The Institute for Humane Education (IHE) is committed to creating an organization and a world where everyone can thrive. To that end, we actively seek to work with and welcome a diversity of people and partners. We also strive to understand a variety of perspectives. We believe that diversity in its many forms is a catalyst for solutionary action and foundational to a more just, vibrant, and caring community.
At IHE, we leverage the power of education to address multiple forms of social injustice through the ongoing work of our various teams, staff, faculty, and board. We recognize that structural injustices, acts of exploitation, violence, discrimination, and degradation remain pervasive across the U.S. and other countries around the world. We also recognize that the systems affecting people are often inextricably bound to the systems affecting our planet and all life. We strive to educate about injustice in ways that equip people to transform systems to be more equitable, humane, and sustainable.
To ensure our organization is thriving, advancing towards greater justice, and helping others do the same, we have established the following goals and strategies, which will be reviewed, assessed, and supported by a committee comprised of board members and staff:
Goal 1: IHE’s working environment will attract, support, and maintain a community of faculty, staff, advisors, and board members with a range of different backgrounds and life experiences
Goal 2: IHE’s faculty, staff, and board will have continual learning opportunities to expand knowledge about injustice and its impacts
Goal 3: IHE’s graduate programs, professional learning, and resources for teachers and changemakers will provide ways to collaboratively redress unjust systems
Goal 4: IHE will collaborate with an array of mission-aligned partners to achieve mutual goals in the service of diverse constituencies
Goal 5: IHE’s resources and offerings will be widely accessible
Including but not limited to:
“Changing the world one child at a time.” Those words have inspired my work for more than four decades in education, and they continue to inspire me now. We are at a pivotal point in the evolution of our world. We are facing a climate crisis, a health crisis, a crisis of racial justice, a crisis in our treatment of animals, a crisis of media bias. The list goes on. And perhaps our greatest crisis is our consistent struggle as a society to simply come together respectfully, intelligently, and ethically to solve our problems and save our planet. We need solutionaries. We need young people who have been educated not only to think critically, creatively, and systemically about real-world issues, but also to be passionate, persistent, and humane in their implementation of real-world solutions. And that is IHE’s mission: to support teachers and educational institutions in preparing young people to become solutionaries – and the next caretakers of our planet.
IHE offers a healing vision and a tangible pathway forward for a struggling world. As Executive Director, I am excited, humbled, and deeply honored to join with others to promote that vision and that pathway in ways that make them foundational to systems of education throughout the world – and to each child who is committed to making that world a better place.
Passionate about preparing young people to lead lives of joy and purpose, Steve Cochrane has had a remarkable journey through the field of education. It is a journey that has taken him from the campus of Princeton University, where he served as an admissions officer and an assistant dean of students, to the classroom of a public elementary school, where he had the privilege of teaching – and learning from – his fourth and fifth grade students. Steve has been a dorm director and associate dean of admissions at Wheelock College in Boston. He has also been an elementary school principal, a middle school principal, an assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, and, prior to his work at IHE, he was the superintendent of the Princeton Public Schools in Princeton, New Jersey where he was honored with the award of County Superintendent of the Year. In each of these roles, Steve has collaborated with others to prioritize innovations in learning, wellness for students, equity, and a belief that every child should be supported and inspired to achieve their highest potential.
Steve received his undergraduate degree in English from Princeton University and his master’s degree in educational administration from Harvard. He is a competitive road cyclist who also enjoys the thrill of mountain biking. Steve and his wife are both vegans and advocates for holistic health. They currently reside in Spencerport, New York, with their two dogs and a very large Maine Coon cat.
