About Us

The Hechinger Institute exists to equip journalists with the knowledge and skills they need to produce fair, accurate and insightful reporting. Since its launch in 1996, the Institute has sponsored more than 63 Seminars for journalists who write, editorialize or edit coverage of education.

More than 1,800 journalists have attended Hechinger Institute Seminars, which feature top education experts, including faculty from Teachers College. Held at Teachers College and throughout the U.S., the Seminars are designed to create an intimate, salon-like atmosphere in which all of the participants and presenters are encouraged to participate.

The Institue also produces The Hechinger Report, the nonprofit news outlet that is focused on producing in-depth national education journalism. The Hechinger Report is an independently funded unit of Teachers College, Columbia University. Content published in The Hechinger Report -- or content produced and disseminated by any of its collaborators with funding from the Institute --does not necessarily reflect the views of Teachers College, its trustees, administration or faculty.

The Institute produces primers and publications on timely topics in education, from covering higher education to understanding teachers unions. The Institute maintains a website with resources related to Seminar topics along with a blog on early childhood issues. In 2007, the Institute is sponsoring "Covering America, Covering Community Colleges" a Fellowship designed to encourage and promote in-depth coverage of community colleges for print and broadcast reporters, online and editorial writers.

The Institute's Director is Richard Lee Colvin, the former lead education writer for the Los Angeles Times who spent much of his career writing about education for newspapers in California. The Associate Director is Liz Willen, a former education writer for Newsday and Bloomberg News.

The Institute is supported by a variety of private philanthropies, including the Joyce Foundation, Harold W. McGraw Jr., chairman emeritus of the McGraw-Hill Companies, the Lumina Foundation for Education and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is named in memory of Fred M. Hechinger, a former education editor of the New York Times and a trustee of Teachers College.