第一篇：女校长个人先进事迹材料

园丁情怀

**年12月8日，**桥镇教区代表选举会在中学礼堂如期举行。坚持不贿选的**校长又一次高票当选咸安区人大代表。这位被人们誉为“铁观音”的女校长，在教师中口碑极好，在社会中影响极佳。在二十余年的教师生涯中，她在五尺讲台辛勤耕耘，默默奉献；在六年艰难的校长历程中，她坚强面对困难，拯救了两所濒临关门的学校。**校长犹如一位辛勤的园丁，把贫瘠得几乎无法种植的校园耕耘得生机勃勃。

2001年8月中旬的某一天，**村小学的老师一致推荐**老师任校长。教师们有的代替**填写好了“校长竞聘表”，有的自发组织一支队伍，深夜赶到镇教育总支一把手陈希湖组长家中，告诉陈组长：“**村小学现在已经负债30多万元，简直要熄火了！群众眼睛是雪亮的，我们相信正直踏实的**老师能让我们的学校起死回生！我们已经为她填好了竞聘表，请求组长同意她参加本次校长竞选！”说完，其中一位老师把竞聘表递给了陈组长。陈组长果断地回答：“尽管我不认识**老师，但是既然大家这么相信她，那么我也相信大家，我同意**参加校长竞选。”

**本是一个踏实做事的人，她根本就没想当这个校长。然而教师们这样信任她，让她深感义不容辞。她觉得自己应该勇敢地站出来接受挑战了。2001年8月20日，这是一个令**难忘的日子。在这天的校长竞聘演讲中，她以98。5〈满分100分〉的好成绩获得全镇第一名，轰动了**教育界，成为**村小学有史以来唯一的一位女校长。从此，**在这条艰难的校长路上苦苦求索着。

任职伊始，**恐负众望，彻夜难眠。是啊，沉重的“普九”债务和不断上门索讨的债主，就像一条无形的越勒越紧的绳索令她窒息！开学了，校门却被债主们上了锁。面对如此严重的困难，她没有退缩。一方面向党委政府汇报，提出了动员社会力量捐资助学的建议，得到了镇领导的支持，一方面加强学校内部管理和改革，清理内差外欠，开源节流。终于破解了第一道难题，确保了学校正常运转。为了把镇政府“捐一百元钱，献一份爱心”的倡议落到实处，方圆20里的**村留下了她忙碌而又令人怜悯的身影。理解她和学校困难的人慷慨解囊，也有不大理解和囊中羞涩的人，非常反感募捐活动。在历时两个多月的募捐活动中，她不知吃了多少苦，挨了多少骂，受了多少气。终于为学校募集了五万元的款项，还讨回外欠学校的死债近万元，加上开办学前班收费，小卖部出租收入，**上任的第一学期就为学校筹资还债10万余元，其中还了历年拖欠教师工资近7万元。在**村小学任校长三年，**没乱花学校一分钱，甚至她因公出差的车旅费，手机费，乃至学校的招待费，都是自己掏腰包。这样廉政的校长谁不欢迎啊！2004年9月23日，**被调到**桥镇中心小学。那天，张校长离开时，**村小学全体师生为她送行，教师们有的悄悄流泪，有的嚎啕大哭。那一刻，足以让**感动一生，她觉得自己的一切付出都值得。

她接手的**镇中心小学是一个更烂的大摊子：负债40多万元，现金没有一分文。她到任的当天，就有六个债主上门讨债。另外，迫在眉睫的是没有钱交水电费，没有钱买煤，学校就要被迫关门了！怎么办哪？！**只好找亲朋借钱为学校交了水电费，又跟煤厂老板说尽好话，为学校赊了16吨煤，以保证学校正常开门。她还得千方百计为学校筹措资金。**中心小学地处**正街，校门边有6个门面。由于前任校长家属占用一个最适中的门面经营，向学校交租不多，又不愿意退出门面。因此，教师意见很大，也导致生发一系列问题。**到任只几天，就有老师问她：“你是否会像前任者一样霸着门面不让啊？”**明确告诉这位老师：“我不想油渣吃，不到锅边站！”无私就无畏，**校长大刀阔斧地对学校门面，小卖部的承包问题进行了整顿改革。这种改革涉及了经营者的利益，遇到的阻力是很大的。**多次召开行政会，行政扩大会，教师会，一次次地进行商议，最终制定了切实可行的整改措施和竞标细则。又花了一个多月时间进行调研，宣传，上门做工作。最后按竞标细则进行竞标。竞标时，张校长让总务主任宣读竞标细则之后，自己郑重有力地宣布：“我简要说三点。一，大家参与竞标，是对学校工作的支持，我表示感谢！二，这次竞标绝对坚持公平公正公开的阳光操作，希望大家严格遵守操作程序。三，这次竞标只能成功，不能失败！对于任何阻碍竞标顺利进行的人和事，我会毫不客气，毫不含糊，毫不留情，快刀斩乱麻地解决问题！我的讲话完毕，下面开始竞标。” 也许是**的三个“毫不”把个别尖子户给震慑住了，这次竞标只花了一刻钟就大功告成，并且为学校多创收一万多元，在场的老师无不拍手叫好，有的甚至竖起大拇指对**说：“你真是个有能力，有魄力的校长啊！”张校长还四处求援。2004年期末，她给袁善谋区长写了封6页材料纸的长信，自己花了23元的特快专递邮费发出去了。区长当天就收到了信，并调派一行人第二天就到**中心小学调研。调研情况属实，区长随即拨给该学校一万元。由于**校长做到了开源节流，内挖潜力，外筹资金，因此，为**中心小学打开了全新的局面！吴老师如实说：“**调进我们学校后，我们学校出现了‘三少’现象，即上餐馆吃喝现象少了，坐车出入现象少了，浪费现象几乎没有了。”

