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About
Before being appointed dean, Theodore Ryland Sizer had been a faculty member since 1960, teaching courses in the history of education, and heading the Master of Arts in Teaching Program.
When Sizer stepped into the role of dean, HGSE had an influx of federal funds to support its programs, projects, and research initiatives. However, with the election of Richard Nixon, HGSE faced severe budget cuts as federal support fell from roughly 57% of the total budget in 1966 to less than 40% in 1970. Nevertheless, the school nearly tripled its budget by the end of Sizer’s administration despite fiscal strains on income. By the end of his deanship, he made significant revisions to the curriculum based on the 1966 Graduate Study in Education report.
By the last year of his tenure, Sizer organized programs of study into seven general divisions: administration and social policy, childhood education, human development, humanities, learning environments, public psychology, and teaching. Sizer recruited talented scholars to the faculty and expanded HGSE’s research to include higher education, lifelong learning, learning environments, law and education, children’s education, and family study.
HGSE also focused on issues related to class and race, especially in the area of urban education. The student body became more diverse, with 18% of the students coming from minority groups in 1971. Many students became more activist-oriented as the civil rights movement raised the nation’s consciousness of inequalities in the American education system. The expansion plans begun under Dean Keppel were completed during the Sizer years with Larsen Hall and the Gutman Library.
After leaving HGSE, Sizer became the 12th headmaster of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. In 1983, he returned to academia and became a faculty member and chair of Brown University’s Education Department. Sizer returned to HGSE as a visiting professor of education in 1997.
Deane Keller was a family friend of the Sizers’ and, at the time, professor emeritus of art at Yale. The rug behind the dean is a painted representation of a natural rug stitched by his father, Theodore Sizer, Sr., a professor emeritus of art history at Yale, during the first years of his son’s administration. The rug shows the coat of arms and mottos of both Harvard and Yale. Another personal touch is the inclusion of the initials TRS (Theodore Ryland Sizer) and NFS (the dean’s wife, Nancy Faust Sizer). The books on the desk include Sizer’s Moral Education and his father’s authoritative work on John Trumbull.
Keller was a 1926 graduate of the Yale School of Fine Arts and was appointed instructor in painting and drawing in 1929. His teaching career was interrupted by his wartime service as a fine arts officer attached to the fifth army in Italy. His duties included the location and protection of art treasures, emergency restoration of war-damaged pieces, and the return of stolen art by the German army. Keller resumed his teaching career at Yale in 1946. He was a staunch supporter of traditional techniques, despite some opposing views from certain colleagues on the faculty. He retired from teaching in 1970 but remained an active artist.