The Fighter | Survivor. Advocate. Inspiration | A Dream Fulfilled
FIRST WORDS Letter from the Editor
Hope Springs Eternal
When times get rough, when darkness seems to creep into our lives, it is often hope that keeps us hanging on.
It is light at the end of a dark tunnel. It is sun through the clouds. It is a promise we tell ourselves that things will get better.
In times of great struggle, sometimes hope is all we can do.
A pediatric brain tumor, a paralyzing accident, the horrors of war. In an instant lives are changed.
But they did not let the darkness win. They pushed back against it, they found their calling helping others and in doing so, are inspirations for us all to carry forth with the same determination and resilience that saw them through some of the worst hurdles of their lives.
Within these pages you’ll find stories of determination, of resilience, of strength in the face of insurmountable odds.
They are so much more than stories. They are lives, they are people, they are pioneers.
Dave Dellecese Editor
From the Archives
Senior Class Officers Gloria Nobili, Anthony Collea, Anna Marie Cavallo, Terrence P. McGinty, and Annette Jones walk in the snow outside of Plymouth Bethesda Church in downtown Utica during the 1958-1959 academic year.
TRUE TO HIS ROOTS
Harry Cynkus ’71
Harry Cynkus has had quite an extensive career. In 2015, he retired as the Senior Vice President, Chief Operating Officer, and Treasurer of Rollins, Inc. one of the nation’s largest consumer services companies. Through its wholly owned subsidiary, Orkin, Inc, the company provides essential pest control services to 1.7 million customers in North and Central America and the Middle East.
Even before he was the most senior non-Rollins family member in the company’s top-level management, his guiding hand led many an industry to success. After beginning his career with Arthur Andersen & Co., he held financial positions with several companies including Tyco International, ARAMARK Services, Brach & Brock Confections and Mayer Electric Supply Co., Inc.
Yet he never forgot where he came from.
“I’ve had a very successful career that was driven by two factors in my life, my Mother and Utica University,” Cynkus says. “I believe in paying it back so today’s students can pay it forward. I didn’t realize it while attending Utica, but learning to learn was the best preparation for a long and successful career.”
He was born and raised in Utica, the son of a Polish immigrant who passed away when he was very young. Though his mother, Jessica Cynkus, never went to college, she valued education immensely, leaving no option for the young man but to pursue higher education - only a question of where. He applied to only one school - Utica - and to this day remains grateful for his acceptance. He
honored his mother’s commitment to education by establishing the Jessica Cynkus Memorial Accounting Award.
His biggest piece of advice for Utica students, beyond staying engaged with their alma mater when they become alumni, is to never cut corners in your education, as those cut corners won’t leave you ready for what lies ahead.
“Never stop learning and always give it your best. You can cram for that final exam, but if you have been a C student all year do you deserve anything more than a C?”
Harry’s love for Utica has lasted long after he graduated cum laude in 1971 with his accounting degree. In addition to serving on the University’s Board of Trustees since 2007, earning the Alumnus of Achievement Award in 2006, and delivering the 2008 Convocation address, he has also become a proud member of the Heritage Society, including his alma mater in his estate plan.
“I have supported Utica University for over 25 years, and wish to continue through my estate.”
For him, it’s not about his name on a building or a ledger - it’s about helping other students get the education and opportunities that he found at Utica.
“I’m not concerned about leaving a legacy,” he says. “I want to provide a brighter future for
today’s and tomorrow’s students. If my contributions have a positive impact on just one student’s life, that’s one heck of a return on my investment.”
Though the institution he once called home has certainly seen itself change throughout the years, he says it’s that very change that has allowed it to remain innovative and relevant to the changing times, changing student populations, and changing workforce. As he puts it, it’s an institution of opportunity.
“Utica University has always focused on the individual, its small class sizes provide the best learning environment. Its willingness to change and grow with the times and needs of its students has always been paramount and that culture which has been built will carry on for a long time.”
Learn more about Planned Giving Opportunities at Utica University. Call 1-800-456-8278 today.
Many travel far for homecoming, but Saleh (Sal) Alsaykhan ’15 not only travels from Saudi Arabia, but scheduled his wedding and honeymoon around it.
The World According to Cormican
As he enters retirement, John Cormican looks back on a life of teaching, mentoring, and profound non-conformity.
Survivor. Advocate. Inspiration.
Pediatric brain tumor survivor Anna Owens G’24 uses her new lease on life to help others.
The Fighter Girard Plante ’88 leaves behind a rich legacy of journalism and advocacy in support of accessibility rights.
26 From Journalist to Emmy Nominee
John Caher ’80 carries his passion for journalism over to the world of film with the Emmy-nominated documentary “A Bridge to Justice: The Life of Franklin H. Williams.”
33 Longtime Coach Blaise Faggiano’s Coaching Tree is Growing
Over 17 years, Coach Faggiano has laid down strong roots not only at Utica, but across the football coaching profession.
Editor Dave Dellecese
Creative Directors
Hannah Barley Aimee Music
Senior Writers
Joe Perry ’90 Kelly Adams ’00
Photography
Aimee Music
Victoria DeLuca
Adrienne Smith
Cover photos by Aimee Music
Class Notes Editors
Benjamin Atwood ’09 G’13
Melissa Foote
Mark Kovacs
Utica is published annually by the Office of Marketing and Communications: Kelly Adams, Vice President. Stay in Touch!
Homecoming 2025
Send correspondence regarding Utica, address changes, and Class Notes to: Office of Alumni and Parent Relations Utica University 1600 Burrstone Road Utica, NY 13502-4892 Or call: (800) 456-8278 (315) 792-3025 Or e-mail: uticamag@utica.edu
Get ready for an unforgettable Homecoming, September 26-28 - a weekend packed with celebration, excitement, tradition, and of course, the big football game.
Everyday Pioneers: A passion for helping that spans the globe: Lois Mensah ’28
Lois Mensah ’28 spent 37 tiring hours in the air on a journey to a new country, a new environment, and a new school. It was her first time away from home, balancing the nervousness of a completely new chapter of her life on her own with the passion to learn all she could about nursing and contribute meaningfully to the health system back home in Ghana.
“I was away from everyone I knew and all that I was used to, in a whole new environment,” she says. “So yes, it was quite challenging.”
Growing up in Kumasi, within the Ashanti region of Ghana, Lois always loved helping people wherever she could, an inherent trait of her personality that made the step to nursing all the easier.
“I think that’s what drove me to pursue nursing. I figured it was one of the best ways I could give back and care for people,” she says. “I believe nurses play crucial roles in healthcare. Most of the time, they are the first point of touch with patients and the ones in most contact with them. They also assist doctors in their day-to-day activities. In fact, without nurses, healthcare delivery would be very difficult.”
Determined to achieve her dream of becoming a nurse, she is incredibly passionate about supporting individuals with disabilities - something very near and dear to her heart.
“My drive comes from my personal experience with someone very close to me who struggles with mental health challenges and, also, the strong urge to be an advocate for mental health-related problems.”
When it came time to find where best to pursue her passion for helping others, it was a friend who told her about Utica University, hearing particularly good things about the institution’s nursing program, as well as its prime location in upstate New York.
“It was one of the best programs in New York,” she says. “My professors are amazing. They are all so nice and interactive. And I also was attracted to the location of the school with its serene environment and how close to nature it is.”
The proximity to nature has also brought with it an unexpected source of joy.
“Seeing so many squirrels around - it’s so cool, and seeing them always makes me smile.”
For a profession with potentially life-altering conse-
quences to those you treat, it’s important to find joy where you can, whether it be watching wild things skitter across the campus, or finding delight in some of the non-healthcare-related classes she’s taking at Utica, giving her the chance to experience the world of performing arts.
“I like to laugh a lot, and I laugh about literally anything,” she says. “Acting class is like a little escape from all the countless terms, reading, and memorization in nursing.”
She hopes to one day return to Ghana, taking her experience and using it to contribute meaningfully back home.
“I’d like to push for the advancement of the health sector in my country. For the use of more technology-oriented syllabi in the various health-related courses and more specialized knowledge in healthcare delivery.”
With healthcare systems in the U.S. and in Ghana both literally and figuratively a world apart, Lois hopes a balance can be found between the two that will allow her to improve the lives of those she treats.
“Healthcare here is more advanced than healthcare in Ghana but also more expensive,” she says. “I never studied nursing in Ghana, but based on my observation and research, nursing in Ghana teaches resourcefulness and resilience too, and nursing here deals with the use of more cutting-edge technology and specialized knowledge. This has urged me to incorporate the values of both worlds into my nursing world.”
As she balances the heavy workload and responsibilities that come with preparing for a career in the medical field, Lois says that one of the biggest challenges she faced wasn’t even in healthcare itself but, instead, in the stomach - when her taste buds collided with many of the foods here in the U.S.
“It’s been a challenge trying to transition from eating very spicy foods to eating foods with little to no spice in them.”
I received and read the attached Memoriam about Kay Hobaica in the Utica University (formerly Utica College) Winter/Spring 2024 Magazine and after all these years, her name came back to me after seeing her photo in the magazine. It made me reflect on our lives and times as students at Utica College of Syracuse University. I remembered how kind Kay was to me and all the students she must have assisted in her career as an employee at Utica. Life is very precious, so take every minute and live it to the fullest by loving, respecting, and showing kindness to humanity, and you will be blessed. It is hard to find people in the world today like Kay who demonstrated compassion to help others in order to make this a better world.
Robert James Autry ’77
I thoroughly enjoyed the article on Utica’s first artist in residence – Henry DiSpirito. I have what I believe is an entertaining story related to Henry and myself. Like many Italians who immigrated to the United States, my grandmother did not need to learn English because she moved into a predominantly Italian neighborhood. When I visited her, I would ask my aunt, who was bi-lingual and lived upstairs of grandma, to translate. As you would expect, conversation was difficult. So how does this involve Henry? While I was at Utica College I would visit Henry at his studio at least two or so times per week. I enjoyed our conversation on various subjects from soup to nuts. I enjoy sculpting and wildlife so attraction to Henry and his wildlife sculpting was a natural. When I was preparing for graduation I went to see Henry to wish him well. As I was leaving his studio he shouted “I don’t even know your name!” It’s true. Us guys don’t need to know names. I knew he was Henry and I was a friend with no name. “Al Frisillo,” I said. “Frisillo!!” he echoed. And with as big a smile as I have ever seen, he said “I am married to your grandmother’s sister!”.
Al Frisillo ’65
Utica University Announces New Tuition-Free Program for Eligible First-Year Students
On October 3, 2024, Utica University President Todd Pfannestiel and Vice President for Enrollment Management Eric Sykes announced the official launch of Pioneer Passport, a new tuitionfree option for qualified first-year students.
The goal of the Pioneer Passport program is to offer a zero-dollar tuition option for eligible first-year students. Pioneer Passport offsets all out-of-pocket tuition costs and mandatory fees that are not covered by other scholarship and grant programs. In other words, once students receive TAP, Pell Grant, and other benefits, Pioneer Passport pays any remaining tuition balance.
Qualified first-year students must be New York State residents (as determined by TAP eligibility guidelines) with an annual family income of $65,000 or less, based on 2023 tax filings.
For qualified and interested applicants, there is no separate application for Pioneer Passport. Students simply apply for admissions at Utica University. Once accepted, students should file their FAFSA and NYS TAP applications. While there is no deadline for eligibility, Utica University strongly recommends submitting these applications as soon as possible.
Pioneer Passport is similar to other needbased financial aid programs, but it has no ceiling on the number of recipients, no
post-graduation residency requirement, and no time limit on the award. If qualified students continue to meet all criteria, they can attend Utica University for the entire four years tuition-free.
However, if at some point a student’s family income exceeds the $65,000 annual maximum, they will no longer be eligible. Additionally, if a student changes residency to another state, this will make them ineligible for Pioneer Passport. This program is not available to transfer students at this time.
Since its founding, Utica University has been committed to affordability and providing students with access to a quality private university education, regardless of their financial means.
“By closing the tuition gap for a large number of future first-year students, Pioneer Passport fully supports our mission to make higher education an attractive option on everyone’s table. We’re doing this not only because we can, but because it is the right thing to do,” said Utica University President Todd Pfannestiel.
Utica University already offers one of the lowest tuition prices among private universities in the region. In 2016, Utica University boldly took the lead among New York’s private colleges to reset its tuition price, reducing it by 42%. Currently, the estimated annual cost for a full-time undergraduate student, before financial aid, is $25,830 tuition and $14,848 for room and board.
Faculty Achievement
Sharon Kanfoush [1], Distinguished Professor of Geology, has been named co-Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed journal Marine Geophysical Research.
Dr. Ahmed Radwan [2], professor of Physical Therapy and former dean of the School of Health Professions and Education, published a manuscript at the Journal of Palliative Medicine . The manuscript, titled Top Ten Tips Palliative Care Clinicians Should Know About Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, and Speech Language Pathology, was written in collaboration with colleagues from the Rutgers Cancer institute and the School of Medicine at Duke, among others.
Dr. Gary Leising [3], Distinguished Professor of English and Dean of the Division of Faculty Excellence, presented a paper titled “‘Properly Jointed[?]’: Reflections on Building a Sylvia Plath Syllabus” in the session “Sylvia Plath after Ninety Years: Accessibility, Disability Studies, and Pedagogy” at the 2024 Modern Language Association Convention in Philadelphia on January 6, 2024. The panel of Plath scholars was recognized with inclusion in the MLA’s Presidential Theme, “Celebration: Joy and Sorrow.”
Dr. Rachel Wolfe [4], Associate Professor of Theatre, had a chapter entitled “Harnessing the Political
Power of Traditional Femininity in the 1980s: David Henry Hwang’s ro’s Antígona furiosa” published in the new collection Milestones in Staging Contemporary Genders and Sexualities , edited by Emily A. Rollie. This volume is a part of the Routledge Milestones series, and is available from Taylor & Francis Press.
Richard Tehan, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry, gave an invited presentation entitled “Paraisariamides: New cyclic peptides as drug leads, mycotoxins, and chemotaxonomic markers, from insect-pathogenic fungi” at the 12th International Mycological Congress. The quadrennial meeting, the world’s preeminent conference in mycology, was held in Maastricht, The Netherlands, August 11-15. Dr. Tehan’s presentation reported on the discovery of a new family of metabolites with potent anticancer activity, and possible role as mycotoxins, derived from new species of insect-pathogenic fungi recently discovered by Dr. Tehan and co-authors. The presentation also included a pioneering approach to compare degraded biological specimens using chemical analysis by mass spectrometry where DNA sequencing and genetic comparison is not possible.
Dr. Luke Perry [5], Distinguished Professor of Political Science, served as WCNY-TV’s
correspondent at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Perry, a scholar of presidential elections, was on the convention floor each night and shared insights for the Utica University Center of Public Affairs and Election Research.
Mary Cooper [6], Associate Professor of Accounting, recently published an article titled, “Converting a Rental or Vacation Home to Primary” in the AICPA issue of The Tax Advisor . The article discusses certain tax intricacies that can arise when taxpayers change their principal residence to a current vacation home or rental investment property.
Sara Scanga [7], Professor of Biology, gave an invited presentation at the Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting this week. Her presentation was entitled “4DEE 4ALL: Adapting the 4DEE Framework to teach ecology to non-majors,” and kicked off a session entitled Applying ESA’s Four-Dimensional Ecology Education (4DEE) Framework to Teach Non-Majors. The 4DEE Framework is an ecology teaching framework that was designed for use with ecology/science majors, and Professor Scanga has been working with collaborators to identify how to adapt the Framework to be inclusive of non-major audiences as well. This presentation summarized this work.
Jeff Miller [8], Professor of Communication, had a photograph selected for the 2024 Munson Arts Festival Sidewalk Art Show juried exhibition. The photograph, titled, “Amnesia (Freeman’s Barber Shop 1978-2017),” captures the poignant last remnants of Freeman’s Barber Shop following its demolition in December 2023, and is meant to symbolize the destruction of a community displaced by development. In 2020, Miller’s photograph titled, “Dìseart 2018,” was selected for the Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute’s Virtual Sidewalk Art Show.
Daniel Tagliarina [9], Associate Professor of Political Science, presented their paper “Contesting Needle Exchange Programs Through the Lens of Deservingness” at the Law and Society Association’s annual conference on June 6, 2024. Their paper examines Idaho’s recent repeal of its safe syringe program, becoming the first state to ever implement, and then repeal, such a program. Proponents of the repeal used deservingnessbased rhetoric to frame people who use injection drugs, and the safe syringe program itself, as inappropriate use of resources and as government condoning of drug use. Thus, despite overwhelming medical evidence of the efficacy of such programs, the state of Idaho decided to subject people who use
injection drugs to higher incidences of disease, suffering, and death. The use of deservingness-based rhetoric enabled the legislative move to punish a vulnerable population, rather than make evidence-based policy decisions.
Dr. Beth Haas [10], Assistant Professor of Chemistry, presented at the American Chemical Society’s Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, a national meeting for chemistry teachers, professors, and education researchers. The conference was held at the University of Kentucky in Lexington Kentucky July 28-August 1. Dr. Haas’s presentation, entitled “Lessons in Ungrading Chemistry,” described her approach to teaching Chemistry of Everyday Things at Utica University. She described her efforts to increase student autonomy and reduce grade anxiety using a form of “ungrading” in which students determine their final course grades through a process of reflection and dialogue. She also addressed misconceptions about ungrading and offered strategies for applying lessons from her classes to other chemistry courses. The presentation was part of the Disrupting Grading symposium, which focused on efforts to move from traditional points-based methods to alternative grading practices and other emancipatory pedagogies.
Dr. Thomas Rossi [11] was among the honored inducted into The Genesis Group’s Hall of Distinction at the 18th Annual Celebration of Education, held at Hart’s Hill Inn in Whitesboro, New York on Thursday, November 21. Beginning his career at then-Utica College in 1979, Dr. Thomas Rossi is currently in his 46th year of teaching. As a Professor of Management within Utica University’s School of Business and Justice Studies, he instructs online and in-person courses in Organizational Management, Human Resources, Labor Relations, and Collective Bargaining. In 2019 he was awarded the 45th Dr. Virgil Crisafulli Distinguished Teaching Award. The Celebration of Education program serves as a platform to celebrate and honor the remarkable educators and educational programs within the Mohawk Valley community.
Utica gets DOJ Grant
The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Violence Against Women (DOJ-OVW) has awarded Utica University a continuation grant totaling nearly $400,000 over three years to support and expand the University’s Victim Advocacy and Violence Prevention Initiatives.
Previously, the University received a DOJ-OVW award in 2019 to enhance prevention education and victim support services relating to sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking. This continuation grant enables us to build on the progress made possible by that initial grant in conjunction with the University’s longstanding commitment to victim advocacy and violence prevention.
Specifically, the grant will provide funding for expanded ongoing initiatives carried out in coordination with community-based partners, leveraging our longstanding relationships with key local organizations to provide for greater awareness initiatives, training programs, and services to support survivors of sexual assault and violence, with particular focus on LGBTQ+, refugee/immigrant, and other marginalized populations.
The grant also provides for the hiring of a project director to oversee all grant-funded initiatives and activities. This individual will work in tandem with Executive Director for Health and Wellness Ariel Rios and others to plan campus-wide programming, provide specialized training, and coordinate services with community partners like the YWCA, MVHS, Utica Police Department, The Center, and The Q Center. As before, University Victim Advocacy and Violence Prevention Initiatives will continue to be coordinated through the Student Health and Wellness Center under the aegis of the Division of Student Affairs.
“In addition to the resources it will provide for new and expanded initiatives, the DOJOVW’s decision to award Utica University this continuation grant is recognition of the outstanding work we’ve been doing in this area for many years,” said President Todd Pfannestiel. “Utica’s consistent leadership in victim advocacy and violence prevention is a source of great pride for all of us, and the new funding will contribute to even greater achievements in the years ahead.”
A long way home:
Saleh Alsaykhan ’15
Many travel far to revisit the campus and their memories of Utica University, but few may be hard-pressed to come as far Saleh (Sal) Alsaykhan ’15, who not only travels from Saudi Arabia for Homecoming, Alumni and Family Weekend, but actually scheduled his wedding and honeymoon to do it.
“I always talk about Utica, the area and the university, and bring all the good memories to my wife,” Saleh says.
Born and raised in Alqurayat, Saudi Arabia, Saleh always had an interest in computers, especially when it came to the topic of cybersecurity. That put Utica, though a world away, at the top of his list of potential institutions in which to begin his future.
“I found very few Universities and Colleges around the U.S. back in 2010 who were teaching cyber security,” he says. “It was one of the very first universities that was doing that back then. I call Utica University ’the home of cyber-security’. I thank the King of Saudi Arabia, King Salman, and the Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, who gave me the opportunity to study abroad and gain my knowledge in cybersecurity.”
Today, he puts all the expertise he honed while a Cybersecurity and Information Assurance major at Utica to use as an Assistant Director of the Cyber security Department at a private company in Saudi Arabia.
“I can easily say that my dream came true.” Those dreams found their foundation in the classes and experiences at Utica that have left a lifelong impression upon Saleh since the moment he arrived.
“From day one until the last day of my student life, Utica became home for me,” he says. “It taught me how to manage everything in my life. Every little detail I have experienced in the Utica area and on campus has left a positive mark on my life. And the faculty at Utica have given me the best advice to prepare for my master degree and for my career. I still keep in touch with many of them.”
It’s evident that his time at Utica holds a very special place in Saleh’s heart, and when reflecting on the impact of that experience
“From day one until the last day of my student life, Utica became home for me.”
he says the thing that made the biggest difference can be summed up in one word.
“Diversity. I would easily say it without thinking twice. I met many international students throughout my five years in Utica. We got along with each other, we learned from each other and got to know many cultures, which later led me to explore many different things about life.”
And when that life brought him back to Saudi Arabia after graduation, it was also back to a girl he grew up with in his neighborhood and had kept in touch with via social media while he was so far away from home. The two would eventually plan to marry - a wedding timed to allow the couple to return to where it all began for Saleh, with a return to campus during Homecoming planned as part of their month-long honeymoon travels.
“My wife was very interested to visit and see my university, my old house and my favorite restaurants. We had a plan to make our wedding in the fall season, so I checked on Homecoming dates, then I picked our wedding a week before so we could be at my alma mater during our honeymoon. She was, and still is, so happy every time I mention a visit.”
