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3rd Annual Edmund Gordon Lecture
Date and time
Location
Teachers College, Columbia University
525 W 120th St New York, NY 10027Description
3rd Annual Edmund Gordon Lecture
50 Years in Public Education: Reflections on a Fulfilled Life
In this lecture, Professor Nieto reflects on her life as a teacher, curriculum developer, mentor, ethnic studies instructor, researcher, and professor of teacher educator to draw a number of significant lessons about public education and its future for the most vulnerable students as well as for the nation.
Date:
Thursday, October 8, 2015
Time:
5:00 p.m. reception in Everett Lounge;
6:00 p.m. Lecture in Cowin Auditorium
About the Speaker:
Dr. Sonia Nieto has devoted her professional life to questions of diversity, equity, and social justice in education. A native of Brooklyn, New York, she taught at the intermediate and elementary levels before moving on to her first position in higher education as an instructor in the Puerto Studies Department at Brooklyn College. She received a doctoral degree with specializations in curriculum, multicultural education, and bilingual education from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. After working for the Massachusetts Department of Education for a year, she accepted a faculty position at her alma mater where she remained for 26 years, retiring as a full professor.
Professor Nieto’s research focuses on multicultural education, teacher education, and the education of students of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, topics on which she continues to write and speak. She has written or edited eleven books including the best-selling Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education, a textbook widely used in teacher education programs around the nation and beyond. The first edition of Affirming Diversity (1992), featured in a 2015 online exhibit of the Museum of Education, was also selected as one of the books that helped define the field of education in the 20th century. She has also published dozens of journal articles and book chapters. Her memoir, Brooklyn Dreams: My Life in Public Education, will be published by the Harvard Education Press in 2015.
Dr. Nieto has received numerous awards for her scholarly work, teaching, and advocacy, including six honorary doctorates. In 1998, she was awarded an Annenberg Institute Senior Fellowship in Urban Education and in 2000, a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Italy. In 2008, she received the Social Justice in Education Award from the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the premier professional organization for education researchers, and has also been elected as a Fellow of AERA. In addition, she was elected as a Laureate of Kappa Delta Pi honorary educational organization, a distinction limited to 60 living educators. She has been a Visiting Scholar at universities in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Spain and in 2012 she served as the Wits-Claude Distinguished Scholar at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Dr. Nieto received the Medal of Distinguished Service, the highest honor given by Teachers College, Columbia University, in 2014. In 2015, she was elected as a member of the National Academy of Education.
She is married to Angel Nieto, a poet, children’s book author, and former middle and high school teacher. Together, they have raised two daughters, Alicia and Marisa, and their granddaughter, Jazmyne. They are the proud grandparents of twelve grandchildren.