About Sean Cook

Sean Cook, M.Ed., is an experienced higher education professional, with a 15+-year history of working with students, their parents, and other higher education professionals. He recently left his position as Assistant Director of Residence Life at Penn State University to establish a full-time coaching and consulting practice.

Sean writes periodically for the Student Affairs Collaborative Blog, on issues related to student affairs careers, campus issues, and higher education in general.

At Penn State, he worked with apartments and suites, traditional residence halls, and special living options.Past projects include welcome week/orientation, assessment, marketing, multicultural programming, and coordination of a 3-credit RA training class, including development of an online learning environment using the ANGEL course management system. Sean has also written several versions of Residence Life’s annual reports, diversity strategic plan, and RA and Professional Staff Manuals.

Before leaving Penn State, Sean set up a podcasting studio for Residence Life and developed formats for audio and video podcasts on topics of interest to Penn State students, families, faculty and staff. He was also responsible for Residence Life’s emergency plan coordination, including student staff training modules, fire safety drills and building evacuation exercises, mock shelter activations and critical incident response.

Sean recently passed his certification exam and is completing independent projects to earn his coaching certification from the Life Purpose Institute. Eventually, Sean hopes to obtain accreditation from the International Coach Federation, an independent accrediting body for career and life coaching programs and  pursue MBTI and EQ-I certification, so he can offer individual and group workshops around exploring personality types and emotional intelligence. Information about these certifications will be added to the site once these certification programs have been completed.