One thing he missed during his visit is the embrace of James D. Adasek, “my forever best friend and my favorite math professor at Utica, who passed away several weeks ago. I was hoping to see him, and he planned to attend my wedding in Saudi Arabia. I have never left him behind in my prayers and I never will. My warm thanks and best wishes to the rest of my professors at Utica, who have prepared me for my bright future. They are all amazing.”
With plans during Homecoming to attend athletic events, visit old classrooms, and show off the campus to his new bride, Saleh couldn’t wait to relive his most cherished years with the one he loves.
“I wanted my wife to see the Utica team beat the other team, not just in football, but in all sports. We will visit my two old houses in Utica, and eat in many of my favorite restaurants, too. I hope to see everyone from my classes who attends the Homecoming weekend.”
Their visit to New York State was the longest part of their month-long honeymoon trip, which includes stops in New York City, Utica, various destinations within Upstate New York, Hershey Park, Florida, and wrapping up with a cruise to The Bahamas.
He hopes those considering Utica for their future academic career will embrace it as much as he has and take advantage of all its campus, professors, and community have to offer.
“Utica University is the best choice and will prepare you not just for your future career, but for your life and many things you may have never guessed. Everyone at the University has the knowledge to offer and an open ear to your concerns. You just need to ask. Do not hesitate.”
The World According to Cormican
Utica’s most beloved non-conformist retires after 50 years of teaching
He taught his first class when he was a freshman at Jefferson Township High School back home in Indiana.
Not an English class, mind you. No, John Cormican – who announced his retirement over the Fall semester – began his remarkable decades-long teaching career helping his teenage classmates master the fine points of forestry. For anyone who doesn’t know John, this might seem a strange starting point for a professor so deeply associated with Utica University’s English major and its linguistics curriculum.
But virtually none of John’s many colleagues, friends, or former students would find this at all surprising.
In the 1950s, interscholastic academic competition in Indiana was as spirited as league athletics, with county matches, sectionals, regionals, semi-finals, the works, and Jefferson Township High punched well above its weight in the agricultural fields, including forestry.
John had ranked first in the county competition in seventh grade and was generally considered a star in forestry. When he entered ninth grade, his ag teacher, George Frick, asked him to instruct the school’s forestry team.
“He told me, okay, the team is yours. You teach them what they need to know,” says John. “So I did. Seven of the top ten kids in the county were my kids. My junior year, our team was number seven in the state, and I was number three in the state. In forestry.”
Both a teacher and a student. Embodying multiple, often conflicting identities has been a running theme for John since those early days. “I don’t fit neatly into people’s categories,” he says. “And I kind of like not fitting in.”
Up from Upland
Upland, Indiana – the tiny farming community where he was born – earned its name for being the highest point on the
Pennsylvania Railroad between Chicago and Cincinnati. It was home to the only high school that served both Jefferson and neighboring Monroe townships. And though John had sixty classmates in seventh grade, his graduating class numbered only thirty-seven. “There were a lot of dropouts or force-outs, because the teachers were kind of cruel,” he recalls.
“I don’t fit neatly into people’s categories. And I kind of like not fitting in.”
Aside from forestry, John placed high in other subjects as a high schooler, competing statewide in English and algebra, and taking the bronze in geometry at one competition. He was an academic star at Jefferson Township High, though he in part attributes his success to being a big fish in a very small pond.
John enrolled at Ball State University after graduation with the goal of becoming a secondary school teacher. Modern English grammar – a course he has taught at Utica for five decades –was a requirement for English majors at Ball.
“It happened that the chairperson of the department taught modern English grammar,” says John. “On the first day in class, he was tossing an eraser and saying, ‘What’s the grammar for this?’ And people were saying, you tossed the eraser; the eraser was tossed by you, whatever. Everybody gave an answer, and he wasn’t happy with any of them. I didn’t normally stand out in classes or
With job offers in both Puerto Rico and South Carolina, John chose Benedict College. “I figured I could walk out of South Carolina,” he says.
say anything, but I couldn’t stand this craziness, so I said, ‘There’s no grammar for that.’
And he said, ‘You are right!’”
John aced the course, and it proved something of a turning point for him. Up to that time, his mind had been set on literature, but the fact that he had excelled at English grammar when about a third of his classmates failed the course made him reconsider. “I thought, okay, if I understand this and I can do this, maybe this is what I should do,” he says.
When he studied for his masters, John served as the chairperson’s graduate assistant and was hired as an instructor soon thereafter. At the time there was a shortage of English teachers at Ball State. He recalls the deans inviting the brighter students – including himself – to dinner and encouraging them to teach English at the college rather than taking posts as secondary school teachers. John agreed. “I was the youngest and lowest paid faculty person on campus,” he recalls. “At the same time, I knew I was going to work on a Ph.D., and I was taking freshman foreign language courses with the freshmen. So nobody was sure if I was a teacher or a student, because I’ve always been kind of ambiguous.”
John applied to the Ph.D. program at the University of Michigan. The program had a foreign language requirement but wouldn’t accept his minor in Spanish and graduate
credits in Spanish literature, a decision that rankles him to this day.
“Am I still pissed off about this? Yes! I had to learn effing French and German. They didn’t consider Spanish a literary language, despite Cervantes and all this stuff. I had credits in Spanish poetry, so I think I should know, but okay, it doesn’t exist,” he says, laughing.
His graduate journey was very much a tale of two cities. He worked on his Ph.D. at the campus in Ann Arbor while teaching full-time at the University of Eastern Michigan in Ypsilanti, seven miles away. At that time there was a surplus of U of M doctoral students doing the same thing, so the institution adopted a policy of firing students once they earned their degrees. As a result, John found himself on the job market when he finished at Michigan, searching for a teaching position at a time when there was a surplus of English PhDs vying for a limited number of openings.
He got job offers from two colleges – one in South Carolina, the other in Puerto Rico. His reason for choosing the former was entirely practical. “I figured I could walk out of South Carolina and I couldn’t walk out of Puerto Rico, so I took the job there,” he says.
From Benedict to Utica
John began his teaching career in earnest at Benedict College, the renowned HBCU
John with former student and current Director of Program Operations for the Young Scholars program Mary Hayes Gordon.
in Columbia, South Carolina. He liked the students, got along well with the administration, and even met his wife Elin there, who was teaching human services and social work at Benedict. But it wasn’t long before he knew he had to move on. For one thing, the deep south climate did not agree with him all that well, and he was starting to have some health issues. More importantly, though, he was being pressured to take on administrative responsibilities, and he was determined to remain focused on teaching.
The final straw came when John got a call from his dean while he and Elin were back in Michigan between semesters for their wedding.
“My publications, while respectable, really aren’t that important. It’s the influence I have on students that’s important.”
“The school had gotten this big grant and they wanted me to be the director,” he says. “I said, no, I’m not an administrator, but when I got back they said, you’re the director – nobody else can do it. I did not apply for the position. The search committee chair said, we’ll give it to you anyway. I said, like Sherman, if nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve. It was time to get the hell out of there.”
Fortunately, it turned out that one of the schools he had originally applied to was still in search of an English professor – a small, private institution in upstate New York named Utica
College. After he had already accepted the job at Benedict, Jerry Cartwright, then the English chair at Utica, had called him to try to set up an interview. John renewed his application to Utica and heard back from the new department chair, Frank Bergmann, who told him, in essence, not to get his hopes up.
“Frank had written me that I wasn’t his preferred candidate, which is, okay, kind of strange,” says John. “I was at a convention in Chicago where people go to find jobs, staying at a hotel, and I got a call from Amby [Ambrose] DeFlumere, then the president of Utica College, saying that Frank had asked him to check me out when he was there. And I said, uh, okay, I’ll come over to your hotel. He said, ‘No, I’ll come over to yours.’ I thought, okay, that’s not the way it’s usually done, but that’s fine.”
President DeFlumere arrived at the hotel, invited himself up to John’s room, and conducted the interview there. When the conversation was wrapping up, John told DeFlumere that he really didn’t understand what this interview was about, since Frank Bergmann had already told him that he wasn’t his first choice. “I don’t know anything about that,” the President replied. “He just told me to check you out.”
John eventually was invited to Utica to meet with the search committee and – as he describes the experience five decades later – proceeded to explain to them why he might not be the person they were looking for … at least not yet.
“As they were talking about the position, I said, I think you want a sociolinguist, and I’m not one, but I can read,” he says. “So basically I turned myself into a sociolinguist.”
Long after he joined the faculty at Utica, one comment from the search committee interview continued to puzzle him. “At one point in the
interview, Virgil Crisafulli said, ’You know, Utica is not Harvard.’ I thought to myself, yeah, I know – Harvard is in Boston and we’re in Utica, New York,” says John.
The mystery was solved for him three or four years later, on one of the occasions when New York State was looking at incorporating Utica into the SUNY system. John recalls Dr. Crisafulli suggesting in College Council – the predecessor body to Faculty Senate –that they should consider the offer.
“Cris said, ‘State colleges aren’t all bad. After all, Michigan is the Harvard of the west.’ And I thought, oh right … University of Michigan, Harvard – now I understand what he had meant.”
Putting students first
John arrived at Utica at a time when many of the College’s original professors were still teaching – Crisafulli, Ray Simon, Jake Oser, and others. It was a smaller institution then, and the faculty interacted at a much more personal level than is possible at a growing university with multiple locations and hundreds of full- and part-time professors. “When I first got here, we would go to retirement gatherings for faculty in different departments,” he says. “People, when they had been here for a while, would always invite new faculty to their homes for dinner, as I did. We stopped doing that twenty or twenty-five years ago because it got too cumbersome.”
He has, throughout his tenure, been an active member of the Utica University faculty and a trenchant voice in campus conversations about issues facing the institution over the decades. Among his chief accomplishments as a member of the curriculum committee was the establishment of Utica’s first academic minor – the minor in English language, which he argued would allow students to acquire a useful creden-
tial. It is still part of the University’s program listing, along with the nearly sixty other minors that have been added since.
In many ways, John is an old-school academic with an impressive range of knowledge across multiple disciplines, but his focus has always been on teaching. “My publications, while respectable, really aren’t that important,” he says. “It’s the influence I have on students that’s important.”
He remembers many of his students from the early years going on to successful careers in a variety of fields, some earning advanced degrees in English and teaching at institutions all over the country. Ann Marie Ade, an associate professor at Embry Riddle in Florida and a Cormican alumna, sent him a Christmas card last December telling him how she strives to emulate his passion and compassion when teaching her written communication classes. “Ann says her brother-in-law and niece see me at hockey games, so she knows I’m still alive,” he says.
His former students on the Utica University payroll alone could fill a small lecture hall. The short list includes Dorothy Obernesser, Polly Smith, Mary Hayes Gordon, Rich and Melissa Racioppa, Mary Siniscarco, Dave Fontaine, Kelly Adams, Alison Ricci-Wadas, and Brian Marcantonio, among many others.
“I often say, so and so is my student … like most people in the world,” says John.
As much as he is associated with the junior and senior-level linguistics courses he teaches, John admits to a marked preference for working with first-year students. Even now, officially retired, he continues to teach comp 101 as an adjunct alongside his upper-level courses, a 50-50 split he can trace back to the courseload requirements articulated in his appointment letter in 1974.
“The truth of the matter is, I like interacting with first-years,” he says. “You can have more impact on them than you can on more advanced students. It’s more fun. They’re still shockable. It probably has more impact on them than the upper-level classes do.”
Students are generally less gregarious than they used to be, John says, partly due to the shift toward online learning during the pandemic. He recalls one class he had a year or so after the COVID-19 shutdown that bucked the trend. “There were a lot of baseball players, all about six-foot-two, good students, articulate. I remember
“I’m conservative in terms of academia, but I’ve always been liberal as hell on social issues. Sometimes they conflict.”
walking into the classroom and they were all talking, and I said, you know how happy this makes me? You guys are actually talking to each other!”
Still, he finds that he is frequently covering very basic principles in English 101, as many recent high school graduates – particularly post-COVID – are unacquainted with concepts as foundational as a thesis statement, a sentence fragment, or a comma splice. Students – and, indeed, the world they live in – have changed a great deal since his arrival at Utica, and while he has remained a fully analog teacher in a digital age, over time he has adjusted
his curricula to meet the demands of the current moment. He finds, for instance, teaching Modern English Grammar a very different project now than it was decades ago. “The students used to have to unlearn the stuff they learned in traditional grammar. But kids have had no traditional grammar in years, so now they don’t have anything to unlearn,” he says.
While many academics blame such gaps in knowledge on the students themselves, John – unsurprisingly – has an entirely different take on this issue.
“Let’s focus on who’s responsible and who’s not responsible,” John says.
“Blaming the kids is not really fair to them. The schools didn’t teach them what we think they should know. You can’t fault the kids for not knowing something if the schools and the teachers didn’t teach them.”
Small-c catholic
In some ways, being a lifelong contrarian has enabled him to adjust to changes in language usage perhaps more easily than the average octogenarian. During the interview for this article, he opens a blue book and reads a marginal comment he wrote to the student essayist regarding the use of “they” as a singular pronoun:
Pronoun antecedent agreement
– If you want to use “they” or “their” as singular rather than plural, mark it with an asterisk so that I know that it is intentional and you are aware of the issues involved. Some (but not all) LGBTQA+ people prefer it, but some employers do not accept it.
“I’m conservative in terms of academia, but I’ve always been liberal as hell on social issues,” he says, smiling. “Sometimes they conflict, so I try to straddle the fence and say, okay, I’m going hold you to everything, but if you want to make a political statement, I will accept
that and not consider it an error. But I want you to be aware of it. And if you mark it with an asterisk, that acknowledges you know you’re doing it intentionally for a purpose.”
John has always been adept at meeting students where they are. Perhaps his tendency to blur the lines between his various roles and identities, defying easy categorization, has made this task simpler. Whatever the reasons may be, he has left an indelible impression on generations of students.
“John Cormican changed the way I talk,” says M.J. Allen ’24, a recent graduate of Utica’s English program, now a human resources officer at the Arc of Central New York. “It blew my mind what he taught in linguistics – I had taken it over the summer, and it totally changed my perspective on how I speak and every single word that I say. I feel that I am a lot more eloquent now, since having him. He is a great professor. I really enjoyed him. He is a sweetheart.”
A couple of years ago, one of his English 101 students approached him in class with a question. “This may be a rude question,” he said, “but how old are you?”
“I said, yeah, it’s kind of rude, but I just turned eighty-two about a week ago,” says John. “The student asked, ‘Why are you still here?’ and I said, well, I get to hang out with young people.”
And at eighty-four, he insists that he still learns from his students. “One time when they weren’t paying attention, I tossed something out to them, and one of the students asked, ‘What is the meaning of life?’ I thought about that for a moment and told them that I think the meaning of life is trying to make the world a better place when you leave it than when you found it. And I hadn’t really thought about it before, but that is kind of my philosophy of life,” he says.
John associates this with the Jewish concept of Tikkun olam, repairing the world, which in modern times denotes building a better world through social justice and acts of compassion. A Catholic with a deep intellectual interest in religion and philosophy, he has often been misidentified as belonging to other faith traditions as well as other ethnicities.
“One of my colleagues at Benedict asked me if I was Jewish,” John recalls. “I told her, only socially, because most of my friends in grad school were Jewish and I dated an Israeli girl for a couple of years. She didn’t know what the hell I meant, but that’s okay.”
Once during the Arab Spring, when the Syrian civil war was just getting started, John was at a local Middle Eastern restaurant he frequents when the owner approached him with a $500 check for the Syrian Relief Fund. “I said, I don’t know who you think I am … but I am not who you think I am,” he says.
Perhaps one of the best expressions of his non-conformity was his and Elin’s wedding in Michigan, which he says was thrown together in three weeks. Elin’s Lutheran pastor from New Jersey came to help officiate. He and the Catholic priest had a brief discussion and proceeded to perform a consolidated Catholic/Lutheran mass which neither church would have approved of at the time. John smiles as he recalls one of his Jewish friends bringing bread and wine for the altar and his Methodist relatives and Episcopalian friends taking communion.
And though technically retired, John is now teaching sections of Modern English Grammar, History of the English Language, and Written Communication as an adjunct. So … both a working professor and a retiree? It’s just the next chapter for Utica’s quintessential non-conformist.
“I’m catholic in the small-c sense of universal,” he says, laughing. “Isn’t that a crazy life?”
John receiving the Virgil Crisifulli Distinguished Teaching Award in 2010.
Anna Owens G’24
Photo
The lullaby of the hospital monitors. Years of unanswered questions. Perhaps after all this time wondering what was wrong, she might have felt a sense of relief in that hospital bed that someone had finally discovered the source of her pain.
But at that point, Anna Owens G’24 already knew she was dying.
At the age of 14, she had already been incredibly sick for two years. Her symptoms began in 2012 when she was laying on her trampoline with the family dog. The ten to fifteen-pound Yorkie-Poo walked by her head and Anna immediately became dizzy. With the world spinning around her, she threw up - the first of many such instances over the next few years as she made her way through middle school.
“I would have nausea almost every morning between ten and eleven. I remembered a class I’d always get sick in. I’d vomit and would stop moving my neck because when I did, I’d always get dizzy. I didn’t know at that age that what I was doing was overcompensating.”
Misdiagnosed time and time again, she would always come away from her medical visits with even more questions. It wasn’t until she began experiencing intermittent blindness that she started getting some answers. Her optometrist discovered a lesion behind her eyes and sent her to a retina specialist who ordered an MRI. By the end of the week, she was being admitted to Golisano Children’s Hospital.
One might think that there would be relief in finally getting some answers, but she was in no shape to feel much of anything.
“I could feel that I was dying,” she says. “And when I arrived at Golisano, I was so relieved when they told me it was a brain tumor because someone had finally told me what was wrong. I knew this was my only hope or I was going to die. Once you get to that point, I felt like I didn’t have time to react. Someone didn’t have to tell me there was a possibility I could die because I already knew it was happening.”
Entering an unimaginable world
The doctors told Anna that she was dealing with hydrocephalus. Due to where the tumor was located, cerebral spinal fluid was being blocked from the rest of her body, and that fluid was building up.
“The minute I got there, they inserted a shunt in my head and then performed brain surgery the next morning.”
Her mother never left her side during that time Anna calls “an unimaginable world in the mind of an innocent.” Her hair was unkempt and covered in her own blood and snarls, her forehead bearing two symmetrical scabs that marked where they had screwed her head into the table. But what Anna says her eyes were so drawn to in those moments was the shunt, which she often referred to as “the tube.”
“That tube was my best friend, yet I wanted so badly to get rid of it and it wouldn’t let go of my hand,” she says. “The tube slithered into the top of my head and sucked out the enormous amount of venom that had been stored there over the course of two years.”
Even now, years later, feeling a completely new person than the young girl sitting in the hospital, she feels like that tube would always be there in her head.
“That tube and that entire moment inspired me to survive. Not just physically survive, but to survive spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. I am a survivor and as a survivor I am strong, determined, grateful for today, and genuinely full of love.”
Her healthcare team referred to her as “the miracle case,” a term she is humble enough to admit could be true for many individuals, depending on their beliefs. But Anna is also confident enough in the power of her determination to know that it enabled her to overcome obstacles that others, even her healthcare providers, saw as insurmountable.
“If I close my eyes after all these years, I can still hear the lullaby of the monitors that sang to me every night. I could
see a child no older than eight years old walking past my doorway in the same armor as myself. I’ll never understand how young children can be the targets of such severe illnesses. I hate seeing anyone, especially the pure, suffer to the point where they can’t live happily anymore,” she says.
Working her way back
A week later, she was homebound, going to physical therapy three times a week and trying to keep herself occupied during recovery.
“I like to keep busy, so during recovery I did a lot of journaling, coloring, and listened to a lot of music,” she recalls. “I got back into playing piano. I did a lot of cooking. My family joked they all gained weight because of all the cooking I was doing. I was also frustrated because I felt so great when I got home but the pressure in my brain was still healing, still going down. So I couldn’t go out and go for a run for a long time. I couldn’t do much that was physical even though I wanted to, outside of physical therapy.”
While Anna worked to keep herself from going stir crazy, she continued her recovery with both physical therapists as well as her private coach, Kevin Green, who helped make sure the one-time softball player was working her way back to the game.
“I was very close to him. He was also part of my healthcare team, in my opinion. His one-on-one with me to get me back into shape and to playing softball was invaluable. He took the time to adapt with me too and determine how I could return safely to the sport,” Anna says.
Other than her ongoing physical therapy, much of her recovery was spent at home, which meant sitting out the remainder of her 8th grade year. A review of her work by the school determined that, despite all she had missed due to her medical absence, she would be able to segue into 9th grade in the fall.
“I was lucky,” she says. “I had a lot of friends and I loved school and I was so excited to go back. Kids are good
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at adapting to change and I was ready to go back. It ended up feeling like an ordinary school year.”
Though the return to school was not without its difficulties. She may have been out of the hospital and out of recovery, but she still wasn’t a hundred percent, and had frequent appointments or days when she would not be physically capable of completing a full school day.
“I didn’t realize until I got older that a lot of stuff wasn’t there to help me and I had to be my own advocate. I missed a lot of school due to needing half days or sick days. I had to work with my teachers and figure out how to balance things and make up work because of either needing to be out for therapy or just being sick. It made me wish there was an occupational therapist there who could have advocated for me and worked with the teachers. I had to do that myself as a teenager and advocate for myself,” Anna says.
It’s an issue she says she thankfully didn’t have once she came to Utica University. She longs for such a position to be in place for students like herself in high school.
“I just wish someone had been there,” she says, recounting how even during the years she was sick, medical professionals had brushed off what she was dealing with because she was still able to act normal and do sports. The years of disregard forced her into advocating for herself.
“In high school, I was doing okay, but I was far too young to be balancing all those responsibilities and being my own advocate. As I’ve gotten older and learned more about resources out there, I realized how much I was doing for myself.”
Becoming a therapist
Despite the challenges she faced, she made it through, eventually landing at SUNY Polytechnic Institute as a biology major with plans to become a neurosurgeon.
“I wanted to be a doctor, but as I started going through their program, I started thinking about the type of care I always wanted to give my clients,” she says. “I felt the more I learned what I’d be doing as an MD, I thought it might not be what I wanted after all. The people that I have looked up to and wanted to be like have been my therapists. Once that clicked in my head, I knew about the occupational therapy program at Utica and transferred here for my junior year.”
And what a time to leap into Utica - in the summer of 2020, the world still in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic and months prior to the development of COVID vaccines, forcing many institutions like Utica to move classes online.
“We did all our labs at home because of COVID. We couldn’t go into the lab and everyone was trying to figure out
pational therapy was where I found what I needed. I needed someone to help me adapt to the situation. The therapy she did to my neck really broke up some of the adhesions I had going on and it enhanced my ability to move,” Anna says.
