Let me introduce myself.
Call it what you will, the bottom line is my intention is to help.
Whether as a teacher, speaker, mentor, consultant, advisor, writer, coach—call it what you will—I assist people and organizations solve problems through simultaneously drilling down to what’s going on (defining/assessing) and keeping the big picture in mind. Sometimes it involves increasing awareness, sometimes it involves sorting out how to put the awareness into action, but it almost always involves balancing that big picture/goal with the details, habits of mind, and routines that get us to the goal in a meaningful way.
I’m a social psychologist and interdisciplinarian with expertise in how people can live more comfortably in their own skin and more effectively navigate the many arenas of life, from, for example, succeeding in college (as a student or as a professional), dealing with being misunderstood, harshly judged, or even betrayed, by an organized religion, or being a more effective worker or leader in any organization. I’m particularly experienced in facilitating meaning-making and helping people succeed in themselves and in the world around them, no matter the setting in which they find themselves. I also have expertise in organizational studies and theory and you’d be surprised how the “cold hard facts” of business and organizational level issues can and do relate to the “philosophical” or “psychological” or “spiritual” material I’ve learned.
I draw on what the person in front of me is saying & what they are avoiding saying, what I perceive or learn to be true about the space/organization, and a wealth of practical and theoretical knowledge. Add to that a studied understanding of the human event from ancient and modern perspectives, and I’m well-positioned to assist you to coming to a better understanding of what’s on your life or work plate, identifying where you are headed & where you’d prefer to go, and ways you might get there with integrity. Whether at the organizational or individual level, I bring the practical, systems-level, “physical” side of things together with the universal-yet-individual “human” side in useful ways.
Brief Professional Biography
Overview, with a bit on service
Dr. Stephanie deLusé professes in Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University, working with the best-and-brightest students and colleagues.. (If you haven’t heard about it yet, Barrett is well-regarded and was named by New York Times writer, Frank Bruni, as the Gold Standard in honors colleges.) Dr. deLusé has worked at ASU since 1993, across three different colleges at ASU as she reinvents herself periodically, moving into new positions via being chosen through competitive national searches. Prior to joining Barrett she taught in ASU’s Leadership and Interdisciplinary Studies program for eight years, where she also served as Associate Faculty Director and helped launch major degree programs in Organizational Studies. At ASU, part of her extensive service includes having served years on the Faculty Senate for two colleges, on the Academic Affairs Manual Revision Task Force, and on the Faculty Senate Personnel Committee as well as on two college personnel/annual evaluation committees (one as chair), and has chaired the promotion committee for years in two colleges, shepherding dozens of junior faculty to higher ranks. She regularly serves on the Admissions Committee, and has served on the Community Dialogues Committee and on the Curriculum Committee, on Fulbright interview panels, Faculty Search committees, and more—including regularly the person who reads the names and majors at college convocation ceremonies. She especially enjoys mentoring students in a variety of ways beyond the classrrom, including on honors thesis projects, in independent studies and assistantships, in preparation for career planning and graduate/professional school, and in working with First Generation students.
Award-Winning Teacher and Mentor
Dr. Stephanie’s teaching has won her awards, including Barrett’s Exceptional Teaching Award (2019), ASU’s Faculty Women’s Association “Outstanding Faculty Mentor” Award (2019), “Outstanding Faculty Award” (2005), “Featured Faculty (2006)” and “Last Lecture” (2009), among other awards and nominations like, for example, “Excellence in Diversity" (2012) and Centennial Professor (2012). While her current teaching focus is “The Human Event” sequence—courses that use classic primary texts (not textbooks) to consider the arc of human existence and key currents and intellectual, ethical, and cultural turning points—her background and capacity is broad. For example, she’s also developed and taught “History of Ideas,” “Civilization and the Human Sense of Self,” “Money & Meaning,” and “Money, Medicine & Morals,” the latter two earning her an invitation to deliver a well-received keynote to the National Association of the State Treasurers. All of her classes draw in some way on her deeper past, if not in content then in skills, which include her teaching a variety of psychology courses (like introductory psychology, social psychology, and research methods) and communication classes (like interpersonal communication, small group communication, and public speaking).
