Carol Fineberg has acquired a reputation as a problem solver of issues where the arts and education are linked. She was both editor and contributor to the popular handbook, Planning an Arts-Centered School (Dana Press, 2002). Her more recent book, Islands of Excellence: the Arts as Partner in School Reform (Heinemann), has been used in many colleges and universities as a text and as a source for professional development provided by arts organizations around the country.
A graduate of Smith College in the era before most Ivy League schools accepted women, Carol earned her doctorate with concentration on aesthetics and cognitive psychology at New York University. In addition she studied with Fellowships at Bank Street College, Sophia University (Japan), Cornell Institute of Labor Relations, and earned additional credits from Fordham University.
Carol has served as external evaluation consultant for some fifty client organizations since founding her own company some 30 years ago including the American Place Theater and Tony Randal’s National Actors Theater, and she served on the Board of the Vineyard Theater for several years. She continues to consult with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Midori and Friends, AppleArts and the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation. She has been a panelist for the US Department of Education (USDOE) Arts Education and Promise Neighborhoods initiatives as well as for the New York State Council for the Arts.
Carol has taught in the Masters programs at Brooklyn College, Pratt Institute and the College of New Rochelle, and has been a frequent guest speaker at various state-wide convocations of arts and general educators. She started her career as a teacher and administrator at the High School of Music and Art (a/k/a LaGuardia High School).
As an innovator, Carol founded the exemplary Thinking Through the Arts program in New Rochelle (validated by New York State Department of Education), the Westchester Arts Program (for advanced high school musicians, visual artists and dancers) at SUNY Purchase, arts magnet schools in New Rochelle and Teaneck NJ, and the School Arts Rescue Initiative (SARI) for schools within Metropolitan NYC after 9/11 as well as the School Arts Support Initiative (SASI) for middle schools in New York City. In addition she facilitated the development of curriculum for the barely new Frank Sinatra HS of the Arts, leading teachers of music, art and drama to formulate advanced versions of their curricula.
Carol continues to believe that the two worlds of the arts and education can combine to develop young people in need of intellectual, emotional and artistic direction.