**总是把自己放在“一校之灵魂”的位置，对自己严格要求。她认为，校长的教育思想，观念，学识，精神是办学成功的关键。所以，她总是不断地给自己充电，挤时间学习，钻研教育理论，探讨管理经验，充实知识功底，并大胆地用于指导实践。以教学为中心，积极改革办学模式，管理模式和课堂教学模式，激发了教师的工作热情和学生的学习兴趣，提高了教学效率。**自己也带头实践，像普通教师一样活跃在教学一线。备，教，批，辅，查，每一个环节她都不马虎。她在实际工作中不断积累经验，并将实践升华成理论。她写了许多论文，其中《微笑面对》和《感悟宽容》获得国家级科教成果特等奖，并在国际核心刊物《中华教育论坛》中发表。

把关心献给每一位老师，把爱心献给每一位学生，是**的为人之道，为校长之道。余芳老师流产了，**代她上数学；王燕华老师生病住院了，**替她上语文；陈细先老师照顾爱人治病，**白天给她上课，晚上将几十个作文本带回家，一改就是三个多小时。对待学生，她常常既是先生，又是母亲。她为失去母亲的孩子梳过头，缝过扣子，她多次为贫困生和单亲学生捐款捐物。她走到哪里，就在哪里随时播撒温暖。

师生平安，学校安全是**最大的心愿。她为确保师生安全做了大量工作。除了制定一系列安全制度，责任状外，还苦口婆心劝说教师们不要酗酒，不要酒后驾车。对学生的安全更是管理得细，管理得勤，管理得全。学生该如何注意交通安全，活动安全，着装安全，饮食安全，就餐安全，就寝安全，上下楼梯安全等等，她都逢会必讲。赤日炎炎的中午，**在河边，水塘边来回穿梭，防止学生玩水洗澡，防患于未然；夜深人静时，**在学生寝室周围徘徊，预防住读生翻墙夜逃。小心谨慎不亏人啊，**任校长六年，学校未发生一起安全事故。

**的确是一位辛勤的园丁，她以园艺师的情怀把校园打理得文明有序，生机盎然。用她的话说就是：我们同行，一路阳光灿烂；我们同行，一路花朵鲜艳；我们同行，一路笑脸烂漫。

第二篇：小学女校长优秀教育工作者先进事迹范文

小学女校长先进事迹 梅花 在严寒傲雪中绽放

xxx，xx区为数不多的年轻女校长之一，而五载二次荣立三等功，那可谓凤毛麟角了，但更多的时候，她都视自己为普通的教育工作者，在平凡的三尺讲台，成全孩子的梦想，成就自己的教育人生。xxx校长――理治小学教坛的一枝梅花，人淡如梅，坚强如梅，给人的永远是一种崇敬，一种震憾。

(一)她是执着的。她的心中有一颗永不陨落的太阳――小学教育。从师范毕业分配到调至理治小学，孩子王一当就是15年。从一个春天到另一个春天，从一所学校到另一所学校，由语文教师，到大队辅导员，到教导主任，到副校长，到辅导校长，平平凡凡的历程，普普通通的事业，却被她做到了极致，实现了圆满。

