Arthur D. Casciato is the founding Director of the Office of Distinguished Fellowships at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and the former (and founding) Director of the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania. At Rutgers and Penn, the candidates he mentored have been recognized with many of the world’s most prestigious and competitive awards, including three Rhodes Scholarships, three Schwarzman Scholars, four Churchill Scholarships, five Marshall Scholarships, five Beinecke Scholarships, seven Luce Scholars, 24 Gates Cambridge Scholarships, and 39 Goldwater Scholarships, as well as 260 Fulbright U.S. Student Grants.
Dr. Casciato holds a PhD in English from the University of Virginia and was awarded tenure in the Department of English at Miami University of Ohio where he served as that department’s first Graduate Placement Director and as Interim Director of the Graduate Program. He has co-edited two books, Waiting for Nothing and Other Writings by Tom Kromer and Critical Essays on William Styron and published essays on the novels of Styron, Theodore Dreiser, John Barth, and Pietro Di Donato. Dr. Casciato was also the co-founder and first book review editor of the Oxford University Press journal, American Literary History. His poetry has appeared most recently in print in the Chiron Review, Dark Mountain III, and Italian Americana, as well as online at Poor Mojo’s Almanack and 50 to 1.
In 2013, Dr. Casciato was selected as a Fulbright International Education Administrator Scholar to Japan, and the following year he represented the National Association of Fellowships Advisors on a similar study tour in Taiwan. For the past five summers, as the senior member of the writing faculty of Elite Scholars of China, he has taught in Beijing, helping to prepare Chinese students already accepted to the best US universities and colleges for the rigors (and pleasures) of American academic and professional writing.
