A|L Arts in Education Service Award

About the Award

A|L recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions in support of the arts in education. Past recipients include:

2009: Ann McQueen; Senior Program Officer, The Boston Foundation

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.

2008: Paul Reville; Massachusetts Secretary of Education

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.

2007: Richard J. Deasy; Executive Director, Arts Education Partnership

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.

2005: Doug Herbert; Special Assistant on Teacher Quality and Arts Education, U.S. Department of Education

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.

2005: Thomas H. Payzant; Superintendent, Boston Public Schools

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.

2002: Schuyler G. Chapin; Former Commissioner, NY Department of Cultural Affairs

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).

2002: Joseph W. Polisi; President, The Juilliard School

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.

2001: Roberta Guaspari; Co-Founder, Opus 118 Harlem School of Music

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.