Audrey C. Cohen (May 14, 1931 – March 10, 1996) was the founding president of
Metropolitan College of New York
Metropolitan College of New York (MCNY), formerly Audrey Cohen College, is a private college in New York City. MCNY is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and consists of three schools: The Audrey Cohen School for Huma ...
, a non-profit, private institution known for its unique curricular structure and commitment to
experiential education
Experiential education is a philosophy of education that describes the process that occurs between a teacher and student that infuses direct experience with the learning environment and content. The term is not interchangeable with experiential ...
. An educational visionary, activist, and social entrepreneur, Cohen was convinced that people learn best when they approach their learning with an immediate, concrete purpose directed at improving the world. The college she founded continues today to provide students with a
"Purpose-Centered" education that enables them to work towards a degree while developing their skills as counselors, business managers, teachers, community organizers, and human service providers.
Early life
Audrey Cohen was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and attended
Taylor Allderdice High School
Taylor Allderdice High School is a public high school in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It opened in 1927 and is part of the Pittsburgh Public Schools district. It was named for industrialist and Squirr ...
. Diminutive in stature, smart, and energetic, she went on to the
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the universit ...
where she majored in Political Science and Education. During her summers off from college she did volunteer work in Washington with the
Young Women's Christian Association
The Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) is a nonprofit organization with a focus on empowerment, leadership, and rights of women, young women, and girls in more than 100 countries.
The World office is currently based in Geneva, Swi ...
(YWCA), the
Congress of Racial Equality
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is an African Americans, African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the civil rights movement. Founded in 1942, its stated mission ...
(CORE) and the
American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) – experiences that she later said raised her awareness of social injustice and nurtured her commitment to civic activism.
Cohen graduated from college ''magna cum laude'' in 1953 and spent the next three years in Japan and Morocco with her husband, Mark Cohen, who was at the time an intelligence officer with the U.S. Navy. The young couple then returned to Washington, D.C. and began raising a family. In 1958 a desire to stay active in the workplace while still caring for her two young daughters prompted Audrey Cohen and another mother to launch Part-Time Research Associates (PTRA), an organization that enabled well-educated married women to work on specific part-time research projects contracted by businesses or government agencies.
When Audrey Cohen and her husband moved to New York City, her outreach work for Part-Time Research Associates expanded, and soon the organization was making a profit. But by early 1964 Cohen began to sense that her focus on finding part-time jobs for well-educated women was insufficient.
Michael Harrington
Edward Michael Harrington Jr. (February 24, 1928 – July 31, 1989) was an American democratic socialist. As a writer, he was perhaps best known as the author of '' The Other America''. Harrington was also a political activist, theorist, profess ...
's exposé of ''
The Other America
''The Other America'' () is Michael Harrington's best known and likely most influential book. He was an American democratic socialist, writer, political activist, political theorist, professor of political science, radio commentator, and foundin ...
'',
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
's "
I Have a Dream
"I Have a Dream" is a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist and Baptist minister, Martin Luther King Jr., during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. In the speech, King called ...
" speech, and President
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
's announcement of a "
War on Poverty
The war on poverty is the unofficial name for legislation first introduced by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964. This legislation was proposed by Johnson in response to a national ...
" in his January 1964 inaugural address contributed to a new social consciousness, and Cohen was eager to become part of the era's efforts to create more just and equitable cities. She and a small group of friends began to organize the Women's Talent Corps (WTC), an organization that would focus on jobs for low -income women who had been left behind in America's post-war economic boom.
The Women's Talent Corps
For two and a half years Cohen and her associates worked to build support for the new venture. Their aim was to develop an educational institution that would help create above-entry-level jobs in schools, health-care centers, and human service agencies and at the same time provide training for those jobs. Cohen herself engaged in intensive community outreach, visiting low-income neighborhoods in
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street (Manhattan), 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and 110th Street (Manhattan), ...
