Deborah Bial

Last updated

Deborah Bial
Deborah Bial at Mount Holyoke College.jpg
Deborah Bial receiving an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Mount Holyoke College in 2014
Born1965 (age 5859)
Alma mater
Awards MacArthur Fellowship
Scientific career
FieldsEducation
Thesis Alternative measures for college admissions : a relational study of a new predictor for success: the promise of the Bial Dale college adaptability index and the success of the Posse program (Harvard)  (2004)

Deborah Bial (born 1965) is an American businesswoman. She is the founder and president of the Posse Foundation [1] and a trustee of Brandeis University. [2]

Contents

Bial is known for the concept of her foundation, which is to send groups of around ten students to collaborating colleges so that they can support each other and achieve a greater success rate. She is also known for the Bial–Dale College Adaptability Index, an activity-based test of college readiness that incorporates Lego play.

She was one of the 2007 winners of the MacArthur "Genius" awards [3] [4] and is a frequent speaker at college graduations.

→==Life== Bial was born in Manhattan [5] and grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey. Her father played bassoon and contrabassoon with the New York Philharmonic and her mother worked as a public relations professional for the New York State Psychiatric Institute. She describes her younger self as shy and not standing out in any way: "There was nothing remarkable about me growing up." Her childhood ambition was to become a writer and illustrator of children's books. [6]

She attended Brandeis University, graduating in 1987. [7] She worked briefly as a paralegal, and then became a counselor for the CityKids Foundation in New York. After starting Posse, she returned to graduate school, and earned master's and Ed.D. degrees from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1996 and 2004, respectively. [8]

She delivered the 2012 commencement speech at her alma mater, Brandeis University. [9] She has also been chosen as a commencement speaker at numerous colleges and universities including at DePauw University (2008), [10] at the University of Rochester (2015), [11] at Vassar College (2017), [12] Kalamazoo College (2018). [13] and at The College of Wooster (2019). [14]

Contributions

Bial's Posse Foundation sends talented young people from diverse backgrounds in "posses" of approximately ten students at a time to cooperating universities, with the intention that the students in each posse will support each other. The idea for the foundation came to Bial in 1989 when she was working as a youth counselor in New York City. One student had dropped out of college; when she asked why, he told her that he would have stayed in school if only he had his posse to support him. Based on this experience, she started her foundation as a way to create these posses as support groups for students. As well, she designed the selection process of the foundation to focus on urban students who might otherwise be overlooked by traditional college admissions processes. [15]

As well as being known for this concept for the foundation, Bial is known for developing the Bial–Dale College Adaptability Index, a method for determining whether students are ready for college that avoids written testing in favor of interviews and activity-based assessment. [16] [17] [18] It has been dubbed "the Lego test" because of its incorporation of play with Lego bricks as one of its components. [16] [17]

Awards

Besides winning a MacArthur Fellowship in 2007, Bial has been given honorary degrees from many institutions of higher education including Brandeis University (2012), [5] Hamilton College (2014), [19] Mount Holyoke College (2014), [20] Colby College (2015), [21] Agnes Scott College (2017), [22] Hobart and William Smith Colleges (2017). [23] and The College of Wooster (2019).

She was one of the 2013 winners of the Harold W. McGraw Prize in Education. [24] In 2013, the Harvard Graduate School of Education gave her their Anne Roe Award. [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brandeis University</span> Private university in Massachusetts, US

Brandeis University is a private research university in Waltham, Massachusetts. It is located within the Boston City Metropolitan Area. Founded in 1948 as a non-sectarian, coeducational University, Brandeis was established on the site of the former Middlesex University. The university is named after Louis Brandeis, a former Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mae Jemison</span> American astronaut, doctor and engineer (born 1956)

Mae Carol Jemison is an American engineer, physician, and former NASA astronaut. She became the first African-American woman to travel into space when she served as a mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992. Jemison joined NASA's astronaut corps in 1987 and was selected to serve for the STS-47 mission, during which the Endeavour orbited the Earth for nearly eight days on September 12–20, 1992.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Honorary degree</span> Academic qualification awarded without the usual requirements

An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases honoris causa or ad honorem . The degree is typically a doctorate or, less commonly, a master's degree, and may be awarded to someone who has no prior connection with the academic institution or no previous postsecondary education. An example of identifying a recipient of this award is as follows: Doctorate in Business Administration (Hon. Causa).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marian Wright Edelman</span> American activist for childrens rights (born 1939)

Marian Wright Edelman is an American activist for civil rights and children's rights. She is the founder and president emerita of the Children's Defense Fund. She influenced leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harvard Graduate School of Education</span> Education school of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts

The Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) is the education school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1920, it was the first school to grant the EdD degree and the first Harvard school to award degrees to women. HGSE enrolls more than 800 students in its one-year master of education (Ed.M.) and three-year doctor of education leadership (Ed.L.D.) programs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deborah Meier</span> American educator (born 1931)

Deborah Meier is an American educator often considered the founder of the modern small schools movement. After spending several years as a kindergarten teacher in Chicago, Philadelphia and then New York City, in 1974, Meier became the founder and director of the alternative Central Park East school, which embraced progressive ideals in the tradition of John Dewey in an effort to provide better education for children in East Harlem, within the New York City public school system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Posse Foundation</span> American college access organization and leadership network

The Posse Foundation is a nonprofit organization that partners with select colleges and universities in the United States to provide student scholarships and leadership training. The organization is centered on a cohort-based model that admits students to attend college as part of a "Posse" of 10 peers.