那条上班路上的艰辛只有严校长自己知晓，乃至记忆犹新。不管是三伏盛夏，还是数九寒冬，她都是5点钟起床，因为蹬车的汗水足够湿透衣裳，到校洗澡换衣服成了每天的必修课。3年前送毕业班的时候，年迈的母亲因胰腺炎住院治疗，严校长的爱人工作单位又远在如东，家里还有年幼的女儿要上学，学校的孩子要教育，千斤万斤的担子就这样压在她柔弱的肩上。

第三篇：哈佛女校长

作为哈佛大学370多年历史上第一名非哈佛毕业生的女校长，Drew Faust 对于她的任命安之若素。这位女历史学家在她的一生当中一直在寻求改变，而且为此不惧怕任何挑战。在她九岁的时候，她就曾经给当时的美国总统爱森豪威尔工工整整地写了一封信。生活在种族歧视严重的福吉尼亚州一个白人家庭的Faust，在信中准确地表达了自己的理念，那就是：“为什么黑人的孩子和白人的孩子，不能够在同一个学校上学。如果有一天，我把皮肤染成黑色，我的情感没有发生任何的改变，但是我却注定因此不能在现在的学校上学，您不觉得这很不公平吗？”当时，Faust写这封信并没有事先征求过父母的意见，所以，当她的父母收到一封来自白宫的回函时，为此深感意外，不知道究竟发生了什么事。几十年后，当Drew Faust在艾森豪威尔总统的图书馆中找到自己当年写的那封信时，也不胜感慨。

在哈佛大学上任的时候，Faust反复强调：“我是哈佛的校长，而不是哈佛的女校长。”她的前任萨默斯曾任美国的财政部长，在美国的经济界一言九鼎。但是由于他发表了女性在智力上不适合从事科学研究的言论，深深激怒了女性团体和各方人士，所以不得不黯然辞职，在这样的背景下，Faust成为哈佛的校长，外界不免要猜疑这是否是一个“政治正确”的结果。对此，Faust早有心理准备――她确信女性不应因自己的性别受到歧视，也不需要因为自己的性别而得到某种优待。与此同时，当她收到来自世界各个国家女孩子的信件，看到她们在信中表达了自己由于Faust的上任而深感同为女性的自豪；同时表达出因此受到鼓励，更加有勇气去追求自己梦想的决心时。她深深地为自己可以在女性当中有这样的影响力，并能在社会上树立如此正面的形象而感到安慰。

Faust认为，今天的年轻人面临更多的就业压力，所以在寻求高等教育的时候，往往有比较直接的职业期待和需要速成的要求。但是她仍然认为高等教育是给人的知识以及求学能力方面打下一个全面的基础。因此，Faust希望能在未来的哈佛本科教育的改革中，始终坚持以人的全面发展为最终目的。这位致力于研究历史的女学者，相信高等学府不仅仅要满足社会和学生当下的要求，更应该满足未来对于年轻人提出的要求。她最喜欢的学生是那种有好奇心的学生。因为在她看来，不断地探究和追求真理，正是教育的真谛所在。

虽然Drew Faust前方的道路不会平坦，但是在她的心中仍然跳跃着当年那位勇于给总统写信的小女孩的正直和勇气。她说：“所谓女性的权力，并不是去控制多少的资源，而是让人们看到如果你有梦想，是有可能去实现的。无论你是男性还是女性。”

第四篇：哈佛大学女校长毕业典礼演讲全文

哈佛大学女校长毕业典礼演讲全文

Universities nurture the hopes of the world: in solving challenges that cross borders;in unlocking and harnessing new knowledge;in building cultural and political understanding;and in modeling environments that promote dialogue and debate...The ideal and breadth of liberal education that embraces the humanities and arts as well as the social and natural sciences is at the core of

Harvard’s philosophy.2011年5月哈佛大学迎来了第360届毕业典礼。哈佛大学女校长福斯特（Drew Gilpin Faust，1947年9月18日－，美国历史学家）在毕业典礼上发表了演讲。福斯特是哈佛大学历史上第一位女校长，也是自1672年以来第一位没有哈佛学习经历的哈佛校长。福斯特1947年出生于纽约，1964年毕业于马萨诸塞州的私立寄宿中学 Concord Academy，后就读于位于宾州费城郊外的一所女子文理学院 Bryn Mawr College；文理学院毕业后福斯特进入宾夕法利亚大学攻读历史学硕士，攻读历史硕士学位，1975年获得了宾大美洲文明专业的博士学位，同年起留校担任美洲文明专业的助教授。后由于出色的研究成果和教学，她获任历史学系教授。福斯特是一位研究美国南方战前历史和美国内战历史的专家，在美国内战时期反映南方阵营思想的意识形态和南方女性生活方面都卓有成就，并出版了5本相关书籍，其中最著名的一本《创造之母：美国内战南方蓄奴州妇女》在1997年获得美国历史学会美国题材非小说类最佳著

