Don Foss
Professor, Department of Psychology, College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences, UH
Expertise: Cognitive Psychology, Psycholinguistics, Applied Cognitive Psychology
Career Highlights:
Don Foss received both his B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Minnesota, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University. Prior to joining the University of Houston, he served on the faculties of the University of Texas-Austin (where he also was chair of the Psychology Department) and Florida State University (where he was also dean of the College of Arts & Sciences). At the University of Houston he served from 2005-2008 as Senior Vice President and Provost.
Foss has been Editor of Contemporary Psychology and Associate Editor of the Annual Review of Psychology. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, of various divisions of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Psychonomic Society. He has served on numerous boards and commissions. He received an all-University Outstanding Teaching Award at the University of Texas at Austin, and also received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the University of Minnesota.
His research interests focus on cognitive psychology, specializing in language comprehension. He has published more than 50 refereed articles and book chapters on these topics, as well as co-written or co-edited seven books. More recently he has turned his attention to the factors that determine success in college and how to instill them in beginning college students. The American Psychological Association has published his evidence-based book on this topic, Your Complete Guide to College Success. It is written for high-school seniors and undergraduate students. In addition, he is studying ways to move inexpensive, scalable, readily adoptable and adaptable learning and teaching techniques into college classrooms.