Once she did start moving her neck, she says her body was so unaccustomed to it that she’d feel incredibly sick.
“You don’t think about little things like that until you do them and that’s what I love about occupational therapy and why I chose it,” she says. “It’s not always about strength and endurance. My physical therapists were superstars as well, but occupational therapy is very holistic and focuses on how you can get there. Sometimes you have to be creative. It’s not as simple as exercise. Now, when I work with my clients, I just feel like I can see myself on the other side. It makes my practice better, more client-centered, and not just a job. I know they’re a person.”
She says she found her time at Utica to be empowering and never had the struggle for accommodations that she had to advocate so strongly for back in high school.
what to do. Materials were sent to the student, including a goat brain, and labs were done from home. It was just really gross. Something I never want to do again. The teachers were great, though.”
She joined other students back on campus that fall and as she immersed herself more and more in the world of occupational therapy as a student, she started gaining further understanding of her own medical issues as a patient.
“I had only seen one side of it when I was a patient, going through Occupational Therapy at Faxton Hospital with Amanda Wallace, who did myofacial release therapy with me on-and-off as needed for my neck. We’d do exercises and emulate things like me doing laundry, which I couldn’t do on my own at one point. It didn’t have to do with strength, so it didn’t fall into the category of physical therapy, and thus occu-
“At Utica, getting accommodations was really easy. I’d just go to Judy Borner, the Director of Learning Services, and she took care of everything. She’s been great. It’s been so simple since I’ve been here,” says Anna.
“The thing that makes the program so great here is the faculty. When I got here, I could see why. The faculty really embodied what the occupational therapy profession is all about, assuring me from the very start that I had a place in the profession. They didn’t see me as a difficult case to work with. They adapted with me, they empowered me, and they supported me in every way.”
Practicing with Penny
At the end of her junior year at Utica, Anna began getting the hands-on experience Utica University is known for, putting her wealth of experiences both
in and out of the classroom to work with patients in real-world settings like the Rescue Mission of Utica and Mount Markham Elementary School. She spent 12 weeks at each site, providing occupational therapy with the help of her service dog, Penny. Anna has been working with Penny, now five years old, since her freshman year of college.
“She’s an extension of myself,” she says.
Unsure at first how she’d incorporate Penny into her Practice, Anna says her professors in the occupational therapy program at Utica helped her develop a plan for Penny to work alongside her. Now, the two are inseparable, going everywhere from classes to doctor appointments to the grocery store.
“And some people are incredibly supportive. Others are not. I’ve gotten harassed out in the community by people who don’t understand and give you a hard time about having a dog, even when she’s wearing her vest. Part of that, I think, is being a young woman. I don’t know if I’d get that as an older male.”
The Rescue Mission is what Anna describes as a “non-traditional site,” meaning that there was no occupational therapist there when she began. She and one other student worked with Assistant Professor of Occupational
Therapy Cicily Talerico to try to establish an occupational therapy program there full-time.
“Penny’s presence there really gave people a reason to smile. I didn’t realize just how therapeutic she could be until I was out doing fieldwork with her. She stopped a client from having a panic attack. Penny walked right over to the client as it was taking hold and put her face tight into the client’s lap. And the panic attack stopped.”
The experience led Anna to her first peer-reviewed publication by the American Occupational Therapy Association - “Witnessing the Power of Occupation Working With the Unhoused.”
Her experiences at Mount Markham Elementary School, while very different, were just as rewarding. With an occupational therapist already on site at the school, Anna worked with children across a range of diagnoses.
“I loved the kids there. It was very hard for me to leave. I always envisioned working in pediatrics due to my own experiences. I know what it’s like to be a sick kid and struggle like that,” she says.
As she prepared to walk across the stage in May 2024 completing the occupational therapy bachelor’s to master’s program, with Penny at her side, Anna looked back on what she calls “an
intense program” and the thing that got her through it the most - the Utica University faculty.
“I don’t know how I would have gotten through the program without them. I really feel blessed that I came to this program and had these professors. They just really empowered me and got me through. They made me feel like I could do it.”
Being the hero to others
While her journey to recovery inspired her path to becoming an occupational therapist, it has also driven her to devote her time to the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation (PBTF) as an active volunteer and fundraiser, along with participation in their events such as the Starry Night Walk in Boston and the Ride for Kids right here in Utica. Through these events, Anna works with fellow brain tumor survivors to raise awareness and funds for continuing research.
Post-graduation, she plans on doing research with Assistant Professor of occupational therapy Yvonne Monti on the impact of occupational therapy combined with service dog intervention on sleep dysfunction. She says she’d love to work with kids again, or explore more of occupational therapy’s role in mental health.
“I want to inspire my patients to recognize that every day is worth living, every moment is worth cherishing, and every challenge is worth facing.”
Whatever the future holds, Anna is ready to take it on with passion and looks forward to the journey.
“I’m grateful I chose a career where I have a lot of opportunities,” she says. “I love this profession even more than when I started the program. It fit my personal healing journey that I started when I was 14. I’d like to be the hero that I wish I had, but to other people.”
Girard Plante ’88
leaves behind a rich legacy of journalism and advocacy in support of accessibility rights.
The Fighter
To all those who knew him growing up, he was the extroverted one, the active one, the one who excelled in every athletic endeavor he took on.
And then at the age of 14, a freak bicycle accident left him a quadriplegic, setting him on a path that channeled his passion into a lifelong crusade for accessibility rights.
Girard Plante ’88, accomplished journalist and passionate advocate for the rights of people with disabilities, died on February 14, 2023 at the age of 63.
Girard’s twin Gerald remembers his brother as the more active sibling in their early days.
“He was more the outgoing athlete, and I was more introverted on the sidelines,” Gerald says. “I stayed with him from the time he was injured. It wasn’t pretty, but he just kept moving forward.”
Following the accident, members of the family followed Girard to Colorado to help with his rehabilitation.
“We all drove out there and took turns learning how to take care of him,” says Girard’s niece Sheryl Thrasher ’05.
After a childhood playing football, hockey, baseball, and any other athletic activity he could find, the accident profoundly impacted both Girard’s life and the lives of those around him.
“It changed the dynamic of our family too,” Sheryl recalls. “But it really strengthened his focus. It’s why so much of his journalistic writing is heavily focused on advocacy. He was very selfless and I don’t think I ever remembered him once saying ‘this is for me.’”
“Everything he did was in the service of others,” Gerald says. “He felt, even as a youngster, that he was going to go out and be a voice.”
Opening Doors
Sheryl says that when Girard returned to the Utica area after rehabilitation, having missed almost a year of high school, he embraced his life and his family with an appreciation that never left him.
“He kind of lived vicariously through us for all the things he didn’t get to enjoy first-hand - like learning to drive,” she says. “We’d still all go to the movies together, and he definitely loved to pull pranks or get us into trouble, telling us what to do. My mother used to say he was the Kingpin of all we did. And he loved it.”
Graduating in 1979 from Thomas R. Proctor High School in Utica, Girard received a resounding standing ovation at commencement for his achievements. From there, he enrolled at Utica University – then Utica College – and earned a journalism degree, providing him with the means to pursue his lifelong ambition to help others.
“He opened the doors and let people know that you don’t have to sit home alone and deteriorate. You can go to college and you can do things,” says Gerald. “He became as independent as possible, and for somebody very active before the accident, that meant a lot to him. It was all about his independence, whether it be housing, jobs, getting to the store - so many things we take for granted.”
Like many educational institutions in the late 1980s, the Utica University campus presented a number of accessibility challenges to people with disabilities. It was a plight that Girard knew all too well, and he was pleased when in the Fall of 1987 Vice President Michael Simpson spent a day on campus confined to a wheelchair so that he could evaluate the accessibility of Utica’s facilities. “I was elated when I found out he was going to take the initiative to go around in a chair and see what a person in a wheelchair has to contend with,” Girard told the Tangerine student newspaper at the time. “His interest bodes well for everybody.”
After his time at Utica, Girard would go on to become a freelance writer for the Observer-Dispatch newspaper, the Central New York Academy of Medicine, and NetDesign. He also worked as a writer for Zogby International.
As gracious with his time as he was with his heart, Girard volunteered for Utica’s Resource Center for Independent Living (RCIL) for decades, serving as the organization’s first Vice President, helping those in need find housing as well as access to programs and services.
“Girard was a good friend and a wonderful person who never allowed any physical limitation or social or environmental barrier to stop him from loving and living his life to the fullest,” says Professor of occupational therapy Colleen Sunderlin, who first met Girard through her work as an occupational therapist at Faxton Hospital in the late 1980s and early 1990s. “He was a staunch advocate for accessibility and independence. He knew the law and he understood human rights. He was practicing and preaching DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) long before it was a popular construct.”
As a member of the spinal cord injury support group, Girard provided education, support, and advocacy for any of the newly injured people going through rehabilitation, Professor Sunderlin recalls. Their paths continued to cross through his work at RCIL.
The two remained connected throughout the years as he moved to the Boston area, sending messages back and forth via email and social media, with the occasional long telephone conversation thrown in for good measure. On many occasions, Girard would speak to occupational therapy students at Utica and share his story, his knowledge, and his passion for accessibility and independent living. “He encouraged and motivated our students to always promote and support independence and access,” Professor Sunderlin says. “He always kept me informed of victories in accessibility, advances in science, and good ol’ human interest stories from his world and I did the same through my knowledge of occupational therapy.”
She also remembers him as someone immensely proud of his family, of growing up in Utica, of being Irish, and of being a Utica alumnus. “I was always amazed by his stories and historical knowledge of sports and politics in the Utica area. He was a great listener and always remembered what was important to you. In our numerous exchanges, he never failed to ask about me, my sons, my family, and life at Utica. I miss him dearly,” she says.
Girard served on the City of Utica’s Human Rights Commission and Charter Revision Commission, and even ran for councilman in the City of Utica against future Utica Mayor Robert Palmieri. Upon his death, Mayor Palmieri issued a proclamation stating that Girard “will be truly missed by family, friends, and the disabled, for whom he dedicated his life fighting for their equality.”
Always looking out for people
Sheryl Thrasher says that, with such a small gap between their ages, she and her brother saw their Uncle Girard as more like a sibling. His influence on her life was significant enough to lead her both to attend Utica University and to pursue a degree in public relations and journalism as well.
“He always wanted better things for us,” she says.
During her time at Utica, Sheryl was surprised when she heard Professor Emerita of Journalism Kim Landon relating a story about a former student who had many obstacles to overcome during his time on campus. Landon never mentioned the student by name, but when Sheryl approached her after class, she learned that the student was in fact her uncle Girard. “There was never a time in my life when I was more proud than I was after I heard that story,” Sheryl recalls.
For her own part, Professor Landon remembers Girard vividly, saying he made his presence known in her class immediately and quietly. “Of course he was noticeable because he used a wheelchair, but it was the intensity of his mind and spirit that drew my attention,” she says. “I had to deliver my A-game with Girard in class, because if I didn’t, he called me on it.”
Recalling Girard’s time in her editing class, Professor Landon says they talked about how newspaper editors made decisions on which articles to run, where to place them and what headline would accompany a given piece. She remembers Girard taking exception to editorial decisions that had been made in some of the media examples she presented in class, often leading to spirited discussions of journalistic perspectives – something that continued long after Girard graduated. “He often questioned me on Facebook about the media’s coverage of some event or another,” she says. “I thoroughly enjoyed his edifying comments as well as his deeply thoughtful and often spiritual posts about life.”
“I feel privileged to have known him,” Professor Landon says. “And I sorely miss his voice in the chaos that surrounds us today.”
“He was always looking out for people,” Sheryl says. “He always wanted to make sure that people had access to the
health care that they needed. And was a huge supporter of education. He wanted people to be able to create a better life for themselves and for all of us.”
Girard eventually moved to Massachusetts, where he lived in the supportive company of his brother and his lifetime friend and nurse, Jenna Catrombone. Both were at Girard’s side when he passed last February.
In his later years, Girard continued to pour his energy and his heart into serving others and fighting on their behalf. He was a columnist for the Boston Post-Gazette, writing a biweekly column entitled “Simple Times” from 2003 up until his passing. He was also a writer for the Book Builders of Boston, and a contributing writer/editor for the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission.
Girard oversaw many improvements to access throughout the Boston region, volunteered for the Boston Center for Independent Living, and was affiliated with numerous community organizations, including the Commission on Disability in Newton, MA where he served a co-chair, the Greater Boston Chapter of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association (NSCIA), and the Spinal Cord Injury Advisory Board. He continued to be a community advocate and activist for access issues and disability rights as an active member of the Disability Policy Consortium.
For Gerald Plante, his brother’s contribution to building a better world was undeniable. “He was brilliant, articulate, and a defender for those less fortunate in our society,” he says.
From Journalist to Emmy Nominee
John Caher ’80
John Caher’s passion for journalism began as a second grader when he wrote an essay comparing the school principal, a stern nun, to a sunburned toad and got in trouble for what in his mind was accurate reporting. That led the 1980 graduate on an unlikely 30-year odyssey as a legal and court reporter for three newspapers—the Albany Knickerbocker News, Albany Times Union and New York Law Journal—and a writer who wrote or co-authored eight books and helped write and produce a PBS documentary that won a Telly Award and was nominated for an Emmy last year.
Caher’s documentary “A Bridge to Justice: The Life of Franklin H. Williams,” narrated by Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning actor, Sterling K. Brown, dives into the life of a relatively obscure but important civil rights leader and lawyer, Franklin H. Williams, one of the hidden figures in the struggle for racial equity. The documentary segued into a book of the same title co-authored by Caher and anthropologist Enid Gort. Caher attributes many of the skills and lessons he learned from his time at what was then Utica College.
His first day on campus, Caher signed on as a reporter for the Tangerine, Utica’s student-run newspaper. “When I was looking for my first job, it was those clips from the Tangerine that got me in the door,” Caher said. “Editors didn’t care about my grades or the courses I took. They wanted to know I could hit the ground running.” The Tangerine is still active to this day, instilling the same skills and experiences to new students year after year.
At Utica, legendary journalism Professor Jack Behrens encouraged Caher to stock up on electives of interest and learn anything and everything he could. Caher had no idea that would led to a career as a legal writer, but became one at the now-defunct Knickerbocker News when the court beat opened.
“Like most of my career, it was kind of a ’when you come to a fork in the road, take it’ deal,” Caher said. “At Utica, I took every law course I could, mainly because I found the law fascinating. But it certainly didn’t occur to me at the time that I would become – or even that there was such a thing as – a legal reporter.”
Caher quickly tired of writing formulaic “Joe Smith was sentenced to life for murder yesterday” stories and delved into the intricacies and legal issues swarming through the courthouse. He developed a reputation as an astute observer of legal proceedings and continued reporting on the law with the Times Union and New York Law
Journal. That ultimately led to a position with the courts and the opportunity to work on the Franklin Williams documentary.
“Writing for film is a different discipline because you have to take into consideration not only your prose, but how your prose interacts with the images,” Caher said.
Currently, Caher works as the Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications for the NYS Unified Court System and part of his job is to help judges make things happen. In that vein, he played a key role in implementing U-CAN, a novel mentoring program designed to help troubled young offenders successfully navigate a year of probation with the help of a volunteer mentor. U-CAN, a tough love program that demands accountability that has been incredibly successful, operated without costing the court system or local government a dime.
Surprisingly, Caher said he was never very career oriented.
“At Utica, I was a serious student, but I was more interested in running marathons and rowing than thinking about what exactly I was going to do after graduation, which kind of explains why I spent the summer after graduating cleaning toilets in a bar,” Caher said. “And once I did break in, I can’t say anything was very well planned or choreographed. I just did what I found fun and opportunities kind of found me.”
–Victoria DeLuca ’24
A Dream Fulfilled
Medal of honor recipient Forrest Vosler
Picture this: a young American World War II airman, blinded by shrapnel and badly wounded, his B-17 crashing into the English Channel, somehow manages to repair the ship’s damaged radio in time to send out a mayday call, saving his crewmates’ lives.
No, this isn’t a scene dreamed up by some Hollywood screenwriter; this is the actual wartime experience of Utica University alumnus and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Forrest L.
Vosler, who before starting classes at Utica had already lived a life seemingly pulled straight out of an action movie.
Born in Livonia, New York in 1923, one of four children, Vosler was a boy scout and a big basketball fan. After high school graduation in 1941, he worked as a drill press operator at General Motors in Rochester before answering the call to serve and enlisting in the Army on October 8, 1942.
Rising to the rank of staff sergeant, Vosler was deployed to Europe the following year with the 8th Air Force’s 358th Bombardment Squadron -
“Hell’s Angels” - as an aerial gunner and radio operator on a B-17 Flying Fortress called The Jersey Bounce, Jr. He quickly demonstrated his bravery when, on his first combat mission, he saved the lives of two unconscious crewmates by repairing their oxygen supply while keeping enemy fighters at bay with one of the men’s guns. His actions that day earned him the Air Medal for valor.
A few missions later, Vosler and his crewmates faced an even more daunting test as their formation encountered fierce anti-aircraft fire and more than a hundred Luftwaffe fighters
Army Air Corps Tech. Sgt. Forrest L. Vosler is awarded the Medal of Honor from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during a White House ceremony, Aug. 30, 1944. Shaking Vosler’s hand is Undersecretary of War Robert Porter Patterson Sr.
Courtesy: U.S. Air Force
during a bombing run over Bremen, Germany. As the fighters attacked, a 20 mm artillery shell hit the radio compartment, severely injuring Vosler’s legs. The aircraft’s tail was hit at almost the same time, seriously wounding the tail gunner and taking out the plane’s guns, followed by another strike that sent shrapnel into Vosler’s chest and eyes.
Despite his injuries, Vosler refused offers of first-aid and continued to fire back at the enemy. And though he could barely see, he managed to get the B-17’s damaged radio working well enough to send out a distress signal before the pilot ditched the disabled plane in the English Channel.
As the aircraft began to sink and several of the crew members prepared a life raft, Vosler, bleeding and nearly blind, somehow found the strength to keep the badly-wounded tail gunner from sliding off the wing and into the cold December waters. He grabbed the man around the waist, holding onto an antenna cable with his other hand until his crewmates were able to pull them both into the raft.
Fortunately, Vosler’s distress signal had been picked up by a nearby ship, which soon located the raft and carried the Jersey Bounce crew to safety. Without question, his remarkable bravery and
steadiness under fire made all the difference that day. He would spend the next several months in Air Force hospitals in England before returning stateside, where he continued his recovery and doctors were able to restore vision in his left eye.
It was during his convalescence in the U.S. that Vosler was invited to the White House to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt personally presented him with the nation’s highest honor for valor in an Oval Office ceremony on August 30, 1944.
After his discharge from the Army, Vosler became one of the founders of the Air Force Association and moved to Syracuse, New York where he got a job as a radio station engineer at WSYR and enrolled at Syracuse University in Spring 1945 to study business administration.
It was during his time at S.U. that he met his future wife, Virginia Slack. The two were married on October 28, 1945. Vosler took a job at the Veterans Administration in the late 1940s, where he served for the next three decades until his retirement. He and Virginia raised four children – two sons, Stephen and Jeffery, and two daughters, Sondra and Susan.
Sadly, despite his best efforts, Vosler’s
eye injuries made university study extremely difficult. He dropped in and out of classes over the course of two decades, transferring to then-Utica College in 1956 before ending his studies in 1962 without a degree.
Vosler died of a heart attack on February 17, 1992 at the age of 68, shortly after he and Virginia permanently relocated to their vacation home in Titusville, Florida the autumn before. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, and as befits a bona fide war hero, lives on not only in the hearts of those who loved him, but in the living monuments dedicated to his memory in the years since his passing. These include the Vosler Academic Development Center at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi and the Forrest L. Vosler Veterans Memorial Park at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado.
There was a happy coda to his educational journey as well when in 2015 Syracuse University awarded him a posthumous associate degree of arts, crediting him for his persistent studies at Syracuse and Utica over 17 years. For this celebrated hometown hero, decorated for valor by the President of the United States, it was the fulfillment of a long-held dream and a fitting epilogue to a life well lived.
Army Air Corps Tech. Sgt. Forrest L. Vosler, center, sits with his airplane’s crew after being rescued from the English Channel. Courtesy: U.S. Army
Kristin St. Hilaire Appointed Interim Director of Athletics
Kristin St. Hilaire G’15 has been appointed interim director of athletics
St. Hilaire, who previously served as assistant director of athletics and is entering her 18th season as Utica’s head women’s lacrosse coach, succeeds the retired Dave Fontaine ’89, who in January concluded his 12-year tenure as athletic director.
The Utica women’s lacrosse program’s all-time winning coach, St. Hilaire has compiled a 151-102 overall record and a 59-52 record in the highly competitive Empire 8 Conference. She has coached nine
Intercollegiate Women’s Lacrosse Coaches Association (IWLCA) All-Region selections and has led her program to winning records each of the past eleven seasons. Last season, she led her team to a 14-4 record and its first Empire 8 Conference final.
A 2023 Upstate Lacrosse Foundation Hall of Fame inductee, St. Hilaire played lacrosse collegiately at Division I UMass, where she earned Atlantic 10 All-Conference First Team honors all four years and set several school records.
Under Fontaine’s leadership, Utica totaled 20 conference championships, 15 NCAA Tournament appearances, and 65 All-American selections, among many other achievements.
In total, Fontaine spent 23 years at Utica, having served from 1989 through 2000 in a variety of roles including head softball coach, director of intramurals, compliance director, and assistant director of athletics. Reflecting on his career, his memories naturally center on the student-athletes and coaches whom he supported, mentored, and cheered on.
“The best part has been watching our students and coaches experience success,” he says. “Having them compete for championships and achieve individual success has been very special. To be a small part of their journey is something I will always remember.”
New Name, New Look
Utica University and ABM Industries introduce ABM Field at Charles A. Gaetano Stadium
During last year’s Homecoming, Alumni, and Family weekend, Utica University and ABM Industries, the University’s new facility services provider, formally announced the rebranding of the playing field at Charles A. Gaetano Stadium.
Utica University and ABM Industries have agreed to a multi-year naming rights partnership for what’s now called ABM Field at Gaetano Stadium.
“We are grateful for ABM’s partnership and appreciate their commitment to working with the University to support our students,” Utica University President Todd Pfannestiel says. “ABM identified our athletics complex as an
area in which they were interested in investing and associating their brand.”
