Gerald Edmonds

Ph.D., Syracuse University; M.B.A, Syracuse University
gedmonds@syr.edu

“I’ve been pushing the scholarship of concurrent enrollment to show that it has an impact. We want to make sure students are successful by giving them the skills to transition from high school to the university and beyond.”

Dr. Edmonds has been director of Project Advance since 2002.  In addition to oversight for all of SUPA, he administers the College Learning Strategies, computer engineering, and economics courses.

Edmonds is also the founding president (in 2002) for the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships (NACEP), the governing body for concurrent enrollment programs across the country. He served a second term as president from 2004 to 2006, and he was chair of the Accreditation Committee on the NACEP Board of Directors from 2006 to 2008.

Edmonds received his undergraduate degree in 1987 from York University in Toronto, Ontario, where he double-majored in communication and English. Following that, he attended the University of Windsor, in Windsor, Ontario, where he completed a master’s degree in communication studies.

However, after a year of work he wanted to go back to school. His Windsor professors suggested he look at the School of Education at Syracuse University. By 1990, Edmonds was enrolled in a Ph.D. program in education at SU and on his way to becoming a faculty member.

Edmonds first joined SUPA in 1991 as part of the evaluation team when he saw a posting for an assistantship. He stayed with Project Advance and in 1994 was named associate director for research and evaluation. He was also responsible for administering the calculus and engineering courses.

This experience motivated him to stay in education administration, and in 2002 he was named the director of Project Advance. In the same year, Edmonds helped found NACEP and establish national accreditation standards as a way to promote concurrent enrollment and “make sure students are successful by giving them the skills to transition from high school to university.” He was the architect of NACEP’s national standards for accreditation.

Subsequent to being named director, Edmonds attended the Program for Leadership Development at Harvard Business School, a developmental program geared toward high-potential leaders. He also began pursuing his M.B.A. from the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at SU, which he completed in 2006. This provided him with the business tools and skills to make Project Advance the country’s leading concurrent enrollment program.

“Concurrent enrollment was a new idea when SUPA started more than three decades ago,” says Edmonds. “Our success is due to the strength of our partnerships between SU’s faculty and high school instructors, allowing for the creation of long-term success.”

Going forward, Edmonds hopes to further promote Project Advance and programs like it, striving to bridge the gap between high schools and college by increasing partnerships.

“Elementary schools, middle schools, high schools—they should all be viewed as a system in which a student is immersed, and at each stage educators should receive feedback on how to better serve their students,” says Edmonds.

His research interests lie in applying technology to instructional settings and improving school-college partnerships. He has presented papers at several national conferences, including NACEP, High Schools that Work, the Association on Educational Communication and Technology, and the Eastern Educational Research Association. Subjects he has published on include research on concurrent enrollment, knowledge management, instructional design models, and change.

Edmonds teaches IDE 651: Message Design and Digital Media and IDE 632: Instructional Development II, both in the SU School of Education, and MAR 356: Marketing Research in the SU Martin J. Whitman School of Management.

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Joshua Davis

B.S., University of Baltimore; M.A., Syracuse University
 jedavi05@syr.edu

“When the chance to work for SUPA came about, I gravitated immediately toward it. It was an opportunity for my skills in marketing and communications to have a positive impact in the community.”

Mr. Davis was born and raised in Baltimore MD, and received his B.S. in Corporate Communications from the University of Baltimore. He moved with his family to Syracuse in 2006 to pursue a masters degree in Advertising at SU’s SI Newhouse School of Public Communications. “We sold our house in Baltimore and lived in a South Campus ‘married student’ apartment with my wife and then-five-year-old daughter. We had no plans to stay in Syracuse, but came to love the university and the area,” says Davis. They have since moved to Liverpool, NY and are active in the community.

Before joining SUPA, Davis worked at Aspen Dental in East Syracuse, NY; Mark Russell & Associates and Eric Mower & Associates, both in Syracuse, NY; and Bon Secours Health System in Baltimore, MD.

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John C. Fiset

M.A., C.A.S., St. Lawrence University
jcfiset@syr.edu

“Educational opportunities are rapidly expanding because of this national idea that we’re competing with other countries for innovation and need to be competitive at the highest level. Concurrent enrollment programs make this competition possible by getting more students into and through college.”

Mr. Fiset is associate director of Project Advance. He administers the chemistry, forensic science, psychology, public affairs, and sociology courses and oversees SUPA’s government relations.

Fiset graduated from Le Moyne College and spent nine years teaching high school students. During that period he attended St. Lawrence University, receiving a master’s degree in educational administration and a certificate of advanced study leading to certification in New York State as a principal and school district administrator.