作奖。

2001年，福斯特进入哈佛大学，并担任拉德克里夫高等研究院（Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study）的首任正式院长，该学院的前身是拉德克利夫学院。2007年就任哈佛大学校长。

2011年福斯特就任哈佛大学校长届满四年，四年也是本科生完成学业的时间跨度，所以Class of 2011对于福斯特来说，有着不一样的意义。在这篇演讲中谈到了她这四年的心路历程，同时对美国教育的未来发展提出了自己的观点，其中多次提到中国的教育发展。Commencement Address

Tercentenary Theatre, Cambridge, MA May 26, 2011

Distinguished guests.Harvard faculty, alumni, students, staff, friends.As we celebrate the Class of 2011 and welcome them to our alumni ranks, I feel a special sense of connection to those who just received their “first degrees,” to use the words with which I officially greeted them this morning.I began as president when they arrived as freshmen, and we have shared the past four years here together.Four world-changing years.From the global financial crisis, to a historic presidential election, to the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring — not to mention earthquakes, tsunamis and tornadoes.The choices and circumstances these new alumni face are likely to be quite different from the ones they expected when they moved into Harvard Yard in September 2007.And I hope and trust that they too are transformed — shaped by all they have learned and experienced as Harvard College undergraduates.Their departure marks a milestone for me as well.One that prompts me, as Harvard enters its 375th year, to reflect on what these four years have meant for universities, and what universities must do in this time of worldwide challenges when knowledge is becoming ever more vital to our economies, our societies and to us all.Education has never mattered more to inpidual lives.In the midst of the Great Recession, the unemployment rate for college graduates in the United States was less than half that for those with just a high school diploma.Those with bachelor degrees earn half again as much as high school graduates.Doctoral or professional degrees nearly double, on average, earnings again.And education of course brings far more than economic benefits.We believe that the graduates of institutions like Harvard are instilled with analytic and creative habits of mind, with a capacity for judgment and discernment that can guide them through a lifetime that promises an abundance of change.But education is not just about inpiduals.Education has never mattered more to human progress and the common good.Much of what we have undertaken at Harvard in these past four years reflects our fundamental sense of that responsibility: to educate inpiduals who will understand the difference between information and wisdom, who will pose the questions, and create the knowledge that can address the world’s problems, who can situate today’s realities in the context of the past even as we prepare for the future.Yet universities have been deeply affected, as events have reshaped the educational landscape in the United States and abroad.The cost of higher education has become the source of even greater anxiety for American families.At a time when college matters more than ever, it seems increasingly less affordable.Access to higher education is a national priority, and at Harvard we have significantly enhanced our financial aid policies to make sure that Harvard is attainable for talented students regardless of their financial circumstances.This is fundamental to sustaining Harvard’s excellence.More than 60% of undergraduates received financial aid from Harvard this year;their families paid an average of $11,500 for tuition and room and board.The composition of our student body has changed as a result, and we have reached out to students who previously would not have imagined they could attend.This past year, for example, nearly 20% of the freshman class came from families with incomes below $60,000.We want to attract and invest in the most talented students, those likely to take fullest advantage of their experience at Harvard College.Our graduate and professional schools recognize a similar imperative and seek to ensure that graduates are able to choose careers based on their aspirations rather than on the need to repay educational debt.The Kennedy School, for example, has made increasing financial aid its highest priority;Harvard Medical School’s enhanced financial aid policies now assist over 70% of its student body.Like American families, institutions of higher education face intensified financial challenges as well.At our distinguished public universities, pressures on state funding threaten fundamental purposes.The governor of Pennsylvania, for example, proposes cutting state appropriations for higher education by half.Leaders of the University of California system warned last week of a possible tuition increase of 32% in response to reduced state support.Some in Congress are threatening to reduce aid for needy students, and to constrain the federal funding that fuels scientific research at Harvard and at America’s other distinguished universities.By contrast, support for higher education and research is exploding in other parts of the globe.In China, for example, undergraduate student numbers have more than quadrupled in little over a decade;India has more than doubled its college attendance rate and plans to do so again by 2020.Higher education, these nations recognize, is a critical part of building their futures.As battles rage in Washington over national priorities and deficit reduction, we need to make that case for America as well.Universities are an essential part of the solution—providing economic opportunity and mobility, producing discoveries that build prosperity, create jobs and improve human lives.And American higher education—in its dedication to knowledge in breadth and depth, beyond instrumental or narrow technical focus — has proved a generator of imagination, wisdom and creativity, the capacities that serve as foundations for building our common future.When I met last year with university presidents in China, they wanted to talk not about science or technology, where we all know they have such strength, but instead about the liberal arts and how to introduce them in their country.They believed those principles of broad learning had yielded the most highly regarded educational system in the world.This year, Tsinghua University in Beijing introduced a new required course called “Moral Reasoning and Critical Thinking.” It is modeled on Professor Michael Sandel’s famous Harvard undergraduate class, “Justice,” and he lectured in that course last week.This is a time for us to convince Americans of what these Chinese educational leaders affirmed to me: that we in the United States have developed a model of higher education that is unsurpassed in its achievements and distinction, in the knowledge it has created and in the students it has produced.It must be both supported and adapted to help secure the future in which our children and their children will live.That future encompasses a second powerful force shaping higher education.When Thomas Friedman famously proclaimed that the world was “flat” in 2005, he drew attention to the ways in which ideas and economies no longer respect boundaries;knowledge, he emphasized, is global.Yet societies, cultures and beliefs vary in ways that affect us ever more deeply.If the world is flat, it is far from homogeneous.Universities must embrace the breadth of ideas and opportunities unfolding across the world, and at the same time advance understanding of the differences among distinctive cultures, histories and languages.I am repeatedly struck when I meet with undergraduates at the intensity of their interest in language courses, which at Harvard now include nearly 80 languages.These undergraduates understand the kind of world they will live in, and they want to be prepared.One member of the class of 2011, who will be a Marshall scholar next year, told me about how she took up the study of Chinese at Harvard and when she traveled abroad recognized how speaking the language transformed her relationship to those she met.“When you learn a language,” she said, “you get goggles.My Chinese goggles.You have different kinds of conversations with people in their own language … we’re going to grow up in the world together in countries with such intertwined futures.We are,” she concluded, “an international generation.”

