A|L recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions in support of the arts in education. Past recipients include:
Sandra Gordon was the founding president of the Boston Arts Academy Foundation, the fundraising and program development arm of BAA. Under her ten year leadership, the Foundation raised over $10 million in support of arts teachers, programs, art supplies and production costs not covered by public allocations. This public/private partnership has meant continued success for Boston Arts Academy with over 95% of graduates consistently going on to college. The school’s Sandra and Philip Gordon Gallery has hosted numerous visiting artists through the years, providing students with extraordinary opportunities to study with acclaimed, working visual artists. Currently, Sandy serves as the founding president of the school's Council of Advocates, a group of business and community leaders charged with advocating on behalf of the school and arts education in the greater community.
Philip co-founded EdVestors, a non-profit organization that drives change in urban schools through smart, strategic private investment by identifying and shaping the most effective initiatives, partnering with donors to invest in these efforts, and supporting project leaders with hands-on expertise. Since its launch in 2002, EdVestors has raised over $7 million in private support of high-impact school improvement efforts in the communities of Boston and Lowell. A significant amount of this funding has supported programs that bring the arts back to the public school classrooms. This has led to a unique partnership between the Boston Public Schools, EdVestors and other foundations that recently culminated in the launch of the BPS Arts Expansion Initiative, a three-year effort to expand direct arts instruction during the school day to all students in the BPS district.
Ann McQueen exemplifies activism, advocacy, and vision in the arts. She is not only the Senior Program Officer at The Boston Foundation, where she has left an indelible imprint on the arts community over the past 16 years, but she is also on the Board of Directors for Grantmakers in the Arts, she is Co-Chair of the Neck Art Project for LandWave, and the owner of a fine arts and commercial photography company, McQueen Studio. As a working artist, Ann’s photography has been published in 3 anthologies of work from the Polaroid Collection and is represented in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her photography has taken her to Europe, Turkey, Egypt, China, Vietnam, and Singapore.
Ms. McQueen is a strong and long-standing proponent for public arts projects and sustaining our cultural abundance through community-based art experiences and opportunities, particularly in and around the Boston area. The Neck Art Project is an initiative of the residents of Boston’s South End and others to implement the public art project, LandWave, in Peters Park to mark the historic neck of the Shawmut Peninsula.
Ann has served on the Board of Directors of the United South End Settlements, a non-profit organization management industry. Previous positions included being coordinator for Grants and Research of the Worcester Art Museum, a consultant for the LEF Foundation, and a Fellow in Arts Administration at the National Endowment for the Arts.
Ann McQueen earned a B.A. in Art History from Wheaton College, a M.S. in Film from Boston University, and another M.S., for Arts Administration at Lesley University.
Paul Reville assumed the position the Massachusetts Secretary of Education on July 1, 2008 where he will be overseeing the recently created Executive Office of Education. He is a Senior Lecturer on Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and recently stepped down as the Director of the Education Policy and Management Program while he serves as Secretary.
He is the former president of the Rennie Center for Education Research& Policy, an independent policy organization dedicated to the improvement of PreK-12 public education. Reville is also the former Chairman of the Massachusetts State Board of Education and has served,over the years, on numerous state task forces and committees.Additionally, Reville is the former executive director of the Pew Forum on Standards-Based Reform, a Harvard-based, national education policy"think tank" which convened the U.S.'s leading researchers,practitioners, and policymakers to set the national "standards" agenda.
Reville was founding executive director of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education (MBAE), which provided key conceptual and political leadership for the Education Reform Act of 1993. He also served on the Massachusetts State Board of Education, where he chaired the Massachusetts Commission on Time and Learning. From 1996 to 2003, Reville chaired the Massachusetts Education Reform Review Commission, which provided research and oversight for implementation of education reform.
Richard J. Deasy was the Executive Director of the Arts Education Partnership (AEP) for more than a decade. AEP is a coalition of over100 education, arts, business, philanthropic, and government organizations co-founded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S. Department of Education, the Council for Chief State School Officers and the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, which demonstrates and promotes the essential role of arts education in enabling all students to succeed in school, life, and work.
