ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT

Gene Carlo ’73

For Gene Carlo ’73, the key to success is to work hard and surround yourself with good people. It happened for him in both high school and college, and he devoted his 36-year career as a teacher and administrator to making it happen for others.

As a student at Grafton High School in the late 1960s, Carlo was a standout athlete. Captain of both the football and track teams, he held the record as one of the leading scorers in yardage in Worcester County at that time. “I was blessed,” he admits. “God gave me a little bit of size and a little bit of speed, and I put it to good use.” He also credits his coaches for his achievements and a “great” high school for preparing him academically.

A senior with an athletic scholarship to Syracuse University, Carlo was all set. But fate had other plans. One of his uncles, who had played high school football with Mike Vendetti, the Nichols football and track coach, had encouraged him to “take a peek” at Nichols. In yet another twist, Carlo discovered that his advanced accounting teacher was a Nichols graduate who raved about the school. So, he took a peek.

“When I visited, it was one of these things that I could feel myself going to school there,” he says. “The amount of people that knew everyone, teachers knew students, students knew teachers. I fell in love with it.”

As a student, Carlo felt that same level of camaraderie, from peers to professors, throughout campus, “Right up to Herbie, the cop,” he adds, referring to Herb Durfee, the college’s storied head of security from 1961 to 1984. He thrived under Coach Vendetti, again becoming captain of both the football and track teams, as well as a conference all-star and a small college All American, and eventually earning a spot in the Nichols Athletic Hall of Fame.

Carlo also found his calling. In 1971, he was selected to participate in a new education program at Nichols that prepared students to teach in secondary schools. At first, he was skeptical, but after a turn as a substitute teacher and coach at Oxford High School, he was hooked. “I thought, ‘I can see myself doing this,’” he recalls.

Following graduation, Carlo was given the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a new school, Assabet Valley Regional Technical High School, located in Marlborough, Mass., and serving seven towns. “It was a dream come true,” he says. He was the first (and only) business education teacher, as well as the department head, and football coach, track coach, class advisor. “I jumped in with two feet right away,” he remembers. “And, as the school grew, I grew.”

He became the director of finance and ultimately was appointed by the school district as superintendent and director. The position allowed him to take on other leadership and advocacy roles to enhance public education, such as president of both the Worcester County Superintendents and Massachusetts Vocational Schools and serving on statewide policy-making boards, such as the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents.

When he retired from Assabet Valley in 2008, he continued to use his background in finance, by helping schools who were struggling during the Global Financial Crisis, and by teaching graduate-level courses at Fitchburg State University for 10 years.

Carlo is grateful for his Nichols education. “Academics are academics. Some people fall in love with them,” he states. “To me, it was just a process. I did what I had to do and got decent grades. But then when I got out of Nichols, I realized how much I really knew when it came time to put it to good use to teach. I wouldn’t change a thing.” Over the years, Carlo has returned to campus to speak with aspiring teachers and has even hired Nichols graduates.

When his daughter, Christie, was looking at colleges, he encouraged her to “take a peek” at Nichols. An outstanding athlete like her father,

Christie had been recruited by Division I Michigan State. “When she looked at the DI contract, she realized she would have no life. You sign your life away in DI,” Carlo relates. At Nichols, Christie felt the same warmth of the campus community that impressed Carlo. She excelled academically and athletically and met her future husband, Nick Stefos ’95. Today, Christie (Carlo) Stefos ’98 works at Greenwich Capital Investments on Wall Street. She is also a member of the Nichols Athletic Hall of Fame for field hockey and track, completing what is believed to be the only father-daughter inductees in Bison history.

These days, Carlo has traded football and track for golf and pickle ball, both of which he enjoys with his wife of 50 years, Deborah. The couple resides in Millbury, Mass., close to their two children and three grandsons, and spend winters in Naples, Fla. They also love to travel, most extensively through Italy, from which both of their families hail (the province of Reggio de Calabria, to be exact.)

“We’ve been to every village in Italy, from the south to the north, and each one is different,” he says, referring to the food, the style of cooking, the retail, even the dialect. “In the heart of the village, everything is walkable, the restaurants, the shops, the piazzas. To me, I feel like I am at home.” They recently returned from a three-week trip that brought them from Milan through the north to Bologna.

Carlo is proud of his heritage, as an Italian and a Bison.