Fiset spent several years working in New York high schools, as an assistant principal and an athletic director. In 1983 he came to Syracuse University to pursue his Ph.D.

Several years later Fiset was hired as the director of SU’s Summer College Program for High School Students. During his nine-year tenure with Summer College, he focused on designing programs to help students make successful social and academic transitions from high school to college.

“You always get reinvigorated when you feel like you’ve connected with students and helped them to grow and develop. That’s what really drives me,” says Fiset.

Fiset joined Project Advance in 1999, attracted by SUPA’s commitment to growth and development in student learning. He saw concurrent enrollment programs (CEPs) as a means to help students succeed after high school and to raise the bar of education.

Fiset is past chair of the Government Relations Committee of the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships (NACEP). His accomplishments with NACEP include advocating on Capital Hill for government support of CEPs and raising awareness among government officials that CEPs are as viable as Advanced Placement courses.

“The trend we see across the country is the need for students to pursue and gain access to education beyond high school. However, not all students have the resources to go to college and succeed. CEPs are an important support for these students, helping ensure their success by starting their college careers early,” observes Fiset.

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Avinash Kadaji

M.S., Syracuse University
akadajis@syr.edu

“As an engineer, I enjoy designing programs and writing software. One of the best aspects of working at SUPA is the freedom to try new ideas and new technologies.”

Mr. Kadaji joined Project Advance in 2005 when he was hired to design a program management system, a project that soon grew into a full-time commitment. Today, he is responsible for the design, development and maintenance of Project Advance’s registration, records, billing, and administrative systems. Among the programs he has launched are Syllabus Maker and an Evaluation and Assessment (IES) tool. He also provides the programming for Project Advance’s website.

Prior to coming to Syracuse University in 2003 to pursue a master’s degree in computer engineering, Kadaji attended R.V. College of Engineering, Bangalore, Karnataka, India, where he received his bachelor’s in Computer Engineering. As an undergraduate he held internships at WIPRO Technologies and the Indian Space Research Organization and was a Research Assistant at the Indian Institute of Science. Constantly learning new technologies, Kadaji is an active member of the Linux Bangalore Group.

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Torry Mendoza

M.F.A., Syracuse University
smendoza@syr.edu

“Project Advance is a vital instrument of Syracuse University in its method of providing Syracuse University classes in high schools.”  

Mr. Mendoza began working with Project Advance as a part-time graphic designer in 2006; shortly thereafter he began working as a full-time team member, coming fully on-board in 2011. He is responsible for videography, photography, video editing, video conversion, compression, DVD construction and authoring, and web and graphic design.

Prior to coming to Syracuse University in 2004 to pursue a master’s degree in film production with a full graduate assistantship, Mendoza worked as a library technician at the Native American Rights Fund’s National Indian Law Library in Boulder, CO, where he received his B.F.A. in film production and a B.A. in studio arts with a concentration in photography from the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Mendoza is is an Adjunct Faculty member at PrattMWP in Utica, NY and an Interdisciplinary Media Artist, exhibiting internationally. His work is part of various educational institutions, museums, galleries and private collections. It engages issues of Native American identity, cultural appropriation, and representations in media. He is also an educator in the Native American community who has presented papers at the annual Hawai’i International Conference on Arts and Humanities and the Native American Indigenous Studies Conference. Mendoza is a member of the Native American Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA), the College Arts Association (CAA), and the American Studies Association (ASA).

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William R. Newell

M.S., Syracuse University
bnewell@supa.syr.edu

“It’s good to get out of a student’s way sometimes and meet him or her where he or she wants to go. Let a student do some inner self-learning and have the teacher mediate that process.”

Mr. Newell is associate director of Project Advance. He administers the modern language (French, Italian, Spanish), Latin, mathematics (calculus and statistics) and earth science courses and advises students on course transfer processes and the integration of transfer courses into the undergraduate program.

In addition to a background in geology and work experience as an exploration geologist in the oil industry, Newell has always been passionate about education. His father was a teacher and school administrator, and, as a result, Newell always had access to educational literature, which he read incessantly. He completed teaching certification requirements for secondary earth science, biology, and general science and served as a teaching assistant for upper-level courses while he was completing his master’s degree in geology. He also spent seven years working with secondary school and junior college science instructors on equipment and supply purchasing.

In 1994 he joined Project Advance as a member of the evaluation team, for which he studied trends in student learning and school-college partnerships.

