Joseph H. Wycoff

After completing his BS and MA at Arizona State University, Joe earned a doctoral degree in US History from the University of Washington with an emphasis on business and consumer history. He has worked as a higher education administration and research professional for over twenty years. During his career, he worked as an institutional research and effectiveness officer in three different sectors of higher education: a community college, a private nonprofit, and a public Research I university. His first book, Outsourcing Student Success, offers a critical analysis of institutional research scholarship from the past one hundred years and delivers his personal insights into the barriers to student success at American colleges and universities.

As an independent scholar, Joe continues to study and practice the art of historical analysis. In 2009, he began a project to craft a historical narrative about a magical place from the distant past that fascinated him as a young adult. Nearly ten years in the making, his second work, Arcane Cage, explores the discovery of humanity’s native powers to master elemental forces, as documented in several archives around the globe, while his larger story invites readers to enjoy the fantastic exploits of a small group of individuals who put those powers to use to change the course of world history. Through the prism of his account of a cleric and her party of adventurers at the forefront of early civilization, his book considers how a new culture dedicated itself to higher education in the classical powers and in so doing refashioned the everyday life of human civilization as we know it today.

A recent convert to the possibilities of self-publishing, Joe has embraced the challenges of the process and intends to edit selections from his lifelong collection of writings for publication in the near future. Follow him on Twitter or on his blog to learn more about his work or to track progress on upcoming publications, including the anticipated follow-up to Outsourcing Student Success.