The Secret Syllabus equips students with the tools they need to succeed, revealing the unwritten rules and cultural norms and expectations not included in the official curriculum. Left to figure out on their own how the academic world works, students frequently stumble, underperform, and miss opportunities. Without mastery of the secret syllabus, too many miss out on the full, rich experience available to them in college.
Jay Phelan and Terry Burnham share the essential lessons they have learned from struggling, unfocused students as well as award-winning college instructors and researchers. The Secret Syllabus draws on Phelan and Burnham’s experiences with thousands of undergraduate and graduate students. Weaving engaging storytelling with practical, actionable advice, they illustrate both productive and counterproductive approaches to achieving academic excellence, and highlight the importance of setting and attaining goals, nurturing strong relationships, developing resiliency, and more.
This fresh, funny, and boldly innovative book enables students to develop the consistently winning and effective behaviors that will equip them to thrive on campus and beyond.
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Jay Phelan is a biology professor at UCLA. He received his PhD in biology from Harvard and his master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Yale and UCLA. His main area of research is evolutionary genetics and aging. Jay’s research has been featured on, among others, Talk of the Nation and the BBC, as well as seeing his work covered in several major magazines and newspapers.
Jay is passionate about equipping students with the skills they need to succeed, in college and beyond. As a speaker he shares the experience he has garnered from decades of coaching struggling, unfocused students as well as award-winning college instructors and researchers. He is the author of several books, the most of recent of which is the The Secret Syllabus: A Guide to the Unwritten Rules of College Success (forthcoming from Princeton University Press). You can watch his TEDxUCLA talk on finding – and creating - happiness here.
Terry Burnham is an economist who studies the biological and evolutionary basis of human behavior. Terry has a PhD in Business Economics from Harvard University, and a masters in finance from MIT. He is currently a finance professor at Chapman University, and previously was a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, the University of Michigan, and the Harvard Business School.
Terry has won teaching awards at Harvard University and Chapman University. Outside of academics, Terry was the director of economics for Acadian Asset Management, an international money manager, the President of Progenics Pharmaceuticals, Inc. a start-up biotechnology company, and worked on Wall Street for Goldman, Sachs & Co.
He is the co-author of Mean Genes and the author of Mean Markets and Lizard Brains. He can be found at: terryburnham.com and on twitter @TerenceBurnham.
