Cheryl Spector

Positions

• Professor Emerita, English Department (retired 2020)
• Founding director, Academic First Year Experiences (2006-2019)
• Team leader, Matador Momentum (2015-2020)
• Web diva, Matadors Rising
• Faculty member, California State University, Northridge (1986-2020)
• Faculty member, The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee (1982-1986)

Research interests

Freshman success, transfer student success, common reading programs, freshman pedagogy, faculty development, learning communities

Jewish-American writing, intertextuality, American literature (esp. fiction, 1820-present)

Honors

• Outstanding First-Year Student Advocate Award from the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition (2013)
• California Reads Book Selection Panelist (2013)
• Disability Resources and Educational Services Outstanding Faculty Award (2011)
• Living Learning Community Faculty Member of the Year (2010)
• NCOD Outstanding Faculty Award (2008)
• Staff Service Excellence and Recognition Team Award: Freshman Convocation Committee (2008)

Education

• PhD and MA in English. Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
• BA in English, Phi Beta Kappa. Rice University, Houston, Texas

Presentations

• RFY to OMG to A-OK: Weathering the Storm of GI 2025 in Southern California. With Patrick Bailey, Susanna Eng-Ziskin, and Helen Heinrich. AASC&U Academic Affairs Summer Meeting, Bellevue, WA. July 28, 2018.
• Helping New Students Thrive: Applying David Yeager's "Psychological Friction" Model at CSUN. With Anne Eipe, Emily Fitch, Kelly Kroeker, and Shelley Ruelas-Bischoff. September 26, 2017.
• Belonging Intervention for Faculty & Staff: Changing Hearts and Minds. With Patrick Bailey, Susanna Eng-Ziskin, and Helen Heinrich. AASC&U Academic Affairs Summer Meeting, Baltimore, MD. July 22, 2017.
• "Re-imagining the First Year of College": Year One Takeaways. With Susanna Eng-Ziskin. Annual First Year Experience Conference, Atlanta, GA, Feb. 12, 2017.
• Demystifying Office Hours for Your Students at CSUN. Poster presentation, CSUN's Faculty Innovation Showcase, May 2016. Webpage, September 2018.
• Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman: Panel discussion. With Linda Rader Overman and David Gerrold. West Valley Regional Branch, Los Angeles Public Library, Reseda, CA. Oct. 24, 2015.
• Out Far and In Deep: The Things They Carried. Invited lecture-discussion. Virginia Yerxa Community Read. Colusa, CA. Apr. 25, 2015.
• Investigation, Imagination, and Invisibility: Longbourn and Nickel and Dimed. Invited presentation. Santa Monica Reads 2015. Santa Monica Public Library, Santa Monica, CA. Mar. 3, 2015.
• Exploring the Role of Common Readings in Student Engagement. With Leslie Jo Sena and Karen Weathermon. National Conference on the First-Year Experience & Students in Transition. Dallas, TX. Feb. 8, 2015.
• Shaping the Debate about Common Reading Programs. With Susanna Eng-Ziskin, Leslie Jo Sena, Gina Garera, and Amanda Breu. National Conference on the First-Year Experience & Students in Transition. San Diego, CA. Feb. 17, 2014.
• CSUN's University 100 Makes Transition to Moodle. Digital Stories Blog, CSUN. Sep. 25, 2012.
• The New High Touch, High Tech University 100: Using Technology to Supplement the Freshman Seminar. With Cecile Bendavid, Susanna Eng-Ziskin, Ellyn Gersh Lerner, and Lisa Riccomini. Apr. 2011.
• Executive Order 1048: Mandatory Early Start at CSUN. Campus plan. Nov. 2010.
• Orchestrating Learning: The Example of To Kill a Mockingbird. With David Aks (Music), CSUN. Nov. 6, 2010.

Publications

• Beach Books: The View from My Island. In Thorne, Ashley. Beach Books 2013-2014: What Do Colleges and Universities Want Students to Read Outside Class? National Association of Scholars. Oct. 2014. 170-173. (Read the pre-publication PDF.)
• Freshman Focus at Cal State Northridge. ITL Connections 2.1 (Fall 2008). Institute for Teaching and Learning, The California State University.
• CSU Northridge Transforms Its Approach to Information Competence. Co-authored with Susanna Eng. E-Source for College Transitions 4.5 (May 2007).
• Instructional Strategies for Teaching CSUN Freshmen: Gum and Glory (.pdf). C.E.L.T. Letter, Cal State Northridge, Fall 2003.
• Editor, Aftermath: Essays in Response to September 11, 2001 by Freshmen at California State University, Northridge. Northridge, CA: CSUN, 2002.
• Articles on Maxine Kumin, Adrienne Rich, and Muriel Rukeyser. Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century. Chicago, IL: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001.

Contact information

Send me an email

What I'm reading

Current

• The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk

Recommended

• All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
• Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
• Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant? A Memoir by Roz Chast
• The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
• Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
• The Common Good by Robert B. Reich
• Engaging Ideas, 2nd ed., by John C. Bean
• Every Day by David Levithan
• Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
• Kitchens of the Great Midwest: A Novel by J. Ryan Stradal
• Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
• Lost Children Archive: A Novel by Valeria Luiselli
• Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
• The Overstory by Richard Powers
• Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
• Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning by James M. Lang
• The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee
• Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
• Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean by Jonathan White
• Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O'Neil