,
Bedford Stuyvesant, and the
South Bronx
The South Bronx is an area of the New York City Borough (New York City), borough of the Bronx. The area comprises neighborhoods in the southern part of the Bronx, such as Concourse, Bronx, Concourse, Mott Haven, Bronx, Mott Haven, Melrose, B ...
. Making the trips alone and often at night, Cohen spoke to groups of women in their homes, churches, or nearby school auditoriums. She asked them about the kinds of jobs they themselves could imagine doing that would improve the services in their communities, and then she used this information to push city schools and agencies to open new lines of employment. When the funding for her organization was eventually secured, these women became part of the WTC's first student cohort.
At first Cohen's project was met with resistance from many of New York City's social service bureaucracies, especially since it was specifically aimed at and directed by women. But with the passage of the federal
Economic Opportunity Act of 1964
The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 () authorized the formation of local Community Action Agencies as part of the War on Poverty. These agencies are directly regulated by the federal government. "It is the purpose of The Economic Opportunity Ac ...
and the establishment of the
Office of Economic Opportunity
The Office of Economic Opportunity was the agency responsible for administering most of the War on Poverty programs created as part of United States President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society legislative agenda. It was established in 1964 as an i ...
(OEO), Cohen saw an opening for support. In July, 1966, her fledgling organization received a
Community Action Program
In the United States and its territories, Community Action Agencies (CAA) are local private and public non-profit organizations that carry out the Community Action Program (CAP), which was founded by the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act to fight p ...
grant from the OEO that enabled her to begin accepting students and training them for what are now termed "paraprofessional" jobs in schools, hospitals, and human service agencies throughout the city.
The College for Human Services
By 1969 the Women's Talent Corps had grown and was successfully improving the employment opportunities of hundreds of inner-city women, many of whom had previously been on public assistance. But Cohen soon saw opportunities for further growth. Building on the Corps Women's own requests for more formal training and wanting also to admit men, Cohen changed the organization's name to the College for Human Services. In 1970, after an arduous struggle, the College succeeded in gaining the authority from the
Board of Regents of New York State to grant the
Associate degree
An associate degree is an undergraduate degree awarded after a course of post-secondary study lasting two to three years. It is a level of qualification above a high school diploma, GED, or matriculation, and below a bachelor's degree.
The fi ...
.
From the outset, the College for Human Services was unique. Federal funding required that the College could accept applicants only from families with incomes of less than $3,600, and students were paid a stipend for their fieldwork. The curriculum required that students spent three days in the field assisting at city schools and human service agencies and two full days in the College's classrooms at 201 Varick Street in Lower Manhattan.
As a ''New York Times'' article pointed out at the time, the academic courses and the human service work were "coordinated." Students' work in the field was informed by their study of social theoreticians such as
Erik Erikson
Erik Homburger Erikson (born Erik Salomonsen; 15 June 1902 – 12 May 1994) was a German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on psychological development of human beings. He coined the phrase identity cr ...
,
B.F. Skinner
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher. He was a professor of psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.
...
, and
Marshall McLuhan
Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his ...
; in turn students could bring their first-hand knowledge of practices in the field to their reading of social theory. Most faculty members had experience in
education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
,
social work
Social work is an academic discipline and practice-based profession concerned with meeting the basic needs of individuals, families, groups, communities, and society as a whole to enhance their individual and collective well-being. Social work ...
, or
community organizing
Community organizing is a process where people who live in proximity to each other or share some common problem come together into an organization that acts in their shared self-interest.
Unlike those who promote more-consensual community bui ...
and were responsible for classroom instruction and field guidance.
By mid-1970 the college was suffering growing pains, and both faculty members and students were complaining about their workload. External rumblings from the student movement and the
black power movement were echoed at College meetings and workshops. When an African-American member of the administration was fired for mismanagement of funds in August 1970, the College for Human Services became one of 450 campuses to go on strike that year. After nearly three weeks of picketing on the street in front of the building, a group of about 20 students and faculty members took over Audrey Cohen's office, demanding that she be replaced by a person of color. Cohen stayed calm during the episode, even when, according to a ''New York Times'' article reporting on the event, one student called her a "blue-eyed devil."
