A Brief History

Our history can be traced through four institutions: from the University of Dallas, to Trinity Christian Academy in Addison, Texas, to the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture’s Louise and Donald Cowan Center for Education, to The MacMillan Institute.

On a personal level, the bloodline runs most directly from Drs. Louise and Donald Cowan to Dr. Dan Russ to Dr. Claudia MacMillan.

The MacMillan Institute exists to teach and spread the educational philosophy of Drs. Louise and Donald Cowan, visionaries in the fields of education, literature, and physics.

Its story starts with the Cowans at the University of Dallas. Beginning in the 1960s, the Cowans were the anchors and “guiding lights” of the University, working tirelessly for the University of Dallas while being actively engaged in serving the City of Dallas.

Dr. Dan Russ came as a student to the University of Dallas in the 1970s and was transformed by the Cowans’ philosophy and methods with Dr. Louise Cowan serving as his dissertation advisor.

In the 1980s, Dr. Russ took that vision to Trinity Christian Academy in Addison, Texas, where he translated the Cowans’ philosophy for university studies into primary and secondary education. Most importantly, at Trinity Dr. Russ introduced and helped create the nationally recognized, integrated humanities curriculum in its History/English department.

In May of 1980, the Cowans and four colleagues who had worked together at the University of Dallas—Drs. James Hillman, Robert Sardello, Joanne Stroud, and Gail Thomas—left the University and founded The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. At the Dallas Institute, the Cowans shifted their imaginations to primary and secondary education and began working with public schools in 1981.

“If civilization is to survive, we can no longer avoid the need for nurturing all our young: in our time, nothing less than a
universal liberal education will suffice.”

Dr. Donald Cowan, Unbinding Prometheus: Education for the Coming Age 

Originally funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Dallas Institute's Summer Institutes for Teachers (now called the Sue Rose Summer Institutes for Teachers) were designed by Dr. Louise Cowan and her students—among them Dr. Dan Russ—to awaken the critical and imaginative powers of participants and transform them as teachers. In 1987, these summer classes grew into the Dallas Institute’s Teachers’ Academy, year-round courses and events taught in the Cowan spirit, and the enterprise began to be sponsored through the generous patrons of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.

In the spring of 1989, a fortunate introduction to Dr. Russ led Claudia MacMillan, while a school teacher, to the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture’s Summer Institutes, a learning event that changed the course of her life.

While in the 1989 Summer Institute, Dr. Louise Cowan counseled Claudia MacMillan to further her education by seeking a graduate degree at the University of Dallas.

A Master of Humanities degree from the University of Dallas helped MacMillan procure a teaching job at Trinity Christian Academy in the fall of 1990, and she began an eight-year apprenticeship in the delightful rigor of the History/English department, teaching all four levels of the high school curricula. From 1994-1998, MacMillan was once again tutored and mentored by Dr. Russ, who came as Headmaster to Trinity.

In 2004, a few years after finishing her doctoral degree under the direction of Dr. Louise Cowan at the University of Dallas, Dr. MacMillan was hired at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture to oversee the programs for teachers that transformed her life.

“A suffusion of understanding destroys limits, opens up the universe to the mind. This blaze of glory transforms a person;
after such an event, the world never seems quite so mundane,
nor one’s destiny quite so fixed.”

Dr. Donald Cowan, Classic Texts and the Nature of Authority

While working at the Dallas Institute, Dr. MacMillan frequently consulted with Dr. Louise Cowan about how she wanted the programs for primary and secondary educators that she and Dr. Donald Cowan had designed to be in the world.

Dr. Louise Cowan reiterated that her priority was still to serve educators in the regular public schools so that they could provide a higher quality education to students who were being increasingly marginalized by society at large and by practices in the public school bureaucracy that were creating specialized schools rather than providing the “spirit of liberal learning for all.”

Dr. MacMillan designed programs and classes that provided opportunities for primary and secondary educators to experience the Cowans’ philosophy of liberal learning, and to empower these educators to carry this healing vision and its practices back to their campuses and districts.

“A mistrust of analogy as a mode of thought has led to a literal-mindedness that cuts us off from understanding each other.”

Dr. Louise Cowan, Classic Texts and the Nature of Authority

In 2010, all the Dallas Institute’s programs for primary and secondary educators were gathered into its Louise and Donald Cowan Center for Education—a professional educational center designed to teach the Cowans’ philosophy of liberal learning and to certify educators and institutions to carry the Cowans’ vision of the “spirit of liberal learning for all” into the world.

National trademarks for a Cowan School and a Cowan Academy designed to house Cowan-trained educators in the public school system were granted in 2016.

In 2017, the bold public school administrators hosting the first Cowan Academy departments—in the Dallas ISD and in the Fort Worth ISD—wanted their students to have the same quality curriculum that the students at Trinity Christian Academy had enjoyed.

Dr. MacMillan began the process of translating Dr. Russ’ History/English curriculum into humanities curricula for the public schools, using state-approved history books and state graduation requirements for both disciplines.

The hard-won yet spectacular success of the Cowan Academy in the Humanities departments in the regular public schools increasingly led those who served in the Dallas Institute’s Cowan Center to see the need for a non-profit dedicated solely to spreading the Cowans’ transformative vision for public school education.

In the spring of 2021, the staff who had been doing the Cowan’s work at the Dallas Institute left Dallas to form a non-profit called The MacMillan Institute, housed in Duncanville, Texas. There, “The Mac,” as it has been dubbed by Duncanville alumna Katherine Reves, works to build the Southern Dallas County community and provide Cowan-inspired programming to public school educators so that they are liberated to provide their students with an education that sets them free to build their lives as individuals who can thrive in the communities that democracy requires.

On to the world!