Kirwan Receives 2009 Carnegie Corporation Academic Leadership Award
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2009 Carnegie
Corporation Academic Leadership Awards Honor Leon Botstein, Scott Cowen, Amy
Gutmann, William Kirwan
Awards Carry $500,000 Grants in the Leaders' Honor
New York, New York, September 21, 2009-Four higher education leaders were
honored today with a 2009 Carnegie Corporation Academic Leadership Award -Leon
Botstein, President of Bard College; Scott Cowen, President of Tulane
University; Amy Gutmann, President of the University of Pennsylvania; and,
William E. Kirwan, Chancellor of the University System of Maryland. The awards were announced by Vartan Gregorian,
President of Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Carnegie Corporation honors these individuals with grants of
$500,000 each to be used at their discretion in support of their academic
initiatives.
The awards recognize higher education leaders who have
demonstrated a commitment to excellence in undergraduate education, both
teaching and research; the development of major interdisciplinary and
multidisciplinary undergraduate and graduate programs that aim to bridge the
gulf between the theoretical and the practical; university outreach to their
respective communities and cooperative efforts with business, civic, and
education leaders on initiatives such as K-12 school reform; and, international
initiatives.
Nominations are solicited from previous winners as well as
leaders from several national academic organizations. They are carefully
reviewed with particular scrutiny given to candidates' sustained records of
innovation and accomplishment.
"Each of these leaders has an academic vision focused on a
commitment to excellence. They all see
the university as an integral part of their communities, and view the health of
K-12 education as central to the future of higher education," said Vartan
Gregorian.
"At a time when resources are scarce, we hope these awards
will allow outstanding leaders to maintain the momentum of their most critical
and innovative educational initiatives," Gregorian added.
The Academic Leadership Award, established in 2005, is an
investment in leadership by Carnegie Corporation that builds on the
foundation's long tradition of recognizing, developing and sustaining exemplary
leadership in higher education. In the Carnegie
Quarterly of April 1959, published during the presidency of John
Gardner, the strength of the Corporation's grants program was described as
seeking to be "as responsive as possible to the expressed concerns of college
and university leaders" and to "lend itself to the kinds of giving which will
strengthen the institution in terms which the president considers necessary."
Hence, this award for academic leadership renews and continues a time-honored
Carnegie Corporation tradition in support of advancing excellence in higher
education.
2009 Academic
Leadership Award winners:
Leon Botstein has been President of Bard College since 1975. His has been a long-time voice raised in support of innovation in
American higher education. Botstein,
also Leon Levy Professor in the Arts and Humanities, is the author of Jefferson's Children: Education and the
Promise of American Culture and has been a pioneer in linking higher
education to public secondary schools. He established an innovative high
school-early college program carried out in conjunction with the City of New
York, which offers highly motivated students a chance to complete high school
and two years of college within four years.
The program's schools are tuition-free and mirror the city's economic
and racial diversity. Bard's Master of
Arts in Teaching program places apprentice teachers in New York City's
high-need public schools. Thanks to Botstein, Bard has created notable
international education programs including Smolny College, one of post-Soviet
Russia's first liberal arts colleges, and the Al-Quds Bard Partnership, the
first-ever collaboration between a Palestinian and U.S. institution of higher
education to offer dual-degree programs.
The International Human Rights Exchange, a program offered by Bard and
University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, offers the world's only
full-semester, multi-disciplinary program in human rights. President Botstein is also music director
and conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra and the Jerusalem Symphony
Orchestra, the radio orchestra of Israel. His recording of the music of Popov
and Shostakovich, with the London Symphony Orchestra, was nominated for a 2006
Grammy Award. His most recent recording is Bruno Walter's Symphony in D Minor
with the North German Radio Symphony
Orchestra.
Tulane University President
Scott Cowen's leadership
was fully demonstrated during the post-Katrina rebuilding of New Orleans. While rebuilding Tulane, he has been active
in improving the city's K-12 public schools, sustaining its health care system,
and championing public service. Less
than six months after Hurricane Katrina, which flooded 70 percent of Tulane's
uptown campus and all the buildings of its downtown health sciences campus,
dispersing faculty, staff and students around the country for an entire
semester, Scott Cowen spearheaded an effort to repair the campus in time to
welcome 87 percent of its students for classes in January 2006. He led a committee to reform and rebuild the
city's failing public school system and, as part of this effort, Tulane
chartered a K-12 school in New Orleans and created an Institute for Public
Education Initiatives to support the transformation of public education in New
Orleans. In addition, President Cowen
has served as a commissioner of the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority, which
continues to play a major role in the rebuilding of Orleans Parish in the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Tulane
has earned both a community and national reputation as one of the leading
institutions of higher education dedicated to public service. At the 2008 ServiceNation Summit, convened by Carnegie Corporation and
presented by Time Inc., Cowen reaffirmed Tulane's extensive service programs
and announced a new initiative to transform community health in New Orleans
while offering unprecedented opportunities for public service to the
university's students. Under Cowen's
presidency, Tulane has implemented a number of innovative academic and research
program initiatives and has more than quadrupled its undergraduate
applications, recruiting the highest quality students in the school's
history. He is currently chairman of
the Southeast Regional Airport Authority, which is
charged with turning Louis Armstrong International Airport into a world-class
transportation center and a significant economic development powerhouse. Building upon its strengths in civic
engagement and public service, Tulane is currently developing a university-wide
set of initiatives in social entrepreneurship.
