Women in Education (Audio)

A daughter of Korean immigrants, Michelle Rhee graduated from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and began her career in education as an outstanding member of Teach for America. She founded the New Teacher Project in 1997, recruiting and training teachers for disadvantaged communities. In ten years, the Project had expanded to 40 programs in 20 states and recruited more than 10,000 teachers. In 2007, she was appointed Chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public school system by newly elected Mayor Adrian Fenty. She immediately drew fire from critics who resented her as an outsider, but she has persevered in the face of all resistance, replacing entrenched teachers, principals and administrators whose performance she found unsatisfactory. In the face of determined resistance to change, he has won national acclaim for her efforts to turn around one of the nation's most troubled school systems.

A daughter of Korean immigrants, Michelle Rhee graduated from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and began her career in education as an outstanding member of Teach for America. She founded the New Teacher Project in 1997, recruiting and training teachers for disadvantaged communities. In ten years, the Project had expanded to 40 programs in 20 states and recruited more than 10,000 teachers. In 2007, she was appointed Chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public school system by newly elected Mayor Adrian Fenty. She immediately drew fire from critics who resented her as an outsider, but she has persevered in the face of all resistance, replacing entrenched teachers, principals and administrators whose performance she found unsatisfactory. In the face of determined resistance to change, he has won national acclaim for her efforts to turn around one of the nation's most troubled school systems.

When Susan Hockfield was a student, women in the sciences had few role models. As a senior at the University of Rochester, she had come up with an idea for an interesting experiment, but lacked the confidence to carry it out herself. "People like me don't do these things," she remembers thinking. Fortunately, a sympathetic professor encouraged her, and she resolved to pursue a career in the sciences. Today, she is a neuroscientist of international reputation, and the president of one of the world's leading research universities. Dr. Hockfield's research has focused on the development of the brain and central nervous system. She pioneered new technology in brain research and has discovered proteins that regulate structural changes in the neurons and influence the movement of cancer cells in the brain. Among other insights, her work may open new avenues for the treatment of the deadly brain cancer glioma. When she was chosen to head the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she was not only the first woman to hold the post, but the first biologist to head a faculty better known for its achievements in physics and electrical engineering. Although her appointment reflects the ever-increasing importance of biology and biomedical research, she is also winning praise for her leadership of the MIT Energy Initiative, a massive research program that may well transform the way we power our homes, cars and businesses. In this podcast, recorded at the 2008 International Achievement Summit in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, Dr. Susan Hockfield discusses the importance of collaborative thinking in both science and academic leadership.

As an undergraduate at Princeton University, Wendy Kopp created a plan to build a movement for educational equity by enlisting her generation's most promising future leaders to teach for two years in the nation's neediest urban and rural public schools. After graduation, Kopp set about making her plan a reality, founding Teach for America in 1989. With no teaching or business experience of her own, she created a multimillion dollar organization. Today, more than 3,500 corps members are teaching in our country's neediest communities, reaching approximately 300,000 students. They join more than 10,000 Teach For America alumni -- still in their twenties and thirties -- who are already assuming significant leadership roles in education and social reform. She recounts the experience in her book, One Day, All Children: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach For America and What I Learned Along the Way. In her book, she not only describes how she created and built Teach For America, but also shares her thoughts about what it will take to realize her vision that one day all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education. In 2004, Teach for America received a record number of 17,000 applications and is the number one employer of new graduates on some college campuses. In 2005, Wendy Kopp created a Katrina Relief Corps to serve students and communities impacted by Hurricane Katrina. In 2008 Wendy Kopp was named in Time magazine's "100 of the World's Most Influential People."

As an undergraduate at Princeton University, Wendy Kopp created a plan to build a movement for educational equity by enlisting her generation's most promising future leaders to teach for two years in the nation's neediest urban and rural public schools. After graduation, Kopp set about making her plan a reality, founding Teach for America in 1989. With no teaching or business experience of her own, she created a multimillion dollar organization. Today, more than 3,500 corps members are teaching in our country's neediest communities, reaching approximately 300,000 students. They join more than 10,000 Teach For America alumni -- still in their twenties and thirties -- who are already assuming significant leadership roles in education and social reform. She recounts the experience in her book, One Day, All Children: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach For America and What I Learned Along the Way. In her book, she not only describes how she created and built Teach For America, but also shares her thoughts about what it will take to realize her vision that one day all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education. In 2004, Teach for America received a record number of 17,000 applications and is the number one employer of new graduates on some college campuses. In 2005, Wendy Kopp created a Katrina Relief Corps to serve students and communities impacted by Hurricane Katrina. In 2008 Wendy Kopp was named in Time magazine's "100 of the World's Most Influential People."

