Foundations for Learning

Laurie L. Hazard has been teaching and designing curricula for First-Year Experience and study skills courses for the last fifteen years. She is the Director of the Academic Center for Excellence and Writing Center at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island, and the Curriculum Coordinator for their First-Year Experience course. Her area of expertise is the personality traits and attitudes of college students that influence academic achievement and mediate the utilization of newly learned study strategies.



As a New England Peer Tutor Association Board member, she has hosted their Annual Forum at her institution. Laurie regularly presents at national conferences such as the First Year Experience and Students in Transition, the Conference on College Composition, and the College Reading and Learning Association. Laurie has taught courses in college reading and study skills, liberal arts seminars, psychology, personality psychology, abnormal psychology, and social psychology.


Laurie has done extensive work writing about and assessing the effectiveness of learning assistance programs and FYE courses. She has been a Guest Editorial Board member for the Learning Assistance Review. Publications by Laurie and her co-author include: Exploring the Evidence, Volume III: Reporting Outcomes of First-Year Seminars, a monograph published by the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition and "What Does It Mean to be `College-Ready'?", an article which appears in Connection: The Journal of the New England Board of Higher Education, at http://www.nebhe.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=34&Itemid=71.



Laurie was recently selected by the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition as a top ten Outstanding First-Year Student Advocate.





Jean-Paul Nadeau is an instructor at Bristol Community College in Fall River, Massachusetts.