Dr. Stephanie’s focus emphasizes that we are, first and foremost, humans and should aim to be the best person we each can be, tapping into what is best and aspirational about being human rather. Next, though, we are citizens of one or more levels of government or place, and, after that, we are members of one or more organizations, which run the gamut from family to church to civic group to any number of workplace organizations. Thus, another element of her training and teaching deals with the health of organizations like developing and teaching “Theories and Applications of Organizational Studies” and ””Diversity & Organizations,” two courses that anchored a new degree program in Organizational Studies and Leadership, in addition to other core courses like “Foundations of Interdisciplinary Studies,” “Interdisciplinary Inquiry,” and “Applied Interdisciplinary Studies,” and “Internships” the latter two classes included supervising the academic component and integrity of internships and other applied studies of students from multiple disciplines at all manner of work sites. Relatedly, Dr. Stephanie also directed study abroad programs to London, England where students completed summer internships and took her class “London as Text: The Cost(s) of Living” and she’s co-directed a study abroad program to Ireland focusing on historical trauma, tourism, and the making of a national landscape.
Advising / Consulting / Coaching
As a psychologist, Dr. Stephanie’s experience includes designing, implementing, disseminating, and evaluating divorce education programs via grant-driven work and a competitive NIMH-funded pre-doctoral fellowship in prevention and intervention science at the Prevention Research Center (now REACH) at Arizona State University. Her primary focus was on community samples of divorcing families, making the logistics, ethics, quality research design, and statistics more challenging than working with standard laboratory subjects. Integrating her experience at the intersection of her areas of expertise as an experienced educator and administrator, Dr. Stephanie was recently invited (2017) as one of three international experts to a symposium in Japan on nurturing talents for global citizenship in regard to the possibilities and challenges of small liberal arts programs inside big research universities, and to work with faculty around a new interdisciplinary degree at Okayama University. She’s also been consulted by, coached, mentored, and/or advised — pick the term that suits you — a range of professionals (and future professionals) including, for instance, Fire Chiefs planning for the various human and organizational elements anticipated in for major workforce transitions in their municipalities.
Writing
An interdisciplinarian, who always wishes she had more time to write, Dr. deLusé has work in academic journals including Family Court Review, Issues in Integrative Studies, Honors in Practice, Family Process, and the International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, and in literary journals such as Rougarou, The MacGuffin, Emrys, The Griffin, Wild Violet Magazine, Gemini Magazine, The Legendary, and TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism. One of her essays was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for inclusion in two anthologies. On the popular side, she has essays in books like: The Psychology of Survivor, The Psychology of Joss Whedon, and The Psychology of Superheroes. Her authored books include two public history books, Arizona State University (2012, co-author) and Legendary Locals of Tempe (2016), among other books, edited books, and works-in-progress. In addition to articles-in-progress, she’s working on a book whose working title is: Confronting Crisis: How to Blunt the Trauma of LIfe’s Tough Times.
Some Additional Perspective on Dr. Stephanie’s Background
Though trained as a psychologist, I’ve found that we often can make significant changes without a big long slog through the past, or having to label something as broken before it can be fixed. Whether in my teaching, speaking, mentoring, coaching, or consulting, I aim to get to the heart of the matter in fairly direct, and hopefully most often kind, manner. Of course I believe in honoring and learning from the past—we are wise to learn from reasons and rationales that led to both good and bad decisions that preceded the present—that’s part of why I love using texts from the most ancient to modern to explore the human experience. But the present can also be as powerfully informed from what we want to see happen in the future. What we do now simultaneously creates our past and our future. Good teaching, writing, and everything other form of communication, can open the minds and hearts of the listener/reader, inspiring new thoughts, clarity of emotion, and more effective action that aligns better with one’s cherished values and key goals.
That—supporting people in learning how and practicing effective thinking through broadening perspectives and keeping an open-mind—is far more useful and humane than aiming to close minds. An open-mind does not mean an empty mind though, one can still have a leaning. By open-minded, I mean being able to hold more than one point-of-view in mind long enough to build awareness, understanding, and perhaps even empathy, with other people who might differ in some ways…long enough to find common ground or re-orient to focus on solutions rather than on the differences that shut down communication and stifle personal and/or organizational success. So, while I’m trained as a psychologist, I leave therapy to my clinical colleagues and I focus on social psychology and other aspects of data and the lived experience to solve problems and optimize opportunities. I write and teach on matters that are close to the heart of our everyday lives, whether at work or at home or in the community. My Masters and PhD degrees are in psychology and my Bachelor of Science degree is in Communication (multi-focal emphases on interpersonal, organizational, and intercultural), with a minor equivalent in business. I also have accrued licenses, certificates, and/or training in a range of fields. What can I say, I love to learn! I am a serial and concurrent interdisciplinarian, and, beyond that, I am a generalist—In today's complex times it helps to have a generalist's perspective who balances depth with breadth and can serve as a boundary-spanner or translator-of-sorts when groups of very different people are seeking to communicate with one other or have shared concerns but need a bridge to