K A R E N.  L.  M A P P.  '77.

The following feature story appeared in the campus publication Mosaic in March, 2000.

Promoting Family and Community Involvement in Education

The African proverb "It takes a village to raise a child" has special resonance for Karen Mapp. Raised in a family that valued and encouraged learning, Mapp studied and documented the link between family and learning as a graduate student and now is head of a national organization that promotes family and community involvement in education.

"I’ve always had a love of learning; it was instilled in me by my family members," Mapp explains. "There were many teachers in my family. I was read to by my mother and had a library card by the time I was five or six. There wasn’t any question that I was going on to college."

As soon as Mapp arrived at Trinity, she immersed herself in her new community. A sports enthusiast, she considered the crowds at the College’s athletic contests too quiet for her taste. As a result, in her first year she founded Trinity’s cheerleading squad, raised funds for uniforms, and introduced the memorable "Dig It" cheer.

Mapp found many supporters in the Trinity community who cheered and supported her and her interests. Notable among them were Karl Kurth Jr., then the director of athletics; Professor of Psychology David Winer; James A. Miller, former professor of English and director of Trinity’s American studies program; and Mohamed Jama Jibrell, who served as assistant dean of students while Mapp was an undergraduate. As a psychology major planning to study human behavior and work with families, Mapp found Professor of Psychology Karl F. Haberlandt and one of his classes especially memorable.

"I had Karl for ‘Psychology of Learning,’ where we had to train rats using the famous Skinner box (in which an animal must press a lever to gain a reward)," she recalls. "Karl always impressed me with his ability to explain very complex theories of psychology very clearly. He really made us think beyond what was on the given page in a book. He was just marvelous."

Haberlandt readily recalls his former student and is pleased, but not surprised, by her success. "Karen was among the students who were very serious about theories and practical applications of the psychology of learning," he says. "I remember she asked excellent questions about how the mind works in learning. She was really interested in the subject. She exhibited a level of maturity one really doesn’t see among many students. She wrote good papers and had a good level of penetration in the material. She was a delightful student to have around the department."

Postgraduate studies

After graduating from Trinity, Mapp followed in the footsteps of her parents, who worked for Southern New England Telephone Co. in New Haven, CT, and joined the company’s management training program. At the same time, she continued her studies by enrolling in the counseling education program at Southern Connecticut State University, where she became involved in the school’s marriage and family program. "I saw many families with children acting out and having problems in school," she explains. "I started to get interested more in education than in psychology." She earned a master’s degree in counseling in 1981, and went on to earn a six-year diploma of advanced studies in counselor education and student personnel from Southern in 1982.

In 1985, following the divestiture of AT&T, Mapp took advantage of a SNET management buy-out program, left the company, and put her interpersonal skills to work in her own consulting company, where she coordinated events planning. In 1987, she returned to Trinity to become assistant director of admissions and coordinator of the minority recruitment initiative. Using her counseling skills, she designed and directed a program that resulted in a significant increase in minority enrollment and also initiated an early-awareness college program for Hartford middle school students. In the process, she began to see how important family involvement was to the success of a student in school.

Intrigued with the idea of studying parental involvement and educational success, she heeded the advice of a mentor and family friend, Edgar Beckham, a senior fellow at the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and enrolled at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. In the course of her studies, she conducted research at a number of organizations where she began to validate what she instinctively knew was true. Parental involvement in education produces increased student achievement, enhanced self-esteem, improved behavior, and better school attendance. She earned a master’s in administration, planning, and social policy in 1993, and in 1997 she received a Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship for her research on parent and school partnerships in urban settings.

Having documented the importance of family involvement in education, Mapp became a project director in 1997 for The Institute for Responsive Education, which conducts research on and advocates for school-family-community partnerships. She became head of the organization, based at Northeastern University, in 1998.

In her current position, Mapp has taken on a familiar role. She is now a cheerleader for the enhanced learning opportunities educational partnerships create. "Education cultivates the soul," she observes. "Education allows you to see in a whole new way. When you have a love of learning, the world is open to you. I believe that education really can set you free."

-Suzanne Zack