Susan Engel

Susan Engel is Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Founding Director of the Program in Teaching at Williams College. Her research interests include the development of curiosity, children’s narratives, play, and more generally, teaching and learning. Her current research looks at whether students learn to think differently in college.

Her scholarly work has appeared in journals such as Cognitive Development, Harvard Educational Review, and the American Education Research Journal. She is the author of six books: The Stories Children Tell: Making Sense of the Narratives of Childhood, Context is Everything: The Nature of Memory, Real Kids: Making Sense in Everyday Life, Red Flags or Red Herrings: Predicting Who Your Child Will Become, The Hungry Mind: The Origins of Curiosity in Childhood, and The End of the Rainbow: How Educating for Happiness (Not Money) Would Transform Our Schools. Her writing on education has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, Salon, and The Boston Globe. She is a founder of, and the educational advisor to an experimental school in NY State. She lives in New Marlborough MA with her husband Tom Levin. They have three sons, Jake, Will and Sam. She and Sam are currently writing a book about high school.