In these past four years, Harvard has reached into the world, and the world has reached into Harvard as never before.I have traveled as Harvard president on five continents.I have met with thousands of the more than 50,000 Harvard alumni who live outside the United States, and I have visited Harvard initiatives that address issues from AIDS in Botswana to preschool education in Chile to Renaissance studies in Italy to disaster response in China.Our new Harvard Center Shanghai joins 15 offices supporting Harvard faculty and student research and engagement abroad.We have over the past several years launched the university-wide China Fund, the South Asia Initiative, and an enhanced African Studies effort that recently received a coveted Title VI recognition as a National Resource Center.Undergraduate experiences abroad have more than doubled since 2003.Design School field studios reach from the favelas of Sao Paolo to the townships of Mumbai, and Harvard’s clinical and research opportunities in medicine and public health range from tuberculosis in Siberia to adolescent health in Fiji.Here in Cambridge, teaching incorporates an enhanced global perspective, from newly required international legal studies at the Law School to an international immersion experience beginning next year for all MBA students at the Business School, where 40% of case studies now have a significant international component.And we benefit from an increasingly international faculty and student body — 20% of our degree students overall.But it is not just knowledge that knows no boundaries.The world’s most critical challenges are most often borderless as well, and it is these pressing problems that attract the interest and talents of so many in our community.Universities are critical resources in addressing issues from economic growth to global health, to sustainable cities, to privacy and security, to therapeutics.To borrow a phrase from the Business School mission statement, Harvard faculty and students want to “make a difference in the world” by creating and disseminating critical knowledge.And we increasingly understand how to bring the elements of knowledge-creation together by crossing intellectual and disciplinary boundaries just as we cross international ones.I speak often of “one university,” for it is clear that we work most effectively when we unite Harvard’s unparalleled strengths across its schools and fields — and do so at every stage of the educational process, from College freshmen through our most accomplished senior faculty members.The new Harvard Global Health Institute is a case in point, engaging more than 250 faculty from across the university in addressing issues that range from post-earthquake response in Haiti and Chile to reducing cardiovascular disease in the developing world.We have established an undergraduate secondary field in Global Health, and over 1,000 College students are involved in courses, internships and related activities.Similarly, the Harvard Center for the Environment draws on graduate and undergraduate students and more than a hundred faculty, in law, engineering, history, earth sciences, medicine, health policy and business — to look comprehensively at problems like carbon capture and sequestration, or the implications of the Gulf oil spill for structures of environmental regulation.This brings us finally to innovation, a third powerful force in higher education — and in the wider world in which higher education plays such an important part.Students and faculty working together in new ways and across disciplines, are developing wondrous things — from inhalable chocolate to inhalable tuberculosis vaccine.Our undergraduates have invented a soccer ball that can generate enough power to light villages;Business School students are launching more and more start-ups;Medical School experiments have reversed the signs of aging — in mice at least.The Dean of our School of Education has been named one of the region’s foremost innovators for inventing a new degree, a doctorate in educational leadership — the Ed.L.D.— whose graduates, trained by faculty from the Business, Kennedy and Education schools, will be ready to lead change in America’s schools.New ideas and new ways of enabling those ideas to reach a wider world.That is the essence of what we are about.And we as an institution have some new ideas about how we do our own work as well.We have innovated after 350 years with governance, expanding and enhancing the Corporation.We are innovating(after almost as long)with the organization of our libraries — at the heart of how we learn and teach.We are in the second successful year of a new undergraduate curriculum.We created a new School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.We are exploring new ways of teaching, with new technologies and new partners.We are integrating the arts into our teaching across fields, recognizing that the act of “making” — whether in the arts or, perhaps, engineering — is an essential part of creative learning.In the fall we will open a new Innovation Lab, to foster team-based invention that connects students across disciplines and with local entrepreneurs.Perhaps every generation believes that it lives in special times and perhaps every cohort of graduates is told just that at ceremonies like these.But both the depth of the challenges we face and the power of knowledge — and thus of universities--to address them is unprecedented.Harvard must embrace this responsibility, for it is accountable to you, its alumni, and to the wider world.Universities are among humanity’s greatest innovations and among humanity’s greatest innovators.Through universities we find a better future, where our graduates and their children and the greater global community may lead lives of peace, prosperity and purpose in the centuries to come.Thank you very much.-Drew Gilpin Faust