ABM’s investment in the naming rights funded the installation of a new, nextgeneration field turf in July 2024. The Vertex Core product, used by several NFL teams and college football Power Four programs, delivers advanced safety, performance, durability, and aesthetics. The state-of-the-art system features renowned Classic HD slit-film fiber and is teamed up with CORE monofilament super fiber.
“The impact of ABM’s investment is multifold,” Dr. Pfannestiel says. “First and foremost, this upgrade will significantly improve safety while helping our student-athletes maximize their athletic performance. Second, this innovative agreement alleviates the University’s need to secure either
a private donation or funding from the capital budget to pay for its replacement.”
In addition to the new branding, the design of ABM Field, which is used for field hockey, football, men’s and women’s lacrosse, and men’s and women’s soccer, has undergone some minor adjustments. The now filled-in blue end zones say “Utica” in white block text outlined in orange on the west-facing end zone and “Pioneers” on the east-facing end zone.
In May 2024, Utica selected ABM Industries as its integrated facility services and infrastructure solutions provider.
ABM is one of the largest higher education facility solutions providers in the United States.
Andrew Canicatti, ABM VP of Operations; Scott Camp, ABM President of Education; Denham Hall, ABM Regional Director of Operations
Men’s Hockey Comes Within One Goal of Utica’s First National Championship
In a game of inches, Gary Heenan estimates it was a quarter of an inch separating his men’s hockey team from a national championship.
That’s how close Johnny Mulera’s breakaway shot, 3:46 into sudden-death overtime, came to making history. Instead of burying into the back of the net, the puck glanced off the inside of the goalpost and bounced back into play. A quarter of an inch to the right, and Mulera’s shot sends the standing room only crowd inside the Utica University Nexus Center into a frenzy celebrating Utica University’s first-ever national title.
“Obviously gut-wrenching for us,” a dejected Heenan said following the Pioneers’ eventual 2-1 loss to now threetime defending champion Hobart College. “It’s disappointing we couldn’t get that bounce and have luck go our way, but give credit to Hobart. They’re a great team, and it’s a wagon they’ve got going.”
It was a similarly gut-wrenching bounce at 18:22 of overtime when a lively carom off the endboards behind the Utica goal
landed right on the stick of Hobart’s Kahlil Fontana who scored the game-winner, ending Utica’s championship run one goal short.
“It took a weird bounce off the back wall,” Fontana describes. “Then it popped out in front of the net. I saw the (defenseman), and it was a bit of a race to the puck. I just tried to make sure I got it on net.”
The Pioneers, who downed tournament No. 1 seed Curry College 2-1 to advance to the championship game, have now advanced to the NCAA tournament five straight seasons, including back-to-back Frozen Four appearances. They look to make it three in a row next season when the City of Utica again hosts the Frozen Four.
“I’m super proud of the guys,” Heenan says. “I was worried about us being in awe of that team, but I liked our fight. We got the (game’s) first goal, and we played with confidence.
“It’s an empty-feeling right now (knowing) you were that close to winning it all, but we’ll be back.”
Sideline Report
After 25 seasons and 303 victories, Michele Davis is stepping down as women’s basketball coach. Davis departs as the winningest coach in the program’s history. A two-time Empire 8 Coach of the Year, she guided the Pioneers to two NCAA tournament appearances, and coached 49 Empire 8 All-Conference honorees, four conference Players of the Year, and four All-Region selections.
Men’s hockey player Andrew Della Rovere ’27 was named as the recipient of the NCAA Elite 90 Award. The award is presented to the studentathlete with the highest cumulative grade-point average at the finals site for each of the NCAA’s 90 championships. A management
major, Della Rovere has a 4.0 GPA.
The Men’s Basketball team are back-to-back Empire 8 conference champions, defeating SUNY Poly 89-76 on March 1 to earn an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Photo by NML Creative
Longtime Coach Blaise Faggiano’s Coaching Tree is Growing
It’s been 17 years since Blaise Faggiano first took the sidelines as head football coach at Utica University. He’s laid down strong roots over that time, not only at Utica, but across the football coaching profession.
Lazarus Morgan ’08, G’14 is a proud branch on the Faggiano coaching tree. The former Pioneers defensive back coached under Faggiano for five seasons before being hired as defensive coordinator at Alfred University and then SUNY Cortland. This fall, he completed his second season as the head coach at Buffalo State.
“I’ve watched how he’s built the program at Utica, and I’ve implemented a lot that here at Buffalo State,” says Morgan, who took over a 0-10 team and has improved its win totals in each of his first two seasons. “Certain aspects of how we play (schematically), I’m sure, resemble some of what I picked up at Utica, but the core values behind his coaching philosophy are what I’ve definitely taken with me.”
Morgan is one of four former Faggiano assistants now serving as college head coaches, joining Curt Fitzpatrick, who last month was hired at Division I Colgate University, Keystone College’s
Justin Higgins, and Hartwick College’s Matt Rogers. Additionally, 29 former graduate assistants under Faggiano are currently college assistant coaches, across Divisions I, II, and III.
But Faggiano’s reach extends far beyond the college football sidelines. His coaching tree numbers seven high school head coaches, 28 high school assistant coaches, and one NFL scout – Maya Ana Callender ’16, who is in her second season with the six-time NFL champion New England Patriots. They are numbers in which Faggiano takes great pride, and he hopes will continue to grow.
“You wake up 17 years later, and you’ve got 70 coaches out there, and they’re having incredible success,” he says. “It’s a special feeling knowing you had a small hand in that success.”
His protégés are making their mark on the game in very big ways.
Fitzpatrick led Cortland to its firstever national championship in 2023. Morgan is the first African-American head football coach in the history of the Liberty League. Callender was first female director of football operations in the Ivy League, and in 2023 was hired as the first full-time female member of the Patriots scouting department.
Faggiano’s influence on their careers extends far beyond coaching strategy. Truth be told, there are only so many systems of Xs and Os in the sport of football. To a person, Faggiano’s former staffers will tell you his genius lies in his meta-skills – building culture, impacting team dynamics, inspiring future leaders – as well as his appreciation for the simplest of acts –extending kindness and opportunity.
“I tell people all the time, Coach Faggiano is the best people person I’ve ever met. (It’s) just how he treats people,” Morgan says.
“He taught me how to take care of younger coaches, giving them opportunities and something as simple as staying late after work, taking them to dinner, and just getting to know them by who they are and not just what they do. He creates a family-like atmosphere within his program, and I’ve taken that with me wherever I’ve been.”
“He allowed me to gain not only a deeper knowledge about the game, but gain confidence and gain a voice,” Callender
says. “He welcomed me into a maledominated profession and made me feel, not only comfortable but made it feel like it was my place. Like I belong. After that, I could walk into any place knowing, ’I can do this.’”
The Ford Legacy
Faggiano is a coaching disciple of Bob Ford. Ford coached for 44 seasons, 40 of which were at the University at Albany, where he gave Faggiano his coaching start as a graduate assistant. Faggiano counts himself among the more than 100 high school, college, and NFL coaches who began their careers under the legendary coach’s tutelage, an orientation of sorts that extended beyond football.
Ford was closely connected with the Catholic elementary schools in Albany, most of which did not employ physical education teachers. He made arrangements with the schools to have the graduate assistants on his coaching staff teach physical education courses part-time, which, from a practical standpoint, helped the budgetchallenged schools fill a void and allowed the GAs to earn modest pay
that they could use toward housing.
“I taught phys ed at St. Casimir’s School on Second Street in the city of Albany,” Faggiano recalls, laughing. “The other GAs were out in the suburbs. I’d go out to their schools and borrow dodgeballs.”
St. Casimir’s served students from a wide range of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. The experience it offered Faggiano more than made up for the school’s lack of resources.
“I remember going into his office after my first day (at St. Casimir’s) saying, ‘Coach Ford, I just thought I should let you know that you sent me to teach gym at a school that doesn’t have a gym,’” Faggiano says. “He just looked at me and said, ‘Blaise, I sent you there because you understand diversity. I know you’ll figure out the rest, and you’ll be fine.’”
Ford is the 2025 recipient of the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) Amos Alonzo Stagg Award, which is presented in part to recognize individuals who influence and set an example through their association with the game of football. His 265 career
Lazarus Morgan ’08, G’14, Head Coach at Buffalo State
victories place 22nd on the all-time Division I list. However, in line with the spirit and purpose championed by the Stagg Award, it was Ford’s impact off the field that left an impression on Faggiano and help mold him into the coach he is today.
“I’m a part of Coach Ford’s coaching tree. I saw the impact that he had on me and on everyone who touched the program,” Faggiano says. “I knew if I ever had the opportunity, I wanted to impact people’s lives in a similar way.”
Book of Success
Shortly after taking the job at Utica, Faggiano began compiling a coaches’ handbook. The book, now in its seventeenth edition, is an omnium gatherum of coaching philosophies, core values, and, deliberately to a much lesser extent, game strategy.
“It covers my expectations of our
coaching staff and how we are going to coach – our philosophy of coaching and teaching, and all the different things that go into building a successful program,” he says. “Because it’s not just about offense and defense –or, at least, I don’t think it should be.”
The Faggiano coaching doctrine now dots bookshelves in coaches’ offices across New York state and beyond.
“Whether it’s a college coach or Matt McCoy (’19), who’s the head coach down the road at (Vernon-VeronaSherrill) High School, to watch all these guys take (the handbook) to where they’re coaching now, use it in their programs, and add their own ideas to it is pretty wild.”
Faggiano hears from his former assistants often. In addition, the entire group religiously reunites every year for “Utica Night” at the AFCA Convention, a group that includes members from all corners of football.
There is no brightest star – or strongest branch – among the group, only a fraternity of coaches bonded by a common lineage and philosophy.
“The word’s out there that Utica has great coaches – coaches who know how to teach and develop not just student-athletes, but young coaches too,” Faggiano says. “I couldn’t single anyone out, even if I tried. For example, you’ve got someone like Jared Keyte (’12) who was just named defensive coordinator at UMass, and I’ve got just as much pride in Marcus Gurdineer (’10) who’s a high school head coach down in New Jersey, doing great things and making a positive impact on the lives of young men.
“We talk all the time about, ‘What is success?’ It’s about other people. To think that we’re built this family here – and maybe I’ve had some impact on some other folks – is truly a blessing.”
HONOR ROLL OF DONORS
June 1, 2023 – May 31, 2024
The Honor Roll of Donors highlights the names of those who made a gift to Utica University during the 2023-24 fiscal year beginning June 1, 2023 and ending May 31, 2024. Gifts to the University received after May 31, 2024 will be recognized in the 2024-25 Honor Roll of Donors. Every effort has been made to ensure accuracy and completeness. In the event that an error or omission is found, we sincerely apologize and ask that you contact the Office of Advancement at 315-792-3053 or email advancement@utica.edu so we can correct our records.
PIONEER SOCIETY
The Pioneer Society honors Utica University’s most generous annual donors. The Society recognizes those leadership donors whose commitment and investment in Utica University is critical to the institution’s future. Each year, gifts received from Pioneer Society donors represent more than 80 percent of the University’s total gifts.
Pioneer Society
Chair’s Summit Circle
$20,000 or more
Anonymous
Kenneth Bell ’75 and Anne Veness Bell
Joan Brannick ’54
Robert Brvenik ’77
Larry ’74 and Cora Bull
John Burkholder III ’75 and Diane Burkholder
Anne Burton ’63
Harold Clark Jr. ’65, H’03 and Bernadette Clark
Christopher ’80 and Cynthia Crolius
Ronald ’66 and Sheila Cuccaro
Harry ’71 and Wendy Cynkus
Krista ’82 and Louis DiBerardino
Alan Ellinwood ’68
John Forte ’73*
Heidi Hoeller ’91 and Paul Serbaniewicz*
Peter ’69 and JoAnn Lekki
Daniel and Pamela Meehan*
Elizabeth Meehan
Louis Natale ’59
Jeffrey and Amanda Novotny
Anthony ’72 and Barbara Paolozzi
Mark ’88 and Mary Beth Pilipczuk
James Reagan Jr. ’72
Tricia and Joseph Rutkowski
Gloria Shaheen ’82
Stephen Sloan ’83
Stewart Starer ’66†
Kenneth ’80 and Wendy Taubes
Jeremy ’00 and Carrie Thurston
Pioneer Society
President’s Summit Circle
$10,000 - $19,999
William and Joan Blanchfield
Robert Brandt Jr. and Carole Brandt
Gerard Capraro ’66
Don H’14 and Edna Carbone
Laura and Filippo Casamento
Peter and Suzanne Ciancia
Thomas Cole ’92
Thomas Cox Jr. ’69
Frederick ’70 and Connie Degen
Violet ’73 and J. Chris Eagan
Ronald ’63 and Cecelia ’62 Gouse
Samuel and Nancy Hester
John G’13 and Deborah Johns*
Daniel ’97 and Anne-Marie Jones*
Gregory Jones ’98
Christopher ’61 and Virginia Kelly
George and Pinny Kuckel
Brandon Laidlaw
Albert ’58 and Elinor Mazloom
Linda Romano and Russell Petralia*
James ’70 and Sharon Samuel
Tanner Stewart ’10*
Karen Stonebraker Miga ’80
Paul ’05 and Catherine Ward*
David ’67 and Jayne Wilson
Pioneer Society
Burrstone Circle
$5,000 - $9,999
Joseph ’11 and Barbara Chubbuck
James and Margaret Clifford
William ’68 and Judith Dowling
James DuRoss Jr. and Cynthia DuRoss
Erica Eckman ’08
Christine ’92 and Peter Farley
George Fritz
Hartwell Herring III and
deceased *arranged for matching gift
Paulette Herring
Carol and Robert Keller
Benay Leff ’65
Carol and Steven Mackintosh
Christian Meyer III ’79 and Mary Beth Welle-Meyer ’79
Wester ’76 and Lorraine Miga
Frank Mondi ’62
Risa and Zachary Morrison
Todd Pfannestiel and Aimee Zellers
Kathleen Riley Tehan ’76
Treesa Salter ’88
Michael and Carol Simpson
Katie ’98 and Richard Terry
Charles Teuscher ’84
G. Page West III and Linda West
Ann Wynne ’58
Pioneer Society
Scholars Circle
$2,500 - $4,999
Stephen Alcala ’77 and Donna Braun
Alan Bucholtz ’59
Mikhail Bushinski ’17, G’18
Michael Curran ’22
Geno Decondo
Richard and Bonnie Fenner
Blake ’91 and Cathy Ford
Martin Gleason Jr. and Lenore Gleason
Mary Green
Andrew ’69 and Eileen Guzzetti
Patrice and David Hallock
Janice ’73 and Michael ’73
Huss
Robert ’71 and Cindy Julian
Robert and Tatyana Knight
Barbara Marchilonis ’69 and Clyde Evans
J. Kemper Matt Sr. and Angela
Matt
Glenn Miga
Michael Miller ’00
John ’66 and Patricia ’66
Mulhall
Thomas ’69 and Anne ’77 Nelson
Joseph Pupillo ’04
Solade Rowe ’94 and Chidi
Blyden-Rowe
Laura Salvaggio
John ’71 and Mary Schalk
Pioneer Society
Charter Circle
$1,000 - $2,499
Joan Achen-Brown ’63 and David Brown ’63
Kelly ’00 and Michele ’01
Adams
Jon ’07 and Amanda Ames
Andrew Arcuri ’99 and Gina Arcuri
Benjamin Atwood ’09, G’13 and Cindy Winfield
Francisco Ayala III ’94
Alan Balutis ’67
Gordon Bashant Jr. ’55 and Nancy Bashant
Gregory ’83 and Julie Benincasa
Mark ’85 and Joanne Blood
Holly Boltz ’75 and Daniel Vega
Jacqueline Boulden ’75
Linda ’89 and Les Bramblett
Bryant Buchanan and Sharon Wise
Stacy ’88 and Robert Buckley
Mary Cahalan ’53
John Casellini ’81 and Christine Rutigliano
Dana Christofferson ’14
Richard Coffey
Randolph Collins ’83
Kevin Conway
Shad and Heidi Crowe
Sarah ’89 and James Dam
Ann Damiano
Leila Davis ’89
Benjamin De Iorio ’62 and Donald Daniels ’61
Rory ’77 and Vanessa ’79
DeJohn
Michael Delia Jr. ’20
Kyo ’98, G’03 and Erik Dolan
Sharon Douglass ’68
Siobhan Dugan ’79
Greg and Denyse Evans
Michael Evolo Jr. ’90 and Melissa Hobika Evolo*
Anthony and Katherine Farrington
Anthony Fus Jr. ’04, G’06, G’11
Mark Gauger ’78
Lawrence Grasso ’77 and Cindy Moeckel
Warren Graves
Anna Green ’73 and George Stairs
Lisa Green G’16 and Donald Green II
Douglas Gross ’65
Mary Hayes Gordon ’82, G’13 and Dean Gordon
Christopher Healy
Gary G’05 and Jodi Heenan
Kathy Hendel
Sarah Hinman ’77
Stephen Hoffman ’70 and Mimi Santos-Hoffman
Brian ’75 and Susan Hughes
Todd and Nancy Hutton
Stanley ’67 and Phyllis Ann Jachimowski
Anthony ’50 and Ann Jadhon
Richard ’67 and Sally ’68
Jarvis
Barbara Jordan ’75
Eric Kahl ’10, G’13
Ronald ’71 and Darlene Kaminski
Harry ’73 and Melissa Keel
Kevin Kennedy ’82
Richard Kennedy ’97
J. Eric King ’65 and Kathlene Thiel
Barbara Knauf and Arthur Knauf Jr.
Jean-Marie ’78 and Richard Kneeley
Mark Kovacs
John Kuhlmann ’72
Dennis ’13, G’15 and Heather ’12 Labossiere*
David ’76 and Martha ’77
Lamb
Michael Levine ’05, G’12
Sylvia ’79 and David Liebers
Amy Lindner and Michael Failing
Arlene Lundquist
Lori Lupini
Kelly Maharaj ’07
Brian Marcantonio Jr. ’10
Anthony G’04 and Janice
ONEIDA SQUARE SOCIETY
Martino
Nicholas and Susan Matt
Anne Mercurio Dunn ’65
Jennifer Miller ’07 and Patrick Buchinski ’08
Mark Miller
Carol Montana
Robert ’73 and Lynn Montesano
Stephanie Nesbitt and Liana Prosonic G’17
Rachel Netzband ’63
Frank Notarianni ’67
Adalgisa Nucci ’67
Peter ’90 and Colleen O’Connor
John ’81 and Kathleen ’83 O’Donnell
Michael Pandolfo ’78
Rose Patterson ’87
Todd ’94 and Sally Prouty
Curtis and Joni Pulliam
Doris Rice ’68
Ann ’87 and Danny Roman
Setsuko Rosen ’87
John Rowe
Barry ’70 and Patricia Ryan
John Sammon III
Ashlea and Cory Schad
Kristian Schlottner ’01
Michael Scialdone ’99
Anthony Shaheen ’57
David Shanton ’80
Robert ’74 and Veronica Sherman
Norman and Ann Siegel
Kevin Smith ’73
John ’95 and Renee Snyder
Andrew Steiner ’92
John ’66 and Madeline Stephenson
Kyle Strife ’08*
Ann Marie Teitelbaum
Cassella ’92
Vincent Tessitore
Eric Threadgill ’08
DeForest ’62 and Arlene ’63 Tinkler
Tracy Tolles-Rueckert ’90 and Donald Rueckert
Michael and Ellen Valenti
Kenneth ’08 and Noel Visalli
Jeremy Welsh ’01
Melissa ’92 and Richard ’93
Whitney
Thomas Woodburn ’15, G’17
John ’68 and Patricia ’68 Zalatan
Ralph Zegarelli ’70 and Lucille Nickerson
Gerard ’71 and Carolyn Ziehm
John Zografos ’77
Susan Zullo ’88
Jaime Zusman ’65
The Oneida Square Society honors the visionary leadership of those donors whose lifetime giving to Utica University totals $100,000 or more. Their generous gifts helped build Utica University and lay the foundation for its future.
Genesee Street - $5,000,000 or more
Harold T. Clark Jr. ’65
F. Eugene Romano†
Plant Street - $1,000,000-$4,999,999
Anonymous
Bob Brvenik ’77
Larry ’74 and Corky Bull
Community Foundation of Herkimer and Oneida Counties
John A. ’57† and Valerie Donohue
The Hayner Hoyt Corporation
Gary Thurston ’68 and Jeremy Thurston ’00
Lotis R. Howland Trust
Thomas J. ’65 and Virginia Rossiter
Dr. Albert ’49† and Gloria ’82 Shaheen
Estate of Francis A. Wilcox
Hart Street - $500,000-$999,999
Adirondack Bank
George I. Alden Trust
ARAMARK
Donald G. ’71† and Bernice F. ’72† Benson
Thomas J. Jr. ’49† and Marion D. Cahill† The Carbone Family
Ellen Knower Clarke Charitable Trust
Harry J. Cynkus ’71
Edward W. ’50† and Jean M. Duffy†
Jim & Cynthia DuRoss
Charles A† and Connie† Gaetano
Estate of Dr. Jean Halladay ’53
Estate of Ruby Rogers di Iorio
Christopher ’61 and Virginia Kelly
Albert S. Mazloom ’58
Lucy McLean Trust
John ’61† and Betty Meehan
John F. Millett ’52, DDS† and Margaret A. Millett†
Estate of Professor Wayne N. Palmer
Gerald Starer ’65† and Dr. Stewart H. Starer ’66
Francis Street - $250,000-$499,999
Adirondack Financial Services Corporation
Eugene† and Connie† Corasanti
John ’66 and Ann Costello
Ronald ’66 and Sheila Cuccaro
Fred L. Emerson Foundation
† deceased *arranged for matching gift
Estate of Joseph P. Furgal ’50
Frank E. Gannett Foundation
Sam & Nancy Hester
Andrew ’84 and Mary Hislop
Estate of Peter Kucherenko and Eugenia Kucherenko
Gary Kunath ’79
LexisNexis
Mac-Clark Restaurants
Theodore E. Martin ’61 Mele Foundation
Christian W. Meyer III ’79 and Mary Beth Welle-Meyer ’79
James ’59† and Katherine Pyne
John F. and Jacqueline C. ’11, G’13 Romano
Linda Romano and Russell Petralia
John and Deanna ’62
Sammon
SBU Bank
Sodexo
Estate of Lt. Col. Edna Stappenbeck ’51
Kenneth J. ’80 and Wendy R. Taubes
Philip ’70 and Barbara ’69 Taurisano
Howard J. Terrillion ’58
Dr. Esat Toksu
Walter W. ’61† and Nancy† Williams
Estate of Gladys W. Young
State Street - $100,000$249,999
Anonymous
Albert† and Nata M. Augustyn
Bank of Utica
BBL Charitable Foundation,
ALUMNI DONORS
Jacqueline Hanifin
Anthony Jadhon 1951
Robert Knapp
John McEvoy
Vincent DeIorio
Inc.
