Generations of Scholars Mentored by Vivian L. Gadsden Return to Campus for Symposium in her Honor

The hallways at Penn GSE hummed with conversation as scholars, students, and community partners gathered for a daylong symposium honoring Vivian L. Gadsden, the William T. Carter Professor Emerita of Child Development and Education, who retired in December. The event commemorated Gadsden’s field-defining impact in early childhood and family education and her 38 years of service to Penn GSE. From breakfast through three panels and an afternoon reception, the program for “Imagining and Securing the Futures of Children and Families: Perspectives for Changing Times” traced the extraordinary breadth of her influence: on research, on policy, and most enduringly, on people.

Gadsden’s legacy of building relationships, working in community, and putting people first was on display from the opening remarks of Dean Katharine Strunk and Penn Provost John Jackson. Both spoke to Gadsden’s gifts as a scholar who reshaped how the field understands learning, literacy, and family life, and as a Penn citizen whose leadership helped define Penn GSE’s public mission—having previously served as both the president of the Penn Faculty Senate and president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Strunk, in particular, noted her influence in the Penn GSE community.

“Vivian never needs to speak loudly for her voice to carry,” said the dean. “That’s earned over decades of service.”

Jackson noted that Gadsden had recently been honored with two awards from AERA: the 2026 Distinguished Contributions to Research in Education Award and the inaugural Dr. Felice J. Levine Distinguished Contributions to Mentoring in Research and Leadership Award, recognizing her profound impact on both scholarship and the development of future scholars. 

Penn Trustee Harlan Stone, C'80, followed with an announcement that drew sustained applause: a new scholarship established in Gadsden’s honor, designed to broaden access to graduate study in education and ensure her impact will be felt by future generations of scholars and practitioners.

True to Gadsden’s desire that the focus of the day’s event be on the work and not her, the day’s three panels delved deeply into learning in cultural and community contexts, child development and welfare in Philadelphia and across the U.S., and the relationship between research, policy, and practice. One such panel—the first of the day—featured Gadsden’s former students discussing their work on how children’s literacy is shaped by family narratives, community knowledge, and cultural histories. The conversation echoed Gadsden’s foundational insight that literacy does not live solely in classrooms, but in homes, churches, and relationships, and that honoring those contexts is essential to educational justice.

The symposium closed with reflections from Gadsden’s colleagues, like AERA President Jerome Morris, who called her his “big sister” and his “advisor beyond his institution,” offering tributes that blended intellectual admiration with personal gratitude.

“I want to thank you, Vivian,” said Morris, “for uplifting us, giving us something to work with, giving us a blueprint, a template, to move forward. We’re going to make sure that all of your work is not in vain.”

Senior Vice Provost for Faculty and GSE Centennial Presidential Professor of Education Laura Perna began her remarks by asking the attendees to raise their hands if they had Gadsden as a teacher, an advisor, a mentor, a colleague, a thought-partner, a friend.

“You should look around,” she told Gadsden, pointing to all the raised hands in the audience representing a career full of relationship-building.

When Gadsden herself took the microphone, she shined the spotlight elsewhere, thanking her students, her colleagues, her School, her dean, and her family for their support and turning her attention to what she perceives to be most important: ensuring that children and their families can thrive.

“What I said to each person [here], all of whom ignored me, was that this was not a day about me,” she said. “It was a day about, how can we imagine something different? How can we do something that’s really important, particularly for those who have the least among us?”

Gadsden noted that she asked for the word “imagining” to be in the symposium’s title because she wanted all the gathered academics, experts, nonprofit partners, colleagues, and more to use the occasion to devise a new and better vision for the future for children and families.

“So, what do I imagine?” she asked. “I imagine a future where we can have healthy children who are breathing and living healthily in a climate that supports them. I imagine children who have nutrition and are not suffering from food insecurity. I imagine children who have decent housing, who aren’t fearful that they won’t have some place to live. I imagine them being in homes where parents and family members are able to support them and to nurture them. I imagine that they are in communities that are not constantly battered. I imagine that they can be liberated from poverty and the vulnerability that so many children and families find themselves in. I imagine schools that address the needs of children and try to understand who they are, and for these schools to serve as supporters, not barriers. I imagine a world for young children and their families that is just, equitable, and fair, that allows them the opportunity to become better than they ever imagined.”

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