For Immediate Release
Contact: Laura Mirsky, Communications Coordinator
International Institute for Restorative Practices
Phone: 267-718-7374
Email: lauramirsky@iirp.org
October 8, 2007
Bethlehem, PA
Theodore Wachtel to be Inaugurated as
the Founding President of New IIRP Graduate School
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The Board of Trustees of the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP) Graduate School is pleased to announce the Inauguration of Theodore (Ted) Wachtel as Founding President, on Monday, October 8, 2007, 10:30 a.m., at the Hotel Bethlehem, in Bethlehem, Pa.
A native of Allentown, Pa., and a graduate of William Allen High School, IIRP president Ted Wachtel, a resident of Tinicum Township, attained national prominence in the 1980s as co-author of Toughlove, a bestseller for parents of troubled adolescents.
The Institute, the world’s first graduate school wholly dedicated to restorative practices, received its Charter of Authority as a Graduate School from the Pennsylvania Department of Education in June 2006 and opened in October 2006. Its main campus is at 544 Main Street, Bethlehem, and classes are offered there and in Lansdale (www.iirp.org).
IIRP Graduate School students hail from the Lehigh and Delaware valleys and beyond. The Institute offers Master's degrees in Restorative Practices and Education, and Restorative Practices and Youth Counseling, as well as a graduate certificate.
Wachtel's inauguration was a joyous event for the students, faculty, administration and trustees of the year-old graduate school, who began the ceremony with a procession in academic robes, accompanied by the Fairmount String Quartet. Congratulatory remarks followed, from Bethlehem Mayor John B. Callahan; Dr. Vivian Nix-Early, Dean of Joseph Campolo School for Social Change of Eastern University; and Mr. George Southworth, representing the University of Pennsylvania.
The heart of the ceremony was Wachtel's inaugural address. It took 30 years to reach this day, he said, beginning when he and his wife, Susan, former public school teachers, turned their energies to the urgent problem of troubled young people who were falling through the cracks.
Their vision of hope spurred them to build the network of non-profit Community Service Foundation and Buxmont Academy centers and programs located throughout eastern Pennsylvania, which have served many thousands of young people and their families.
The driving force behind these programs is restorative practices, an emerging field of study that enables people to restore and build community in an increasingly disconnected world. The IIRP Training and Consulting Division, added to the family of organizations in 1995, has introduced restorative practices to thousands of people from 50 states and 42 countries, in education, criminal justice, children-and-youth-serving and workplace environments.
As Wachtel said, the aim of both the Graduate School and the Training and Consulting Division is to "generously share the exciting potential of restorative practices with others so that all of us may collaboratively change the world."
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