peabody education fund2 of 2 Parts: George Peabody, "Education: A Debt Due from Present to Future Generations" (June 16, 1852); A Review with Commentary of Paul K. Conkin, Peabody College: From a Frontier Academy to the Frontiers of Teaching and Learning (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002), ISBN 0-8265-1425-1.
By Franklin Parker (see end of article About the Reviewer).
Concluding Part 2 of 2 Parts Follows:
Peabody College of Vanderbilt University
Peabody's Acting Dean Hardy C. Wilcoxon
Acting Dean Hardy C. Wilcoxon during 1979-80 knew that Peabody College of Vanderbilt University had to "sharpen its focus as a professional school." Like all Vanderbilt schools, Peabody College had to pay its own way from tuition, research grants, and fundraising. It also had to pay its share of total plant operating costs, personnel costs, and other services.
H.C. Wilcoxon attended the University of Arkansas (B.A., 1947, and M.A., 1948) and Yale University (Ph.D., 1951), was psychology professor, University of Arkansas (to 1966), a George Peabody College for Teachers faculty member from 1966, and acting dean at the Peabody College of Vanderbilt University merger, 1979-80.
Dean Willis D. Hawley
Wilcoxon's successor was Dean Willis David Hawley (b.1938) from October 15, 1980 to l989. He came to Vanderbilt in August 1980 to teach political science and to direct the Center for Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt's interdisciplinary Institute for Public Policy. Born in San Francisco, he earned the B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. He taught political science at Yale University (1969-72) and co-directed Yale's training of secondary school teachers. He taught political science at Duke University (1972-80) and directed its Center for Education Policy. He was on leave from Duke (1977-78) to help plan the cabinet-level U.S. Department of Education under U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
Educational Technology Breakthrough
Under Dean Hawley and amid a national surge of public education reform (inspired by A Nation at Risk, 1983, and other national reports critical of public education), Peabody had by 1983-84 upgraded its undergraduate and graduate programs, added new faculty, become proficient in using computers and telecommunications to enhance teaching and learning, and moved Peabody into national leadership in applying the new educational technology to improve public school teaching and learning. Peabody's scattered educational technology components were placed in a Learning Technology Center to assure better research and to secure grants to improve learning and public school teaching.
"America's School of Education"
Hawley stated in 1986: "Peabody, more than any other school of education and human development, [is] national in scope and influence." He cited Peabody as "America's School of Education" because "we are arguably better than anyone else at linking knowledge to practice." After a 1987 self-study on Peabody's mission, Hawley wrote that "Peabody's central mission is to enhance the social and cognitive development of children and youth," focusing on the handicapped, and to transfer that knowledge into action through policy analysis, product development, and the design of practical models.
Peabody Library School Closed
A self-study in 1987 led Peabody to close its 60-year-old Library School. Reasons given for its closing were: it had been understaffed, student enrollment had not grown, school librarians had become computer-based learning facilitators, and American Library Association standards would require adding faculty. A two-day celebration in May 1987 honored Peabody's Library School leaders and alumni.
Ten Years after Merger
Dean Hawley left the deanship after nine years (1980-89), remaining at Peabody. He became University of Maryland's education dean on July 1, 1993. Reflecting on Peabody's ten years as Vanderbilt's ninth school, he said: To make it the best U.S. school of education and human development, Peabody had improved two-thirds of its programs, collaborated with Fisk University on increasing minority teachers, added new faculty, and increased its capacity to serve and influence educational policy makers and practitioners.
Peabody had established the Center for Advanced Study of Educational Leadership, the Corporate Learning Center, the Learning Technology Center, and strengthened and broadened the mission of the John F. Kennedy Center for Research on Education and Human Development. It had increased student aid and increased external research and development funding at an annual rate of 20 percent. In educational technology research and learning, he said, "we can claim to be the best in the country."
In 1989 Hawley listed the following among Peabody College of Vanderbilt University's achievements:
The U.S. Department of Education had awarded Peabody College and Harvard University a joint 5-year $2.5 million grant to study effective leadership in kindergarten through grade 12 school systems. The grant funded a National Center for Educational Leadership, housed at both Peabody and at Harvard, to study the leadership styles of school principals and school superintendents.
Apple Computer had donated computers, with equipment and software matched by Peabody, to improve math, science, and language arts teaching in a Nashville middle school. Besides better middle school learning, multimedia presentations showed prospective teachers how to apply educational technology in the classroom. Peabody was one of a six-member Southeast research university consortium testing and evaluating new educational technology programs in teaching and learning.
Peabody College received a four-year $80,000 grant for 20 educators to develop and evaluate computer-based instruction to improve learning by children with disabilities. The 20 teachers so trained, in turn, were resource educators for other teacher education institutions, thus stimulating ongoing programs. Said a Peabody special education professor directing the research: "We're on the forefront of computer-based instruction and one of the leading institutions on technology as applied to teaching children with disabilities."
