Roben Torosyan, Ph.D.

Associate Director, Center for Academic Excellence

Assistant Professor, Curriculum & Instruction, Graduate School of Education & Allied Professions, Fairfield University, 1073 No. Benson Rd., Fairfield, CT 06824

Tel. (203) 254-4000 x. 3190 Fax (203) 254-5575

mailto:rtorosyan@mail.fairfield.edu

http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/rtorosyan

Since 1996, Roben has designed and implemented a variety of innovative faculty development programs for some 2,500 participants in all, including:

· 35 invited presentations at conferences, institutions and organizations including Harvard, Columbia, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and New York University

· 34 other national conference presentations, including 3 sessions drawing over 100 participants

· taught 23 course sections in education, philosophy and psychology, with documented outcomes

· facilitated dozens of faculty workshops on recurring concerns such as managing classroom dynamics, promoting critical thinking and fostering integration and application

As the Assistant Director, and now Associate Director, of the Center for Academic Excellence at Fairfield University, Roben has worked closely with faculty members and administrative leaders to lead innovation and programs in the scholarship of teaching and learning. He is also a member of the general faculty (assistant professor, curriculum and instruction), teaching undergraduate courses in philosophy and graduate courses in philosophical foundations of education.

Previously, as founding director of the University Writing Center at The New School, he spent three years pioneering faculty development initiatives ranging from workshops and syllabus redesigns to one-on-one coaching. Before that, Roben helped run Pace University’s Straus Thinking & Learning Center for five years, first as Assistant to the Director, then as Assistant Director and finally as Acting Director, developing courses and programs in critical thinking, leadership and decision making.

Roben’s studies ranged from undergraduate civil engineering, architecture, art history and studio art, to his Ph.D. in cultural studies in philosophy and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Roben’s expertise in personal and professional development includes communication, conflict management, time management, resistance, change management, leadership and facilitation. He has consulted most frequently on critical thinking, faculty learning communities, and facilitating sensitive dynamics—and on his personal passion for racing triathlons since 1997 and playing classical piano since 1973. He has authored or co-authored six peer reviewed articles, and six chapters in The Colbert Report and Philosophy, The Daily Show and Philosophy, and Integral Education, among others. His work has also been published in the popular monthly The Teaching Professor, and in the trusted quarterly New Directions in Teaching and Learning. He is authoring a book entitled Teaching for Transformation: Pathways and Pitfalls of Integrative Learning, and coauthoring another book, Life After College: Transitions of Work, Relationships and the Life Project. http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/rtorosyan/