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Dr. Elizabeth Minnich has served higher education in different roles at a variety of liberal arts institutions as well as through her writing, speaking, special projects, board memberships, and consulting.

Dr. Minnich’s book, Transforming Knowledge (Temple, 1990), received the Association of American Colleges and Universities’ Frederick W. Ness Award for “best book in liberal learning” of its year. An extensively revised 2nd edition will be published in November, 2004.. Her essays appear in 16 anthologies and 3 textbooks, and she was "scribe" for the Association of American Colleges & Universities’ report, "Liberal Learning And The Arts of Connection for The New Academy," issued by The National Panel on "American Commitments: Diversity, Democracy, and Liberal Learning.” She has served as an editor and author for the AAC&U's journal,"Liberal Learning," published in scholarly journals, and serves on 6 academic journals’ editorial boards. She is Series Editor for “The New Academy”(a series of anthologies focused on contemporary critical, creative scholarship and teaching) from Temple University Press.

She has been a keynote and plenary speaker at national conferences of the Association of American Colleges & Universities; the American Council on Education; the Association for General & Liberal Studies; the American Association of Higher Education; the Society for Values in Higher Education; the National Association for Independent Schools; and many others in the U.S. and abroad (Sweden, Hungary, Poland). Her consulting work has taken her to over one hundred colleges, universities, and independent schools, and she has worked with the Ford Foundation, FIPSE, The Kettering Foundation, NEH, the Spencer Foundation, Carnegie, among other philanthropic organizations. Her volunteer work includes serving as Chair of the North Carolina Humanities Council (1999-2001), and the board of The Humans & Nature Center.

As an academic administrator, she has been a dean and/or director at The New School (now Lang) College; Sarah Lawrence College; Hollins College; and Barnard College on the undergraduate level. She has also been a dean at the Union Institute & University’s Graduate College for Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. She has taught at all of these institutions.

Special appointments have included Professor of Philosophy & The Humanities - the Hartley Burr Alexander Chair, Scripps College; Visiting Scholar, Scholars & Seminars Program, the Getty Institute for The History of Art and The Humanities; Thomas P. Johnson Distinguished Visiting Professor, Rollins College; and the Whichard Visiting Distinguished Professor of Humanities and Women’s Studies, East Carolina University.

Dr. Minnich earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from The Graduate Faculty for Political and Social Science of The New School University in New York, where she was teaching assistant for Hannah Arendt. She wrote her dissertation on John Dewey, and has continued to work on issues of democracy and education, with particular focus on inclusive scholarship, curricula, teaching, and institutional practices.

In the summer and fall of 2004, her work includes finishing a book presently titled Thinking Friends and Teachers: a propos Hannah Arendt, Moral and Political Considerations. With Si Kahn, she is writing a book (under contract) on the relationship between democracy and privatization. A recent paper will be included in an anthology on Dewey’s Democracy and Education; another, on Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger (“A Life of Action, A Life of Thought”) will appear in a new philosophy textbook, Gendering Western Philosophy. She is presently scheduled to speak at conferences on interdisciplinary, integrative studies; engaged education; and teaching thinking.