Stephen Alessi, associate professor of psychological and quantitative foundations and faculty member in second language acquisition, received his bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Rochester and both a master's and Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Illinois. He has co-authored a leading textbook on educational multimedia design.

Alessi's research efforts have focused on developing educational technologies that benefit student learning at all levels—K-12, college, and adult professional education.  In recent years, he has been heavily involved in an international research and development effort (with colleagues in Norway, Switzerland, and Italy) to create multimedia instruction that improves the performance of people in government.

"Although educational institutions have not adopted technology quite as fully as has the business community, innovations in communications technology and the Internet have had an immense impact on education recently," Alessi said.