Bitsy Cohn
Director, Learning Opportunity Center Services
Front Range Community College/ Larimer Campus

Bitsy Cohn holds a bachelor's degree in English with minors in Linquistics and Theatre Arts. She is very proud of the fact that her less than exemplary undergraduate experience taught her how to make every mistake a college student can make while still managing to graduate, find a passion and pursue a successful career. She says if she can do it, so can you. Over the course of a twenty year career in Community College teaching, tutoring and administration, she has become an expert in post-secondary disability services, faculty training and development, adapting curricum for Universal Design, Adult Basic Skills instruction, at-risk retention strategies and at teaching all of the various tips, tricks, tools and magic spells students need for academic success. She is currently the Director of Learning Opportunity Center Services at Front Range Community College in Fort Collins, CO and is also an Adjunct Faculty member in the Developmental Studies Department.

Laurie L. Hazard holds an Ed.M. in Counseling and an Ed.D. in Curriculum and Teaching from Boston University. Laurie's experience with academic support began as a graduate student at Boston University and later as a reading and writing specialist in an innovative, team structured learning assistance program at Boston University. For two years, Laurie served as the Director of Academic Support Services at Becker College, a department which housed advising services for at-risk students, learning assistance programs, and tutoring services.

Laurie has been the Director of the Academic Center for Excellence and Writing Center at Bryant University for the last nine years. Laurie has been teaching and designing curricula for first-year experience and study skills courses for the last seventeen years. She has taught courses in college reading and study skills, liberal arts seminars, psychology, personality psychology, abnormal psychology, and social psychology. 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.

Laurie is a New England Peer Tutor Association Board member and has hosted their Annual Forum at her institution. She has presented 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 co-authored a text entitled Foundations for Learning designed for study skills and first-year experience courses. 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.

Laurie, an award winning educator, 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. In 2006, she also received the Learning Assistance Association of New England’s Outstanding Research and Publication Award.