CEJJES Co-Founder
Dr. Susan G. Gordon has been a resident and an active citizen of Pomona, NY for over 50 years. As a young physician and graduate of Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C., she practiced pediatrics in Rockland County, with an office in Haverstraw from1954-58. She is a Licentiate of The American Board of Pediatrics and a Fellow of The American Academy of Pediatrics. In 1958 Dr. Gordon became an Associate Professor of Pediatrics, first at New York Medical College and then at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. For 25 years she taught at these two institutions and their teaching hospitals, Metropolitan Hospital, The Children's Hospital of the New York Presbyterian Hospital in the City of New York, and Harlem Hospital respectively. From 1978-1981, she has served as a member of The National Panel on the Measurement of the Program Effects of Head Start.
For 8 years Dr. Susan Gordon served on East Ramapo Central School District Board of Education, elected and served as President for 3 of those years. The Health Center of The Lexington School for the Deaf was named in her honor, where she served for over 20 years as a member and past president of their board. She most recently served as a member of the Board of Trustees of Nyack Hospital for a 4 year term. Dr. Gordon is a long-standing board member and serves as President on the Martin Luther King Multi-Purpose Center Board of Trustees. She was one of three women recognized at the African American Chamber of Commerce of Westchester & Rockland Counties, Inc. 2000 Women's History Month luncheon, on March 9, 2000. She was the recipient of the "Children's Champion Award," given by the Early Child Consortium of Rockland County, New York, 1999, and the classrooms and computer center of the Martin Luther King Jr. Multi-purpose Center, Inc. Spring Valley, NY was dedicated as the Susan G. Gordon, M.D. Education Corridor, January 22, 2000. On December 7, 2006 she was honored, along with her husband, by the Rockland County Commission on Human Rights and inducted into the Rockland County Civil Rights Hall of Fame.
Her husband, of over six decades, Dr. Edmund W. Gordon, is a developmental, cognitive and educational psychologist who retired as the John M. Musser Professor of Psychology and Professor of African American Studies at Yale in 1991. Professor is the Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology at Columbia University's Teachers College as well as director of the Institute for Urban and Minority Education, also at Teachers College where most recently the Harlem campus was named The Edmund W. Gordon Campus of Teachers College, Columbia University.
Together they have raised four children, two sons and two daughters, all of whom went through the East Ramapo School system. When their children were young they were very active in the PTA, school board elections and other community matters. In the late '50s and '60s they were part of a small group of concerned citizens who worked with Dr. Merril Colton, to integrate the schools in East Ramapo CSD. Together they have collaborated on numerous projects including the founding of the Harriet Tubman Child Health and Guidance Clinic in Harlem in the 1950's, the establishment of a Psycho-Educational Diagnostic Clinic for children referred to the Ambulatory Pediatrics Division of the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. Most recently they founded Gordon and Gordon Associates in Human Development and the CEJJES Institute in Pomona, NY. However, they feel their greatest collaboration is their four children, and by extension their nine grandchildren and one great-grandson, all of whom are wonderful human beings and of whom they are immensely proud.