A Message from the President

Bank Street College of Education has been described as a small college with a big voice in education, one heard and respected far and wide. Located since 1970 at 610 West 112th Street in New York City, it was founded in 1916 in Greenwich Village by visionary educator Lucy Sprague Mitchell as The Bureau of Educational Experiments, an experimental nursery school staffed by an interdisciplinary group of teachers, psychologists, and researchers.

Bank Street has grown over the years to become an internationally-recognized leader in early childhood education, a pioneer in improving the quality of classroom education and teacher preparation, a national advocate for children and families, and a hub of related scholarly work. It has had a unique impact on the New York City public schools, with over sixty years of onsite collaboration with those schools, and also a national impact on American education, through its key roles in the design of such innovative programs as Head Start and Follow Through, as well as its work in public school systems in cities across the country.

The College is composed of:

• a Graduate School of Education, serving over 1000 students;
• a School for Children and Family Center serving over 500 children aged six months to
  thirteen years;
• a Division of Continuing Education;
• and a Publications and Media Group, which prepares learning materials for and about
  children in a variety of media.

Take a brief journey through our site. You will learn quickly that Bank Street is a complex institution. It is an exciting, even passionate place, with superb faculty, a dedicated staff, and a loyal group of trustees who care deeply about the enterprise.

As Bank Street's new president, I am especially delighted to welcome you to our web site. I am a firm believer in the importance and potential of web-based technologies to communicate, inform and educate. Bank Street's distinctive educational philosophy stresses experiential learning, taking initiative, developing curiosity and creativity, and asking good questions. These qualities can be enhanced through the tools new technologies provide. We are in the process of assessing and rethinking our web site in order to better serve both internal and external users. I welcome learning your comments and observations, and hope you will send them to me at websitereviews@bankstreet.edu.

Elizabeth D. Dickey