For three consecutive years, Peabody College was named as having the "top choice" program to prepare guidance counselors. The judges (6l8 high school guidance counselors) most often named Peabody College of Vanderbilt University as having the best program for undergraduates from among 650 quality four-year colleges, public and independent, listed in Rugg's Recommendations on the Colleges for 1990, 1991, and 1992.
Peabody College's Dean J.W. Pellegrino
After a two-and-a-half year search, James William Pellegrino (1947-) was chosen as the second dean of Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, 1992-98. He had been acting dean at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before joining Vanderbilt as holder of the Frank W. Mayborn Chair of Cognitive Studies. "I inherited a financially stable and intellectually robust institution," he said in the fall of 1992 (enrollment was over 1,500 [870 undergraduate, some 630 graduate students]). His goals were to so undergird Peabody 's instructional programs with innovative technology that they would be "uniquely superior" and set a standard for other universities.
Dean Pellegrino said Peabody was developing a college-wide blueprint to improve learning in U.S. schools. That blueprint included continued collaboration with school leaders and teachers in Nashville and elsewhere, focusing on Peabody-developed innovative educational technology. Besides continued collaboration after September 1992 with Nashville schools, Peabody also joined the U.S. Education Department-sponsored alliance to promote the six (later raised to eight) national education goals.
Social-Religious Building Remodeled
During 1993-96 Peabody's historic Social-Religious Building was renovated and expanded by 50,000 feet at a cost of $15 million to make it Peabody's center for educational technology research and development. Its aim was to use creatively computers, interactive video and audio, fiber optics, and satellite systems to improve learning and enhance teaching.
The Social-Religious Building retained the main auditorium and housed Peabody's central administrative offices, the Department of Teaching and Learning, and the Learning Technology Center. It had built-in capabilities for multimedia presentations, productions, and conferences, and also a visitors center.
Dean Camilla Persson Benbow
Peabody College's second Dean James William Pellegrino, who remained as research professor, was succeeded by third Dean Camilla Persson Benbow (b.1956) from August 1998. She was former interim dean of Iowa State University College of Education and an authority on academically talented children.
Under Dean Benbow, on April 30, 2000, the Social-Religious Building was renamed the Faye and Joe Wyatt Center for Education, to honor the retiring Vanderbilt University chancellor and his wife, under whom the 1993-96 building renovation occurred.
Since 1979, under deans Hawley, Pellegrino, and Benbow, Peabody College of Vanderbilt University has advanced its small but excellent teacher education and other programs, especially its educational technology; has been financially stable; has refurbished its physical plant; and has enhanced its national reputation.
Conkin's Conclusions
Conkin wrote positively about the Vanderbilt-Peabody union. He ended his book with the statement that "Peabody…has enhanced the reputation of its host [Vanderbilt]." Conkin sees a realization of "Philip Lindsley's 1828 dream of a great university in Nashville, with one of its colleges dedicated to the training of teachers." Conkin lauds as reality "Chancellor Kirkland's dream at the beginning of the last century of a great university center in Nashville" (Conkin, p. 409).
Final Thoughts
Conkin wrote a fair and balanced history of Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. He read massive documentation, offered much detail yet also presented the big picture. He was blunt and made judgments based on facts. This book is a fit companion to and will stand the test of time alongside Conkin, et al. Gone With the Ivy: A Biography of Vanderbilt University (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985).
Touching Dedication
I was touched, as all Peabodians will be, at Conkin's dedication:
I dedicate this book to the corps of Peabody-trained teachers. From the first thirteen young women who enrolled in a new State Normal College in December 1875 to the present, thousands of women and men, teachers or prospective teachers, have come to Peabody to gain needed skills in their chosen calling. They have eschewed wealth or the lofty status that too often attaches to high incomes. They have left Peabody, not only well prepared to teach or to assume leadership positions in education, but with a heightened idealism and a stronger commitment to a life of service. More than anyone else, they embody the Peabody ideal.
Last Word
Faced with greater financial challenges and class and race divisions than its northern and western counterparts, Peabody College and its predecessors rose phoenix-like again and again to produce educational leaders for the South, the nation, and the world. Strengthened since 1979 as part of Vanderbilt University, and annually in the 1990s through 2002 voted among the best U.S. graduate schools of education, Peabody College of Vanderbilt University proudly carries into the twenty-first century George Peabody's 1852 motto, "Education, a debt due from present to future generations."
[About the reviewer: Franklin Parker's article, "George Peabody (1795-1869)," appeared in Notable American Philanthropists: Biographies of Giving and Volunteering, pp. 242-246, ed. By Robert T. Grimm, Jr. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002). His other George Peabody articles, co-authored with Betty J. Parker, published in the ERIC system (Educational Resources Information Center) include ERIC ED numbers 369720, 378070, 379179, 388571, 392653, 392664, 397179, 398126, 413254, 422243, 436444, 444917, and 445998.
The Parkers do research and writing in their retirement home, 63 Heritage Loop, Crossville, TN 38571-8270. E-mail: bfparker@frontiernet.net]
End of Review
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