Amy Gutmann, who succeeded Judith Rodin as President of the University of
Pennsylvania, launched the Penn Compact in 2004, which has enhanced Penn's
global leadership in teaching, research, and professional service, and has made
Penn a dynamic agent of civic progress. The Compact has propelled Penn forward
in three strategic areas: integrating knowledge, engaging locally and globally,
and increasing student access. Under the leadership of President Gutmann, an
eminent political scientist and philosopher, Penn has continued to recruit and
retain a truly interdisciplinary faculty, and has dramatically increased
support for distinguished teacher-scholars who integrate knowledge across
multiple disciplines. The Penn Integrates Knowledge Initiative has attracted to
Penn some of the finest teacher-scholars who hold joint appointments across
Penn's schools, and demonstrate exceptional achievement across disciplines.
Gutmann has continued major university-wide initiatives that have transformed
West Philadelphia and become a model of community outreach not only in
Pennsylvania but also throughout the nation.
Penn has had a major impact on K-12 public education through school
partnerships that create and foster high-achieving public schools, including
collaborations between local elementary schools and Penn's Graduate School of
Education. President Gutmann has
championed equity in higher education, expanding Penn's outreach efforts and
the university's financial aid to make Penn fully affordable to students from
all socioeconomic backgrounds. Penn has
notably expanded service learning and community partnership initiatives:
academically based community service courses have grown by thirty percent since
2004. At the 2008 ServiceNation
Summit, Gutmann pledged that Penn will fund an additional 400 community service
opportunities over the next four-year period.
The new campus master plan of the university, which is the largest
employer in Philadelphia, will increase green space by twenty percent and
Penn's Climate Action Plan will further reduce the University's carbon
footprint. In addition to its ongoing
international programs, Penn has established a new partnership with the nation of
Botswana to mitigate the devastating effects of HIV and AIDS. The new Penn World Scholars Program broadens
the university's international student body, enrolling students from countries
in South America, Africa, the Middle East and other parts of the world.
William E.
Kirwan, Chancellor of the University System of Maryland (USM), is nationally recognized for his commitment to diversity,
efforts to place math and science learning at the center of the educational
enterprise and for ensuring America's young people have access to
excellent education that is also affordable.
Under the Chancellor's direction, USM has made
progress in closing the achievement gap in Maryland by initiating efforts to
increase college retention and completion rates for lower income and
underrepresented students and to help ensure that more Marylanders have access
to excellent education that is also affordable. A respected mathematician,
Chancellor Kirwan has placed a strong emphasis on increasing the number of
graduates in science, technology, engineering and math (so-called STEM
disciplines), and thus boost the supply and improve the quality of students
entering teaching and STEM fields.
Kirwan has reached out aggressively to the broader community to help ensure
that his institutions are serving society.
In partnership with other universities and organizations such as the
Governor's Workforce Investment Board, Kirwan has been deeply involved in
harnessing the resources of the state's institutions of higher education to
better meet Maryland's workforce and economic development needs. Under Kirwan's leadership, the University System of
Maryland has extended its outreach to the Baltimore City Public Schools and
other school systems throughout Maryland. His commitment
to K-12 education led to the creation of a teacher professional development,
recruitment and retention program that has established teacher academies to
cultivate future teachers from within the state's K-12 system and to improve student learning. Kirwan has
led USM in implementation of its Effectiveness and Efficiency initiative
(E&E), developed to build quality and hold down costs. To date,
E&E has resulted in more than $100 million in cost savings and emerged as a
model for higher education nationwide. In addition, while president of the University
of Maryland, College Park, Dr. Kirwan championed the creation of
living-learning communities, which link students' curricular and residential
experiences to create deeper understanding and integration of classroom
material, and which have been recognized as a pioneer and as a national model
in this area.
Previous Carnegie Corporation Academic Leadership Awardees
are: Henry S. Bienen, President of Northwestern University (2005); Jared Cohon,
President of Carnegie Mellon University (2005);; Don Randel, then President of
the University of Chicago (2005); Matthew Goldstein, Chancellor of the City
University of New York (2007); Robert J. Birgeneau, Chancellor of the
University of California, Berkeley (2008); and Nancy Cantor, Chancellor and
President of Syracuse University (2008).
Carnegie Corporation of New York was founded by Andrew
Carnegie in 1911 to promote "the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and
understanding."
Contact: Anne Moultrie
Phone: 301.445.2722
Email: amoultrie@usmd.edu