Ken Bell ’75 and Anne Veness Bell
Nancy E. Blake ’55
The Honorable Sherwood L. Boehlert ’61†
Robert Brandt Jr. and Carole Brandt P’07
Dr. Leo J. ’54† and Joan F. ’54
Brannick
John Burkholder III ’75 & Diane Burkholder
Anne Burton ’63
The Gilbert and Ildiko Butler
Family Foundation
Judge Richard† and Catherine
Clarke† Cardamone
Filippo Casamento and Dr. Laura Casamento P’10 and P’13
John Casellini ’81 and Christine Rutigliano
Thomas J. Cole ’92
Thomas F. Cox Jr. ’69
Professor Virgil C.† and Martha† Crisafulli
Steven M. Critelli ’72
Christopher ’80 & Cynthia Crolius
David F. D’Alessandro ’72
Frederick C. Degen ’70
Krista ’82 & Louis DiBerardino Jr.
Ronald H. ’61 and May C. ’60† Duff
Professor Allyn R. Earl ’62
Estate of Suzanne J. Finegan ’74
First Source Federal Credit Union
Marianne and Peter Gaige
Gilroy Kernan and Gilroy Inc.
Larry and Elizabeth Gilroy
Arthur J. Golder ’50†
Isaac Gordon†
Ronald ’63 and Cecelia ’62
Gouse
Friends of Dr. Michelle E. Haddad ’81† Dental Seminar
The William Randolph Hearst Foundation
Dr. Hartwell C. Herring III and Paulette Herring
Sam and Nancy Hester
Heidi Hoeller ’91 and Paul Serbaniewicz
Dr. Todd and Jennifer Hutton
John Ronald G’13 & Deborah Johns
Daniel B. ’97 and Anne-Marie Jones
Estate of Mary S. Kramer ’88
David Lamb ’76 and Martha Sutton Lamb ’77
Estate of Doris ’52 and William Lynch
Sally ’61† and Donald† Majka
Estate of Elvira Marotta
Professor Doris W.† and Walter E.† Miga
Wesley Miga ’80† and Karen Stonebraker Miga ’80
Wester ’76 and Lorraine Miga
Louis Natale ’59
Fredericka Paine
Anthony C. ’72 and Barbara Paolozzi
Dr. William F. Pfeiffer Jr.† and Margaret M. Pfeiffer ’89†
Mark ’88 and Mary Beth Pilipczuk
P.J. Green, Inc.
Mary Cahalan
Joan Brannick
Marvin Sitrin†
Mitchell Amado Jr.
Gordon Bashant Jr.
Nancy Blake
† deceased *arranged for matching gift
Adrian Briggs
Donald Brown
Frank Chambrone
Senatro Iuorno
Katherine Shannon 1956
Anthony Fabbio
Robert May
Felix Rotundo 1957
John R. Pyle Jr. ’50†
Dr. James H. Reagan Jr. ’72 and Garnet Reagan
James E. Reid ’73, Linda P. Reid and Griffin A. Reid ’07
The Retirement Research Foundation
Estate of Esther Reynolds
Jeffrey B. Senft ’76†
Dr. Michael & Reverend Carol Simpson
Stephen R. ’83 and Erika Sloan/S.R. Sloan
Slocum-Dickson Foundation, Inc.
DJ Smith Family Foundation
Estate of Dr. Vincent A. Solomon ’60
Charles ’61† and Gretchen Sprock
Estate of Bernard W. Sullivan Jr. ’61
Estate of Wilson H. Tyler ’69
Upmobility Foundation, Inc.
Utica First Insurance Company
Utica National Insurance Group and Foundation
Hans and Laura Wang
David J. Wilson ’67
Women’s Christian Association of Utica
George ’55† and Ann ’58
Wynne
Ronald and Helena Youngs Charitable Remainder Unitrust
Dr. Donald K.† and Doris Zellner†
Allen Berger
David Bersch
John Dinneen
Leo Kupiec
Anthony Shaheen
Stanley Walerski†
1958
James Boehlert
Malio Cardarelli
Thomas Della Posta
Lorraine Fava
Frank LaPuma Sr.
Albert Mazloom
Alvin Rickman
Florio Vitullo
Ann Wynne
1959
Alan Bucholtz
Timothy Coakley
Mark Morchower
Louis Natale
Maryann Nunnally
John Panarites
Arthur Sitrin
Ronald Varley
1960
Anthony Feduccia
William Gale
Walter Kunz
Judith Long
Roger Parish
James Vallee Jr.
1961
Howard Bushinger
William Bushnell
Donald Daniels
Grace Dreidel
Ronald Duff
Anthony Garramone
Christopher Kelly
Richard Kennedy
Donna Merryman
John Moore
Richard Thomas
1962
Nancy Aiello
Frederick Carville
John Cleary
John Crossley
Benjamin De Iorio
Gary Gildersleeve
Cecelia Gouse
Malcolm Hughes
John McNeil
Frank Mondi
DeForest Tinkler
Edmund Waszkiewicz
1963
Jerry Amoroso
Rae Battle
David Brown and Joan AchenBrown
Anne Burton
Barbara Clay
Naz Fiore
George Frank Jr.
Ronald Gouse
Frances Hunter
Rachel Netzband
John Pinto
Maureen Scarafile
Arlene Tinkler
1964
Ann Anderson
Vincent Cicconi
Charles Daniels
Regina Galer
Helen Galime
Judith Gorman
Suzanne Harrington
John Haverlick
Carol and Kenneth Hawks
Rosa Hosp
Patricia Jenkins
Dominick Mattia Sr.
Pauline Rogers
Susan Slachta
Donald Starr
David and Lois Sumberg
James Walter
1965
Stuart Barrett
Harold Clark Jr. H’03
Robert DePiazza
Marta Donohue
David Greene
Douglas Gross
Angelo Izzo
J. Eric King
Benay Leff
Anne Mercurio Dunn
Caroline Polito
Nancy Szymczak
Jaime Zusman
1966
Gerard Capraro
Michael Coyle
Vincent Coyne
Ronald Cuccaro
Francis Delaney Jr.
William Evans III
Salvatore Falcone
Barbara Freeman
Robert Hubbell
Nicholas Kelly
Paul LaBella
John and Patricia Mulhall
Dorene Oberman Pizer
Lawrence Pasek
Francis Perretta
Anthony Perrone
Phyllis Petrillo
Robert Polce
Stewart Starer†
John Stephenson
Daniel Ventimiglia
1967
Kenneth Arnold
Alan Balutis
Joseph Bechtold
William Britt
Nelson Carpenter
Herbert Dorn
William Grove
Stanley Jachimowski
Richard Jarvis
Janet Kolwaite
James Leach
Terrence Lisbeth
Richard Miller
James Mumford
Frank Notarianni
Adalgisa Nucci
Gary Olivella
Catherine Patterman
Frederick Scherer
Vincenza Silverman
Barry Webb
David Wilson
1968
Patrick Bastow
Patrick Bellegarde Smith
Roberta Bonafield
Steven Callahan
Judson Davis
Sharon Douglass
William Dowling
Alan Ellinwood
Terry Fike
Anthony Grimm II
Joseph Hamoy
Joseph Hovish
Sally Jarvis
Joan Koury
Salvatore Pristera
Barbara Queirolo
Doris Rice
Michael Roswig
Donna Schebel
James Smith
Chet Wilk
John and Patricia Zalatan
1969
William Blackman
John Booth
Michele Boyer
Angela and Thomas Chmielenski
Thomas Cox Jr.
Sue Davis
David Gibson
Diane Green
Andrew Guzzetti
Thomas Hansen
Daniel Hayes
James Hickey
Gene Ann Hoffman
Michael Kane Jr.
Frank Kozusko Jr.
Peter Lekki
Kenneth Lerch
Barbara Marchilonis
Thomas Nelson
Mary Lou Pristera
Patricia Quinn
Robert Rasnick
Ronald Ribyat
Patricia Ruffalo
James Silverman
Jane Sipila
Mark Stein
James Sullivan
David Suuronen
Imogene Zoller
1970
Francine Abdoo and George Abdoo Jr.
Patricia Bogan
Janice Burke
Alan Catlin
Kathleen Custodero
Frederick Degen
Patricia DeMatteo
William Dennison
Charles Dougherty
Michael Dyer
Marcia Emmerich
Donna Falzarine
Barry Grabow
Devlin Gualtieri
Stephen Hoffman
Thomas House
Richard Janowitz
David Ketchiff
Thomas Kinney
Kathy Lindsley
Nancy Mandry
Burrett McBee Jr.
Brenda McPherson
Robert Miller
John Nitchie
James Pugliese
Joseph Rugari
Barry Ryan
James Samuel
Steven Slachta
Jeffrey Sweet
Linda Truax
Ralph Zegarelli
1971
Michael Adey
Joseph Ayoub Jr.
Ronald Cilensek
Gordon Custodero
Harry Cynkus
Gregory Donohue
John Gallicchio
Gene Goundrey
Anne Gualtieri
Rod Gualtieri
Sharon Gulla
Anthony Joseph Jr.
Robert Julian
Ronald Kaminski
David Navin
Mary Philp
Lawrence Piper
Eugene Quadraro Jr.
John Schalk
Nadine Thomas
Edward Wallace
Gerard Ziehm
1972
Michael Adamczyk
Thomas Bertlesman
John Bliss
David Bonacci
Alan Caminiti
Martin Carlson
James Cook
Sherry Cooperman
Lark Eshleman
Daniel Failing
Steven Greenberg
Linda Griffin
Martha Hanson
Pamela Hodge
James Kenny
John Kuhlmann
Gordon Mappes
David Mathis
Karen Ann Mazza
Anthony Paolozzi
Jan Radlowski
James Reagan Jr.
Lucille Ricci
Andrea Rounds
Linda Sakon
Robert Warwick
John Winslow
1973
Ann and Thomas Berry
Brian Bradley
Leonard Bryant
Mark Cacozza
Joseph Calabrese
Rocco Carzo
Kenneth Circelli
Frederick Conte
Violet Eagan
John Forte*
Joan Friedenberg
Richard Fuller
Cliff Glaviano
Anna Green
Charles Holmberg
Janice and Michael Huss
Harry Keel
Carl Klossner
Joan Klossner*
Thomas Krol
Joseph Militello
Nicholas Montesano
Robert Montesano
Edward Pfendler
Eileen Rehm
Dwayne Robinson
Margaret Rowe
Kevin Smith
Joanne Sudakow
David Thurmond
Debra Welpe
Robert Wineburg
1974
Thomas Atkinson
Michael Betrus
Christine Blossom
Larry Bull
Timothy Connors
George Crandall
William Grammaticas
David Hambruch
Patrick Helbach
Leo Joncas
Theresa Mack
Constance McConnell
William Millar
Diane Nobles†
Anthony Prumo
William Randall
Neil Reich
Kenneth Relyea
Robert Sherman
Joseph Tesoriere
Susan Warwick
Wayne Welpe
1975
Lorraine Barringer
Kenneth Bell
Paul Bianchi
Richard Block
Holly Boltz
Jacqueline Boulden
John Burkholder III
Margaret Capalupo
Thomas Davis
Douglas Garren
Raymond Hagan
Judy Hambruch
Brian Hughes
Barbara Jordan
Gary LaBella and Jeanne Wickline LaBella
Robert Lalli
Kim Landon
William Lee
Edward Maziarz
Janet McCauley
Grace McNasser
Philip Mondou
Kathryn Montesano
James Moore
Edward Naidamast
Aosta and Frank Nasutowicz
David Nobles
E. Daniel Powers
Angelo Reina
† deceased *arranged for matching gift
Alfred Rocci
Susan Stone-Groppe
Mark Techmanski
Annette Zarelli-Parsons
1976
Albert Allen III
Anna Arnette and Linwood
Arnette Jr.
Janet Bennett
Alissa Bogorad
John Briggs
Frank Gillette
Anne Ichihana
David Lamb
Carol Lavelle
Scott Liebman
Wester Miga
John Otfinoski
Kathleen Riley Tehan
Stuart Rounds
Carol and Dirk Sonneborn
Jeffrey Weiss
1977
Stephen Alcala
Robert Autrey
Gail Belden-Harrington
Theresa Brush†
Robert Brvenik
Rory DeJohn
Nancy DePaolo Pattarini
Lawrence Grasso
David Harrington
Sarah Hinman
Lucretia Hunt
Martha Lamb
Lorraine Martin
Frank Maurizio Jr.
Kevin McKeown
Matt Murell
Anne Nelson
Kevin O’Rourke
Timothy Perry
Patrick Putrello
Bella Reich
David Roberts
Pamela Seymour
Nina Ven
Kirby Wilson
Joseph Zlomek
John Zografos
1978
Janine Carzo
Robert Clemente
Roberta Federici
Constance Gachowski
Mark Gauger
Joseph Giannotti
Leslie Goldberg
Elizabeth Gray-Nix
George Grisham Jr.
Suzanne Helbach
Jean-Marie Kneeley
Michael Pandolfo
Kathleen Potter
Kim Predgen
Thomas Sweeney
Gail Welch*
Jill Ziemann Bergmann
Robert Zuccaro Jr.
Henry Zucker
1979
Peter Brody
Vanessa DeJohn
Siobhan Dugan
Donald Gregory
Jerry Jadlowski
Jeffrey Johnson
Sylvia Liebers
Janice Maurizio
Christian Meyer III and Mary Beth Welle-Meyer
Paula Mrzlikar
Beth and Richard O’Donnell
Sharon Ruberti
Mark Salsbury
Alan Smith
Tina Steen
Rosemary Stickles
Marlene Urtz
1980
Robert Blake Jr.
John Caher
Audrey Copperwheat
Michael Corasanti
Christopher Crolius
Cheryl Doyle
Mark Hobaica
Philip Klossner
Susan Knox
Peggy Lounsbury
Louise and Timothy McGowan
Judith Owens-Manley
David Shanton
Karen Stonebraker Miga
Kenneth Taubes
April Tiffany
David Waples
Marjorie Ziegler
1981
Barbara Brusehaber McMurray
John Casellini
Michael Doyle
Nannette Dusseault
Joanna Jiampietro
John O’Donnell
Timothy Roye
Ronald Rudolph*
Dianne Schwarz
Thomas Warren
1982
Karen Bestwick Bricker
Gwen Connors
Andrea Decker
Naomi Dee
Krista DiBerardino
Jamie Ferguson
Mary Hayes Gordon G’13
Kevin Kennedy
Tracy Lach
Stephen Maslen
Lisa Olsen
Wayne Pater
Gloria Shaheen
Joseph Spadafora
Lawrence Stone
Kurt Thompson
1983
David Armon
Gregory Benincasa
Melody Blake
Linda Bowen
Patrice Canady
Marina Cecchini
Daniel Chmielewski Jr. and Dawn Chmielewski
Randolph Collins
George Ellmers
Daniel Hess
Russell Hewitt
Bethann Kistner
Nicholas Mayhew
Kathleen O’Donnell
Luisa Satterly
Stephen Sloan
Sabra Williams
1984
Dolores Boehlert
Janice Caprio*
Cherylann DeLaurentis
James Duffy
Ava Foster
Thomas Green
Alexander Jess
Lynetta Lipsey-Hughes
Philip Mazzatti
Jay Rich
Charles Teuscher
Teresa Wojnas
Joan Wyckoff
1985
Mark Blood
Paula Carey
Rose Carpenter
Adelaide Foresti
Elizabeth Gillespie-Kehoe
Jennifer Leary
Sharon Lyke
Lorie McClory
Mariann Munson and Robert Munson II
Carol Soja
Roxana Spano
Lynne Wadsworth
Douglas Wynne
1986
Jeanette Bonfiglio
Charles Cerny
Kevin Kasky
Nora Mammen
Barbara Trevvett
Janis Winn
1987
Mary Cimbalo
Evelyn Fazekas
Kathleen Gatzendorfer
Alan Higgins
James Humphrey
Michael Joseph
Wendy Lockwood
Eileen Navagh
Rose Patterson
Michael Rodzinka
Ann Roman
Setsuko Rosen
Lucy Rotundo
Lisa Ruyack
Louis Shkane
Michael Trunfio Jr.
1988
Aliceann Beer
Lavelle Bennett
Stacy Buckley
Brenda Coyne Waters
David Kozyra
Lisa Longeretta
Louis Maida
David Martin
Lisa McCarthy Dennis
David Miller
Mark Pilipczuk
Treesa Salter
Susan Zullo
1989
Sharon Bielby
Linda Bramblett
Addison Cunningham Sr.
Sarah Dam
Leila Davis
David Fontaine
Annmarie Kinsella
Linda Lamach
Denise Leary
Janet Leigh
Kim Raga
John Stock
Kevin Wade
Dale Wagner
Kimberly Wilkins
1990
Joanne Croop
Michael Evolo Jr.*
Michael Garguilo
Deborah Kessler
Pamela Klein
James Kozak
John Longeretta
Lisa Miller
John Murray Jr.
Kristi Noyes
Peter O’Connor
Joseph Perry
Richard Pratt
Tracy Tolles-Rueckert
1991
Anthony Baird
John Barbieri
Rebecca Burmaster
Bradley Buyce
Karen Crawford
Yvonne Dennis
Blake Ford
John Hobika Jr.*
Heidi Hoeller*
David Kelly
John Martello
Michael Mirras
Jeffrey Pinard
Kevin Rasha
Ralph Rimando Jr.
1992
Paige Barese Labelle
Elizabeth Bernabe
Julie Betro Shkane
Thomas Cole
Robert Conrad
Lisa Crowley
Andrew Duppert
Christine Farley
Annemarie Garramone
Annette Gleason
Karen Hook
Heather Meaney
Katherine Snyder
Andrew Steiner
Ann Marie Teitelbaum Cassella
Melissa Whitney
1993
Kristin Bassett
David Byrd
Albert Fini Jr.
William Girvan
Beth Lanza
Robert Mina
William Prior
Richard Racioppa
Anthony and Leanne Rorick
Maryanne Seguro
Kathleen Smith G’09
Everett Stalker
Harold Stalker
Christine Stanavich
Anthony Sullivan
Stephan Venet
Richard Whitney
Jennifer Woodman
Michael Yelle
1994
Francisco Ayala III
Elizabeth Blanchard
Pamela Bongiorno
Alexia Conrad
Matthew DiCaprio
Aimee Fini
Bernard Hyman Jr.
Alfredo Medina Jr.
Gina Pearce
Todd Prouty
Solade Rowe
David Smith
Ann Tabrizi
1995
Jocelyn Brandt*
Katherine Bufano
Leigh Levatino
Judith Manuel
Lorraine Panella
Melissa Racioppa G’16
Kimberly Richardson
Joseph Sallustio III
John Snyder
Courtney Souvenir and Ericka Tate-Souvenir
Sukeena Stephens
Nichole Towers
1996
Julie Bush G’11
Thomas Dosch Jr.
David Palmer
Vicki Wilson
1997
Brian Gabriel
Daniel Jones*
Richard Kennedy
Marcia Knapp
Erin Marinelli
Janice Rabbia
Jason Rosenberg
Kerry Sullivan G’04
1998
Jeffrey Baldwin
Amy Chiapperini
Laura DeStefanis
Kyo Dolan G’03
Scott Goodrich
Gregory Jones
Lauren Mattia
Brady Nemeyer
Andrew Siuta
for matching gift
Mary Snyder Radel
Stephen Surace
Katie Terry
1999
Maria Araujo
Andrew Arcuri
Eryn Balch
Christopher Bandura
Mary Christopher
Jeremy Earl G’13
Jill Goodrich
Amy Haver
Tyson Lowry
Eric Mosca*
Jessica Nelson
Valerie O’Reilly
David Proper
David Schilling G’06 and Lisa Schilling
Michael Scialdone
Polly Smith
Michael Wittman
2000
Kelly Adams
David Baker
Ericka Bennett
John Harmon Jr.
Mariah Kane
Michael Miller
Robin Robinson
Jeremy Thurston
Jason Whiteman
2001
Michele Adams
Alicia Crandall
Michael Duignan
Scott Getz
Robert Jones G’01
Joanne Lein
Terrence Li
Kristian Schlottner
Michael Stone
Jeremy Welsh
2002
Patrick MacDonald
Robert Masterman G’04
Roy Miller Jr.
Candice Ossowski
Kristin Phelps
Matthew VanWaes G’13
2003
Scott Bushinger
Michael Clapsadl G’12
Lawrence Cracchiolo Jr.
Douglas Croft
Lisa Derfinyak
Mark Fredericks
Stephen Geng
Philip McGrath
John Sallustio
Courtney Spatto
Cicily Talerico
Michael Vaccaro
Gregory G’06 and Katharine Williamson
2004
Malinda Abraham
Brian Bansner
Megan Cracchiolo
Edwin Cuebas G’04
Kathyanne Davis
Anthony Fus Jr. G’06, G’11
Renee Gamela
Brandy Gray G’10
Anthony Martino G’04
Ryan Palmer
Ciara Parrish G’23
Joseph Pupillo
Frank Robertello Jr.