第五篇：哈佛大学女校长毕业典礼演讲全文2011

哈佛大学女校长毕业典礼演讲全文（组图）作者：涂攀

2011年5月哈佛大学迎来了第360届毕业典礼。哈佛大学女校长福斯特（Drew Gilpin Faust，1947

年9月18日－，美国历史学家）在毕业典礼上发表了演讲。福斯特是哈佛大学历史上第一位女校长，也是自1672年以来第一位没有哈佛学习经历的哈佛校长。福斯特1947年出生于纽约，1964年毕业于马萨诸塞州的私立寄宿中学 Concord Academy，后就读于位于宾州费城郊外的一所女子文理学院 Bryn Mawr College；文理学院毕业后福斯特进入宾夕法利亚大学攻读历史学硕士，攻读历史硕士学位，1975年获得了宾大美洲文明专业的博士学位，同年起留校担任美洲文明专业的助教授。后由于出色的研究成果和教学，她获任历史学系教授。福斯特是一位研究美国南方战前历史和美国内战历史的专家，在美国内战时期反映南方阵营思想的意识形态和南方女性生活方面都卓有成就，并出版了5本相关书籍，其中最著名的一本《创造之母：美国内战南方蓄奴州妇女》在1997年获得美国历史学会美国题材非小说类最佳著作奖。

2001年，福斯特进入哈佛大学，并担任拉德克里夫高等研究院（Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study）的首任正式院长，该学院的前身是拉德克利夫学院。2007年就任哈佛大学校长。

2011年福斯特就任哈佛大学校长届满四年，四年也是本科生完成学业的时间跨度，所以Class of 2011对于福斯特来说，有着不一样的意义。在这篇演讲中谈到了她这四年的心路历程，同时对美国教育的未来发展提出了自己的观点，其中多次提到中国的教育发展。

