Reflector Fall 2012

Director of Metro Nashville Public Schools Jesse Register, Dean Camilla Benbow and H. Rodes Hart, emeritus member of the Vanderbilt Board of Trust and longtime university supporter, at the Roundtable Donor Society Dinner on October 11. Read More

As a member of the National Science Board, I occasionally have the privilege of hearing firsthand accounts of recent scientific advances. Often the best new ideas result when people with different backgrounds and specialized knowledge are thrown together in unexpected ways and places. Peabody College has its own unique history of fostering innovations in the realms of education and human development. Read More

Children or Goats? I read with interest our summer edition of the Reflector and noted several references to “kids.” However there were no references to goats, who are the progenitors of kids. While observing a high school teacher, who was also a football coach, I learned that he always referred to his students… Read More

Camilla Benbow, Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education and Human Development at Peabody, has been appointed to the board of directors for the Washington, D.C., think tank Education Sector. Education Sector is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization committed to achieving measurable impact in education, both through improving existing reform initiatives… Read More

On a beautiful day in late August, Peabody feted new graduate students at a dinner in front of the Wyatt Center (Social-Religious Building) during orientation. Read More

Stella Flores Peabody’s Stella Flores, assistant professor of public policy and higher education, was one of 21 researchers nationwide who developed an amicus brief summarizing key research on affirmative action in anticipation of the case, Fisher v. University of Texas, which went before the U.S. Supreme Court… Read More

The Susan Gray School was selected by Nashville’s Mayor’s Advisory Committee for People with Disabilities to receive the Mayor’s 2012 Education Award at an awards ceremony and reception on October 25. The school was nominated by Lorie Duke, parent of a 4-year-old at SGS. Read More

Melissa Gresalfi Gary T. Henry Andrew Hostetler Joe Rodgers Gary T. Henry, professor of public policy and education in the Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations, comes to Peabody from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Read More

A five-year, $7.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs will continue funding of the IRIS Center at Peabody. The IRIS Center develops coursework and teacher training materials to help students with disabilities achieve their academic potential. Director Naomi Tyler,… Read More

The National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools at Peabody announced the next phase of their partnership with Broward County Public Schools to study and “scale up” effective practices of these Florida high schools. As part of an ongoing, five-year study funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute on… Read More

Randall K. Harley, (MA’54, PhD’62) professor emeritus of special education, who taught at Peabody for over 29 years, was honored with a reception on campus in September during which he was presented with a stone to be placed in the Hall of Legends at the American… Read More

Jason Grissom Former teachers may be an important source for the teacher labor supply, with as many as 30 percent of this population re-entering the field at some point, but who is most likely to return to the classroom after a hiatus? New research from Peabody examines… Read More

Magdalene House Magdalene House: A Place about Mercy, (Vanderbilt University Press, 2012) by Sarah VanHooser Suiter, PhD’10, is a participant-observation account of the history of this remarkable community founded in 1997, its structure, its Thistle Farms beauty products operation, and Reverend Becca Stevens’s communal and spiritual vision. Read More

An acclaimed young adult novelist is now applying her vision, talent and Peabody connections to engage young readers with Shakespeare. Read More

Thomas H. Powell, EdD’82, currently in his 10th year as president of Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmetsburg, Md., has led the nation’s second-oldest Catholic university to new heights. Read More

Selected works were exhibited and artists were recognized at the 31st Annual Awards Celebration of the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on October 25. Read More

The Annual Farm to Fork Dinner on the Peabody mall has become a fall tradition on campus, highlighting locally harvested food and bringing students together to pass around bowls of the best grub around. It’s debatable whether one could actually call “rosemary roasted pork loin with… Read More

Continued accolades might go to any institution’s collective head. Yet Peabody College’s place atop the rankings of education schools nationwide has made the school’s faculty and leadership anything but complacent. The forward-looking approach that helped to build the college continues to infuse its institutional culture: At Peabody, innovation has become standard operating procedure. Read More

In 2011, Tennessee welcomed 1,236 refugees from 17 different countries, most of them settling in Nashville. For a refugee, the first order of business is survival, and the key to survival in the United States is learning English. Angela Harris, MEd’10, is establishing the ESL to Go program to help Nashville area refugees learn the language. Read More

The G.I. Bill changed the way the state and its citizens thought about one another in the postwar period. This was seen especially in regard to higher education, which quickly emerged as one of the institutional embodiments of the G.I. Bill. Read More