Benjamin Schoen G’08
Sinda Tomy
Jeffery Whalley
2005
Julian Alteri
Brian Barnfield
Molly Bonnell
Gary Heenan G’05
Jay Laing
Michael Levine G’12
Scott Leygraff
Jenny Lounsbury
Ronald Mexico G’17
Jacob Miskovic
Jeffrey Mohney
Michael Owens
Michael Pelletier G’05
Amy Potrzeba-Macrina
Kristen Schoen G’09
Bethany Trout
Paul Ward*
2006
Melissa Deeley
Sara Furlong
Shanelle Gabriel
Joshua Gans
Thomas Krol G’06
Melissa Lomanto
Matthew Miles
William Pluff G’11
Neil Trout
Corinn Zalewski
2007
Julia Alteri
Jon Ames
Robert Byrnes G’07
Rachel Daughtry
Jessica Houle
† deceased *arranged for matching gift
Kevin Krogol
Kelly Maharaj
Shauna Malta G’07
Craig Martel
Denise McVay G’07
Jennifer Miller
Ahmed Radwan G’07, G’19
Michael Sanchez
Jan Simpson G’07
Ashley Thompson
Dominic Tripp
2008
Patrick Buchinski
Janette Castro
Keshia Clukey
Matthew Cole
Patrick Cooney
Lauren D’Antonio G’10
Adam Dekker G’19 and Kathryn Rossi
Erica Eckman
Brittany Foreman
Megan Hyman
Brittany Johnson G’10
Katelyn Marks
Nadia Mohamed G’08
Lazarus Morgan ’14
Marc Neff
Sarah Richards Rossi G’12
Vincent Rinaldi III
Kyle Strife*
Eric Threadgill
Carrie Tinker G’13
Kenneth Visalli
Courtney Witherspoon
Janet Woods
2009
Benjamin Atwood G’13
Michael Atwood
Ashley Cobb
Andrea Coluccio
Leslie Corbo G’12
Brian Gleitsmann G’19
Jacqueline Higgins Guzman
Megan Krol G’09
Kourtney Kupiec G’13
Rinae Olsen
Diana Piekielniak
Amanda Saravia-Butler
Thomas Schneider
Suzanne Shepard G’11
Valerie Smith
Jennifer Waters G’17
2010
Monica Bravo G’13
Megan Clapsadl G’15
Rebecca Guthrie
Eric Kahl G’13
Jacqueline Klotzbach
Brian Marcantonio Jr.
Casey and Kaitlyn McNulty
Vincent Nucci
AnnaMaria Omilanowicz
Kelly Regan
Tanner Stewart*
Kurt Zimmermann G’12
2011
Sydney Bell
Adam Bittel G’13
Daniel Bittel G’13
Andrew Buell
Joseph Chubbuck
Michele Davis G’11
Claire Farszmil
Joshua Frederick
Joseph Geniti Jr.
Irakadeem Griffith
Jessica Hannah G’16
Anthony Just G’11
Kera Lindsey
John Massoud G’11
Anthony O’Hagan
Sean Phelan G’13
Joanne Pluff G’17
Keino Purcell
Judeanne Rockford G’11
Jacqueline Stevenson G’13
Samantha Testa
2012
Elyssa Arnone-Earl G’12
Greg Caloia G’22
Luke Centore
Jacob Crawford G’14
Audrey Cross
Michael Crowley G’12
Andrew Fisher
Jeremiah Gillette G’16
Stephen Karboski
Mike Krajacic III
Heather Labossiere
Rosemary McGuire G’12
Carmen Mercado G’12
Seth Mitchell
Amber Recio
Maria Santucci
Daniel Shanley II G’18
Laurel Simer
Amanda Sulicz
Dennis Timmons
2013
Bernard Antwi
Trisha Barone
Andrew Benkwitt Jr.
Raymond Biggs
Justin Edelstein
Gina Educate
Meghan Fiore
Catherine Geniti
Maxim Gorbachevsky G’13, ’17
John Johns G’13*
Dennis Labossiere G’15*
Michael Palmisano
Carmelita Shanley
Paul Smith
Allen Stalker
Kyle Taft G’15
Gabriel Udensi
Jennifer Urbanke G’17
Zachary Zaborek
Steven Zappia G’14
2014
Tracy Balduzzi G’14
Dana Christofferson
Jerrod Clowes
Megan Dean G’23
Meghan Dodard
Rebecca Edwards
Shanell Finney
Jessica Franklin
Joseph Giametta
Bryan Habick
Susan Hall G’14
Jordan Hobaica
Alexandria Jennings G’17
Sean Jones G’18
Samantha Lasker G’15
Louis Malvasi
Brittnee Mexico G’14
Robert Morton
Jennifer Musch
Jennifer Rogaski
Polimarta Rubenstein G’14
Michael Slowikowski
Nicholas Therrien
John Verra G’17
Joshua and Meghan Visalli
2015
Danielle Alpi G’17
Sean Behan G’18
Adriana Benkwitt G’17
Paula Bochniak G’17
Kevin Butler Jr.
Angela Charles G’17
Marian Deacutis G’15
Fredrick Del Genio Jr.
Stephen Dowd
Louis Educate
Courtney Fitzgerald
Benjamin Hobaica
Nicole Hobaica G’21
Karolina Holl G’15, G’18
Zachary Hunnewell
Lauryn Moore G’15
Frances Ngo G’15
Francesca Orsomarso
Yngrid Perez-Torrens G’15
James Richards G’17
Joseph and Patricia Schoen
Zachary Stevenson
Christy Traglia G’17
Thomas Woodburn G’17
Nouran Zohdy G’15
2016
Michael Boehlert
Samuel Catterson G’16
Tori Couture G’18
Donna Dolansky G’16
Vincent Ferrone
Jonathan Fiore
Lisa Green G’16
Zachary Handy
Spencer Lasker
Taylor Lukins
Mary Marafino G’20
Nirla Merantus G’16
Jeffrey Pierce
Jessica Schumann G’19
Cale Siver G’17
Kristin St. Hilaire G’16
Ryan Stalker
Nicholas Surprenant
Shawntay Thompson G’16
Adam Tomblin
Joel Wetmore
Michael Zegarelli
2017
Kevin Balduzzi G’17
Tewasherake Barnes G’21
Nicole Bartolomie-Nucci
Zachary Bruening G’17, G’19
Mikhail Bushinski G’18
Jess Christopher Daet G’17
Ma. Elaine Dela Cruz G’17
Francesca Dunlevy G’17
Rafael Escoto Roa G’17
Teodoro Garcia G’17
Owen Gillam G’19
Merle Guerrero G’17
George Herrera G’17
Alexander Hodkinson
Ryan Jordan
Matthew Malunat
Jennifer Moronez
Bryce Patterson G’20
Liana Prosonic G’17
Parker Smith
Steven Urbanke G’20
Jason VanBenschoten
Felicitas Wilson G’17
2018
Roman Ammirato
Brian Attas Jr.
Tovakesha Barnard G’18
Cassidy Brown
Sabrina Busold G’22
Dalton Carter
Ann Ciancia G’21
Austyn Diller
Sarah Galea
Kevin Garrison G’18
Raymond Gayla G’18
Karen Hansen
Amanda Henderson
Kyle Lajeunesse
Amanda Lupo G’20
Brooke Miller
Gina Musolino G’18
Kenan Nadarevic
Harold Nodler G’18
Jenifer Oevering
John Oevering G’20, G’22
Rebecca Plunkett
Asia Marie Rosa G’20
Katrina Scalzo G’21
Shweta Singh G’18
Juan Sokiri
Samantha Sotherden G’18
Vincent Stefan
Vincent Sto Tomas G’18
Brett Szajner
Margaret Tabone
Alaina Tripp
Kevin Valenti
Kaleigh Verra
2019
Christopher Ed Agasang G’19
Nicholas Ashton G’21
Parth Bagul
Daniel Block
Charles Burmaster
Daniel Busold G’22
Steven Calidonna
Natalie Christensen
Cat Contillo
Cody Cowles
Renee DeResh G’22
Justin Derlago
Craig DiSanto
Patrick Gagan
Nicole Gallup
Allison Harper
Deidre Jenkins G’19
Mona Kazour G’19
Shawn Lynch
Emily Martingano
Rylee Meelan G’21
Heidy Mendez G’19
Mark Mitchell
Joshua Moeckel
Maria Orsino
Kaitlyn Phillips
Holly Ricketts
Andrew Ruyack
Jonathan Schermerhorn
Ana Scott
Joseph Serrano G’19
Tatiana Sievers
Jared Smaldon G’22
Jessica Steinhilber
Malcolm Stowe
Lyndsey Surprenant G’20
Tyler Sutton G’20
Luke Tantillo
Madison Tetens
Andrew Wells G’21
Xyier Woodard G’20
Kristiann Wratten
2020
Jacqueline Aronin
Soumia Baroudi G’20
Matthew Beljan
Brealle Brown
Wendi Brown G’20
David Cooney
Michael Delia Jr.
Stephen Dwyer
Sadie Evans
Jarrod Fitzpatrick
Briannah Florian
Michael Foresti
Patricia Gortman
Daniela Hannah
Sammy King
Johnathan Marvin
Courtney Metacarpa
Marcus Palmer G’20
Elizabeth Pavlov-Jones G’20
Trevor Pletl G’21
Akemi Reyes G’22
Michael Roberts G’22
Judith Rojas G’20, G’21
Seth Schreifels
Tiffany Simmons
Hali Vandermeulen
Alexander Velazquez
James Vienneau
Jaron Wallace
2021
Kwasi Addo-Baffour Jr.
Jamie Bucell
Zackery Caporale
Shayna Held G’21
Amber Jenkins
Brigid Johndrow G’23
Holly Lawrence G’21
Michael Meade
Chantelle Murray
Joseph Quinn
Kyle Riecker
Jack Serrano
Jared Stanley
Mercedes Steele
Dale Wagner
2022
Justin Allen
Keely Alsheimer
John Avery
Joshua Bennett
Dorentina Binaku G’23
Tabo Bo
Mackenzie Caloia G’22
Thomas Caputo
Brooke Catlin G’23
Regen Cavanagh
Megan Chamberlain
Caroline Clowes G’22
Michael Curran
Claire Frier
Addison Green
Jason Houn
† deceased *arranged for matching gift
Shaine Hubert
Emily Joss
Thao Lam
Ann McGowan G’22
Jack O’Shaughnessy
Donovan Ott
Kevin Parisi
Kaitlyn Paul
Brooke Riscica
Joshua Scholten
Sydney Sheldon
Anna Tommasone
Jimmie Warren
Joshua Waszkiewicz
Sean Weaver
Meiping Zheng G’22
2023
Khristian Acosta
Kate Anderson
Erin Bruttomesso
Katelyn Calkins
Brichee Carmon
Jordyn Conte
Reed Corcoran
James Daniele
Samantha DeCondo
Selma Dizdarevic
Anthony Fasano Jr.
Devon Firpo
Lynn Guca
Lucas Herrmann
Fred Holmes
Shannon Jedreicich
Jenna Keeman
Mason Knauf
Sara Kuiken
Colby Kusinitz
Buster Larsson
Brady Maloney
Timothy Martin
Vannroth Meas
John Moncovich
Joseph Nare
Sharanya Prashad
Carter Reilly
Michael Roberts
Matthew Robinson
Hillary Roesler G’23
Julia Rotando
Shayla Seymour
Zachery Shaler
Rajveer Singh
Colin Stace
Mariana Tata
Nickolaus Webster
Teddie Yip
Dante Zapata
2024
Hailey Bassett
Lynzee Bissell
Aana Blaszka
Caitlin Bray G’24
Corrine Bush
Kelsey Carter
Abbigayle Finch
Nicole Fitzgerald
Caiden Frey
Kristina Geraci
Hope Halvarson
Madison Maggiore
Michael McNeil
Ethan Miller
Antonia Palmisano
Alyssa Pisano
Noah Posson
Madison Ranalli
Devin Ryan
Erica Sanford
Julyanna Sauschuck
Steven Sclafani
Brian Scoville
Kimberly Serio
Sam Serrano
John Spoto
Hannah Stack
Jason Story
Ian Winchell
Daniel Yingling
CURRENT STUDENT DONORS
Dakota Alexander
Evan Andrews
Thomas Arcuri Jr.
Makayla Arnold
Omar Bailey
Alyssa Barbato
Desirae Baumann
Kaylee-Lynn Beleza
Kalista Betz
Belicia Biette
Norman Booth Jr.
Angelina Borowiec
Samantha Buley
Haley Burchhardt
Jordan Carmosino
Lindsay Carrier
Christopher Carroll
Amanda Chavarria
Derek Corsner
Riley Cosimeno
Connor Costanza
Madelyn Cozzens
Seamus Crowe
Bryan DeGironimo
Andrew Della Rovere
Frank Detraglia
Lucas DiLego
Nick DiStefano
Cassidy Doiron
Austin D’Orazio
Peter Dupre
Matthew Flower
† deceased *arranged for matching gift
Alanna Fragapane
Landen Frey
Lucia Gargiulo
Joseph Gentile
Kassidy Gloude
Hanna Godkin
Paige Graves
Alexander Gullichsen
John Gutt
Margaret Habernig
Vanessa Hall
Emilia Harring
Nicolas Haviar
Jack Hogan
Jeremy Horowitz
Sara Hotaling
Aidan Hughes
Sarah Huller
Lydia Iorio
Deanna Jackson
Abigayle Jepsen
James Johnson
Ryleigh Johnson
Matthew Kaires
Kieara Kirvan
Hayden Knauf
Isabella Kolb
Jeffrey Kopek
Taylor Kraft
Bryonna Kristoferson
Hayleigh Lagase
Sadie Langdon
Jaida Larsen
Vanessa Leon
Jacob Lexner
Christian Liberta
Ella Lindheimer
Rachel Little
Jeremiah Lockwood
Christopher Loiselle
Francesca Luster
Kate Mahoney
Kelsey McCaskill
Ruby Mehan
Kristine Miller
Mackenzie Mix
Drake Morse
Shane Murphy
Kylie Murray
Daniela Muscari
Ceejay Newton
Reid Oliver
Jamielee Otero
Aydin Parekh
Lauren Paul
Mary Pecora
Garrett Pratt
Vladislav Pshenichnikov
Emma Puleri
Aly Radwan
Ethan Rivers
Courtney Robinson
Abigail Sacks
Claire Sanford
Nicole Servider
Emma Simmons
Mckenzie Simmons
Francesco Sirtori
Avery Sturtz
Devin Taylor
Tyshawn Taylor
Kelly Thornton
Eric Vitale
Vita Waters
Natalie Wedell
Catherine Winter
Hannah Young
Samantha Young
Madison Zulager
FRIENDS OF UTICA UNIVERSITY
Anonymous
Nicholas and JamieLeigh
Accordino
Tyler Ackerman
Dawn Ackernecht
Mia Acosta
Scott Adams
Cory Albrecht
Michelle Alexander
Victoria Allansing
Brittany Allen
Jane Allen
Chris Amandola
Rosa Amapani
Bill Ambler
Anne Anderson
Emily Anderson
Kathleen and Mark Angelucci
Genesis Araujo
Liana Araujo
Giroux Arcuri
Noelle Arcuri
Tessa Arcuri
Adrianne Arnone*
Jennifer Arthur
Ashley Atkins
Jamie Ayers
Jenny Ayers
Mark Badger
Luanne Baird
Bethany Baker
Maya Bala
Alba Banegas
Robert Bannigan
Evelyn Barese
Joseph and Kathleen Barilla
Dolly Barnes
Jesse Barnes Sr.
Margaret Barnes
Norma Barnes
Mark Barr
Andrew Barrett
Melissa Barry
Aaron Barsham
Kelly Bateman
Patricia Bates
Kelly Battaglia
Joseph Baum
James Baxter
Clifford Bearor
Ted Bearor
James Bednarczyk
Aliyah Beleza
Ryan Beleza
Sherry Beleza
Tony Beleza
Aime Bennett
Bettina Berghammer
Mary Lou Berie
Jen Bernard
Maria Bernard
Mary Bernard
Rebecca Berry
Mary Bianchetti
William Biette
Lisa Billings
Jeffrey Bird
Seth Bird
Diane Bledsoe
Kenneth Blum
Sarah Boice
Ryan Bonacci
Wendy Bowers
Catherine and Douglas Bowne
Richard Boyanski
Luanne Brando-Ercolano
Lisa Branson
Steve Bray
Shannon Breuer
Nicole Brewer
Bill Brower
Bryce Brown
Celia Brown
Jeremy Brown
Steven Brown
Vanessa Brown
Nicole Bruce
Colleen Buck
Gail Burdick
Katharine Burns
Maryann Burns
Joe Burry
Morgan Bush
Antoinette Butler
Bradford Butler
Brian Butler
Sierra Butler
Lisa Calhoun
Lisa Caloia
Kennedy Campbell
Janet Campo
Leonard Cancellire
Theresa Cancellire
JoAnne Canitano
Zachary Canne
Michael Capolino
Michael Caputo
Vincent Caputo
Riley Caracane
Don Carbone H’14
Tina Carlson
Bradley Carr
Timothy Carroll
Tracy Caryl
Ashley Casler
Briana Castro
Cory Cavanaugh
Michael Cavanaugh
Steve Cavanaugh
Meghan Chamberlain
Scott Chamberlain
Verna Charles
Flor Chavarria
Francisca Chavarria
Luis Chavarria
Derrick Chavarria Fuentes
Alba Chavez
Braeden Chek
Kimberly Chek
Eugene Chino
Ruth Chiocchi
Shelly Chizzonite
Norma Chrisman
Kaden Christmas
Alisa Cianfarani
Monique Cichon
Cassidy Clark
Olivia Clay
James Clifford
Chuck Clintsman
Cheryl Cloephat
Judy Clow
Donna and Richard Coffey
Danelle Coldicott
Amy Cole
Allison Coleman
Jody Collins Skinner
Haley Congdon
Joyce Conigliaro
Fred Conklin
Joanne Conlen
Barbara Conte
Frank Conte
Joey Conte
Kevin Conway
David Cook
Annie Cooney
Patricia Cooney
Susan Cooney
Nina Cooper
Erin Coplan
David Corasanti
Sullivan Corcoran
Amanda Corey
Anna Corlew
Kristin Coronado
Cohen Cosimeno
Genna Courto
Julianne Cox
Keith Cox
Norman Crabtree
Shirley Cramer
Piper Crawford
Laura and Michael Crigger
Ryan Crigger
Heather Crumb
Diane Crutchfield
Zach Cullen
Kristen Culver
Elle Cunningham
Hannah Curle
Colleen Cusick
Pauline Cynkus
Matthew Dates
John David
Carlina Davis
Erika Davis
Tyheid Davis
Douglas Dean
Sydney Dean
Alissa DeBie
Christian DeBlasio
Joseph DeCola
Dave DeCrescente
Kimberly DeCrescente
Linda DeDominicis
Rosalie DeFilippis
Brice Deking
Amanda Delaney
Abby D’Elia
Alysia Dellow
Chris Dellow
Justin Delong
Dominique Delucia
Jo Ann Delyanis
Greg Dempsey
Michael Denn
Rosemary Desanta
Cheryl DeSpirt
Lisy Devin
Michael Devin
Norma Devin
Tim Devin
Mary DeVoss
Tiffany Devoss
Sarah Dewey
Carol DiDomenico
Joe DiStefano
Barbara Dolise
Eric Donahue
Mark Donahue
Nicki Donlin
Karen Donnelly
Mary Donofrio
J. Rebecca Douglas
Robert Douglas
Keri Doyle
Eric Drummond
Ian Drummond
Jake Duesler
Elizabeth DuRoss
James DuRoss Jr.
Donald Dylis Sr.
Elizabeth Eacker
Ralph Eannace Jr.
Colleen Egresits
Jeanne Eiswert
Sarah Elleman
Mike Ellrott
Anthony Erkel
Samantha Esparza
Jessica Evans
Giavanna Faccioli
Valerie Fadigan
Dawn Fahy
Joan Failing
Michael Failing
Daquasia Faircloth
Madison Fancher
Matthew Fanelli
Lillian Farmer
Rory Farnan
Nelga Farrelly
Henry Faulhaber
David Fedigan
Denise Fedigan
Gregg Fedigan
Rebecca Fedorick
Bonnie Fenner
Ro Ferguson
Michael Ferris
Pam Fiano
Nicholas Finnegan
Shellie Fizer
Sherry Fleet
Elizabeth Fleming
Thomas Fletcher
Payton Flohr
Joseph Florio
David Flynn
Gillian Flynn
Kenneth Foden
Nate Ford
Sue Ford
Wayne Ford
Russell Fortune
Cynthia Foster
Krista Foster
Deatra Fowler
Alexis Fragapane
Allison Fragapane
Anthony Fragapane
Joseph Fragapane
Meredith Francher
Mike Frasier
Keila Frederick
Myra Fredericks
Michele Frontino
Christine Fuchs
Jill Fudo
Merilyn Fuentes
Frank Fuller
Misty Fuller
Tony Fuller
Trisha Fuller
Darius Gainer
Kelli Galish
Kyrstin Gallagher
Tim Gallagher
Carl Gambitta
Janet Gardinier
Casey Gavin
† deceased *arranged for matching gift
Cindy Gemmett
Geoff Gerbasi
Jimmy Gigliotti
Wendy Gilbert
Karen Giles
Lillian Gilroy
Martin Gleason Jr. and Lenore Gleason
Andrea Glogowski
Jessica Glogowski
Tracey Glogowski
Beatrice Gloude
Gaius Gloude
Jeff Golden
Allison Goldstein
Michael and Ceci Goldstone
David Gordon
Mara Gordon
Katherine Gorton
Anna Goska
Cathleen Goska
Donna Goulet
Eric Goyzueta
Francia Goyzueta
Julianna Goyzueta
Julio Goyzueta
Susan Grad
Shannon Grage
Kimberly Gragnaniello
Lisa Gragnaniello
Warren Graves
Mary Green
Richard Greene
Denise Gregory
Jennifer Gregory
Susan Grobsmith
Jamie Gryctko
Joseph Guadagnino
Ann Gualtieri
Jennifer Guhin
Angela Gulisano
Christine Guzzardo
Kiha Guzzardo
Richard Guzzardo
Elaine Habbinger
Jodi Habbinger
Joe Habbinger
Elaine Habernig
Michael Hadnagy
Daniel Haggerty
Hollie Hall
Joyce Hall
Karen Hall
Mary Hall
Richard Hall
Charles Hallam
Robert Hammond
Mary Hannah
Tammy Hanson
Jennifer Harding
Abigail Harring
Michael Harrington
Marcus Harris
Carol Harry
Bob Hartnett
Jeff Haskel
Angela Hawkins
Kristen Hayes
Sheri Hayes
Veronica Hayes
Lynn Hayward
Christopher Healy
Pam Heeps
Sean Heggarty
Fred Heintz
Linda Heintze
Brandon Hemmerich
Kathy Hendel
Cathy Hennessy
Michelle Henry
Sharon Herlehy
Michelle Heroth
Samuel Hester
Scott Heysler
Charlotte High
Sue Hotaling
Lillie Howe
Sheryl Huffman
Aidan Hullar
Sandra Huller
Harrison Hummel IV
Solace Hummel
Judy Hunley
Thalea Hunter
Jessie Immel
Melissa Inouye
Joseph Insogna
Nancy Insogna
Frank Iorio
Allan Irving
Robin Iveson
Brianna Jackson
Michael Jackson
Winnie Jaechel
Charles Jahnke
Tricia Javarone
Payton Jenkins
Shelbie Jenkins
C. Jennings
Steve Jerome
Heather Johnsen
Steven Johnson
Courtney Johnston
Elizabeth Johnston
Jeremiah Johnston
Fred Jones
Margaret Jones
Robert Jucha
Dylan Judd
Kaitlyn Judd
Meaghan Judd
Timothy Kachelmeyer
Richard Kahler
Marcia Kane
Megan Kanyuk
Phil Kanyuk
Sean Kanyuk
Jessica Karmoil
Elizabeth Katz
Carol and Robert Keller
Debra Kelly
Katharine Kelly
Dawn Kero
Theresa Kevorkian
Nicole Keyser
Michelle Kiciuk
Adam Kieffer
Eric Kieffer
Jason Kieffer
Kaitlyn Kieffer
Kevin Kieffer
Neal Kieffer
Patrick Kieffer
Alexandra Kimmel
Hari Kingra
Diane Kingstin
James Klein
Karen Klose
William Klose
Robert and Tatyana Knight
John Kolenda
Lindsey Kolenda
Megan Kolenda
Liliana Kougher
Allison Kozick
Nancy Kracxeski
Annette Kraft
Jack Kraft
Karen Kraft
Nicole Krawczeski
Carly Kubacka
Lisa Kuc
George and Pinny Kuckel
Francheska Kuilan
Hannelore Kukrus
Gretchen Kupiec
Konnor Kupiec
Kyle Kupiec
Donna Kurtzner
Gabby Laccona
Anthony LaFace
Lou LaFache
David Lagase
Wendy Laguzza
Brandon Laidlaw
Suzanne Lamendola
Meghan Lammersen
Leslie Landry
Chad Languish
Aubri Lanier
James Lanier Jr.