At a meeting with the faculty and students the next day, the administration agreed to some of the protesters' demands, including their demands for more transparency in the administration's operations, and classes resumed. For the next two years, however, the inadequacies of the two-year program became more apparent. Cohen saw that with the increasing professionalization of the city's social service agencies, the College needed to become a fully accredited four-year institution.
Again taking a bold and controversial step, Cohen proceeded with the support of her Board of Trustees to dismiss most of the faculty, close down all but the few classes that were needed by the second-year students to graduate, and set up a small task force to engage in a restructuring process that would last for nearly a year. The task force included graduates from Princeton and Harvard, well-known community activists such as
Ruth Messinger (who later ran for Mayor of New York), and a project dean from the
National Training Laboratories Kurt Lewin founded the National Training Laboratories Institute for Applied Behavioral Science, known as the NTL Institute, an American non-profit behavioral psychology center, in 1947. NTL became a major influence in modern corporate training prog ...
who had a background in curriculum design.
After months of meetings, the group came up with a unique curricular grid that has remained the model for all subsequent programs at the College. The curricular grid or matrix consisted of eight semesters, each of which focused on a specific "competency" crucial to human service practitioners. The sequence of competencies (later termed "Purposes") was intersected by the rows of five multidisciplinary "Dimensions" common to each semester's learning. To provide both coherence and a means of assessing field performance each semester, the model also included what Cohen called a "Constructive Action," a project undertaken in the field that relates to that semester's purpose and which, when documented, includes reference to the academic learning covered in all five dimension courses.
The originality of the college's curricular model soon attracted the attention of educators nationwide. In 1976 the matrix was adapted by
Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where it remains today as the conceptual framework for a Masters in Human Services program. In the late 1970s the College for Human Service was the focus of an in-depth study by Gerald Grant and
David Riesman
David Riesman (September 22, 1909 – May 10, 2002) was an American sociologist, educator, and best-selling commentator on American society.
Career
Born to a wealthy German Jewish family, he attended Harvard College, where he graduated in 1931 ...
that was published in ''Perpetual Dream: Reform and Experiment in the American College'' and in ''On Competence: A Critical Analysis of Competency-Based Reforms in Higher Education''.
Over the next two decades the college that Cohen founded continued to grow, and she herself became renowned for her educational vision and leadership. By 1979, the CHS had become a tuition-charging institution and was offering bachelor's degrees in the human services. In 1983, CHS initiated a business degree program, and in 1988 it began offering a master's program in public administration. Also in 1983, the college's Purpose-Centered model began to be adapted for elementary and secondary education in several schools around the country. In 1992 the College was renamed
Audrey Cohen College after its founder.
Audrey Cohen College
Up until her death in 1996, Cohen actively promoted the college's visibility and expansion. As a college president she gave numerous speeches at venues ranging from
Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...
,
Ramapo College
Ramapo College of New Jersey (RCNJ) is a public liberal arts college in Mahwah, New Jersey. It is part of New Jersey's public system of higher education. As of the fall 2021 semester, there were a total of 5,732 students enrolled at the college ...
,
Bryn Mawr, the
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is org ...
, Newport College and
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
, to the
U.S. House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...
. She was also a member of a number of professional organizations, including the American Association of Higher Education, the National Vocational Guidance Association, and the
National Organization for Women
The National Organization for Women (NOW) is an American feminist organization. Founded in 1966, it is legally a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S. states and in Washington, D.C. It ...
, and she was a member of numerous Boards of Directors. In her later life she became an alumna of the President/Owner Management Program at the
Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration
Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...
.
Cohen's written output included 11 articles or chapters authored or co-authored during the college's early years. Perhaps the best known of these was "The Citizen as the Integrating Agent: Productivity in the Human Services" that was published in the Human Service Monograph Series and continues to be assigned in courses at the College today. Another important article was entitled "Human Service" and appeared as Chapter 27 in Arthur W. Chickering's ''The Modern American College: Responding to the New Realities of Diverse Students and a Changing Society''.
