2008 Annual Meetings of the Comparative and International Education Society

New York City

March 17-March 21 (to noon)

Teachers College, Columbia University

525 W. 120 Street

New York, NY 10027

Theme:  GAINING EDUCATIONAL EQUITY AROUND THE WORLD

Teachers College, Columbia University is pleased to host the 2008 Meetings of the Comparative and International Education Society. The Meetings will place special emphasis on the theme of educational equity within and among regions and countries, focusing on the impact of factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, income, wealth, disability, and urbanization.  The Program Committee of the 2008 Meetings will issue a call for proposals at the beginning of October. Especially encouraged are proposals that address the measurement, extent, origins, and solutions for gaining educational equity on a local, national, regional, and international scale. There will be several receptions for participants, and invited lectures are being arranged. Co-Program Chairs are Professor Mun Tsang (tsang@tc.edu) and Professor Frances Vavrus (vavrus@tc.edu), of TC’s Department of International and Transcultural Studies. Please contact them should you have questions about the program prior to the call for proposals.

The venue in New York City and at Teachers College provides a special occasion to return to the roots of CIES.  TC faculty John Dewey, James Russell, Paul Monroe, Isaac Kandel, and George Bereday were pioneers in establishing a focus on international and comparative education. R. Freeman Butts, Harold Noah, and Max Eckstein were among many of the early officers and founding board members of CIES who came from the TC faculty, and the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at TC sponsors one of the largest graduate training programs in the world in Comparative and International Education.  In addition, New York City constitutes one of the most internationalized cities in the world with its large multilingual and multicultural populations and its substantial international institutions including the United Nations

Housing Advisory:  Because we will be meeting during the Spring Break at Teachers College, we will have access to all of its facilities.  However, the week of March 17 is a challenging one for obtaining hotel space because it is the Easter Week, a period of peak  tourism in New York.  The Organizing Committee is presently working to secure limited accommodation space and will make announcements in the fall as details become available. However, we anticipate the prices of hotel accommodations for this week are likely to be very high, and making individual arrangements in advance is an advisable strategy.  The following are our recommendations.  If you have relatives, friends, or professional links in New York City, it is important to see if you can gain accommodations with them.  If you must rely on hotels, we recommend that you contact some of the major internet brokers or your travel agent as soon as possible (e.g. Hotels.Com, Orbitz, or Travelocity).  You may be able to secure advantageous airfare and hotel rates with your preferred airline or through your individual institution’s memberships. Also, check accommodations in Jersey City, New Jersey which is only 10 minutes to Manhattan by a train that leaves every few minutes during the busy hours and frequently at other times.  We are also exploring the possibility of establishing an internet housing exchange among faculty and students in the New York area and participants.

Organizing Committee:

            Henry Levin (Chair)                                                    Teachers College

            Andrew Shiotani (Program Assistant)                          Teachers College

            Frances Vavrus (Program Co-Chair)                           Teachers College

            Mun Tsang (Program Co-Chair)                                 Teachers College

            Gita Steiner-Khamsi, CIES VP                                   Teachers College

            James Shields                                                             City University of NY

            Sandra Stacki                                                             Hofstra University

            Carolyn Kissane                                                         New York University

            Philip Hosay                                                               New York University

            Mary Ann Maslak                                                       St. John’s University

We look forward to seeing you in New York City in March for what promises to be a dynamic meeting on a topic of great centrality to CIES members, educational equity.