SUNY Online Teaching Ambassador 2022: Suffolk – John Capurso

John Capurso, MBA, CPA is an Adjunct Professor of Accounting at Suffolk Community College, Grant Campus. John also serves the college as a Professional Assistant at the Grant Campus Academic Tutoring Center where he tutors students in all accounting areas as well in select Business and Economics courses. Additionally, John currently serves as Advisor to the Grant Campus Business Club.

John earned a B.A. in Communications from Temple University, and his B.S and M.B.A. in Accounting from St. Joseph’s College, Long Island, where he also serves on the college faculty as a Lecturer of Accounting. Outside of teaching, John is a Certified Public Accountant.

I was introduced to teaching a bit later than most, but I was hooked from the first moments of my first class. As an adjunct, I did not have a pedagogical background, only my own education and some practical experience. Those earliest days were both fulfilling and very humbling. Over the past several years I have worked continuously to understand the processes of teaching and of learning and how they relate to my subject area. Just as I began to feel confident in my ability to manage a classroom, the pandemic arrived and created a whole new set of challenges. I consider myself fortunate that I was also functioning as a staff tutor during that time because it gave me the urgent need to find, as well as the opportunity to test and modify, methods by which to teach concepts efficiently and effectively under time pressure while in a remote setting. Over 600 online tutoring hours later, and after trying any and every method I could think of or borrow from others, I have settled on a few basic keys to effective remote teaching that I now incorporate into my courses. Although my methods are geared toward accounting instruction, I believe them to be generally useful and I look forward to trading ideas with others with the goal of bringing back the best practices to my home campus and becoming a resource to my colleagues to best serve our students at this critical time.