Letter from the President
July, 2019
Dear Graduate Student in the School of Education,
Welcome to the outstanding Manhattanville College CAEP-accredited School of Education, one of only twelve such schools in New York State!
While programs in the School of Education are the oldest graduate programs at Manhattanville College (beginning in 1965), in a very real sense, the programs are much older than that. Manhattanville was established by the Sisters of the Society of the Sacred Heart in 1841. That Catholic organization dates back to the years after the French Revolution, when Sister Madeleine Sophie Barat founded the order with the goal of educating young women as a way of inoculating them against extremist ideologies, specifically terrorist ideologies like the “Reign of Terror” imposed on France by Robespierre, in which thousands of innocent people lost their lives.
Though Manhattanville College has been nonsectarian and coeducational for many years, the basic values of its founders --dialogue, relationships, communication and networks, community life, and education--have only gained in urgency in recent years. So, in a very real sense, Manhattanville College and its mission were built around the mission of the School of Education.
In recent years, the “Changing Suburbs Institute®” in our School of Education has been recognized for its national leadership by the White House Initiative for Educational Excellence for Hispanics. This past year it was one of 8 “Bright Spots” for Hispanic Education in America. The School of Education was also listed in 8th place in a national survey of the 50 Top Education Graduate Programs in the country, ahead of (among others) Teachers College and NYU.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of our School of Education is an emphasis on an experiential approach to learning, putting students in real-life classroom situations at a very early stage. For professionals who intend to take the next step in their career, we have graduate programs in Educational Leadership, including a nationally recognized doctoral program, preparing you for work in both PreK-12 schools and, more recently, higher education leadership positions such as student affairs offices, one of the fastest-growing employment opportunities in the country. Our biggest asset, however, is our faculty, every one of them a highly qualified teacher-scholar with a deep interest in their students’ success.
I look forward to welcoming you to the Manhattanville Campus in person.
Sincerely,
Michael E. Geisler, Ph.D.
President