News from
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Office of Communications
Stanhope Hall
Princeton, New Jersey 08544-5264
Telephone 609-258-3601; Fax 609-258-1301Contact: Justin Harmon 609/258-5732
Date: February 11, 1999
Berkeley Educator to Lead McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning
PRINCETON, N.J. -- Jacqueline Mintz, founding director of the GSI Teaching and Resource Center at the University of California at Berkeley, will become director of Princeton's new Harold W. McGraw Jr. Center for Teaching and Learning, effective with the beginning of the 1999-2000 academic year.
Mintz has led the Berkeley center for 10 years, working particularly with graduate student instructors (GSIs) and with faculty members to enhance teaching and learning on that campus.
Mintz earned her 1982 doctorate in comparative literature from Berkeley, and she continues to teach in the field of comparative literature, particularly drama and renaissance literature. She has authored more than a dozen papers and articles and has directed a highly praised videotape in the field of educational development. Twice honored for innovative pedagogy and program design by the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education, Mintz served on the organization's board of directors and currently serves as chair of its committee on professional development.
The Berkeley center offers a number of centralized programs, but the core of its activities is a series of seminars on pedagogy which are developed and taught by faculty together with graduate student instructors within the individual academic departments. The center serves as a partner in these seminars, offering support and expertise as desired.
"The decade of highly successful professional experience and the depth of personal commitment to improving teaching and learning which Jacqueline Mintz brings to the leadership of the McGraw Center give us great confidence that the center will fulfill our aspirations to provide a truly valuable resource to both teachers and students at Princeton," said President Harold T. Shapiro. Associate Provost Georgia Nugent, who led the search along with Dean of the College Nancy Weiss Malkiel and Dean of the Graduate School John Wilson, noted that "Mintz's programs at Berkeley are particularly distinguished for their highly collaborative structure and for their attention to the role of teaching within the larger context of one's professional and personal life. She can help us to realize in new ways Princeton's strong commitment to teaching."
"I look forward to having the opportunity to work with faculty, graduate students and undergraduates at Princeton, in a way that can highlight the interrelations of teaching and learning activities among all of these," said Mintz. "I hope and expect that I will be collaborating with many individuals and departments at Princeton in order to initiate and develop a flourishing program at the new McGraw Center."
The McGraw Center is intended to serve as a laboratory for new ideas and a place to share, across departments and disciplines, teaching discoveries that have proven successful in individual classrooms at Princeton and other colleges and universities. To provide easy access for the undergraduates, graduate students and faculty who will draw on its professional and technological resources, the center will be housed in the University's new campus center, designed by Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, under construction at the heart of the campus. Among the specialized facilities to be included in the McGraw Center are a state-of-the-art electronic classroom for instruction of undergraduates, a multimedia resource laboratory where faculty and graduate students can experiment with new teaching methods and develop new teaching materials, a library of print and electronic teaching resources, a seminar room, and consultation areas. The center also will act as an informal meeting place to encourage discussion and interaction among faculty, graduate students, undergraduates and the center's professional staff. In addition to the center's advanced facilities, nearby classrooms in the campus center will be equipped with videotaping capabilities.
The teaching and learning center will be established through the generosity of publisher Harold W. McGraw Jr., a member of Princeton's Class of 1940, who made a $5 million gift to endow the facility in 1998. McGraw, who has spent 52 years at McGraw-Hill, currently serves as chairman emeritus. Among his many previous gifts to the University, he endowed the editing of Albert Einstein's papers by the Princeton University Press when he served as its president. He has also established an endowed chair for writing courses.