In recognition of her educational work Cohen received numerous honors and awards. She was the only woman invited to serve on the Newman Committee that was funded by the
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...
and sponsored by the
U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare
The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a Cabinet of the United States, cabinet-level United States federal executive departments, executive branch department of the U.S. federal government of the United States, fede ...
to study the problems of higher education in the early 1970s. Awards over the years included the
Mina Shaughnessy
Mina Shaughnessy ( Pendo; March 13, 1924 – November 16, 1978),
was a teacher and innovator in the field of basic writing at the City University of New York (CUNY).
Early life
Born in the mining town of Lead, South Dakota,
Mina Pendo and he ...
Scholarship Award from the United States Office of Education, the Outstanding Leadership in Higher Education Award from the Committee of Independent Colleges and Universities, the President's Award from the National Organization of Human Service Educators, and a doctorate of humane letters from the
University of New England.
[LaRock, Annie.]
Audrey Cohen
" ''Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia''. 1 March 2009. Jewish Women's Archive. July 5, 2011.
By the mid-1990s Audrey Cohen College had moved into new space at the corner of Varick and Canal Streets, was being advertised in subway stations and on TV, and had grown to over 1,000 students. But by then it also became clear that Cohen's health was in decline. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and despite chemotherapy treatments and transfusions, she died in March, 1996. "Ms. Cohen was a powerhouse of energy when scorning the rigidity and failures of the contemporary educational system and proposing how to reform it," the New York Times obituary stated.
Cohen had two daughters, Winifred Alisa Cohen and Dawn Jennifer Cohen Margolin, by her first marriage, to Mark Cohen. She was survived by them and her second husband, Dr. Ralph Wharton, a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City.
Legacy
Cohen's close associate Alida Mesrop succeeded her as College president starting in the mid-1990s, and Mesrop provided strong leadership as the College continued to grow. In 1999, Stephen A. Greenwald was appointed president, and in 2002 the name of the College was changed to Metropolitan College of New York (MCNY
In 2008 Dr. Vinton Thompson became its president.
Today MCNY includes undergraduate and graduate programs in human services, business, urban studies, and education. Together the programs graduate over 400 students a year, most of whom are adult women of color and recent immigrants, many of whom are the first in their families to graduate from college. Among the College's several recent achievements are the accreditation of its masters in education program by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education
The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) was a professional accreditor focused on accrediting teacher education programs in U.S. colleges and universities. It was founded in 1954 and was recognized as an accreditor by ...
(NCATE), accreditation of its business programs by the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs
The Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP), formerly the Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs, is a U.S. organization offering accreditation services to business programs focused on teaching and learni ...
(ACBSP), and recognition for the College's contributions to "community service" by President Obama's Higher Education Honor Roll.
Before her death Ms. Cohen had intended to write a book about her educational aims that would be entitled ''To Build a Better World''.[ Although she did not live long enough to complete that book, the aim of improving the world through constructive actions in community settings remains an ongoing curricular goal at the college that she founded.
]
Audrey Cohen's writings
* ''A new educational paradigm'' (an article from the Phi Delta Kappan dated June 1, 1993)
* ''Predictors of public or private employment for business college graduates'' (an article from Public Personnel Management dated March 22, 1993)
* ''Women and Higher Education: Recommendations for Change'' (Eric reports; 1971)
* ''The citizen as the integrating agent: Productivity in the Human Services'' (from the Human Services monograph series; 1978)
* ''The founding of a new profession: the Human Service Professional'' (1974)
* ''Citizen Empowerment Guide'' (1977)
References
Further reading
*Grace G. Roosevelt,
Creating a College That Works: Audrey Cohen and Metropolitan College of New York
', SUNY Press, 2015.
External links
Metropolitan College of New York's Web site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cohen, Audrey
1931 births
1996 deaths
20th-century American educators
People from Pittsburgh
20th-century American Jews
Educators from Pennsylvania
20th-century American women educators