• About
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    In 2009, Zaytuna College was founded in Berkeley, California, with a mission that called for grounding students in the Islamic scholarly tradition as well as in the cultural currents and critical ideas shaping modern society.

  • Academics
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    As a Muslim liberal arts college in the West, Zaytuna offers a curriculum that provides its students with a foundation in the intellectual heritage of two major world civilizations: the Islamic and the Western.

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  • Admissions & Aid
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    Our mission is to educate students to become morally, intellectually, and spiritually accomplished individuals ready to contribute to our contemporary world in ways that are proportionate to their gifts and to the needs of human society.

     

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  • Campus Life
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    Zaytuna’s campus is on Holy Hill and students enter the College as part of a cohort, a community of learners that travel together through the curriculum.

Cindy Ausec

Coordinator of the Academic Support Center; Lecturer

Cindy Ausec

Biography

Email: causec@zaytuna.edu

Office hours: By appointment

Dr. Cindy Ausec is a scholar of ancient Near Eastern religions. At Zaytuna College, she has taught Research Methods Seminar, US History, Ancient Civilizations, Rise and Fall of Civilizations, and Introduction to Philosophy.

She received her PhD in Near Eastern Religions in 2010 from a joint program of study with the University of California, Berkeley, and the Graduate Theological Union. Prior to her post at Zaytuna College, Dr. Ausec was an adjunct faculty member at Monterey Peninsula College.

Her PhD thesis, titled “Gods Who Hear Prayers: Popular Piety or Kingship in Three Theban Monuments of New Kingdom Egypt,” investigates the iconography and purposes of Thutmose III’s and Ramesses II’s Eastern Temples at Karnak and the Eastern High Gate of Ramesses III’s mortuary temple at Medinet Habu.

Dr. Ausec joined the faculty of Zaytuna College in Spring 2012.

Education
Publications
Professional Activities

Education



  • University of California, Berkeley, and the Graduate Theological Union, PhD, Near Eastern Religions, 2010

  • University of Arizona, MA, Classical Art and Archaeology, 1998

  • National University, MBA

  • University of California, Santa Barbara, BA, International Relations

Working Papers



  • “For Whom the Gods Hear.” To appear in a collection in honor of Candy Keller (currently with the publisher).

Personal Activities


Ancient religions, leather tooling