Education Expert Joe Cuseo to Speak Today on Student Success
With a rich background in the study of freshman year programs, Joe Cuseo, professor emeritus of psychology at Marymount College in California, is currently visiting AUC to deliver athree-day symposium to students, faculty and staff on a broad range of topics related to student success.
Addressing issues that include building bridges across the curriculum, promoting partnerships between academic and student affairs, as well as peer leadership, peer mentoring and changing campus culture, Cuseo’s visit aims to instill greater synergy and efficiency between different departments. As an educational expert, he will be reviewing the first-year experience program at AUC, developing recommendations to enhance it, as well as focusing on the administration of cohesiveness and peer leadership policies within the Academy of Liberal Arts (ALA).
“At the ALA, we realize that we need to build greater collaboration, building bridges if you will, among our various departments: rhetoric and composition, English language instruction, Arabic language instruction, academic advising and community-based learning,” said Doris Jones, senior instructor at the Department of Rhetoric and Composition, who also serves as chair of the ALA publicity committee. “We also realize that there needs to exist greater connectivity within our academy. I consider Joe Cuseo to be the guru of the freshman-year experience; he is in great demand.”
For more than two decades, Cuseo has focused on directing the freshman year seminar program at Marymount College in California. He received his doctorate in education psychology and assessment from the University of Iowa and has earned numerous awards in his field. Cuseo is a 14-time recipient of the student-driven Faculty Member of the Year Award, has received the Outstanding First-Year Student Advocate Award from the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition and the Diamond Honoree Award from the American College Personnel Association. Cuseo is currently an educational adviser and consultant forAdvancement Via Individual Determination, an organization promoting college access and success for underserved student populations. AUC’s Academy of Liberal Arts was established a little more than a year ago and is comprised of the Department of English Language Instruction, Department of Arabic Language Instruction and Department of Rhetoric and Composition. Through the provision of opportunities such as the freshman program in the Core Curriculum, the academy hopes to administer a smooth transition for students into the liberal arts experience at AUC. “One of Joe’s greatest strengths is seeing how the ALA can work together: how we can see this vision, as well as realize and implement this mission, to build sustainable collaborations within the academy,” said Jones. Cuseo has delivered more than 100 campus workshops and conference presentations, in addition to authoring and co-authoring various articles and book chapters on faculty development, student retention and the first-year experience. These include Thriving in College and Beyond: Research-Based Strategies for Academic Success and Personal Development (2010) as well as Diversity and the College Experience: Research-Based Strategies for Appreciating Human Differences (2014).
