Dr. Stephen Moore—Working Toward Student Success

Fairmont State University’s new Business Learning Coordinator, Dr. Stephen Moore, understands the struggles that students sometimes have in the classroom, and he is on a mission to make sure they have opportunities to succeed.

“I had a lot of hardships as a freshman and sophomore in college, and I feel that students should not have to deal with a lot of the things that I dealt with,” Moore said.

Because of the challenges he faced, Moore believes he can relate to students who are struggling in college. He says he did not attend an academically strong high school, and his family did not have the resources to send him to college. Fortunately, with the help of financial aid advisors and effective coaching from academic counselors, he found academic success, which translated into personal and professional success.

His own experiences in high school and college have inspired him to work in higher education, and his ultimate goal in his role at Fairmont State is fostering student success—giving students the skills and resources that will help them achieve academically.

Moore was hired through the U.S. Department of Education Title III Strengthening Institutions grant that Fairmont State was awarded last year. As the Business Learning Coordinator, Moore is responsible for piloting the grant project in the School of Business by working with faculty to infuse curricula with experiential, collaborative and technology-rich learning opportunities.

“We are looking at high-risk courses where students drop out or fail frequently and we are trying to re-tool the curriculum a little bit to help those students succeed,” he said.

Since his arrival to campus in August, Moore has launched the student peer mentoring program in the School of Business; has worked with faculty members on integrating new, grant-funded technologies into their courses; and has arranged for faculty development opportunities, including bringing experts in experiential and active learning to campus. The grant is funding the development and piloting of these strategies to assess their impact on student achievement.   

Moore received his MBA in Strategic Management of Human Resources, his M.S. in Instructional Evaluation and his Ph.D. in Instructional Design, Development and Evaluation from Syracuse University.

For the past 26 years, Moore has worked in both consulting and education. He has taught at Syracuse University, Sejong University (Korea), Columbia College and State University of New York at Morrisville, acquiring significant experience as a university-level professor. He has taught in several areas including entrepreneurship, strategic management, organizational behavior, leadership, production and operations management, human resource management, statistics and research methods.

“I continued in education because I realized I could help students,” he said.

Among his many positions, Moore served as a director for Bachelors Programs at SUNY and director of the Business & Accounting Department in a community college with more than 75,000 students. In 2009, while at SUNY Morrisville, Moore received the Best Academic Advisor Award for outstanding faculty advising.

He aims to use the opportunities enabled by the Title III grant to make a difference at Fairmont State.

“I want to inspire people and motivate faculty and administrators to say, ‘Wow, it’s like we’re at the starting line in a race and somebody just gave us a 10-foot head start.’ We can stand there and not use it wisely or we can train and work every day to maintain that head start. I really feel strongly, that if we work as a team, we’re going to be able to do a lot,” Moore said.

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