From left: Lynch, Wortham, Dearing, Lowenhaupt, and Liang. Image: Lee Pellegrini

On January 30, the University’s Lynch School of Education formally celebrated the expansion of its name, to the Lynch School of Education and Human Development. The change, said Stanton Wortham, the Charles F. Donovan, SJ, dean of the school, “acknowledges and makes visible the important and distinctive work of our students and faculty in the department of counseling, developmental, and educational psychology [CDEP].”

Of the Lynch School’s 54 fulltime faculty, 20—or 37 percent—are in CDEP. At peer institutions, it is more common to have 10 to 15 percent representation from these disciplines, according to Wortham. CDEP faculty do train school counselors, but most graduates go on to work in private practice, outside the academic setting. And while research undertaken in the department may involve school-related subjects, much of it has broader scope—exploring the development of motivation, for instance.

Among the 668 Lynch School undergraduates enrolled in this academic year, 465 have declared a major in applied psychology and human development (with 183 pursuing the traditional curriculum of elementary or secondary teacher education and 20 undecided). This makes the CDEP major the eighth most popular at the University. “We think the new name will help attract even more students,” says Wortham.

At its founding in 1952 (with 110 female and 60 male students), the School of Education became Boston College’s first coeducational school on the Heights; classes were held in Gasson Hall until the construction of Campion Hall in 1955. The first dean, Charles F. Donovan, SJ, expressed the hope that it would “exercise a beneficial influence on education and educational policies in this part of the country.” In 1999, with an enrollment of more than 1,000 graduate and undergraduate students, the school received a powerful boost in the form of a $10 million gift from then Trustee Peter Lynch ’65 and his wife, Carolyn. The following year brought the first name shift, in recognition of the Lynches’ support.

The latest expansion of the title is a matter of “addition, not subtraction,” says Wortham. “We still do all the things in education that we have done since our beginning. We still train elementary and secondary teachers; and we also train educational leaders and people who are going to be higher education administrators. That part of our work is still central to our focus.”

To mark the expansion of the school’s name, Lynch faculty took part in a symposium on January 30 in the Murray Room. “Partnering with Schools and Communities to Foster Human Development” featured a public discussion among Belle Liang, a professor of counseling psychology, who studies mentoring, social media, and relational health in adolescence; Eric Dearing, a professor of applied developmental and educational psychology, whose focus is the role of family and community in the academic development of disadvantaged children; and Rebecca Lowenhaupt, an associate professor in the school’s educational leadership and higher education department, who studies K–12 schools with significant immigrant populations. Before an audience of some 125 faculty and students, the three shared stories from their collaborations with local schools and communities. Dearing described the constructive “feedback loops” that emerge from consulting with target populations on the survey questions that matter to them. Research applications have greater “stickiness,” said Lowenhaupt, “when we approach our learning with humility.”

Following the discussion, Peter Lynch spoke briefly. He described his family’s involvement with the school as “the greatest thing we’ve ever done” and applauded the new name. “It’s not like we’re changing things,” Lynch said; “we’re actually naming what the school does. The two elements of the name relate to each other every minute of the day.”