Catherine Andersen is interim dean of enrollment management and general studies at Gallaudet University, Washington, DC. For fifteen years, she served as director of the First Year Experience program. During her tenure at Gallaudet, she served as chair of the Communication and Developmental Studies Department and was interim assistant dean of the School of Developmental Studies. She has also served as special assistant to the provost for strategic planning and special assistant to the president for retention.
In 1994, Catherine was the recipient of Gallaudet University’s Distinguished Faculty of the Year, and in 1997, she was chosen as one of the Outstanding First-Year Student Advocates by the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition. In both 2003 and 2006, she was featured in First-Year Experience and Students in Transition teleconferences on assessing first-year seminars and on campus culture. In 2006, she was the co-liaison for the campus-wide Foundation of Excellence Project, which resulted in major campus-wide initiatives around the first year and beyond.
Catherine presents regularly at national and international conferences, has been a member of the faculty for the Summer Institute on First-Year Assessment for the past three years, and was an editor and primary author on a number of monographs and articles related to postsecondary students. Her most recent publications include Master Student Reader (Houghton Mifflin, 2006); "Why Teaching First-Year Students is Rewarding for Everyone" in Peer Review (AAC&U, Summer 2006); "Assessing Common Reading Programs" in Laufgraben's Common Reading Programs: Going Beyond the Book, The First-Year Experience Monograph 44 (2006).
Catherine's current interests include the assessment and role of Emotional Intelligence in college success, and she is a master certified trainer in EI.