About

To empower committed learners and leaders to build a smarter, healthier, more just and equitable world through multidisciplinary knowledge creation, policy engagement, and practice innovations across education, psychology, and health.

Creating a Smarter, Healthier & More Equitable World

Our name notwithstanding, Teachers College was founded on the proposition that education alone can’t correct our society’s inequalities — that to maximize the life chances of all people, we must also support poorer communities’ physical and nutritional health and psychological wellbeing. Thus, fields such as education psychology, nursing education, nutrition education, special education, conflict resolution and spirituality and education were created at TC, and for more than a century we have prepared psychologists, nutritionists, health educators, speech pathologists and other professionals, as well as teachers and school leaders.

Today, more than a third of our tenure track faculty are psychologists and health educators, and we continue to take a multidisciplinary approach, combining our strengths across fields to tackle the world’s most challenging problems. We offer more than 100 programs in our four core areas of expertise — education, health, psychology and leadership — and conduct research on topics that range from the impact of poverty on the brain to the legal basis for a Constitutional right to education; from hip-hop pedagogy to the revival of Inca languages in Latin American schools; from the study of motherhood as a developmental stage to the exploration of resilience in military veterans; from the impact of microaggressions on mental and physical wellbeing to language development in children on the autism spectrum; and so much more.

When we speak of education, we mean education writ large — the study of how people learn, and how they should be taught, in all fields. And that, ultimately, is why we continue to proudly call ourselves…Teachers College.

The Place for Visionary Thinkers

Since our founding in the late 19th Century, Teachers College has drawn together visionaries who aspire to make the world a better place for all. Today our alumni network is 90,000 strong. These innovators span the globe, leading in every field at every level. As a student at TC, you will be inspired — and prepared — to follow their lead.

Read ourAnnual Reportto see our faculty and students making an impact at TC and beyond.

The Birthplace of Big Ideas

Teachers College started in 1880 when philanthropist, Grace Dodge, created a school in Greenwich Village to teach sewing, cooking, and other practical arts to underserved immigrant women. Through her work, Dodge had realizedthat a new kind of pedagogy was in order—teaching that reflected an understanding of learners’ backgrounds and of how to present material in relevant, meaningful ways.

By 1887,with the help of the Columbia University philosopher Nicholas Murray Butler, and with a site at West 120th Street donated by the industrialist George Vanderbilt, Dodge’s school had evolved into an entirely new kind of school devoted to teacher education.

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Strengthening Families, Schools, & Communities