Press Release
Contact: Enid Goldberg, Director of Communications, Bank Street College of Education
Phone: 212-961-3325/ Fax: 212-961-3345
Email: Egoldberg@BankStreet.edu

For Immediate Release:

Bank Street College Salutes Its Graduates and Honors Advocates for Social Justice

The Graduate School of Bank Street College of Education, renowned for training progressive elementary, middle school, and special education teachers and leaders, will confer master's degrees on approximately 350 students, Thursday, May 25, at 4:30 p.m. The commencement will take place in Riverside Church, on Riverside Drive in Manhattan's Upper West Side.

Bank Street's graduates have earned degrees in a variety of fields, including Childhood General Education, Early Childhood General Education, Reading and Literacy, and Leadership. Other programs in which graduates will earn degrees include Museum Education and Bilingual Education, among others. The majority of the graduates will enter the teaching profession, and many have already have secured positions as teachers in the New York Metropolitan area and throughout the country and worldwide.

Bank Street's President, Dr. Augusta Souza Kappner, says that the College has a longstanding commitment to diversity as a means to social equality. Dr. Kappner adds, "So it seems fitting that as we celebrate our graduates into careers where we expect them to be agents for academic excellence for all children regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, origin or economic circumstance that we salute three candidates who exemplify those ideals in their life's work."

In keeping with this commitment, this year, the College is conferring honorary doctorates on three people who have made outstanding contributions to advancing diversity in education: Dr. Bettye R. Fletcher Comer, Director of the Fletcher Foundation; Alphonse Fletcher, Jr., Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Fletcher Asset Management; and Dr. Marta Tienda, Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University.

Dr. Bettye R. Fletcher Comer, a former teacher and educational leader in Connecticut, is Director and Manager of the Fletcher Foundation, which focuses on educational advancement, the improvement of race relations, the arts, community building, and the environment. She received her B.S. from Central Connecticut State University, her master's degree from Eastern Connecticut State University, and her doctorate in education from Teachers College, Columbia University.

In the Connecticut public school system, she taught social studies and English, served as a reading teacher and school social worker, and provided leadership in various roles as dean of students, principal, and central office administrator until retiring in 1996.

Dr. Fletcher Comer is a trustee of Mitchell College, and a member of the Teachers Advisory Board of New School University, the Theatre Development Fund, the National Council of Negro Women, the New York State Regents Task Force Subcommittee, Rotary International, the New London (Connecticut) Development Corporation, Phi Delta Kappa, Delta Kappa Gamma, and Alpha Kappa Alpha. In 2003, she received the Distinguished Alumnae Award from the Neag School of Education Alumni Society of the University of Connecticut. Dr. Fletcher Comer is married to Dr. James P. Comer, an internationally renowned professor of child psychiatry at Yale University and creator of the Comer School Development Program, which encourages alliances among educators, parents, policymakers, and community leaders to develop a stronger educational environment. He received an honorary degree from Bank Street College of Education in 1987.

Alphonse Fletcher, Jr., known as "Buddy" and the oldest son of Bettye and the late Alphonse Fletcher, is Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Fletcher Asset Management, a company which researches and implements investment strategies with a view toward environmental and social sustainability. He holds undergraduate degrees in applied mathematics from Harvard and aerospace studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a master's degree in environmental management from Yale.

Mr. Fletcher's many philanthropic activities are focused on community building, education, and the environment. He has served on the boards of a number of national and local charitable, civic, and educational organizations and institutions. He has worked extensively on a variety of conservation projects ranging from wetlands restoration to urban parks to historic architectural preservation. In additional to generous contributions to Harvard and the NAACP, Mr. Fletcher has donated copies of the Encarta Africana - an African American-oriented CD-ROM encyclopedia - to over one thousand public schools in New York City and Connecticut.

In 2004, to honor the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, he pledged $50 million to support individuals and institutions working for continued progress toward racial and social equality. His vision and achievements in business and philanthropy have been recognized by the 1999 Ernst & Young New York City Entrepreneur of the Year Award, the Sponsors for Educational Opportunity's 2002 Leadership Award, the 2004 United Negro College Fund's Extraordinary Black Man Award, and, in 2005, the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus Civil Rights Award and an honorary doctorate from Connecticut College.

Dr. Marta Tienda has been Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University since 1997 and holds the Maurice P. During '22 Professorship in Demographic Studies. Before coming to Princeton, she was the Ralph Lewis Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago, where she also served as department chair. Dr. Tienda received her B.A. degree from Michigan State University, and her master's and doctoral degrees from The University of Texas at Austin. She is a past member of the Board of Directors of the Population Association of America, and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Sociological Research Association. She has been an editor of the American Journal of Sociology and has authored, co-authored, or edited thirteen books and monographs and more than one hundred journal articles.

Dr. Tienda's research interests include ethnic and racial stratification, poverty and social policy, and the sociology of employment and the labor markets. A passionate advocate for affirmative action, her work has focused on the ways
in which social inequalities are shaped and how those inequalities relate to opportunities and constraints for individuals within societies.

Elected to numerous honorary societies and the recipient of many prestigious fellowships, Dr. Tienda also currently serves on the boards of the Rand Corporation, TIAA, the Sloan Foundation, the Jacobs Foundation of Switzerland, Brown University, and Princeton HealthCare System. She was honored with the Outstanding Latina Faculty in Higher Education Award in Research and Teaching by the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education; received Hispanic Business's 2004 Lifetime Achievement Award; was awarded honorary doctorates from Ohio State University in 2002 and Lehman College in 2003; and was named Outstanding Graduate Alumnus by the University of Texas at Austin in 2003.

MEDIA ADVISORY:
Members of the press are welcome to attend the ceremony. Photos may be taken at the ceremony. Photos will be available from the Bank Street Press Office (contact information above).

DATE: May 25, 2006, 4:30 p.m.
(Seating will begin at 3:30 p.m. Guests are requested to be seated by 4:15 p.m.)

PLACE: THE RIVERSIDE CHURCH,
490 Riverside Drive, between 120th and 122nd Streets, New York, NY.

The Graduation Ceremony will take place in The Nave, the sanctuary of the Church. Guests should use the main entrance on Riverside Drive. A reception at The Riverside Church will follow the Ceremony.

 

The mission of Bank Street College is to improve the education of children and their teachers by applying to the educational process all available knowledge about learning and growth, and by connecting teaching and learning meaningfully to the outside world. In so doing, we seek to strengthen not only individuals, but the community as well, including family, school, and the larger society in which children and adults, in all their diversity, interact and learn. We see in education the opportunity to build a better society.