“We need to understand how to better prepare students, but there are a lot of conflicting ideas on how to get there. Research is useful to a point, but it makes the mistake of looking at students the same way you look at a plant or mineral,” says Newell.  He credits Lee Shulman, the prominent educational psychologist, with reinforcing his ideas about learning. Newell believes that teachers must identify what students already know or think they know, before attempting to teach what they think students should know.

“Students are, in a sense, consumers of education,” Newell explains. “It’s the responsibility of educators to make education a worthwhile investment of students’ time and money.”

Newell thinks that the appeal of taking Syracuse University courses through SUPA is that these genuine college courses make students think critically. This critical thinking provides students with the flexibility to adapt their skills to any career.

Newell’s research interests lie in improving the understanding of the school-college partnership structure and function and understanding how college courses taken during high school are integrated into the undergraduate curriculum.

He has presented papers at regional meetings of the Geological Society of America and national conferences of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, the American Association for Higher Education, and the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships.

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Christina Parish

Ph.D., Syracuse University; M.A., Temple University
cmparish@supa.syr.edu

“Students should have more opportunities to work collaboratively on projects and exchange ideas with each other, incorporating elements of inquiry, innovation, and creativity in their education.”

Dr. Parish is assistant director of Project Advance.  She administers the English and writing courses and is responsible for training new teachers at the Summer Institute.

Prior to joining Project Advance in 2008, Parish was an assistant professor of English at Clayton State University in Atlanta, GA.  She received her Ph.D. in English from Syracuse University and has taught at various post-secondary institutions, including SU, Le Moyne College, and Temple University.  She brings 16 years of teaching experience, working with a diverse population of students, to Project Advance.

Parish believes that SU courses offered through Project Advance are specifically designed to challenge and engage students differently than other high school advanced programs because they don’t emphasize standardized testing.  As a consequence, students are able to take more risks intellectually and develop a more in-depth knowledge of subject matter and problem-posing skills that better capture the college experience and workplace demands.

“I realized that I loved teaching because of the excitement students feel when they are able to make a connection between something they learn in class and their own everyday experiences, particularly when those connections aren’t always immediately apparent,” says Parish. “It’s important for students to be exposed to perspectives and interests different from their own, so they can start to question what’s at stake in what they are studying and can have a greater investment in their own education.”

Parish continues, “It’s been incredibly rewarding making class visits to SUPA partner schools and seeing students engaged and wanting to share that excitement and those insights with their parents and peers outside of class. These students aren’t simply ‘studying to a test,’ they are responsible for much of their own learning and discovering how to be self-reflective, critical thinkers.”

Similarly, she sees one of the many strengths of Project Advance to be the highly collaborative nature of the partnership, in which SU faculty and high school instructors routinely exchange pedagogical practices, content knowledge, and curriculum design with each other in a variety of venues.  From her perspective, no other program offers the same high-quality professional development opportunities as SUPA does, or elicits such palpable enthusiasm for teaching on the part of its instructors.

Specializing in Victorian literary and cultural studies, Parish has presented papers at annual conferences of Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies, the International Thomas Hardy Society in the U.K., and the Association for Asian American Studies. Her teaching experience and research interests include British literary history, post-colonial literature, race and literary studies, critical theory, transnational women’s studies, and composition.

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Rob Pusch

Ph.D., Syracuse University; M.S., University of Colorado-Boulder
rpusch@syr.edu

“Students today are more focused on grades than learning. To combat this attitude, you have to start at the lower levels—to get kids at an early age into the idea that it’s not about grades, it’s about education.”

Dr. Pusch is associate director of Project Advance and currently oversees SUPA’s instructional services. This department is responsible for the design and development of supplemental online instructional materials, as well as research and evaluation activities within Project Advance.

At the start of his post-secondary career Pusch studied chemistry, receiving his master’s degree from the University of Colorado in 1987. However, he decided he didn’t want to spend his life in a lab. As a teaching assistant in chemistry, he found how people think and learn things to be far more interesting. This led to his search for a new career, landing him at Syracuse University.

In 2003, Pusch received his Ph.D. in instructional design, development & evaluation from U. That same year he was named SUPA’s instructional designer after only two years with the organization.

Over the years, Pusch has reached several conclusions about the current state of education. First, with the added emphasis on higher learning, a bachelor’s degree has become the new high school diploma, the minimum qualification required to get a job. As a consequence, Pusch thinks that teachers are being pressured to award higher grades, which results in grade inflation.

“Everyone wants the ‘A,’ but nobody wants to work for it,” says Pusch. “How do you show students that it’s not about grades, it’s about learning?”

