Dr. Hans Staats

Most recently he chaired the Humanities Department at the Austin Waldorf School and taught in the High School Teacher Education program at the Sunbridge Institute in New York, preparing new teachers for the realities of adolescent education. His earlier posts include English language arts at Cedars International Academy and film and literature at Stony Brook University. Along the way he has advised student groups, run school events and traditions, and founded a film society that began as a student idea and became a fixture of campus life.

His academic training is in comparative literature, with a doctorate and master’s from Stony Brook University and a bachelor’s in film studies from Brooklyn College. He writes and publishes on film and media, with essays in collections from Routledge, Palgrave, Bloomsbury, and McFarland, and has presented and chaired panels in the United States, Canada, Romania, and the United Kingdom. His teaching has been recognized with the Waldorf High School Teacher Fellowship and Stony Brook University’s President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

In his role at Magellan, Dr. Staats oversees the advising program and student focus meetings and works alongside the Student Support Resources team to keep faculty informed and prepared to respond when a student needs help. His approach to discipline is restorative rather than punitive: start with who was affected, repair it, and give the student a path back. He is equally interested in the ordinary machinery of belonging—clubs, traditions, service learning, and the small rituals that make a school feel like a place worth showing up to.

Away from campus, he has volunteered as a venue chair at the Texas Book Festival since 2014 and spends his free time with his daughter and son, Olive and Atticus. He is glad to be putting down roots at Magellan.