Our History

The Hechinger Institute was launched in 1996 and named after Fred M. Hechinger, the late New York Times education editor who also served as a Teachers College trustee. It was Fred's idea to have an institute for professional journalists, spurred by his belief that few education reporters come to the beat with a background in educational issues.

The founding director was Gene I. Maeroff, who now serves as a senior fellow. Maeroff spent 16 years writing what he estimates to be about 1.5 million words about education for the New York Times, before becoming a senior fellow with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He's also edited, co-written or written 12 books on education, including "Building Blocks,'' Palgrave Macmillan (August 22, 2006).

The current director of the Institute is Richard Lee Colvin. He joined the Institute in 2002 after many years writing about education for newspapers in California, including the Los Angeles Times, where he was the lead education writer. Before that he worked for the Oakland Tribune, the Hayward Daily Review and the Associated Press. He has a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College and a master's degree in journalism from the University of Michigan. He has been a media fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University and in 2000 won a Knight-Wallace fellowship for mid-career journalists at the University of Michigan. He became director of the Institute in May of 2003.

The assistant director is Liz Willen, who joined the Hechinger Institute in March 2006 form Bloomberg Markets magazine, where she was a senior writer focusing on higher education. Liz spent the bulk of her career covering the New York City public school system for Newsday, where she was a reporter for 11 years. She has won numerous prizes for education coverage, including a first place award for magazine writing in 2005 from the Education Writers Association. She also shared the 2005 George Polk Award for health reporting with two Bloomberg colleagues and took first place for beat writing in education from the New York Newswoman's Club in 2005

Since its launch in 1996, the Institute has sponsored approximately 66 seminars that have been attended by 1,943 journalists who write or editorialize about education or who edit coverage of education. Those attending seminars have come from the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Dallas Morning News, Chicago Tribune, USA Today and many other major publications.