creating a College That Works chronicles Cohen's efforts to create an innovative educational model that began with the Women's Talent Corps, evolvied into the College for Human Services, and finally became, in 2002, what is now Metropolitan College of New York (MCNY), a fully accredited institution of higher education that offers bachelor's and master's degrees.

Focusing her attention on the major players in the development of MCNY, Grace G. Roosevelt provides a ringside seat during the years of turbulence, hope, and innovation in the 1960s and '70s. She captures the life of a visionary educational leader while situating Cohen's ideas within the history of progressive education. Cohen and her colleagues, facing great opposition, petitioned and marched, and were harassed and rebuffed. But they persevered, and today the college they founded continues to graduate hundreds of students dedicated to improving their communities, workplaces, and schools in the New York metropolitan area. Woven throughout the narrative are the changing dynamics of the civil rights movement, questions about women's leadership roles, and stories of how adults have transformed their lives through Cohen's innovative educational model.
List of Illustrations

1. Introduction: “I’ve got this idea I want to work on and I’m going to need some help.”

2. The Education of an Activist (1931–1963): High School, College, Travels with Mark, Part-Time Research Associates

3. “My Fork in the Road Presented Itself” (1964–1965): A Focus on Jobs, Community Outreach, Up Against a Male Bureaucracy

4. She Wouldn’t Take No for an Answer: Groundwork, the OEO Grant, Family Matters

5. The Women’s Talent Corps (1965–1967): Corps Women, CTs, Early Successes, New Careers, for the Record, Dellie Bloom’s Social Notes

6. Trial by Fire (1968–1972): Growing Pains, the Strike, the Aftermath, Faculty Overhaul, Dissent at Home

7. Reinventing Higher Education (1973–1974): The Process, the Breakthrough, Early Implementation, a Deweyan Model?

8. The College for Human Services Gains Recognition (1975–1979): In the Background, the Change Game, Doing Crystals, Service as Empowerment, Old Struggles on a New Level, Alida Mesrop Becomes Dean

9. Constructive Actions (1980–1989): Looking Forward, Faculty Development, the CA Document Evolves, Improving the World, Student Success Stories of the 1980s, a Second Marriage

10. Beyond Vocational Education: Washington and Du Bois Revisited, Great Books, Teaching, the Theory-Practice Nexus in Theory and in Practice

11. The Triumphs and Challenges of Leadership (1990–1999): Support Systems, Collaboration or Control?, The Schools Project, Audrey Cohen College, Her Final Battle

12. MCNY in the New Millennium (2000–2014): Transition, Troubles at the Top, Purposes-Centered Education in the Lives of Recent Students, Continuity and Change, Audrey Cohen’s Legacy

The Key Players
Sources and Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Éducation
• Education

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 11 février 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438455907
• Langue: English