Commencement Address Tercentenary Theatre, Cambridge, MA May 26, 2011

Distinguished guests.Harvard faculty, alumni, students, staff, friends.As we celebrate the Class of 2011 and welcome them to our alumni ranks, I feel a special sense of connection to those who just received their “first degrees,” to use the words with which I officially greeted them this morning.I began as president when they arrived as freshmen, and we have shared the past four years here together.Four world-changing years.From the global financial crisis, to a historic presidential election, to the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring — not to mention earthquakes, tsunamis and tornadoes.The choices and circumstances these new alumni face are likely to be quite different from the ones they expected when they moved into Harvard Yard in September 2007.And I hope and trust that they too are transformed — shaped by all they have learned and experienced as Harvard College undergraduates.Their departure marks a milestone for me as well.One that prompts me, as Harvard enters its 375th year, to reflect on what these four years have meant for universities, and what universities must do in this time of worldwide challenges when knowledge is becoming ever more vital to our economies, our societies and to us all.Education has never mattered more to inpidual lives.In the midst of the Great Recession, the unemployment rate for college graduates in the United States was less than half that for those with just a high school diploma.Those with bachelor degrees earn half again as much as high school graduates.Doctoral or professional degrees nearly double, on average, earnings again.And education of course brings far more than economic benefits.We believe that the graduates of institutions like Harvard are instilled with analytic and creative habits of mind, with a capacity for judgment and discernment that can guide them through a lifetime that promises an abundance of change.But education is not just about inpiduals.Education has never mattered more to human progress and the common good.Much of what we have undertaken at Harvard in these past four years reflects our fundamental sense of that responsibility: to educate inpiduals who will understand the difference between information and wisdom, who will pose the questions, and create the knowledge that can address the world’s problems, who can situate today’s realities in the context of the past even as we prepare for the future.Yet universities have been deeply affected, as events have reshaped the educational landscape in the United States and abroad.The cost of higher education has become the source of even greater anxiety for American families.At a time when college matters more than ever, it seems increasingly less affordable.Access to higher education is a national priority, and at Harvard we have significantly enhanced our financial aid policies to make sure that Harvard is attainable for talented students regardless of their financial circumstances.This is fundamental to sustaining Harvard’s excellence.More than 60% of undergraduates received financial aid from Harvard this year;their families paid an average of $11,500 for tuition and room and board.The composition of our student body has changed as a result, and we have reached out to students who previously would not have imagined they could attend.This past year, for example, nearly 20% of the freshman class came from families with incomes below $60,000.We want to attract and invest in the most talented students, those likely to take fullest advantage of their experience at Harvard College.（一名头顶阿拉伯-英语词典的阿拉伯学生）

Our graduate and professional schools recognize a similar imperative and seek to ensure that graduates are able to choose careers based on their aspirations rather than on the need to repay educational debt.The Kennedy School, for example, has made increasing financial aid its highest priority;Harvard Medical School’s enhanced financial aid policies now assist over 70% of its student body.Like American families, institutions of higher education face intensified financial challenges as well.At our distinguished public universities, pressures on state funding threaten fundamental purposes.The governor of Pennsylvania, for example, proposes cutting state appropriations for higher education by half.Leaders of the University of California system warned last week of a possible tuition increase of 32% in response to reduced state support.Some in Congress are threatening to reduce aid for needy students, and to constrain the federal funding that fuels scientific research at Harvard and at America’s other distinguished universities.By contrast, support for higher education and research is exploding in other parts of the globe.In China, for example, undergraduate student numbers have more than quadrupled in little over a decade;India has more than doubled its college attendance rate and plans to do so again by 2020.Higher education, these nations recognize, is a critical part of building their futures.As battles rage in Washington over national priorities and deficit reduction, we need to make that case for America as well.Universities are an essential part of the solution—providing economic opportunity and mobility, producing discoveries that build prosperity, create jobs and improve human lives.And American higher education—in its dedication to knowledge in breadth and depth, beyond instrumental or narrow technical focus — has proved a generator of imagination, wisdom and creativity, the capacities that serve as foundations for building our common future.When I met last year with university presidents in China, they wanted to talk not about science or technology, where we all know they have such strength, but instead about the liberal arts and how to introduce them in their country.They believed those principles of broad learning had yielded the most highly regarded educational system in the world.This year, Tsinghua University in Beijing introduced a new required course called “Moral Reasoning and Critical Thinking.” It is modeled on Professor Michael Sandel’s famous Harvard undergraduate class, “Justice,” and he lectured in that course last week.This is a time for us to convince Americans of what these Chinese educational leaders affirmed to me: that we in the United States have developed a model of higher education that is unsurpassed in its achievements and distinction, in the knowledge it has created and in the students it has produced.It must be both supported and adapted to help secure the future in which our children and their children will live.（这位老先生George Barner 是哈佛在世的最老的校友之一，1929届毕业生。按推算，老先生已经90岁以上高龄）

That future encompasses a second powerful force shaping higher education.When Thomas Friedman famously proclaimed that the world was “flat” in 2005, he drew attention to the ways in which ideas and economies no longer respect boundaries;knowledge, he emphasized, is global.Yet societies, cultures and beliefs vary in ways that affect us ever more deeply.If the world is flat, it is far from homogeneous.Universities must embrace the breadth of ideas and opportunities unfolding across the world, and at the same time advance understanding of the differences among distinctive cultures, histories and languages.（另一位年逾古稀的哈佛校友Donald Brown；1930届毕业生）

I am repeatedly struck when I meet with undergraduates at the intensity of their interest in language courses, which at Harvard now include nearly 80 languages.These undergraduates understand the kind of world they will live in, and they want to be prepared.One member of the class of 2011, who will be a Marshall scholar next year, told me about how she took up the study of Chinese at Harvard and when she traveled abroad recognized how speaking the language transformed her relationship to those she met.“When you learn a language,” she said, “you get goggles.My Chinese goggles.You have different kinds of conversations with people in their own language … we’re going to grow up in the world together in countries with such intertwined futures.We are,” she concluded, “an international generation.”

