Vince Cuseo has been instrumental to the success of Oxy’s admission efforts for the last 22 years—and his commitment to Oxy’s mission can’t be measured by test scores
1999年，文斯·库西奥是招生主任 at Grinnell College, the highly ranked liberal arts college in Iowa—a job he loved. Yet when the associate dean position at Occidental opened up, 他申请了这份工作, even though it represented a step down on the organizational chart.
大约有110,000名学生申请后, Cuseo—now a married father of teenage twins—is credited with more than doubling Oxy’s applicant pool while adhering firmly to the College’s mission. “Simply put, Vince’s contributions to the College have been enormous,” President Harry J. 拦,小. wrote in his February 1 announcement of Cuseo’s retirement at the end of June.
Cuseo has been at the heart of Oxy’s admission success for the past 22 years, 查理·莱泽尔说, 2015年起担任高级招生副主任. “有无数的奥施康定学生, 工作人员, and faculty whose lives have been changed for the better by Vince. He also has had an incredible impact on hundreds of professional colleagues who work at other colleges, 高中, 以及全国各地的社区大学组织.”
Cuseo was hired by Tingley two years into the latter’s tenure as Oxy’s fifth head of admission in as many years—a period that saw applications to the College drop by almost one-third, in part due to the lingering impact of the 1992 Rodney King uprising and the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Tingley and Cuseo were charged with reestablishing Oxy’s reputation with high school counselors and increasing the quantity and quality of the College’s application pool.
Cuseo—named dean of admission in 2001 and vice president in 2010 after Tingley’s retirement—is proud of his role in growing the number of talented and diverse applicants while, 除了少数例外, 完成年度学费收入目标. 在过去的20年里, 随着入学总人数从大约1,800 to 2,000名学生, the number of students of color climbed from 38 percent to 45.5%. 申请数量从3个增加到,从2001年的635到6,去年达到了历史新高,500(2023届). Even so, Cuseo tends to shy away from numbers when discussing his work.
“我很幸运，”他说. “I have been able to represent a place aligned with my own values, which is so important when working in the world of admissions. 如果我感觉不到这种一致性, 这只是一份工作, 这不是爱的劳动——当然这是爱的劳动.”
Oxy的使命是卓越的基石, 股本, 社区, and service have always been at the heart of everything Cuseo does, 莎莉·斯通·里士满说, who was Oxy’s dean of admission for eight years before becoming vice president for admissions and financial aid at Washington and Lee University in 2015. “当我采访文斯的时候, he felt very strongly that to be a great member of that team, you have to be very vested in the mission of the institution,里士满说. “他所有的决定都源于此.”
“I still love to interview students one-on-one and find out who they are, 它们的动力是什么?, 以及他们的激情所在. You lose touch if you sit in your office and crunch numbers all day long.” It was Cuseo’s confidence that the College would back him up that made it easy to say “no” when Rick Singer, the now-infamous admission consultant at the heart of the 2019 college admission scandal, asked him to reconsider Oxy’s rejection of one of his clients, 富人家的女儿. 他的正直让奥施康定上了 《正规博彩十大网站排名推荐》. The scandal “highlighted the role of money in admissions and the often wide gulf between high ideals of meritocracy and mercenary business practices,“ 杂志 报道. “西方石油公司开辟了一条不同的道路.”
Cuseo credits the commitment of the Oxy administration—he had served under six presidents—for making his job simple. “我在奥施康定的时候, 从来没有哪个总裁或董事会成员告诉过我, “你在这里的工作就是提高考试成绩,’”他说.
The different path Cuseo charted is based on a variety of factors, Richmond says—the “wonderful alchemy” of being mission-driven while keeping an eye on the long game; his ability to identify and then champion promising admission officers; his leadership by example, whether by continuing to make school visits or reading his share of applications as vice president; and his constant focus on how and to whom Oxy was being marketed.
为Oxy的春季产量“路演”,” a member of the College’s financial aid team accompanies each admission officer so that they can talk to families in detail about financial aid, Richmond says: “I don’t know of any other schools who do that.”
Cuseo’s territory includes Iowa, Utah, San Francisco (home to his beloved Giants), and New York City. “Vince has never just been a representative or promoter of his institutions; he has embodied their very best ideals in human form,Ali Bhanji说, director of college guidance at the Collegiate School in Manhattan. 他无懈可击的正直造就了他的真实愿景, 总是在寻找永恒, durable access and 股本 and never joining the bandwagon for an easy fix.”
“我喜欢与人互动,库塞奥说。, whose annual class profiles (prepared for trustees and the campus 社区) are rich with details about hobbies and quirks of Oxy’s incoming first-years (from juggling to taxidermy). “I still love to interview students one-on-one and find out who they are, 它们的动力是什么?, 以及他们的激情所在. You lose touch if you sit in your office and crunch numbers all day long.”
而他会怀念那种私人的互动, 他不会怀念长时间的工作, 包括晚上和周末, 让他远离了家人. 而他声称他结婚19年的妻子, 沙龙, is “a little nervous” that he doesn’t have any specific plans for retirement, one thing is clear: “I want to remain connected to Oxy no matter what.”