Extrait

Creating a College That Works
Creating a College That Works
Audrey Cohen and Metropolitan College of New York
Grace G. Roosevelt
Cover photograph © Estate of David Gahr
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2015 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Jenn Bennett
Marketing, Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Roosevelt, Grace G., 1941–
Creating a College That Works : Audrey Cohen and Metropolitan College of New York.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5589-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5588-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5590-7 (ebook)
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Dellie Bloom (1920–2006),
Barbara Walton (1924–2008),
and Deborah Allen (1924–2014),
whose careful recording of Audrey Cohen’s educational vision made this book possible.
As I have continued to reflect on our experience, I can raise certain questions about our zeal and perhaps our overly moral approach to the social challenges the program addressed. But that zeal and conviction did also help to create change. Rhetoric does help to produce reality.
It shouldn’t be revolutionary that people’s potentials are believed in and challenged to grow. It shouldn’t be revolutionary to believe that others can learn and perform. It shouldn’t be revolutionary that service patterns should emerge from patterns of human need. The conditions are, however, for the most part, contrary to this hope. Our society is still too bound up in racism, credentialism, and fragmentation. Yet there are now alternatives, and some of these have been wrought by and from our efforts.
As I look back on the beginnings of the institution, I can see many mistakes—of emphasis, of interpretation, of strategy. But there was an unshakable core of justice, fairness and honesty—in the way we tried to analyze the challenges, in the way we dealt with the world, and in the way we dealt with each other.
We did good work.
—Laura Pires Houston (later Pires-Houston), 12/5/1978, Addendum to
“The Women’s Talent Corps—The College for Human Services:
An Historical Reconstruction. Phase 1—Crystal 3:
Institutional Development and Expansion:
Pushing the Parameter of the Possible.” Volume IV, p. 35.
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations Chapter 1 Introduction: “I’ve got this idea I want to work on and I’m going to need some help.” Chapter 2 The Education of an Activist (1931–1963): High School, College, Travels with Mark, Part-Time Research Associates Chapter 3 “My Fork in the Road Presented Itself” (1964–1965): A Focus on Jobs, Community Outreach, Up Against a Male Bureaucracy Chapter 4 She Wouldn’t Take No for an Answer: Groundwork, the OEO Grant, Family Matters Chapter 5 The Women’s Talent Corps (1965–1967): Corps Women, CTs, Early Successes, New Careers, for the Record , Dellie Bloom’s Social Notes Chapter 6 Trial by Fire (1968–1972): Growing Pains, the Strike, the Aftermath, Faculty Overhaul, Dissent at Home Chapter 7 Reinventing Higher Education (1973–1974): The Process, the Breakthrough, Early Implementation, a Deweyan Model?
gallery of photos Chapter 8 The College for Human Services Gains Recognition (1975–1979): In the Background, the Change Game, Doing Crystals, Service as Empowerment, Old Struggles on a New Level, Alida Mesrop Becomes Dean Chapter 9 Constructive Actions (1980–1989): Looking Forward, Faculty Development, the CA Document Evolves, Improving the World, Student Success Stories of the 1980s, a Second Marriage Chapter 10 Beyond Vocational Education: Washington and Du Bois Revisited, Great Books, Teaching, the Theory-Practice Nexus in Theory and in Practice Chapter 11 The Triumphs and Challenges of Leadership (1990–1999): Support Systems, Collaboration or Control?, The Schools Project, Audrey Cohen College, Her Final Battle Chapter 12 MCNY in the New Millennium (2000–2014): Transition, Troubles at the Top, Purpose-Centered Education in the Lives of Recent Students, Continuity and Change, Audrey Cohen’s Legacy
The Key Players
Sources and Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 7.1 A Curricular Grid for Purpose-Centered Education. Note how each semester (across the top row of the grid) has a designated purpose (in this case, a purpose related to necessary competencies in the field of human services). Students then take five required courses that are taught as dimensions of that Purpose. Illustrative curricular grid created by the author. Figure 8.1 “The Eight Essential Modes for Providing Service to Empower Citizens.” Courtesy of MCNY Archives. Figure 8.2 “The Five Constant Dimensions of Effective Service.” Courtesy of MCNY Archives. Figure 8.3 “The Interplay of Service Modes and Dimensions Creates the Performance Prism.” Courtesy of MCNY Archives.
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Unlike traditional educational approaches that separate learning from its use, [Metropolitan College of New York’s] approach links learning directly to action. Students learn in order to use what they learn, and they use what they learn to reach specific goals. This gives them an appreciation for how deeply they can affect the world around them and builds a lifelong interest in learning.
—Cohen and Jordan, 1996, p. 33. 1
“I’VE GOT THIS IDEA I WANT TO WORK ON AND I’M GOING TO NEED SOME HELP” 2
In a small college library in lower Manhattan, three adult students are busily at work around a large table cluttered with books, papers, and their own laptop computers. Tamisha Tamley is a shy thirty-five-year-old African American woman who has raised three children as a single mom. She works in a homeless shelter in Brooklyn and hopes one day to become a counselor of teenagers so that she can help others avoid the mistakes she feels she made at an early age. Sitting beside her is Bernadette Perkins, a tall, imposing Jamaican woman who has worked as a nurse’s assistant at Elmherst Hospital in Queens for ten years but who now wants to become a teacher. On the other side of the table is Juanel Gomez who grew up in the South Bronx, served in the U.S. Army, and has returned to college to take advantage of the Veteran Administration’s new GI Bill. Juanel is working on a business degree so that eventually he can open his own company specializing in computer software.
Tamisha Tamley, Bernadette Perkins, and Juanel Gomez are composite portraits of students who currently attend Metropolitan College of New York (MCNY). MCNY is a tuition-based, private, urban college with approximately 1,200 full-time students, most of whom are women of color who have jobs and families. Although not well known outside of New York City, MCNY is familiar to many New Yorkers thanks to the college’s frequent ad campaigns on major highway intersections and in the subways. As those ads and the college’s prize-winning website ( www.mcny.edu ) make known, MCNY includes a human services unit (the Audrey Cohen School for Human Services and Education), a public affairs unit (the School for Public Affairs and Administration), and a business unit (the School for Business), with daytime, evening, and weekend schedules that allow students to attend college while continuing to work. For working adults, an important MCNY attraction is that by attending full time, including the summer, students can complete an undergraduate degree in two years and eight months. The college’s promotional materials make clear, however, that the college is no “fly-by-night” institution. MCNY is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, its Masters of Childhood Education program is accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), and its School for Business is accredited by the Accrediting Council for Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP).
What makes MCNY unique is the structure of its curriculum. In a conceptual framework that the college created and that it calls Purpose-Centered Education, each semester has a specific performance goal or purpose to which all five courses taken that semester relate. The courses themselves are then taught as “dimensions” of each semester’s purpose, and the course content is often transdisciplinary—combining, for example, readings from literature and psychology or history and philosophy. Most importantly, students are required to use the knowledge gained each semester to complete a specific project—what the college calls a Constructive Action—in a human service agency, school, or business, and to document that process in a systematic way. As one student wrote, “We become immersed in the practical application of what is taught in theory.” 3
MCNY’s unorthodox model has achieved positive results. In a recent survey of MCNY graduates, 68 percent of respondents reported that they had full-time jobs and 47 percent reported holding a manager/administrator/supervisor position. Thirty percent of respondents reported having received a recent promotion. MCNY alumni include social workers, teachers, ministers, school administrators, business owners, emergency professionals, psychologists, and lawyers. Most interesting, perhaps, 87 percent of the graduates recommended the Constru