Pusch thinks that much responsibility falls on individual teachers, whom he calls the “front line of education.” Teachers have to set a standard for grades and stick to it, without giving in to the demands of parents.

Pusch is also a member of SU’s University Senate Committee on LGBT Concerns and is active within the Syracuse community as a volunteer and youth group facilitator for AIDS Community Resources in Syracuse. He has presented papers at the annual conferences for the Society for Intercultural Education; Training and Research (SIETAR); and the National Association of Foreign Student Affair. He also has pubished in the Journal of Lesbian and Gay Issues in Education.

Pusch has taught IDE 654: Integrating Technology into Teaching, and currently teaches IDE 736: Motivation in Instruction, both in SU’s School of Education.

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Eric Young

M. Ed., Clemson University
ewyoung@syr.edu

“I have a love for learning, and education is a place where you can actually make a difference in students’ futures.”

Mr. Young is assistant director of Project Advance. He administers the accounting, American history, biology, information technology, physics, presentational speaking, and web design courses. He is also responsible for new course development and implementation.

Young was first introduced to SUPA when he took Syracuse University courses as a student at nearby Chittenango High School in Central New York. The experience prompted him to pursue teaching as a career, and he went on to Clemson University for both his undergraduate and master’s degree in education.

After graduating, Young worked for several years as a high school English teacher in both New York and South Carolina. He eventually became an administrator and then joined Project Advance in 2006.

Young believes that education is at a crossroads due to the changing capabilities of technology to enhance learning. However, he maintains that students still need to learn many of the same basic skills.

“There needs to be a balance between being tech-savvy and being able to think critically. The key for the next few years is how to use technology to facilitate learning,” said Young.

He says his real passion for education is a result of his belief that education can have a profound impact on the direction of a student’s life.  “Education is one of the few places where you can truly make a difference in a student’s future,” says Young.

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Kathleen Oliver

kjoliver@syr.edu

“It’s very easy to get new ideas implemented quickly here. Being spontaneous and seeing innovations come to fruition puts us on the cutting edge.”

Ms. Oliver provides administrative management for Project Advance’s business operations, including finance, budget, support personnel, space and facilities planning, registrations, and accounts receivable. She also coordinates the registration process and completes special projects.

Prior to joining Project Advance in 2002, Oliver worked for 10 years at Citibank where she supervised the finance and loan department and coordinated the creation of the financial department within the student loan center. After leaving Citibank, she owned and operated Heavenly Florals, a corporate design service.

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Marisa Johnson

mljohn03@syr.edu

“I really support what we do here at Project Advance. It gives high school students the head start they need to enter college and the chance to earn college credit.”

Ms. Johnson joined Project Advance in 2007. She is responsible for general office assistance, purchasing, coordinating mailings, answering incoming phone calls, and reception. She is also responsible for fulfilling material requests from high school instructors.

Johnson attended nearby Oswego High School in Upstate New York. Prior to joining Project Advance she worked at HSBC Bank and managed Eastpointe Apartments.

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Debra LaVine

djlavine@syr.edu

“It’s important for a department to function well together. We’re like a family, which I think is why the program is as successful as it is.”

Ms. LaVine joined Project Advance in 1982 after attending Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, NY. She is responsible for managing student accounts, billing and payment applications, processing student financial assistance, and data/document processing.

LaVine is the proud mother of three grown sons, and she is an avid long-distance runner.

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Melissa Lowry

malowry@syr.edu

“Project Advance is a good fit for me. There are a lot of really great people who genuinely care about what they’re doing. I hope my son gets to take classes through Project Advance. He’s only 9, but I’m already thinking about it.”

Ms. Lowry joined Project Advance in 2011 after a number of years working in the events management and hospitality industry. At Project Advance, she is responsible for travel arrangements for staff and faculty, organizing campus visits for students, and handling logistics for Summer Institute training sessions.

Originally from Buffalo, NY she lives in Manlius, NY and is the mother of “two really awesome kids.”

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Christine Signy

csigny01@syr.edu

“I love the variety in my job. I get to interact with a lot of different people and personalities—teachers, students, administrators.”

Ms. Signy joined Project Advance in 2005 as an office assistant. Currently, she is responsible for registration, grades, and class lists for Syracuse University courses offered through Project Advance.  Signy also interacts with SUPA instructors and assists students in what is most often their first college registration.

Originally from Portsmouth in England, Signy previously worked in the food service industry, managing pubs for 17 years. She relocated to the US in 2005 to further her education. She is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree from SU’s School of Information Studies, with a major in information management and technology.

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