Crossing the River Jordan Award

Previous Winners

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
Professor of Education
Harvard University

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot is a professor of education at Harvard University. The author of seminal studies on school culture, patterns and structures of classroom life, the relationships between adult developmental themes and teachers’ work, and socialization within families, communities, and schools, Dr. Lightfoot was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship in 1984, and in 1993 she received Harvard University’s George Ledlie Prize for research making the "most valuable contribution to science" and "the benefit of mankind." In 1998, she received the Emily Hargroves Fisher Endowed Chair at Harvard University, which, upon her retirement, will become the Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot Endowed Chair, making her the first African-American woman in Harvard's history to have an endowed professorship named in her honor.