EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA – CHAPEL HILL (2012 – 2014)
Executive Director, LEARN NC
School of Education

Learn_icone-Learning Initiatives
LEARN NC served as a hub for project creation that connected instruction, technology, and scholarship to benefit communities and partner organizations. Primary ED responsibilities included the design, organization, and implementation of experiential professional development projects for K-12 and university educators with a particular emphasis on the integration humanities and STEM content with technology instruction; the lead on development efforts to raise funds to support these programs; the management of FTE university personnel and budget; the facilitation of university faculty, resources, and existing projects to connect existing scholarship, community and academic partners. The ED invited and assembled an Advisory Board of twenty-two education leaders from university and community, facilitated regular communications and feedback, and organized bi-annual meetings.

During his tenure as Executive Director of LEARN NC, Mink performed the following additional duties to meet e-learning goals:

  • identified critical professional development needs for K-12 teachers and recruit content experts to design online courses to meet these needs
  • led instructional design process to create a portfolio of 60 new online courses in the “Invest in Teachers” program in 2014
  • created and review evaluation standards for online courses and instruction
  • promoted course offerings to school districts, education organizations on a state, regional, and national level
  • connected the curriculum development of these online activities with multiple delivery options, including mobile technology, archival repositories, and digital textbooks

Additional duties included service on university committees

• School of Education Technology Committee (2012-2014)
• Research Triangle Schools Partnerships (RTSP) Seed Grant Selection Committee (2012)
• Faculty Administrative Leadership Development Pilot Program, Center for Faculty Excellence (2013-14)

andy_mink_200Curriculum Design & Teacher Leadership
Under Mink’s leadership, LEARN NC transformed from an exclusively digital outreach center to work space for curriculum design, teacher leadership support, and university-classroom research.  The signature online platforms became important components for advancing the professional growth of teachers in North Carolina by connecting them as thought leaders with educators in other states and countries.  Developing new content and producing new digital assets rejuvenated the digital repository in exciting new ways.

To those ends, he conceived, designed, and successfully funded the following projects as Principal Investigator:

  • “Nature of History: Using GIS Tools to Integrate STEM and Humanities Content”, Battelle Foundation, $46,000 (2012-13) and $35,000 (2013-14). 12 middle grades teachers received training in geospatial technologies in order to create a curricular guide for the integration of humanities and STEM content.
  • “Mini-Page Archives”, Betty Debnam Foundation, $49,000 (2013-14). Multi-disciplinary curriculum guide and online courses created for the Mini Page Archives hosted at the UNC Library.
  • “America on the World Stage: Online Courses”, Teaching with Primary Sources Eastern Region, Library of Congress, $20,000 (2013-14). Portfolio of 12 online courses and companion digital textbook created to match the digital archive of teacher-created lessons that focused on teaching American history through a global perspective.
  • “Bringing the War Back Home: the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery”, American Battle Monument Commission, $385,000 (2013-14). Assembled team of teachers and scholars received training in interactive technologies such as 3D modeling, augmented reality, and geospatial tools in order to provide access to the narrative content of the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery in Verdun, France for the 100th commemoration of World War I.
  • “Best Practices in an Interdisciplinary English Classroom”, UNC School of Education Foundation, $12,500 (2013-14). Digital textbook of best practice writing strategies created with an assembled team of 10 ELA teachers.
  • “Bring the Wilma Lee Alive through Project Based Learning”, Ocracoke Alive Foundation and Saltwater Foundation, $5,000 (2013-14). Digital textbook created as companion to 42-foot historic skipjack as a tool for using Ocracoke Island as a lens for the study of North Carolina history and ecology.
  • “Transatlantic Slave Trade: Geospatial Technology in the Atlantic Caribbean”, University of West Indies and Virginia Geographic Alliance, $4,000 (2013). Three day institute organized for Caribbean scholars, archivists, and librarians to integrate visualization technologies into their digital content.
  • “Time Travel with ChronoZoom”, Microsoft Research, $46,500 (2013). Assembled team of eight university historians and K-12 teachers to create curriculum guide for innovative new timeline tool called ChronoZoom.
  • “Classroom Climate and Culture – with Mix”, Microsoft Research, $46,000 (2014). Assembled team of twelve educators to create best practice examples of how to use innovative new presentation tool “Mix”.
  • “Teaching Interconnectness through Family History”, Ancestry.com, $285,000 (2013-14). Assembled team of twelve educators to create digital textbook companion for the use of Ancestry.com databases to teach family history in the history, English/Language Arts, library sciences, and ESL curricula.
  • “NC to Normandy”, Chapel Hill Carrboro Schools, Center for European Studies, UNC MEdX program, $5,000 (2014). Created digital documentary for a student-led service project that took two World War II veterans to Normandy, France for the 70th commemoration of the D-Day Landing in June 2014.