Maya Lin is the world-renowned architect of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, and one of the most important public artists of our times. Her parents fled China just before the Communist takeover in 1949, eventually settling in Athens, Ohio, where both became professors at Ohio University. As a 21-year-old architecture student at Yale, Lin designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as a class project, then entered it in the largest design competition in American history. Her striking proposal, a V-shaped wall of black stone, etched with the names of 58,000 dead soldiers, beat out the submissions of 1,420 other entrants. She encountered ferocious criticism when her unconventional design was selected, but her inspiring vision has since become the most-visited memorial in the nation's capital. Since the early 1980s, she has pursued simultaneous careers as artist and architect, creating large-scale site-specific installations and intimate studio artworks, as well as architectural works and monuments. Among her significant works as an architect over the last decade are the Sculpture Center in Long Island City, the Manhattanville Sanctuary and Environmental Learning Lab, and the New York's Museum of the Chinese in America, as well as a number of innovative private residences, notably the Box House in Telluride, Colorado. Her studio artwork has been exhibited in museums around the world. A film study of her career, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. In 2009, Maya Lin was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. In this video podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 2000 gathering in Scottsdale, Arizona, Maya Lin presents slides of her major architectural works, and relates them to her love of landscape and nature. She discusses the study and analysis of art, while emphasizing the subjective, magical aspect of aesthetic experience.

In November 2000, Dr. Ruth J. Simmons became the 18th President of Brown University; she is the first African American to preside over an Ivy League school. The twelfth child of a sharecropper turned aircraft worker, she grew up in Houston in a home without books, or even a desk. She admits she was terrified to leave home for the first time to attend Dillard University in New Orleans, but Simmons overcame her fears, excelled in college, and went on to earn a Doctorate in Romance Languages and Literature from Harvard University. While her teaching and research interests centered primarily on the literature of French-speaking Africa and the Caribbean, she became increasingly sought after for university administrative posts. She was serving as Vice Provost of Princeton University in 1995, when she was tapped to head Smith College, one of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, traditionally a redoubt of upper-class young women from the Northeast. As President of Smith, Simmons carried on a "personal crusade" to bring disadvantaged students to the Smith campus and others like it. This podcast was recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 2000 gathering in Scottsdale, Arizona while Ruth Simmons was still President of Smith College, a few months before she was elected to lead Brown University. In her address to the Academy, Simmons relates how she fell in love with books and ideas as a child. She encourages the Academy's student delegates to pursue lifelong learning, while warning them of the dangers of arrogance. She reminds them that the wisest people they ever meet may not be the most educated. Her presidency at Brown ended on a high note. She enjoyed an 80 percent approval rating when she announced the she would resign as president, effective June 2012. Ruth Simmons remains at Brown University as a professor of comparative literature and African studies.

Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole made history in 1987, when she became the first African-American woman to serve as President of Spelman College. Ever since it was founded, Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia has been the nation's foremost institution of higher education specifically intended for African American women. Yet, for the first century of Spelman's existence, no African American woman had ever served as president of the college. Spelman prospered under Dr. Cole's leadership. In 1992, the magazine U.S. News and World Report, gave Spelman a coveted number one rating in its annual survey of "Best College Buys." The same issue ranked Spelman the number one regional liberal arts college in the South. Four years later, Money magazine listed Spelman as the number one historically black college, the number one women's college and the number seven college of any kind in the United States. Long before taking charge at Spelman, Dr. Cole had already distinguished herself as an anthropologist, author, university professor and administrator, with a special interest in Afro-American, Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Dr. Cole has served on the boards of major corporations, chaired the Board of Trustees of the United Way and assisted President William J. Clinton in the formation of his administration. After a decade as President of Spelman, Dr. Cole served as President of the nation's other historically black college for women, Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina. A longtime advisor to the Smithsonian Institution, in 2009 she was selected to serve as Director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art. This podcast was recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 1996 Summit in Sun Valley, Idaho.