I met Steve Mintz when he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford in 2006. He’s a smart historian and serious scholar who also cares about teaching. He teaches at U Texas Austin where he also serves as Director of the UT System’s new Institute for Transformational Learning. He’s a leading authority on the history of families and children, author/editor of 13 books, past president of H-Net, creator of the Digital History website, and was recently inducted into the Society of American Historians.
In this Inside Higher Ed column he suggests we think creatively about “curricular optimization” – not the conventional “fewer bigger classes” approach but one that is grounded in the recognition that faculty represent our most valuable institutional resource and, as such, its best deployment ought to be a top priority.
Other Pieces by Steve Mintz in IHE
- “What Non-Profit Universities Can Learn from the For-Profits.” February 12, 2014
- “Five Ways that 21st and 20th Century Learning Will Differ.” March 5, 2014
