Penny Bender Sebring ’64 and Charles Ashby Lewis, Doctor of Laws

Penny Bender Sebring ’64 is a senior research associate at the University of Chicago and co-director of the Consortium of Chicago School Research. After earning a degree in sociology from Grinnell, Sebring went on to study education and policy studies at Pennsylvania State University and Northwestern University. Sebring is widely published on a variety of topics including urban education, course-taking patterns, and school leadership, and is a Life Trustee of Grinnell College.

Doctor of Laws

Penny Bender Sebring ’64 and her husband, Charles Ashby Lewis (Amherst ’64), both built successful careers: she in educational research at the University of Chicago, he in investment banking at Merrill Lynch. Later, they combined their expertise to become active philanthropists with a nation-changing vision for professionalizing teaching.

Dr. Sebring has spent her career at the University of Chicago studying urban education and putting research into practice. She is the co-founder of the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research, a 25-year-old organization that informs school improvement efforts in Chicago and beyond. Lewis spent nearly 35 years at Merrill Lynch. He is also passionate about improving public schooling for diverse, low-income students, helping, among other things, to build University of Chicago’s Urban Education Institute.

The pair’s combined expertise led them to a big idea: the key to attracting the best and brightest to careers in PK-12 teaching and related fields is professionalization — just like in medicine and the law. To that end, the couple has helped found and is funding three collaborative “Careers in Education Professions” programs at University of Chicago, Amherst College, and here at Grinnell. These programs help students at these elite colleges who enter with an interest in public education to validate that interest through hands-on experience, and, if validated, prepare for education careers through internships, alumni engagement, advising, and other guidance.

Grinnell College is pleased to honor Penny Bender Sebring ’64 and Charles Ashby Lewis for their strategic and philanthropic efforts to improve education in America.

Acceptance

Transcript

Penny Bender Sebring: We're an unlikely ... [microphone issue] Sorry. We're an unlikely pair to be standing here today. A long-time educational researcher and a veteran investment banker. First-generation college goers whose worlds were enlarged by our liberal arts education. I didn't know my biological father. My adopted father had an eighth-grade education. My mother was a Rosie the riveter during World War II and didn't finish college. I arrived here freshman year by train from Denver never having seen the campus before. My bags were packed with some clothes that I had made. I don't make them anymore. I came to Grinnell on a recommendation of a friend from my church. It turned out to be perfect for me.

Charles Ashby Lewis: It feels good to have this hood on. This is a little warmer. Actually, one of the last times we were here was 2008 for the caucuses. It was about this temperature in January of 2008. I grew up near Albany, New York just ninety miles west of Amherst College, but I'd never heard of the place until senior year. I was recruited to play football there. Yes, I know the football part is hard to believe.

Sebring: Grinnell opened my eyes to possibility. First, I was a Peace Corps volunteer. Then a social studies teacher. Next I earned my doctorate from Northwestern University and finally co-founded the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research. Chuck never fails to remind me what a mouthful that name is.

Lewis: The long and the short of it here. With that quintessential pioneer background, Penny was skeptical, to say the least, about dating an investment banker assuming I couldn't possibly share her values. It's worked out okay. Probably in part because we share a deep faith in the transformative power of education. Over the years, I've read a lot of research about the critical role that good teachers play in public schools, like the ones that we attended, realizing the need to professionalize teaching in the central interplay of status and talent. In doing so, we seized on the opportunity to start the Careers in Education Professions program. Yeah! All right! Go ed pros! As you heard earlier, both here at Grinnell and at Amherst and U Chicago, where it's no coincidence that we are proud trustees of those three great colleges.

Sebring: We believe that public school teaching will become a much more viable career when relatively more graduates from top colleges like this one make it a career. We are grateful to President Kington, to Professor Ketter, to Program Director Shaefer, to Dean Peltz, and many others for helping to make the Education Professions program a reality here. We appreciate our friend, George Drake, President Emeritus of the college. Not only was he a marvelous teacher, he and Sue were Peace Corps volunteers and their son is a dedicated public school teacher. We also applaud you here at Grinnell, for your leadership in making it possible for more first-generation students, like the two of us, to attend an elite college like this. We are humbled to be honored today. Thank you.