A Passion for Education
Mary Louise Van Winkle (photo by Michael Canale)
by Amelia Lester
For Mary Louise Van Winkle, Ed.M.'63, C.A.S.'71, Ed.D.'82, education has always been an abiding passion. "I believe in teaching and learning," she says--a belief that has found expression throughout her distinguished career in education.
Currently serving as interim vice president for academic and student affairs at Adirondack Community College, in Queensbury, New York, Van Winkle's career in the classroom began at Harvard in 1959, the year she graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in history. "There was nothing I could think of enjoying more than continuing my study of history and sharing it with students," Van Winkle recalls. With no practical experience, she enrolled in Harvard's summer Master of Arts in Teaching (M.A.T.) program to prepare for a position teaching social studies in the Schenectady, New York, school system.
Van Winkle has fond memories of the summer she worked as a proctor in Harvard Yard's freshman dorms and began learning the mechanics of teaching. Van Winkle transferred into the master's program at HGSE and earned her degree over three consecutive summers, in between her work in the New York school system. "It was a wonderful rhythm of teaching during the academic year and being taught in the summertime," she says.
Moving into education administration would be Van Winkle's next step. Upon completion of her master's, she interned with the New York State Department of Education, then traveled to Charlotte, North Carolina, where she taught social studies and began thinking about ways to make learning more accessible for all students.
It was this concern to reach out to students who might feel ordinarily disenfranchised that led Van Winkle back to Harvard--this time, for her doctorate--to study the relationship of ethnicity and education. At HGSE, Van Winkle became engrossed in research and theories on collaborative learning and team-teaching.
Returning to Harvard after many years teaching and working in the field, Van Winkle found she had an acute appreciation for the diversity and inclusiveness of HGSE as an educational institution. "I was very pleased that HGSE had students of all ages, so that being a returning student did not feel strange or unusual." Following her studies at the Ed School, Van Winkle moved to the Hudson Valley and accepted a position as dean of academic affairs at Duchess Community College in Poughkeepsie at a time when there were few women in administrative educational positions.
In the same spirit of leadership in education, Van Winkle joins with other members of the Paul Hanus Society in making a planned gift to HSGE. She is motivated by a desire to build more inclusive educational institutions, fund much-needed scholarships and ultimately, she hopes, provide support for women holding leadership positions in higher education. These same aims have shaped Van Winkle's career as a whole. "At the community colleges in which I work," she explains, "we try to create the same welcoming atmosphere that I felt when I returned to Harvard."
About the Article
A version of this article originally appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of Ed., the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