Semaj Lanier
Karen LaPolla
Thomas LaPolla
Carrie Large
David Large
Anthony LaRocco
Justin LaScala
Stephen LaScala
Susan Lavigne
Anthony Lavoratore
Alan Lazenby
Jane LeBlanc
Alyssa Lee
Julie Lenhart
Zach Levanduski
Gail Lewis
Frederick Lindheimer
Patricia Lindner
Harley Lindwall
Jessica Little
Sara Little
Douglas Littlefield
Holly Livingston
Joseph Lizardi
Celeste Llull
Michele Lockwood
Kelly LoFrese
Shelly LoGalbo
Christina Long
Brian Longway
Jeremy Lopata
Eliana Lorenzo
George Lotito Jr.
Stephanie Lotito
Karen Lucyszyn
Lesia Lucyszyn
David Lupia
Lori Lupini
Kyle Luse
Caitlin Lynch
Linda Mabie
Allison Macari
Peter MacInerney
Joseph Mack
Kimberly Mack
Aimee MacLagger
Marianne Madia
Benjamin Madonia
Julia Madore
Artie Magnuson
Kelly Magnuson
Sean Malone
Marianne Maloney
Johnny Mancini
Michelle Mancuso
Sandra Mancuso
Katie Maneen
Dan Marotta
Jessica Marotta
Lauren Marotta
Lindsey Marotta
Andrew Marshall
Abby Martin
Cynthia Martin
Maxima Martinez
Terry Martinez
Theodore Mascari
Beth Mastrianni
Scott Mastroianni
Mel Mathias
J. Kemper Matt Sr.
Nicholas Matt
Lorrie Maxson
Mathu Mbugua
Paul McBride
Regina McCarthy
Vicki McCarthy
Frankie-Ann McCauley
Valerie McClay
† deceased *arranged for matching gift
Paul McCleary
Teri McDonald
Marie McDowell
Arline McElwee
Patricia McEwen
Christina McGrath
Lyn McKay
Brian McQueen
Erin McQuillan
Alex Mecca
Madeline Mecca
Fran Medina
Alexander Medved
Daniel Meehan*
Elizabeth Meehan
Mary Mehan
Jeremy Meier
Karrie Melita
Suzanne Melita
Brooke Merrifield-Hintz
James Meyers
Jennifer Michaels
Wayne Mickiewicz
Glenn Miga
Caitlin Miller
Darci Miller
Keith Miller
Mark Miller
Jordan Mitchell
Helena Mochak
Erin Monitto
Carol Montana
Emma Montoya
Kelli Mooney
Joe Moorehead
Susan Moores
Jacki Morley
Jennifer Morley
Marcy Morling
Gregory Morra
Jarrett Morrell
Anthony Morris
Jill Morris
Vanita Morris
Alana Morrison
Risa and Zachary Morrison
Michael Morse
Jill Mosher
Nelga Mosqueda
Kristin Muenzen
Patricia Mumpton
Caitlin Murray
Jax Murray
Donna Musacchio
Dina Muscanell
Rebecca Muscanell
Maria Muscatelli
Vito Muscatelli
Sondra Nassar
Pamela Naventi
Jennifer Nembhard
Kristina Neth
Bianca Nevith
Andrew Nguyen
Lena Niedermyer
Tiffany Nielsen
Mary Kay Nitti
Tom Nitti
Shaun Norfolk
Mary Norton
Amy O’Neill
Ella Obie
Brighid O’Brien
Tina Oconnor
Timothy O’Connor
Ryan O’Dell
Diane O’Donnell
Molly O’Donnell
Rory Ogden
Paul Ohlbaum
Mary Lee and Terrance Oliver
Bob Olsen
Carol Olsen
George Olsen
Greg Olsen
Robert Olsen
Ryanne Olsen
Gregory Olson Sr.
Christina Omiatek
Robert Omiatek
Suzanne O’Neil
Maria Ontiveros
Jack O’Shea
David Ovitt
Jessica Owens
Lauren Palmer
Deborah Palozzi
Olivia Panko
Ed Panzella
Ronald Paquette
Lorelle Parks
Loretta Parks
Payadie Park
Katherine Paro
Bruce Paul
Meghan Paul
Nancy and Bruce Paul
Jared Pearl
Lindsey Penner
Leah Perez
Donna Petersen
Alisa Petronella
Jennifer Pfendler
Dawn Plue
Jessica Plue
Patrice Polite
Jeremy Powell
Joanne Powers
John Powers
Lois Pownall
Camille Priest
Lindsay Pritchard
Erika Profenno
Steven Prokosch
Virginia Prout
Marc Pudney
Harry Purdy
Thuy Quach
Kevin Queen
Brian Queey
Donald Radell
Christopher Ranalli
Janel Reardon
Christine Reddy
Michael Reddy
Earle Reed
Keeshann Reid
Grace Reilly
Nancy Renner
Alison Rice
Everol Richards
Sandra Richardson
Erik Richman
Micah Riddick
Andrew Rider
Kristen Riemenschneider
Marissa Rios
Christine Rivera
Frederick Rivera
Meghan Rizzo
Michael Robertello
Michelle Roberts
Beverly Robinson
Carley Robinson
Jeffrey Robinson
Ethan Robles
Mario Rocci Jr.
Randy Rockford
Sandra Rockford
Jacob Rockwell
Diana Rodriguez
Rosse Rodriguez
Sheri Rodriguez
Theresa Rodriguez
Linda Romano and Russell Petralia*
Amy Romeyn
Caroline Rood
Amy Rosado
Ann Rose
Patrick Rougeux
Laura Ruberto
Patricia Russell
David Russo
Matthew Russo
Jaxon Rutkowski
Tricia Rutkowski
Erin Ryan
Leanne Ryan
Tom Ryan
Wendy Ryan
Erin Sacks
Alena Sagalovsky
Frankie Salles
Melissa Sallustio
Joshua Salsman
John Sammon III
Emilly Sanchez
Kaleigh Sanchez
Barb Sanford
Paul Sans
Julie Santiago
Dave Saracino
Isabella Scalise
John Scanlon
Fred Scarano
Gail Scarano
Mark Schneider
Deborah Schrader
Alexa Schultheis
Cristal Schultheis
Bonni Schumann
Caitlin Scipio
Ann Scire
Gregory Scott
Andrew Serio
ToniAnn Servider
Robert Seward
Gail Shaw
Shanae Shaw
Rebecca Sheldon
Abby Shields
Janet Shivers
Ann Siegel
Norman Siegel
Susan Silliman
Anthony Simon
Della Simoneau
Don Simoneau
Kyle Simpson
Kerri Sinclair
Karl Skokan
Brenda Sloan
Pamela Slovinsky
Antenet Smith
Melinda Smith
Susan Smith
David Smittle
Erin Sobecks
Salim Solomon
Margarita Sorto
Ari Spiezio
Jocelyn Spiezio
Penny Spiezio
Stephanie Spoto
Chris Spunar
Nathaniel St. Clair
Jimmy St. John
Richard Stack
Butch Staffo
Devra Stalker
Diane Stalker
Kaitlyn Stalker
Paige Stalker
Bailey Stanton
Tonimarie Stanzoni
David Steadman
Carol Steele
Susan Steiner
Aiden Stephens
Madison Stephens
Miranda Stephens
Carole Stine
Zach Strang
Erin Strollo
Ritchie Strom
Joshua Stuhlman
Samuel Stuhlman
Tom Stuhlman
Mary Ellen Sullivan
† deceased *arranged for matching gift
Maura Sullivan
Nicole Sullivan
Josephine Sumwalt
Shelagh Swanberry Landry
Richard Swanson
Theresa Swinarski
Taryn Tanner
Kristina Taranto
Patrick Tarnacki
Patrick Taylor
Roberta Taylor
Catherine Terry
Dixie Terry
Matt Terry
John Testone
Joseph Testone
Jhanasia Thomas
Linda Thomas
Emily Thompson
Megan Thompson
Scott Thompson
Katelyn Tierney
Joseph Tierno
Adrianne Titus
Kim Tkacsik
Kristie Tonkin
Stephanie Tootle
Bryan Torres
Isaak Torres
Jeff Toscano
Stacey Tourtellot
Sally Townsend
Margaret Tracy
Richard Treat
Seth Trench
Jeremy Trotta
Wendi Trousdale
Gary Trovato
John Trovato
Vincent Trovato
Daniela Trujillo
Gary Tuthill
Gail Uebelhoer
Jason Valdemira
David Valentine
David Valentine
John Valenza
Jane Valero
Beth Vallone
Eve Van de Wal
Eugene Van Deusen
Charoltte Van Horn
Gerald VanDeWalker
Theresa VanDeWalker
Tara Venezia
John Vergis
Mary Vicks
Kaylee Vigil
Erika Volino
Lynn Von Hassel
Julie Waffle
Gina Walker
Tara Walker
Justine Wallace
Diane Warner
Gretchen Washalski
Eric Watson
Kelly Watson
Lindsay Weinman
Elizabeth Welch
Jaclyn Welfeld
G. Page West III
Brooklyn White
Gillian White
Hailee White
James White
Nancy White
Vera White
Phyllis Wilczek
Kate Wilkie
Erin Williams
Karla Williams
Nashia Williams
Tanishia Williams
Deborah Wilson-Allam
Cindy Winfield
Emily Winters
Diane Wise
Robert Wise*
Jeff Wojtowicz
Christine Wolber
Karen Wolff
Karlie Wrae
Alexandra Wright
Dana Wright
Kristin Yehle
Chris Young
Charles Zambito
Melissa Zapotocki
Fredrick Zegibe
Aimee Zellers
Naser Zenelovic
PARENT DONORS
Malinda ’04 and Charles Abraham
Jennifer Ackerman
John Adasek Sr. and Julianne Adasek
Michelle Agnew
Rosemary Albert
David Albrecht
Jeff and Cheryl Albright
Eric and Christina Alexander
James and Karen Allard
Cathy Allison
Jerry ’63 and Susanne Amoroso
Sean and Tammy Arnold
Jon and Marilee Asher
Jill and Kenneth Atwood
Arthur and Melissa Ausfeld
Carrieann and William Bailey
Paige Barese Labelle ’92 and Brian Labelle
David and Laurie Barr
Bobby Bauer
Anne and Chris Beavers
Gail Belden-Harrington ’77
Jamie-Lee Beleza
James Bell III
Kenneth ’75 and Anne Bell
Patricia Benthin
Angela Berger
Tara Bernardo-DeChico
Kelly Berntsen
Daniel Biette
Kyle and Jennifer Billand
Carol Blake
Donald and Amy Blaszka
Damian Boehlert
Norman Booth
Holly Borowiec
Jennifer Bourgault
Janet and Charles Bouteiller
Robert Brandt Jr. and Carole Brandt
Monica Breed
Sherry Brinck
Crystal Brousseau
Aimee Brown
Richard and Connie Brown
Rebecca Burmaster ’91 and Charles Burmaster Jr.
Julie ’96, G’11 and Robert Bush
Howard ’61 and Carolyn Bushinger
Kim Butler
Glenn Buttermore and Christina McCrea
Douglas and Michelle Call
Fred and Dusti Callo
Bradley and Joann Campbell
Maryann Cancellire
Fred and Kathleen Capozzella
Lurie Carabello
Paula Carey ’85
David and Nancy Carlon
Robert and Kerry Carlone
Scott Carmosino
Laura and Filippo Casamento
Vince Catalfamo
Amy Catlin
Jennie Cecere
Donald and Stacy Cepiel
Terry and Tammie Chamberlain
Yeni and Claudio Chavarria
Michelle Chilinski
Joseph ’11 and Barbara Chubbuck
Suzanne and Peter Ciancia
Eric Cicchetti
John Cleary ’62
Cheryl Cleophat
Anthony and Stephanie Colavita
David and Maryrose Cole
Maureen Cole
Randy and Michelle Congdon
Timothy ’74 and Gwen ’82
Connors
Jeffrey and Emaline Conte
Kelly Cooper
Mark and Iolanda Cooper
George Corey Jr. and Jeannette
Corey
John and Elin Cormican
Daniel and Kimberly Costanza
Steven and Pamela Cox
Brenda Coyne Waters ’88 and Richard Waters
Michael and Kimberly Cozzens
David and Barbara Critelli
John and Karen Crofoot
Beth and Bill Crossley
Shad and Heidi Crowe
Patrick and Laura Cunningham
Christopher and Patty Cusanelli
Thomas Czternastek
Kelli Czyzyk
Dawn D’Amico
Vajra Daumont
Karen and Michael Davis
Frank De Traglia
John and Kimberly Dean
Geno Decondo
Naomi Dee ’82
Felix and Nina Delatorre
Angela D’Elia
Fausto Della Rovere
Sydney and Suzanne DeLuca
Vincent and Kimberly Delucia
Michael and Tina Desantis
Andre and Doreen Dessureau
Katey DeTraglia
Thomas and Jeannine Devlin
Craig Dewan
Erin and Joe DiGirolamo
Annette Dimon
Eileen DiStefano
Chris Doiron
Karen Doiron
James and Shirley Dooley
Michael and Rosa Drell
David and Susan Druziak
Dawn Dunn
Stephen and Joyce Dunn
Rebecca Duval
Paul and Katherine Educate
Ashraf Elazzazi and Nadia
Mohamed G’08
Caren and Phillip Elliott
Mark and Elizabeth Elsesser
Kris Erceg
Greg and Denyse Evans
Michael Evolo Jr. ’90 and Melissa Hobika Evolo*
Elizabeth Fallo
Anthony and Katherine Farrington
Albert Fini Jr. ’93 and Aimee Fini ’94
Brandi Finniss
Brian Fiorello
Jacqueline and Glenn Fish
David and Joanna Fitzgerald
Carin Fleshman
Eric and Christel Flynn
Jen Ford
Kenneth Ford
Leigh and Frank Fragapane
† deceased *arranged for matching gift
Mark and Ann Francis
Michael and Stacey Frank
Jane Freeman
Krista Frey
Sharon Frey
George Fritz
Patricia Fuller
Kelly Galea
Jeff and Krissy Gambitta
Marlene Gardner and James Gardner Jr.
Anthony Garganese
Albert Gargiulo
Anthony ’61 and Annemarie ’92 Garramone
Catherine Gehring
Anthony and Monica Geraci
Tiffany Gerling
Kim Gibel
Kimberly Giovingo
Michael Giustiniani and Nicole Spinelli Giustiniani
Edward and Noel Glomski
Joseph and Colleen Gloude
Maxim Gorbachevsky G’13, ’17
Kellie Gorton
Elizabeth and Bruce Gould
George and Jacqueline Graves
Paul and Gwendolyn Grech
Shannon Gutt
Hollie Haaf
Michael Habernig
John Hall
Craig and Susan Halvarson
Paul Hans
Dan Hansen
John Harmon Jr. ’00 and Margaret Harmon
David Harrington ’77
Diane Hart
Kenneth ’64 and Carol ’64 Hawks
John and Katherine Heeren
Paul and Sharon Helfeld
David and Beth Henkel
Barbara Hennig
Dan Herlehy
Patrick Higgins
Mark ’80 and Elizabeth Hobaica
James and Judith Hoffman
Frank and Suzanne Horan
Bohdan and Patricia Horodnik
Chris and Eleanor Horowitz
Robert Hubbell ’66
Brian Huller
Bernard Hyman Jr. ’94 and Megan Hyman ’08
Christine Immel
Molly Insogna
Donald and Nicole Jackson
Ron Jantzi
Renato and Christine Jedreicich
Mario and Katrina Jellencich
Morgan Jenkins and Melanie
Manwarren
Brian Jennings
Sebrone Johnson
Daniel ’97 and Anne-Marie Jones
Edward and Cathy Joss
John Kaczmarski Sr. and Roberta
Kaczmarski
John and Michelle Kaires
Denise Kanyuk
Darshna Katwala
Robert and Paula Keeman
Jeannine Kelley
James ’72 and Mary Anne Kenny
Carol and Jerome Kieffer
Kasandra Killian
Thomas ’70 and Janice Kinney
Annmarie ’89 and Steven Kinsella
John and Barbara Klein
Jodie Knabe
Amanda and Daniel Knaisch
Barbara Knauf and Arthur Knauf Jr.
Jeffrey and Melissa Kolb
Dawn Kolenda
Bob Kraft
Richard and Gina Kraft
Susan and Ross Kraft
Theresa and Michael Kupiec
John LaFayette
Christopher and Michele Lake
Francine Lanier and James Lanier
Jr.
Bruce and Barbara Lanz
Frank LaPuma Sr. ’58 and Marie LaPuma
Timothy Larsen
Stephen and Natalie Lascala
Tracy Lasher
Steven and Mapsita Laughlin
Eric and Dyann Levine
Michael and Alison Liberta
Larrie and Beth Lichtman
Will and Tara Lindheimer
Lori and Brian Little
Lance and Jennifer Loiselle
John ’90 and Lisa ’88 Longeretta
Dawn Longin
Karen and Ralph Lorraine
Peggy ’80 and Robert Lounsbury
Wendy Lucier
Heather Luke
Sandra Luster
Danielle Mahoney-Brown
Ismael Maldonado III
Tony Maldonado
John Malzahn
Richard Maneen
Brian and Sheila Marciano
Erin Marinelli ’97
Doreen Maritato
Andrew and Leanne Martin
Sara Mascari
Nicholas ’83 and Lorraine Mayhew
Billie Mays Jr. and Tara Mays
Frank and Donna Mazovec
Brandon McCaskill
Brian and Krista McDonald
Lawrence and Siobhan McMahon
Paul and Susan McNeil
Stacy McPherson
Debra and Gerard McQueary
Michael and Maryann Mecca
Steven and Jodi Mehan
Heather and Stephen Melita
Christian Meyer III ’79 and Mary
Beth Welle-Meyer ’79
Jenn Michael
Bobby and Sonja Milankovic
Carol Miller
Jodie Miller
John and Karen Miller
Sydney Mills
Kristen Miranowicz
Michael and Rebecca Mix
Shawn and Lori Mix
Francis and Jean Mochak
Frank Mondi ’62
Gail Morris
Julie Mosca
Michael Murphy
Tim and Monica Murray
Anthony and Sabrina Muscatelli
Nicholas Musso
Jason and Michele Nare
Jose and Mikilani Negron
Thomas ’69 and Anne ’77 Nelson
Amy Notarino
Giuseppe and Kristen Novello
Jeffrey and Amanda Novotny
Scott and Jennifer Ogata
David Oliva
Danielle Olivieri
John and Elizabeth O’Malley
David Orsini
Melissa Osborne
Carole Oswald
Debbie Pallouras
Ryan ’04 and Amanda Palmer
Stacy Palmer
Frank and Lynn Palmieri
Payadie Park
Anne and Joseph Patterson
Daniel and Christine Paul
Rachael Payton
Susan Pecora
Jill Pekarski
Dawn Pender
Anthony ’66 and Shirley Perrone
Joshua and Jessica Perusse
Jeffrey Pesnel
Melissa Petronio
Patricia Pfeifer
Jeffrey Pinard ’91
Phillip and Ivon Piranio
James and Kristen Pisano
Peter and Sheri Podagrosi
John and Maryann Polito
R. Paul and Susan Porter
Tracy Powell
Douglas Pratt
Richard ’90 and Tracy Pratt
Terri and Irving Provost
Kelly Prudent
Cheryl Purdy
Patrick ’77 and Deanna Putrello
Lawrence and Jennifer Queen
Richard Rados
Kim ’89 and David Raga
Michael and Nancy Ranalli
William Randall ’74
Mary Regan
Jennifer Reifsteck
Matthew Reifsteck
Andrew Rider
Kathleen Riley Tehan ’76
Maryanne Rinaudo-Concessi
Javier Rivera
Lisa Robare
Carrie and Jeffrey Robinson
Alfred Rocci ’75 and Lisa DefuriaRocci
Steve and Stacie Rockhill
Thomas and Lisa Roman
Anthony ’93 and Leanne ’93 Rorick
Jennifer and Ryan Rossi
Stuart Rous ’76 and Andrea ’72 Rounds
John Rowe
Lisa Ruyack ’87
Barry ’70 and Patricia Ryan
Jason Ryder
Chris and Wendy Sachel
Gary and Valerie Sacks
Christopher and Jennifer Salbinski *
Frank Salles
Virginia Salvo
Daniel Sanford
Krista Sanford
Eddie Santos
Carol Santucci
Anthony Scalise Jr. and Kristen Scalise
Joseph Scalise
Scott and Stacy Schilling
Nicole Schmitt
Denise and David Schulteisz
Thomas and Elizabeth Schwartz
Matt and Maria Sclafani
Jennifer Scott
Julia Serrano
Melvin Serrano
Mike and Jenn Shaler
Tim and Amy Shea
Christopher and Susan Sheaffer
Steve Sheridan
Tim Short and Dawn TerralavoroShort
Marc and Lisa Silverstein
Donnie and Sylvia Simmons
Tracy Simmons
Jan G’07 and Robert Simpson
Michael and Carol Simpson
Albert and Colleen Sirtori
Sue Sleigh
Stephen Sloan ’83
Tracey Sloan
† deceased *arranged for matching gift
Jeffrey and Amy Smith
Polly Smith ’99
John ’95 and Renee Snyder
Camille and John Sorbello
Shayne and Jennifer Spiezio
John and Marcia Spoto
Harold ’93 and Kathleen Stalker
Charles and Kathy Stefanini
Heidi Steiner
Robert Stephens Jr. and Albina Stephens
Susan Story
Tyler Sturtz
Kerry ’97, G’04 and Michael Sullivan
Stephen ’98 and Gina Surace
Kimberly and James Suriano
Pamela and Peter Tabone
Richard and Elizabeth Tantillo
Michele Teague
Rena Terwilliger
Vincent Tessitore
Bonnie and Paul Therrien
William and Maureen Thornton
Dominick Timpano
Gabriel Timpano
Tracy Tolles-Rueckert ’90 and Donald Rueckert
Vinnie Toscano
Roger and Paula Tusiani-Eng
Michael and Ellen Valenti
Maureen and Charles Veach
Jennifer Walker
Rodney Wallace-Messam
Carla Wanukovich
David Weakley
Margaret and Jon White
R. Barry and Mary White
Angela and Eric Whitehouse
Judy Winters
Michael ’99 and Melissa Wittman
Stephen and Susan Wolak
David and Deanna Wood
Kristin Wright
Ann Wynne ’58
Tracy Young
David and Constance Ziskin
FACULTY AND STAFF (CURRENT,
EMERITI, AND RETIRED)
DONORS
Kelly Adams ’00
John Adasek Sr.
