Nominated by: Paul H. Fry
James. R. Vivian is the founder, and for 40 years, director of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute and the Yale National Initiative for the founding of comparable institutes elsewhere, including the Tulsa Institute for Teachers, founded in 2017. These Institutes serve underrepresented school districts in cooperation with a local university to empower teachers in choosing, organizing, and recruiting for content-based seminars led by university professors. There are now institutes in New Haven, Philadelphia, Delaware, and Tulsa, and others planned in Richmond, Chicago, and the Arizona Dine Nation of the Navajo. Many thousands of teachers nationally and abroad have benefited from the curriculum units written by the teachers in institute seminars, all thanks to Jim Vivian’s career dedication.