In these past four years, Harvard has reached into the world, and the world has reached into Harvard as never before.I have traveled as Harvard president on five continents.I have met with thousands of the more than 50,000 Harvard alumni who live outside the United States, and I have visited Harvard initiatives that address issues from AIDS in Botswana to preschool education in Chile to Renaissance studies in Italy to disaster response in China.Our new Harvard Center Shanghai joins 15 offices supporting Harvard faculty and student research and engagement abroad.We have over the past several years launched the university-wide China Fund, the South Asia Initiative, and an enhanced African Studies effort that recently received a coveted Title VI recognition as a National Resource Center.Undergraduate experiences abroad have more than doubled since 2003.Design School field studios reach from the favelas of Sao Paolo to the townships of Mumbai, and Harvard’s clinical and research opportunities in medicine and public health range from tuberculosis in Siberia to adolescent health in Fiji.Here in Cambridge, teaching incorporates an enhanced global perspective, from newly required international legal studies at the Law School to an international immersion experience beginning next year for all MBA students at the Business School, where 40% of case studies now have a significant international component.And we benefit from an increasingly international faculty and student body — 20% of our degree students overall.But it is not just knowledge that knows no boundaries.The world’s most critical challenges are most often borderless as well, and it is these pressing problems that attract the interest and talents of so many in our community.Universities are critical resources in addressing issues from economic growth to global health, to sustainable cities, to privacy and security, to therapeutics.To borrow a phrase from the Business School mission statement, Harvard faculty and students want to “make a difference in the world” by creating and disseminating critical knowledge.And we increasingly understand how to bring the elements of knowledge-creation together by crossing intellectual and disciplinary boundaries just as we cross international ones.I speak often of “one university,” for it is clear that we work most effectively when we unite Harvard’s unparalleled strengths across its schools and fields — and do so at every stage of the educational process, from College freshmen through our most accomplished senior faculty members.The new Harvard Global Health Institute is a case in point, engaging more than 250 faculty from across the university in addressing issues that range from post-earthquake response in Haiti and Chile to reducing cardiovascular disease in the developing world.We have established an undergraduate secondary field in Global Health, and over 1,000 College students are involved in courses, internships and related activities.Similarly, the Harvard Center for the Environment draws on graduate and undergraduate students and more than a hundred faculty, in law, engineering, history, earth sciences, medicine, health policy and business — to look comprehensively at problems like carbon capture and sequestration, or the implications of the Gulf oil spill for structures of environmental regulation.This brings us finally to innovation, a third powerful force in higher education — and in the wider world in which higher education plays such an important part.Students and faculty working together in new ways and across disciplines, are developing wondrous things — from inhalable chocolate to inhalable tuberculosis vaccine.Our undergraduates have invented a soccer ball that can generate enough power to light villages;Business School students are launching more and more start-ups;Medical School experiments have reversed the signs of aging — in mice at least.The Dean of our School of Education has been named one of the region’s foremost innovators for inventing a new degree, a doctorate in educational leadership — the Ed.L.D.— whose graduates, trained by faculty from the Business, Kennedy and Education schools, will be ready to lead change in America’s schools.New ideas and new ways of enabling those ideas to reach a wider world.That is the essence of what we are about.And we as an institution have some new ideas about how we do our own work as well.We have innovated after 350 years with governance, expanding and enhancing the Corporation.We are innovating(after almost as long)with the organization of our libraries — at the heart of how we learn and teach.We are in the second successful year of a new undergraduate curriculum.We created a new School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.We are exploring new ways of teaching, with new technologies and new partners.We are integrating the arts into our teaching across fields, recognizing that the act of “making” — whether in the arts or, perhaps, engineering — is an essential part of creative learning.In the fall we will open a new Innovation Lab, to foster team-based invention that connects students across disciplines and with local entrepreneurs.Perhaps every generation believes that it lives in special times and perhaps every cohort of graduates is told just that at ceremonies like these.But both the depth of the challenges we face and the power of knowledge — and thus of universities--to address them is unprecedented.Harvard must embrace this responsibility, for it is accountable to you, its alumni, and to the wider world.Universities are among humanity’s greatest innovations and among humanity’s greatest innovators.Through universities we find a better future, where our graduates and their children and the greater global community may lead lives of peace, prosperity and purpose in the centuries to come.Thank you very much.互联网界的读者文摘