In a staff change that underscores a shift in priorities at the Carnegie Corp. (assets: $1.7 billion) since Vartan Gregorian became president in 1998, Vivien Stewart, chair of the New York foundation’s Education Division, has departed after 28 years. Replacing the children-and-youth-in-poverty-oriented Stewart is Dan Fallon, a career higher education administrator, currently serving as interim director of the Office of International Affairs at the University of Maryland.
On Stewart’s watch, Carnegie loomed large in the minds of national children and youth policymakers, at least from Harvard Yard to the Children’s Defense Fund headquarters at the base of Capitol Hill. Stewart oversaw grantmaking in the areas of early childhood, school reform, teen pregnancy prevention and youth development, including recent Carnegie initiatives in substance abuse prevention and violence prevention that have yielded mixed results. She oversaw the work of the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, which produced the seminal 1992 report “A Matter of Time: Risk and Opportunity in the Non-School Hours.”
Stewart was also responsible for major Carnegie reports, including ones on adolescent learning, “Turning Points”; meeting the needs of young children, “Starting Points,” and learning in the primary grades, “Years of Promise.” Stewart will be a visiting fellow at Columbia Teachers College. She will also continue to work with Olaro Otunnu, the United Nations Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, aiding in building communications networks between children in nations at war with those fortunate enough to live in countries at peace.
Fallon’s career has been entirely on college campuses, including 11 years as dean of Texas A & M’s College of Liberal Arts. Not to worry, says Michelle Cahill, a Carnegie program officer with deep roots in youth work. Fallon has “a strong interest in children and youth issues.” In announcing his appointment, Carnegie President Gregorian said, “We want to ask the big questions facing higher education.” OK, Dan, try these: Why does higher education need such whopping endowments in the bank (Princeton has a million dollars in its endowment for every student enrolled) while one child in five lives in poverty? How come there are 1,300 colleges training teachers and not one with a major focus on training youth workers? (Dan, those are the people who repair broken kids after their shattering public school experience.) How come college students now graduate so burdened by loans that working in youth-serving agencies (at about half the pay of beginning teachers) is often precluded? Contact: (212) 371-3200.
Venturing forth from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is Jerry Kitzi, a program officer at the foundation since 1989. He’s setting up Social Venture Partners of Greater Kansas City. The new group, with Fred Pryor of Pryor Seminars as chair, will be a donor-advised fund of the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation. Kitzi’s initial work at Kauffman centered on Project Early, an early childhood program directly operated by the foundation. In 1997 he became vice president of the Youth Development division, reporting to Gene Wilson, chief of Kauffman’s two major grantmaking shops. In March, Wilson was transferred to a new assignment and Kauffman official Steve Roling became Kitzi’s new boss. Contact: (816) 932-1000.
