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Contact: Justin Harmon 609/258-5732
Date: February 21, 1998
Publisher Harold W. McGraw Jr. Endows New Teaching and Learning Center at Princeton University
PRINCETON, N.J., February 21 -- Publisher Harold W. McGraw Jr., a member of Princeton's Class of 1940, has made a $5 million gift to endow a state-of-the-art center for promoting innovative teaching and effective learning throughout the University. The announcement was made at the annual meeting of the Alumni Association on campus this afternoon.
The Harold W. McGraw Jr. Center for Teaching and Learning will be a powerful catalyst for preparing Princeton -- with its tradition of excellence in undergraduate education -- to meet the challenges of the 21st century. It will serve as a laboratory for new ideas and a place to share, across departments and disciplines, teaching discoveries that have proven successful in individual classrooms at Princeton and other colleges and universities. To provide easy access for the undergraduates, graduate students and faculty who will draw on its professional and technological resources, the center will be housed in the University's new campus center, designed by Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, under construction at the heart of the campus. Princeton will soon begin a search for the director of the center, who is expected to be an educator with a record both of successful teaching and of effective collaboration with others to enhance teaching and learning.
"Harold McGraw has had a long devotion to literacy and education, and now with this generous gift to Princeton, he is helping us to redefine teaching and learning for future generations," said University President Harold T. Shapiro. "We are grateful for his wonderful generosity and his expansive vision for the University."
The McGraw Center's activities will focus on bringing advances in teaching and curricular improvements to Princeton's classrooms, providing a venue for sharing teaching strategies, exploring novel uses of technology for teaching and learning, strengthening graduate students' teaching skills, and enhancing and facilitating undergraduate learning. By bringing together members of the entire campus community for discussion groups, seminars and lectures by distinguished educators from across the country, the center also will serve as an important forum in which to examine and refine the art of teaching.
"Better teaching means better learning, and that can involve some very sophisticated technology as well as some very simple ideas," said McGraw, who retired from McGraw-Hill as chairman in 1988, having earlier served as president and chief executive officer. "In this new center," he said, "I hope that we can combine high-tech hardware along with human experience and creativity to bring Princeton to an even higher level of achievement."
Among the specialized facilities to be included in the McGraw Center are a state-of-the-art electronic classroom for instruction of undergraduates, a multimedia resource laboratory where faculty and graduate students can experiment with new teaching methods and develop new teaching materials, a library of print and electronic teaching resources, a seminar room, and several small consultation areas. The center also will act as an informal meeting place to encourage discussion and interaction among faculty, graduate students, undergraduates and the center's professional staff. In addition to the center's advanced facilities, nearby classrooms in the campus center will be equipped with videotaping capabilities. Videotapes of actual classes will enable the center's director and staff to assist participating faculty members or graduate students in strengthening their teaching methods and also will provide a valuable resource for use in research on effective teaching and learning strategies.
Harold McGraw, who has spent 51 years at McGraw-Hill, currently serves as chairman emeritus and is a long-time supporter of Princeton's programs of education and scholarship. Among his many previous gifts to the University, he endowed the editing of Albert Einstein's papers by the Princeton University Press when he served as its president. He has also established an endowed chair for writing courses.
Active in many civic and philanthropic endeavors, especially efforts to increase literacy, he founded the Business Council for Effective Literacy and The Business Press Education Foundation in the early 1980s. He also has served as chairman of the Council for Aid to Education and vice chairman of the New York Public Library, where he is a lifetime trustee. In 1988, McGraw-Hill established the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education, awarded annually to deserving American educators, to honor the company's 100th anniversary and McGraw's official retirement. McGraw has received many honors, including the nation's highest literacy award, presented to him in 1990 at the White House by President George Bush. He also has been awarded seven honorary degrees, including one in 1983 from his alma mater, Princeton.
The McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning is an important contribution to the Anniversary Campaign for Princeton, launched in 1995 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the granting of the University's charter. The campaign, which has now raised $555 million, is seeking to raise a total of $750 million by the year 2000 to strengthen the University's programs of teaching, scholarship and research. The University will continue to seek new resources to augment the funding for the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning.
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