TC Today - Teachers College Columbia University

Good Fellowship
Scholarships created by TC’s late Board Vice Chair Arthur Zankel have extended
the College’s tradition of urban service
by Jonathan Sapers
In his doctoral research at Teachers College, Jondou
Chen is trying to tease out precisely how socioeconomic
status affects academic achievement. Clearly
wealthier kids do better than ones from low-income y
backgrounds—but why? What are the protective mechanisms
involved?
From early on, Chen saw that quantitative data alone
couldn’t answer that question. The realization prompted
him to join TC’s Zankel Urban Fellowship program, which
arranges service work in New York City schools and nonprofits
for TC students who, because they are pursuing
non-teaching careers, might otherwise miss out on the rich
experience of working directly with young people.
For his Zankel service work, Chen signed on with TC’s
Student Press Initiative (SPI), a professional development
program that helps teachers incorporate oral histories, writing
and publishing into their instruction.
The signature of a successful
university partnership with local
schools and organizations is a
two-way, mutually beneficial
engagement.
~ NANCY STREIM, Associate Vice President,
School and Community Partnerships
“The very first student I worked with was a young man
named Jerry, from Newark, who was incarcerated out at
Riker’s Island,” Chen recalls. “He had grown up with his
mom telling him that if he didn’t mess with other people,
they wouldn’t mess with him. Then one day, on the way
home from school, he was jumped by a local gang. That’s
The philanthropist Arthur Zankel,
former Vice Chair of the TC’s Board
of Trustees, believed the College
should engage with its surrounding
community through direct and
ongoing service.
how they initiate new members. He joined the gang,
dropped out of school and began getting in trouble with the
law. It’s that kind of story that helps you understand how,
because of poverty and all that goes with it, someone who’s
basically on the right track can be badly derailed.”
Today, Jerry, though still in prison, is working on a
bachelor’s degree. Chen, for his part, now directs SPI.
The Zankel Fellowship Program is the legacy of the
late Arthur Zankel, former Vice Chair of TC’s Board of
Trustees, who became convinced that TC could not claim
success in its mission if it was surrounded by failing schools.
“Arthur strongly believed that Teachers College should
engage with the under-served community in which it
is located through direct and ongoing service by faculty
and students,” says Martin Zankel, Arthur’s brother. “The
Zankel Urban Fellowship program stands as a model of
community engagement that he envisioned.”
Zankel initially provided $1 million to create two programs,
the Reading Buddies and the Math Buddies, which
pair TC students with academically struggling children
in six Harlem public schools. After his death in 2005, the
College received a $10 million gift from his estate in June
2006 that created up to 50 one-year scholarships, to be
awarded annually to both master’s and doctoral students
with demonstrated financial need. Now in its fifth year, y
the Zankel Urban Fellowships enable TC students to y
work in a variety of city schools and programs under the
guidance of TC faculty. There are 13 sites for the 2011–12
Fellowship, including:
38 T C T O D A Y l s p r i n g 2 0 1 1