Ellen Lagemann hopes to help students, faculty, staff
Wants to use BCED to spread Simon's Rock's message to greater community
by Robin Caskey | Llama Ledger Staff
Issue date: 3/12/08 Section: News
"I can talk about any topic in education in my sleep," Ellen Condliffe Lagemann laughs, sitting in her office on the second floor of the College Center.
The room is home to the Bard Center for Education and Democracy (BCED), the project which Lagemann has been working on for the past semester and a half. According to a document Lagemann presented to the Board of Overseers at their March 8 meeting, the Center aims to provide "a venue for conversations concerning education, democracy, and their relationship."
But as Lagemann continues to explain, hopefully BCED will develop to encompass much more than that, and will eventually serve Simon's Rock faculty and staff, the surrounding community, and the educational community at large.
Lagemann, former dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has been appointed as a Bard Center Distinguished Fellow, and, in her own words, "brings a lot of outside activity," to the table.
Lagemann serves as a Director of the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy in Cambridge, Mass., a member of the Advisory Committee of the Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and President of the Board of Concord Academy, Concord, Mass., among many other positions.
She says she is "continuing with those kind of things" in the hopes of bringing "them inside Simon's Rock," and spreading the school's message in the greater academic community.
"What's wonderful about Simon's Rock is it takes young people and it takes them seriously intellectually. That's the core mission," Lagemann says.
Not enough people know about Simon's Rock, she says, and she hopes the Center will help combat this.
At a recent talk given at the Weinberg Seminar on Feb. 28, which included attendees such as Karen Arenson, an education reporter for the New York Times, Lagemann says she had a chance to familiarize her audience with the Simon's Rock model.
"They're pretty prominent people," she says of the attendees, "and they know something [about Simon's Rock] now, maybe not as much as they should know, but they know something."
Speaking to academic audiences and bringing people to Simon's Rock are both critical in the Center's development, and hugely important in the effort to fund the programs the Center hopes to offer students, according to Lagemann.
"I'm trying to raise a lot of money, which is hard to do with the recession we're going into," she says. One possible fundraiser is "Saturday Seminars at Simon's Rock," which would be offered to adults from the Berkshires.
For students, BCED's programs will focus, at least in the beginning stages, on the "civic arts," a combination of civic education and service learning, two terms Lagemann admittedly doesn't like.
As Gidon Eshel, a Bard Center Faculty Fellow and Lagemann's closest colleague explains, "Our general objective is to educate and create a citizen that is at least marginally quantitatively astute, and environmentally knowledgeable and skeptical. How is a student to tell between Bush and a real president? You need some quantitative skills."
A tentative class scheduled for next semester, "Incarceration in America", would be Lagemann's first chance to start incorporate some of the Center's goals into the Simon's Rock curriculum. Working in partnership with professor Rebecca Fiske, the course would offer students field research opportunities, internships and volunteer activities, as well as "bring a number of speakers, prominent scholars, and former inmates [to campus]", Lagemann says.
Lagemann hopes that Civic Arts will evolve from a course to a topic students are interested in. "I have talked to a few [students] interested in starting schools, interested in education. My contact has been informal; I would be very happy if anyone wanted to have an informal discussion," she says.
"Ellen is great fun, a great asset, for Simon's Rock or any place she works for," says Eshel. She brings "a whole new level of academic achievement [to Simon's Rock]."
Lagemann, and The Bard Center for Education and Democracy, deliver a "significant addition in intellectual opportunity, some that have already materialized, and others that will continue to develop," Eshel says.
The Bard Center for Education and Democracy at Simon's Rock has invited Michael J. Feuer, of the National Research Council, to give a forum titled "Science and Policy in the Beltway and Beyond," on March 20 at 5 p.m at in Blodgett House.
Contact the author: rcaskey@llamaledger.com
The room is home to the Bard Center for Education and Democracy (BCED), the project which Lagemann has been working on for the past semester and a half. According to a document Lagemann presented to the Board of Overseers at their March 8 meeting, the Center aims to provide "a venue for conversations concerning education, democracy, and their relationship."
But as Lagemann continues to explain, hopefully BCED will develop to encompass much more than that, and will eventually serve Simon's Rock faculty and staff, the surrounding community, and the educational community at large.
Lagemann, former dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has been appointed as a Bard Center Distinguished Fellow, and, in her own words, "brings a lot of outside activity," to the table.
Lagemann serves as a Director of the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy in Cambridge, Mass., a member of the Advisory Committee of the Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and President of the Board of Concord Academy, Concord, Mass., among many other positions.
She says she is "continuing with those kind of things" in the hopes of bringing "them inside Simon's Rock," and spreading the school's message in the greater academic community.
"What's wonderful about Simon's Rock is it takes young people and it takes them seriously intellectually. That's the core mission," Lagemann says.
Not enough people know about Simon's Rock, she says, and she hopes the Center will help combat this.
At a recent talk given at the Weinberg Seminar on Feb. 28, which included attendees such as Karen Arenson, an education reporter for the New York Times, Lagemann says she had a chance to familiarize her audience with the Simon's Rock model.
"They're pretty prominent people," she says of the attendees, "and they know something [about Simon's Rock] now, maybe not as much as they should know, but they know something."
Speaking to academic audiences and bringing people to Simon's Rock are both critical in the Center's development, and hugely important in the effort to fund the programs the Center hopes to offer students, according to Lagemann.
"I'm trying to raise a lot of money, which is hard to do with the recession we're going into," she says. One possible fundraiser is "Saturday Seminars at Simon's Rock," which would be offered to adults from the Berkshires.
For students, BCED's programs will focus, at least in the beginning stages, on the "civic arts," a combination of civic education and service learning, two terms Lagemann admittedly doesn't like.
As Gidon Eshel, a Bard Center Faculty Fellow and Lagemann's closest colleague explains, "Our general objective is to educate and create a citizen that is at least marginally quantitatively astute, and environmentally knowledgeable and skeptical. How is a student to tell between Bush and a real president? You need some quantitative skills."
A tentative class scheduled for next semester, "Incarceration in America", would be Lagemann's first chance to start incorporate some of the Center's goals into the Simon's Rock curriculum. Working in partnership with professor Rebecca Fiske, the course would offer students field research opportunities, internships and volunteer activities, as well as "bring a number of speakers, prominent scholars, and former inmates [to campus]", Lagemann says.
Lagemann hopes that Civic Arts will evolve from a course to a topic students are interested in. "I have talked to a few [students] interested in starting schools, interested in education. My contact has been informal; I would be very happy if anyone wanted to have an informal discussion," she says.
"Ellen is great fun, a great asset, for Simon's Rock or any place she works for," says Eshel. She brings "a whole new level of academic achievement [to Simon's Rock]."
Lagemann, and The Bard Center for Education and Democracy, deliver a "significant addition in intellectual opportunity, some that have already materialized, and others that will continue to develop," Eshel says.
The Bard Center for Education and Democracy at Simon's Rock has invited Michael J. Feuer, of the National Research Council, to give a forum titled "Science and Policy in the Beltway and Beyond," on March 20 at 5 p.m at in Blodgett House.
Contact the author: rcaskey@llamaledger.com
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