Under his leadership AEP published seminal research studies and reports that are credited with major advances in arts education in the United States. He commissioned and edited AEP’s widely acclaimed compendium of research, Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development, and co-authored Third Space: When Learning Matters,a study of the transformative effects of the arts in high poverty schools.
Mr. Deasy has been a senior state education official in Maryland and Pennsylvania, president and CEO of the National Council for International Visitors, and a prize-winning reporter on politics and government in Philadelphia and the surrounding metropolitan area. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on slum housing conditions in suburban Philadelphia.
Doug Herbert is a Special Assistant on Teacher Quality and Arts Education in the Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement. From 1992 to May 2004, he was the Director of Arts Education at the National Endowment for the Arts. Under his leadership,the Endowment partnered with the U.S. Department of Education to support the development of national voluntary standards in arts education; to establish inclusion of the arts in The Nation’s Report Card; to evaluate the conditions of arts education nationwide using the Department of Education’s Fast Response Survey System; and to create the Arts Education Partnership.
Mr. Herbert previously served as the programs assistant director,coordinating efforts to develop an arts education research agenda and to recognize exemplary arts education programs. Mr. Herbert was also the national program director for Very Special Arts, an educational affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Thomas H. Payzant served as superintendent of the Boston Public Schools from October of 1995 until his retirement in June of 2006. He is a professor of practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Before coming to Boston, he was appointed by President Clinton to serve as assistant secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education with the United States Department of Education.
Over the past decade he has led a number of significant systemic reform efforts that have helped narrow the achievement gap and increase student performance on both state and national assessment exams.
In addition to his tenure in Boston, Payzant has served as Superintendent of Schools in San Diego, Oklahoma City, Eugene, Oregon,and Springfield, Pennsylvania. Payzant's work has been recognized by educators at the regional and national level. In 1998, he was named Massachusetts Superintendent of the Year.
In 2004, he received the Richard R. Green Award for Excellence in Urban Education from the Council on Great City Schools. Governing Magazine named Payzant one of eight "Public Officials of the Year” in 2005. Payzant also received the McGraw Prize for his leadership of the San Diego school system from 1982 through 1993.
Schuyler G. Chapin is a former Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for New York City during the administration of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, beginning in 1994. He was vice president (1963-68) in charge of programming of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. In 1972 Chapin became acting general manager and then general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, a position he held until 1976. He was dean of the Columbia University School of the Arts from 1976 to 1987, when he became dean emeritus. He is the author of Leonard Bernstein: Notes from a Friend (1992) and Sopranos, Mezzos, Tenors, Bassos and Other Friends(1995).
Joseph W. Polisi has been the president of The Juilliard School since September 1984. Previously Dr. Polisi was Dean of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Dean of Faculty at the Manhattan School of Music, and Executive Officer of the Yale University School of Music. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Yale, as well as a degree in political science from the University of Connecticut and one in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
As a bassoonist, Dr. Polisi has performed throughout the United States in solo and chamber performances, as well as at The Juilliard School,Alice Tully Hall, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and at Avery Fisher Hall.
He has written many scholarly and educational articles for professional journals, is a frequent speaker on arts and education issues, has produced several sound recordings, primarily focusing on contemporary American music, and has recorded a solo album of 20th-century bassoon music for Crystal Records. His book, The Artist as Citizen, was published by Amadeus Press in January 2005. His most recent book,American Muse: The Life and Times of William Schuman, the first complete biography of the distinguished composer and arts administrator, will be published by Amadeus Press in October 2008.
Roberta Guaspari is Co-Founder and Director of Performance of Opus 118Harlem School of Music. In 1991, 150 kids in three East Harlem public elementary schools were about to lose their cherished violin program as a result of budget cuts. Working with parents, other teachers and volunteers, their violin teacher, Roberta Guaspari, founded Opus 118Harlem School of Music, a private, nonprofit organization, to save the program and to continue to serve public school students in low-income areas.
Roberta Guaspari’s passionate struggle to keep music instruction alive in Harlem's public schools has inspired two films: Small Wonders, a1996 documentary produced by Allan Miller, and Miramax’s 1999 feature film, Music of the Heart, starring Meryl Streep; both films received Academy Award nominations. The New York City Schools Chancellor restored funds for Ms. Guaspari and for two more Opus violin teachers.Today, Opus serves in six New York public schools.