Spencer History
1911 - 1938
Lyle M. Spencer born in Atlanta, Georgia May 10, 1911.
1933
Awarded BA by the University of Washington
1935
Awarded MA by the University of Washington 1935-38: Pursued graduate study under a University Fellowship and Marshall Field Fellowship at the Univeristy of Chicago
1938
Lyle Spencer co-founded Science Research Associates (SRA).
Spencer was a twenty-seven-year-old graduate student in sociology at the University of Chicago when he founded SRA, the educational publishing firm that provided the basis of his wealth and ultimately made possible the creation of the Spencer Foundation. 1961: SRA became publicly owned.
1968
Lyle M. Spencer died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 57 on August 22, 1968.
Upon Lyle Spencer's death he bequeathed the bulk of his estate to the Foundation, enabling it to begin its major work. Board members Charles Dollard and Ralph Tyler began preparations for the Foundation to be created. Charles Dollard served as the President of record from 1968 until 1970. He also served as Board Chair 1968-1975. H. Thomas James was hired as the 1st President in 1970 and served until 1985.
1971
The Foundation received an initial distribution from Spencer's estate totaling $43 million. The foundation's first two grant awards mark, what would become, a lasting commitment to the training and development of junior scholars.
By 1973 the bulk of the estate had been received and totalled $79 million; by 1982 when the final distributions were completed the endowment from Lyle Spencer totalled just over $82 million.
The first two grants of the Foundation were awarded January 1971 and were to support junior researchers:
The first for $163,500 over three years, was awarded to the National Academy of Education to select, supervise, and support Academy Associates and Fellows; and the second, $450,000 over three years, to five universities to be selected by the President for "young scholars working on problems related to education."
1980
Development of the Good Neighbor Program.
The Good Neighbor program provided a line of funding for action-oriented projects in the Chicago area that were not limited to scholarly research but remained closely related to the Foundation's mission. The foundation's second president, Lawrence Cremin, described the program this way, "What would be special about Good Neighbor projects was not any lessening of academic or professional quality but rather a broadening of the definition of what might be seen as quality within program. Good Neighbor projects are within the domain of the Foundation’s general expertise, but they include a broader array of applied research, evaluation, and information gathering than would be appropriate under our regular grant program. That breadth enables us to join other foundations in contributing to worthy causes in the city of Chicago – to pay our dues so to speak…".
1985
Lawrence Cremin elected to be the 2nd President. He served as president until his death in 1990.
Lawrence A. Cremin joined the Board of Directors in 1973 and served as the Foundation’s 2nd President from April 1985 until his death in September 1990. He was a teacher and a scholar. In addition to serving as President, he was the Frederick A.P. Barnard Professor of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he had served on its faculty for forty-two years, and as its President for ten years. During his time at Spencer he expanded the Foundation’s program by bringing his view of education as occurring not only in schools but also in families, in museums and other cultural institutions, in the work place, in civic organizations, and through electronic as well as printed media. He encouraged scholars in many disciplines of the social sciences to look to the Foundation for support of their research on education and learning. He established the Foundation’s predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowship programs to encourage young scholars to pursue their interests in education research, thereby renewing the ed research community.
1990
David Tatel elected as Chair in January 1990 and served until January 1997.
1991
Patricia Albjerg Graham was elected as the Foundation's 3rd President and served until June 2000.
Patricia Albjerg Graham was elected a director in 1983 and served as President of the Foundation from 1991-2000. She is a leading historian of American education. She began her teaching career in Deep Creek, Virginia, and later taught in Norfolk, Virginia, and New York City. She has also served as a high-school guidance counselor. From 1965 to 1974, while director of Barnard College's Education Program, she worked closely with teachers and administrators in New York City to assist beginning teachers in their schools. She has been a lecturer and assistant professor at Indiana University, a visiting professor at Northern Michigan University, and a professor of history and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. In 1972-73 she was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. She has served as dean of the Radcliffe Institute and as vice president of Radcliffe College. She joined the HGSE faculty in 1974 and served as dean from 1982 to 1991. She was also appointed by the President of the United States as the director of the National Institute of Education, then the federal government's educational research agency, where she served from 1977 to 1979.
1995
Practitioner Research and Communication Mentoring Program.
A grant program to support increased communication and mentoring among practitioner researchers aimed at defining and strengthening the character of such research.
1997
Mary Patterson McPherson elected as Chair and served until January 2003.
2003
Michael S. McPherson becomes Spencer's 5th president.
Derek Bok elected as Chair and served until January 2012.
Michael S. McPherson served as the 5th President of the Spencer Foundation from 2003-2017. Prior to joining the Foundation in 2003 he served as President of Macalester College I St. Paul, Minnesota for seven years. He is a nationally known economist whose expertise focuses on the interplay between education and economics. McPherson spent the 22 years prior to his Macalester presidency as professor of economics, chairman of the Economics Department, and dean of faculty at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
2006
The Foundation organizes a conference entitled "Values and Evidence in Educational Reform Conference"
The conference is in response to developing a new area of inquiry - Purposes and Values on Education. The conference papers lead to the 2015 publication The Aims of Higher Education: Problems of Morality and Justice in Higher Education which brings together essays on the changing role of higher education in America today.
2012
The Foundation announces the Evidence for the Classroom RFP.
A targeted RFP under the Data Use Initiative sought proposals for research projects examining how student performance data is used by educators, from kindergarten through the 8th grade, to inform classroom practices, and how organizational contexts influence this use.
2012
Deborah Loewenberg Ball becomes Chair of the Spencer Board.
Deborah Loewenberg Ball serves as Chair January 2012 - June 2017.
2018
Spencer 'Listening Tour'
Spencer program staff engage in a 'listening tour', visiting over 40 Schools of Education in universities nationally as well as several Special Interest Groups at AERA, and holding one-on-one conversations with scholars, making sure to include a range of geographical areas, types of institutions, and scholars across many sub-fields in education.
These interactions were intended to provide opportunities for foundation staff to engage with educational scholars around the country to better understand the needs, interests, and critical issues for education researchers.
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