Mary Patterson McPherson has served as the president of Bryn Mawr College (1978–1997), the vice president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (1997–2007), and the executive officer of the American Philosophical Society (2007–2012). She is considered to be "a significant figure in American higher education and a leader in the education of women".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evelyn Fox Keller</span> American physicist, author and feminist (1936–2023)

Evelyn Fox Keller was an American physicist, author, and feminist. She was Professor Emerita of History and Philosophy of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Keller's early work concentrated at the intersection of physics and biology. Her subsequent research focused on the history and philosophy of modern biology and on gender and science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margaret Geller</span> American astronomer

Margaret J. Geller is an American astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Her work has included pioneering maps of the nearby universe, studies of the relationship between galaxies and their environment, and the development and application of methods for measuring the distribution of matter in the universe.

Evelyn Erika Handler served from 1980 to 1983 as the University of New Hampshire's fourteenth, and first female, President. Handler was the first woman in the country to be named president of a publicly supported land grant university. She was credited with bringing in $15 million in federal grants for a science and engineering research center.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Regina Benjamin</span> Surgeon General of the United States

Regina Marcia Benjamin is an American physician and a former vice admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps who served as the 18th Surgeon General of the United States. Benjamin previously directed a nonprofit primary care medical clinic in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, and served on the board of trustees for the Morehouse School of Medicine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wendy Kopp</span> American nonprofit executive

Wendy Sue Kopp is the CEO and co-founder of Teach For All, a global network of independent nonprofit organizations working to expand educational opportunity in their own countries and the Founder of Teach For America (TFA), a national teaching corps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deborah Estrin</span> American computer scientist

Deborah Estrin is a Professor of Computer Science at Cornell Tech. She is co-founder of the non-profit Open mHealth and gave a TEDMED talk on small data in 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sam Vaghar</span>

Sam Vaghar is an American social entrepreneur and Executive Director and co-founder of the Millennium Campus Network.

Janet Zollinger Giele is an American sociologist and Professor Emerita of Sociology, Social Policy, and Women's Studies at Brandeis University. She is best known for her research on the evolving lives of women, from the 19th century women's rights movements to women's contemporary work and family roles. In addition, her publications include the methodology of life course research and the history and growth of American family policy. She has written or edited ten books and authored numerous articles, a body of work that has been widely cited in her field.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Bolton (physicist)</span> American physicist and academic administrator

Sarah Bolton is an American physicist and university administrator who currently serves as the president of Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. She assumed this position on July 1, 2022. Bolton has been a strong supporter of Dreamers, students who are undocumented but born in the United States, Posse scholars, a program to "empower diverse groups of leaders who transform communities, this country and the world," and international students, especially when many could not return home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Justice is the independent student newspaper of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. The paper is run primarily by undergraduate students. Since its founding in 1949, the Justice has provided a critical perspective on Brandeis University policy and events through its articles and editorial work. The Justice is published every Tuesday and distributed throughout the Brandeis campus.

Alpha Alexander was co-founder of the Black Women in Sport Foundation.

References

  1. "Annual Meeting Bios A–L". Philanthropy Roundtable. Archived from the original on January 12, 2011. Retrieved March 24, 2010.
  2. "Brandeis elects new trustees". The Jewish Advocate. May 2, 2018.
  3. Lee, Felicia R. (September 25, 2007), "MacArthur Foundation Gives Out 'Genius Awards'", The New York Times
  4. "Alum Awarded MacArthur Fellowship", News & Events, Harvard Graduate School of Education, September 28, 2007
  5. 1 2 "Deborah Bial '87". Commencement 2012 honorary degree recipients. Brandeis University. Retrieved June 2, 2018.
  6. Bryant, Adam (October 4, 2014). "Deborah Bial of the Posse Foundation: Success Isn't Always About You". Corner Office (interview). The New York Times .
  7. Green, Elizabeth (September 25, 2007). "Helping High School Seniors Graduate From College". The New York Sun.
  8. 1 2 "Bial to Receive 2013 Anne Roe Award". Harvard Graduate School of Education. February 14, 2013.
  9. "Deborah Bial '87 to speak at 2012 commencement". Brandeis Now. March 28, 2012.
  10. "Posse Foundation's to Address DePauw Graduates at May's Commencement". DePauw University. November 14, 2007. Retrieved May 30, 2018.
  11. "Posse Foundation founder and president to deliver the 2015 College Commencement Address". University of Rochester. February 5, 2015.
  12. Lanser, Anika; Schultz, Elena (March 6, 2017). "Deborah Bial announced as Commencement Speaker". The Miscellany News. Vassar College.
  13. "Posse Founder to Speak at 2018 Commencement". Kalamazoo College. May 14, 2018.
  14. "Posse founder and president to deliver commencement address". College of Wooster. May 13, 2019.
  15. Goodman, Lawrence (Winter 2017). "The Power of Science Posse". Brandeis Magazine.
  16. 1 2 Marcus, Amy Dockser (November 19, 1999). "A Number of Colleges Back Recruiting Test for Minorities". The Wall Street Journal .
  17. 1 2 Winters, Rebecca (March 4, 2001). "Here Comes the Lego Test". Time .
  18. Brint, Steven (September 13, 2015). "Merit Square-Off: The Fight Over College Admissions". Los Angeles Review of Books .
  19. "Honorary Degree Recipients". Hamilton College. Retrieved June 12, 2018.
  20. "Deborah Bial". May 22, 2014. Archived from the original on June 2, 2014.
  21. "Deborah Bial Honorary Degree Citation". May 24, 2015. Retrieved June 10, 2016.
  22. "2017 Commencement". Agnes Scott College. April 3, 2017. Retrieved May 30, 2018.
  23. "HWS Confer Four Honorary Degrees". Hobart and William Smith Colleges. April 25, 2017.
  24. "Past Winners of Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education". Archived from the original on March 13, 2016.