Sesame Workshop and HGSE: Together Again

Grover charms at press conference

By Beth Potier
Harvard News Office

Grover, the furry blue monster of "Sesame Street" fame, held a press conference at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) Tuesday (Feb. 8) to announce the Harvard School of Grover, a new school of "all the major majors," including not only law, medicine, and business but also hotel and restaurant management and air conditioning and refrigeration repair.

Despite the monster's promises to HGSE Dean Ellen Lagemann that the Harvard School of Grover would be "cute, fuzzy, and very educational," and that its medicine curriculum would include such advanced concepts as "the knee bone is connected to the shin bone," Lagemann rejected Grover's educational proposal.

Instead, she and Sesame Workshop President and CEO Gary Knell--with help from "Professor" Grover--announced a new collaboration that will focus on how electronic media can create powerful educational methods for children between the ages of 6 and 9. At its core is a new course "Informal Learning for Children," taught by lecturer in education Joseph Blatt--with frequent lectures by visiting Sesame Workshop executives, and a Web-based bulletin board that aims to link HGSE students with research projects at Sesame Workshop.

See the full story and more photos in the 2/10/2005 issue of the Harvard Gazette.
Read a related interview with TIE Director Joe Blatt.