Discover the Discoverer

In the Department of Interdisciplinary Programs at Slippery Rock University Dr. Casson is well known for his classes in anthropology and archeology. He serves on the Center for Middle East Studies, the Center for Public Humanities, the International Arts and Culture Series, and directs excavations at the 19th century historic archaeological site at the Old Stone House in Slippery Rock.

Dr. Cassons discusses his education history.

"How did you decide to study your field?"

"What made you want to be a teacher"

Dr. Casson has been at Slippery Rock University since 2011. Casson earned his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Washington with research in luminescence dating as applied to ceramic artifacts from Sinop, Turkey. 

Dr. Casson talks about his favorite parts about being a professor.

Dr. Casson discusses Turkey and what it was like spending so much time there as a child as well as sharing his views on the current situation for anthropologists and the struggles today brings.

His current research centers on the application of an explicitly evolutionary framework to understanding issues of human behavior ranging from an examination of human adaptations to prehistoric environments to the cultural and political context of social organization in the modern Middle East.

Dr. Casson wanted to high light one of the more recent student/faculty projects that students have been working on this semester. It is a RPG game that helps students learn what it is like to be a neandertal or ,from the opposite view, and anthropologist.

One of Dr. Cassons advisee's, Megan McCarthy discusses what it has been like having Dr. Casson as an advisor for the past few years of her life.