Benjamin Atwood ’09, G’13
Anthony Baird ’91
Tracy Balduzzi G’14
Hannah Barley
Noah Batease
Victoria Battin
Lindarae Bauer
Sean Behan ’15, G’18
Robyn Bentley
Frank Bergmann
Raymond Biggs ’13
Dorentina Binaku ’22, G’23
Adam Bittel ’11, G’13
Daniel Bittel ’11, G’13
William Blanchfield
Paula Bochniak ’15, G’17
Damian Boehlert
Judy Borner
Michelle Boucher
Jacob Bryant
Bryant Buchanan and Sharon Wise
Julie Bush ’96, G’11
Greg Caloia ’12, G’22
Elizabeth Caraco
Paula Carey ’85
Jerome Cartwright
Laura Casamento
Samuel Catterson G’16
Megan Chamberlain ’22
David Chanatry
James Christian
Mary Christopher ’99
Ann Ciancia ’18, G’21
Robert Cimbalo
Frank Cittadino
Michael Clapsadl ’03, G’12
William Clausen
Jerrod Clowes ’14
Richard Coffey
Roberta Comerford
Gineene Comito-Paulson
Gwen Connors ’82
Laura Cook
Lynn Cope
Leslie ’09, G’12 and Duane Corbo
John Cormican
Nicole Cornacchia-Morgan
Susan Cox
Jacob Crawford ’12, G’14
Douglas Croft ’03
Audrey Cross ’12
Shad Crowe
Ann Damiano
Michele Davis G’11
Dawn DeGironimo
Adam Dekker ’08, G’19
David Dellecese Jr.
Danielle Dellerba
Ryan Dembrow
Jason Denman
Sharon DePiazza
Renee DeResh ’19, G’22
Craig Dewan
Annette Dimon
Kyo Dolan ’98, G’03
Donna Dolansky G’16
Stephanie Drew
Francesca Dunlevy G’17
Carl Dziekan
Ashraf Elazzazi and Nadia
Mohamed G’08
Blaise Faggiano
Evelyn Fazekas ’87
Richard Fenner
Samuel Ferrara
Jonathan Fiore ’16
Anna Foland
David Fontaine ’89
Melissa Foote
Jonathan Gaffney
Anthony Garramone ’61
Scott Getz ’01
Jeremiah Gillette ’12, G’16
Brian Gleitsmann ’09, G’19
Maxim Gorbachevsky G’13, ’17
Abbie Gorczynski
Brandy Gray ’04
Nina Gray
Allison Green
Danielle Grega
Lynn Guca ’23
Kristin Haag
David Habbel
Marissa Hall
Robert Halliday
Patrice Hallock
Glen Hansen
Allison Harper ’19
Clemmie Harris
John Hartpence
Amy Haver ’99
Mary Hayes Gordon ’82, G’13
Gary Heenan G’05
Margaret Hemstrought
Hartwell Herring III
Leigh Hewes
Molly Hickey
Nicole Hobaica ’15, G’21
Karolina Holl G’15
Nancy Hollins
Rosa Hosp ’64
Zhaodan Huang
Janice Huss ’73
Todd Hutton
Bernard Hyman Jr. ’94
Barbara Jordan ’75
Anthony Joseph Jr. ’71
Eric Kahl ’10, G’13
Karen Kaleta
Mariah Kane ’00
Sharon Kanfoush
Kenneth Kelly
Richard Kennedy ’97
Gayle Kilburn
Annmarie Kinsella ’89
Christine Kisiel
Laurah Klepinger
Jennifer Klimek-Yingling
Mark Kovacs
John LaFayette
Kim Lambert
Kim Landon ’75
Anthony Leone Jr.
Laura Lewin
Amy Lindner
Wendy Lockwood ’87
Carl Lohmann
Melissa Lomanto ’06
Meredith Lopata
Karen Lorraine
Arlene Lundquist
Paul MacArthur
Carol Mackintosh
Shauna Malta G’07
Nancy Mandry ’70
Brian Marcantonio Jr. ’10
Andrea Mariani
Stephanie Marquez
Marvee Marr
John Martello ’91
Anthony Martino G’04
John G’11 and Erin Massoud
Lorraine Mayhew
R. Bruce McBride
Debra McQueary
Denise McVay G’07
Vannroth Meas ’23
Carmen Mercado G’12
Jeffrey Miller
Musco Millner III
Patrick Mineo
James Monahan
Lauryn Moore G’15
Gabriele Moriello
Mariann Munson ’85
Doreen Murray
Aimee Music
Elizabeth Nassar
George Nehme
Jessica Nelson ’99
Stephanie Nesbitt
Zachary Nordstrom
Kathleen Novak
Geoffrey Noyes
Jenifer Oevering ’18
John Oevering ’18, G’20, G’22
Rinae Olsen ’09
Valerie O’Reilly ’99
Rayna Orsino
Candice Ossowski ’02
Adam Pack
Ciara Parrish ’04, G’23
Adi Pasic
Stephen Pattarini
Anne Patterson
Rose Patterson ’87
Francis Perretta ’66
Joseph Perry ’90
Luke Perry
Todd Pfannestiel
Kristin Phelps ’02
Tracy Pratt
Terri Provost
Diane Pudney
Jeffrey Pullen
Curtis and Joni Pulliam
Deanna Putrello
Janice Rabbia ’97
† deceased *arranged for matching gift
Lisa Rabideau
Richard ’93 and Melissa ’95, G’16 Racioppa
Ahmed Radwan G’07, G’19 and Nouran Zohdy G’15
William Randall ’74
Donald Reese
Andrew Reeves
Elizabeth Ricci
Kyle Riecker ’21
Ariel Rios
Frank Robertello Jr. ’04
David Roberts ’77
Michael Roberts ’20, G’22
Matthew Robinson ’23
Doreen Rogers
Thomas Rossi
John Rowe
Pamela Salmon
Laura Salvaggio
Bethany Samuels
Sara Scanga
Ashlea Schad
Victoria Schad
David Schilling ’99, G’06
Alyssa Schleicher
John Schwoebel
Camille Sciortino
Daniel Senif
Rachel Shaver
Suzanne Shepard ’09, G’11
Jan Simpson G’07
Michael Simpson
Jessica Skeldon
Adrienne Smith
Polly Smith ’99
John Snyder ’95
Camille Sorbello
Gregg Sponburgh
Kristin St. Hilaire G’16
Christine Stanavich ’93
Mercedes Steele ’21
Suzanne Storms
Kerry Sullivan ’97, G’04
Colleen Sunderlin
Kimberly Suriano
Christopher Surprenant
Patricia Swann
Robert Swenszkowski
Jillian Szeliga
Corinne and Daniel Tagliarina
Cicily Talerico ’03
Mariana Tata ’23
Nicholas Therrien ’14
Jessica Thomas
Stacy Thomas
Dimitar Todorov
Neil Trout ’06
Hava Turkakin
Alissa Tuthill
Jennifer Urbanke ’13, G’17
Bethany VanBenschoten
Alane Varga
Sarah Vergis
Jo Ellen Vespo
Anthony Villanti
Mathew Vincent
Samantha Vincent
Lesley Wallace
Gregory Walsh
Robert Warwick ’72
Lauren Waszkiewicz
Andrew Wells ’19, G’21
Kaitlyn Westfall
Megan White
R. Barry White
James Wilson
Janis Winn ’86
Robert Woods
Kristiann Wratten ’19
Jennifer Yanowitz
Pietra Yozzo
Andrea Zaborek
Joann Zazula
Donna Zippin
FOUNDATIONS
Mabel W. Bishop Foundation
Helen Brach Foundation
Joseph & Inez E. Carbone Foundation
Central New York Community Foundation, Inc.
The Community Foundation of Herkimer & Oneida Counties, Inc.
Eagan Family Foundation
Fred L. Emerson Foundation
Farash Foundation
Gleason Family Foundation, Inc.
The Griffin Charitable Foundation
The Indium Corp. & Macartney
Family Foundation
Oneida County Sheriff’s Law Enforcement Foundation, Inc.
Sibbri Foundation
DJ Smith Family Foundation
Upmobility Foundation, Inc.
MATCHING GIFT COMPANIES
Baird
BASF Corporation
BPAS Actuarial and Pension Services, LLC
Charities Aid Foundation of America
CyberGrants
KPMG
New York Life Insurance Company
Northwestern Mutual
State Farm Insurance Companies
The Benevity Community Impact Fund
Utica National Insurance Group
Verizon
Wells Fargo
YourCause, LLC
CORPORATIONS, GROUPS, AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS
AAUP/Utica College Chapter
Adirondack Bank
Adirondack Financial Services Corp.
Albreada Tool and Equipment, Inc.
Arcuri Group, LLC
A-Z Recruiting & Training
Joanne M. Babiarz, LLC
Bagg’s Square Brewing Company
Bank of Utica Foundation, Inc.
BBL Construction Services, LLC
Beebe Construction Services, Inc.
Bonacci Architects, PLLC
Charles G. Bouteiller, Electrical Contractor
Brace Management, LLC
Brindisi, Murad & Brindisi Pearlman, LLP
BSN Sports
C & C Handy Men
Clifford Fuel Co., Inc.
CNY Arts, Inc
County of Oneida
John E. Creedon Police Benevolent Association
Dikindurt Distillery, LLC
Energy Management of Facilities, Inc.
Exeter Trust Company
First Source Federal Credit Union
Follett Higher Education Group
Fraternal Order of Eagles
Greycastle Security LLC
The Hayner Hoyt Corporation
Heenan’s Hockey Systems LLC
Hobaica Podiatry, LLP
Hop & Goblet, LLC
Horizon Builders Group, LLC
Jay-K Lumber Corp.
Lafa Mediterranean by Zeina’s
LAM Holdings, LLC
Lockheed Martin
LPL Financial
Lupini Construction
Mac-Clark Restaurants
Magnet Holdings LLC
MAP Consulting, LLC
MARCH Associates Architects and Planners, P.C.
Marcy Excavation Services, LLC
Mastrovito Hyundai
McQuade & Bannigan, Inc.
Michael T’s Restaurant
Mohawk Valley Materials, Inc.
Monroe Bay Builders, Inc.
Mountainside Medical Equipment
Notre Dame Elementary School
One Genny
Orbis Education Services, LLC
Orsini Landscaping
Persevering Nexus of EIGHT
Pratt & Whitney - HMI Metal Powders
Pulver Roofing Co., Inc.
RBK Bowling, Inc.
Rollins, Inc.
Rorick Podiatry, P.C.
S. R. Sloan Inc.
Scala and Roefaro Funeral Home, Inc.
Schwarz Health Care Services, Inc.
Slocum-Dickson Foundation, Inc.
Spectrum Urban Wireless
SSKJ Inc.
Stewart Financial
Swipe Out Hunger
TNT Football Camp
Tony’s Pizzeria & Sports Bar
James J. Totaro & Associates, Inc.
TruStage Members Life Insurance Company
Utica City School District
Utica Coffee Roasting Inc
Utica First Insurance Company
Utica Garage Door Co.
Venice Pizzeria
The Women’s Fund of Herkimer & Oneida Counties, Inc.
Yorkville Memorials, LLC
MEMORIAL GIFTS
In memory of Charles Louis Abelove, Esq.
Anthony ’61 and Annemarie ’92
Garramone
In memory of Dr. Louis Angelini
James Hubbard
In memory of Robert Dewey Bond, Sr.
Anne Fairbanks
Robert Hess
Erica Lloyd Bergamini
Agie Sznajdrowicz
William and Kathleen Wunder
In memory of Martin Bruns ’99
Victoria Battin
Paula Carey ’85
† deceased *arranged for matching gift
Piper and John Crawford
Robert ’65 and Sharon DePiazza
John and Rosa ’64 Hosp
Gayle Kilburn
Megan G’09 and Thomas G’06 Krol
Shelly LoGalbo
Judith Manuel ’95
Lorraine and Nicholas ’83 Mayhew
The Occupational Therapy Faculty
Cicily Talerico ’03
In memory of Hildred Butters ’61
Eryn ’99 and Kyle Balch
In memory of Charles Carey ’96
Victoria Battin
In memory of Jessica Cynkus
Pauline Cynkus
In memory of Dr. John DeTraglia
Grace McNasser ’75
In memory of Pat Dugan
Siobhan Dugan ’79
In memory of Charles A. and Cornelia “Connie” Gaetano
Camille Sciortino
Linda Sciortino
In memory of William B. Goodman ’57
Anthony ’61 and Annemarie ’92 Garramone
In memory of Greg Henry ’93
Heather Meaney ’92
In memory of Kathleen Hobaica
Frank Bergmann and Jill Ziemann Bergmann ’78
Dan Corleto
Bethann Kistner ’83 and Mark Buttiglieri
Betty and Richard Kistner
Alane Varga
In memory of Randy Huta ’63
Frank Bergmann and Jill Ziemann Bergmann ’78
HERITAGE SOCIETY
In memory of Virginia Loin
Frank Bergmann and Jill Ziemann Bergmann ’78
In memory of Doris Miga and Wesley Miga ’80
Karen Stonebraker Miga ’80
In memory of Isabel Nackley
Mark Barr
Victoria Battin
Gail Belden-Harrington ’77
Brad Bennett and Kristina Berg
Eric Coligado
Piper and John Crawford
Gloria Destefanis
Eileen Doser
Bonnie Fenner and Richard Fenner
Anthony ’61 and Annemarie ’92 Garramone
Julia Grant
David Harrington ’77
Gail Lennon
Wester Miga ’76
Judeanne G’11 and Randy Rockford
Kathleen Riley Tehan ’76
Barbara Trevvett ’86
Gail Uebelhoer
Matthew Worth
In memory of Frank Palmisano
Benjamin Atwood ’09, G’13 and Cindy Winfield
Bradley and Joann Campbell
Rachel Mazzotta
Lena and Thomas Murphy
Marc Neff ’08
Daniel Papierniak
Dominic Tripp ’07 and Teammates
In memory of Thomas A. Rabbia
Janice Rabbia ’97
In memory of Kathy Randall ’71
Diane ’69 and Russell Green
In memory of Mario Rocci, Sr. ’56
John and Rosilynn Barone
Fred and Kathleen Capozzella
Gerard Capraro ’66
David and Barbara Critelli
Carl and Kathleen Cuccaro
Ronald ’66 and Sheila Cuccaro
Susan DeFuria-Luker and Thomas Luker
Gustave DeTraglia Jr.
Kelly Fuligni
Hank and Carol Furgal
Lisa Kimmel
Sharon Maraio
Florentino and Carleen Poccia
Caroline ’65 and Frederic Polito
Alfred Rocci ’75 and Lisa DefuriaRocci
Mario Rocci Jr. and Donna Rocci
Stephen Rocci
Florio ’58 and Rosemarie Vitullo
In memory of F. Eugene Romano
George and Pinny Kuckel
In memory of Jeffrey B. Senft ’76
Michael Azersky
Carole McDermott
Christian Meyer III ’79 and Mary Beth Welle-Meyer ’79
In memory of Raymond Simon
Robin Iveson
In memory of Howard John “Jack” Terrillion ’58
David Kurtz
In memory of Denise Timpano
Gabriel Timpano
In memory of Robert Willard
Nancy ’70 and Robert Mandry
In memory of Richard C. Woodard ’61
Lisa Woodard-Mink
In memory of Theodore Zalewski ’75
Jennifer Zalewski
HONORARY GIFTS
In honor of Ben Atwood ’09, G’13
David ’76 and Martha ’77 Lamb
In honor of Nancy Blake ’55
Joanne Adams
In honor of Cora Bruns ’86, G’06
Victoria Battin
In honor of Vincent Coyne ’66
Kim Lambert and William Wheatley
In honor of Harry Cynkus ’71
Pauline Cynkus
In honor of Paige Graves
Warren Graves
In honor of Todd and Jen Hutton
George and Pinny Kuckel
In honor of Daniel Johnson
Earle Reed
In honor of the Men’s Basketball Team
Frank Bergmann and Jill Ziemann Bergmann ’78
In honor of Provost Stephanie Nesbitt
Michelle Boucher
In honor of Frank ’66 and Gail Perretta
George and Pinny Kuckel
In honor of Linda Romano
Joanne ’90 and Robert Croop
Laura Ruberto
In honor of Ashlea Schad
Kim Landon ’75
We gratefully acknowledge the commitment, foresight, and generosity of our community of alumni and friends who believe so fervently in our mission to educate that they have included the University when planning their philanthropy. Those listed here have either made provision in their estate and/or have taken steps to make a planned or deferred gift at some future point to benefit the faculty and students of Utica University.
Future Planned Gifts:
Lawrence and Linda ’96 Aaronson
Robert ’59 and Elizabeth Babcock
John Bach Jr. ’75
Pat Bamdad ’65
Annette Becker
† deceased *arranged for matching gift
Professor John C. Behrens†
Bernice Benson†
Leo ’54† and Joan ’54 Brannick
Larry ’74 and Corky Bull
Anne Calabrese ’71
Gerard Capraro ’66
Timothy Coakley ’59
Thomas Cole ’92
Harry Cynkus ’71
Charles Daniels ’64
Stuart Davis ’58 and Constance
Griffith Davis ’58
Frederick Degen ’70
Ron ’61 and May ’60† Duff
Jim DuRoss
Carl Dziekan
Joan Friedenberg ’73
Linda Gigliotti ’69
Robert Greene ’67
Honorable Linda Griffin ’72
Mary Hayes Gordon ’82, G’13
John Hobika Jr. ’91
Eileen Hopsicker
Todd Hutton
Brian Jackson ’85
Daniel Jones ’97
Kevin Kasky ’86
Harry Keel ’73
Kim Landon ’75
Benay Leff ’65
Gerald Martin ’71
Sharon White McEwan ’64 Wester ’76 and Lorraine Miga
Tim Nelson
Randall Nichols
Adalgisa Nucci ’67
Theodore Orlin
Fredericka Paine
Charles ’63 and Eleda ’65 Roberts
James Samuel ’70
James Sheldon ’67
Henry Spring ’77
William Swick ’70
Ann Marie Teitelbaum Cassella ’92
Charles Teuscher ’84
Joseph and Evelyn Tierno
DeForest ’62 and Arlene ’63
Tinkler
Hans and Laura Wang
Tina Wiernusz ’79
Walter Williams ’61†
Bequests Received from the Estates of:
Lotis Howland
Donald Majka
Lucy McLean
Joanne Reppel ’62
Vincent A. Solomon ’60
Jack Terrillion ’58
Robert Thomasch ’58
John Weber
Power Couple
David ’76 and Martha ’77 Lamb reflect on their Pioneer journey
Though they now call Rochester home, for David ’76 and Martha ’77 Lamb, their hearts remain in Utica, a place where the couple met and made wonderful memories.
“I’m sure I’m nostalgic to a degree but I loved the totality of my experience,” David says. “Living in North Hall, making lifetime friends, becoming an RA, intramural sports, ad hoc football and baseball on the lawn, snowball fights when we used to have snow, going to basketball games, attending films, my degree classes (maybe other than Statistics – that one got me), pulling all-nighters in the computer lab (running Fortran!), historical geology and oceanography as electives – fantastic, the pub, concerts in the gym. I was envious of our kids as they toured prospective colleges and universities because I knew what was ahead of them.”
“I enjoyed the gambling nights in the cafeteria, roller skating at the rink that was down the street and around the corner,” adds Martha. “Beer blasts. Remember, we could drink legally at 18! I really enjoyed my Chemistry classes with Dr. Cerny and my Genetics class and breeding fruit flies!”
Fond memories flood back to Martha of living in South Hall - the huge vaulted ceilings she remembers on the third floor, sewing carpets together out of free carpet samples with her roommate, JoAnn, trading beds with someone in North Hall so they could have bunk beds and more floor space, and of course, JoAnn introducing Martha to David in the cafeteria one day at lunch.
“For some reason, JoAnn thought
Martha and I were a good match,” says David.
JoAnn and Martha would go on to be bridesmaids for each other’s wedding and still keep in touch at the holidays. With the whole world in front of them after high school, what was it that made them choose Utica? For David, it was setting foot on campus.
“Walking around with my parents, we were so well-treated and welcomed by everyone we met that day,” he remembers. “Not just the staff – of course, they were great – but the professors and students who really seemed to want me to come to Utica.”
Undecided at the time as to what his major would be, David found the core program at Utica appealing but also considered accounting as a possible route after taking a class his senior year of high school. After a few years of experimenting, he decided that indeed was the route for him.
“I had no idea really what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go,” Martha laughs. “Just that I was interested in some sort of medical career that was not nursing. I found medical technology in the Utica catalog, but what really sold me was that physical education was not a requirement.”
David attributes many of the great experiences he had at Utica to the encouragement and guidance of Professor Randy Huta.
“Randy learned that the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation in Washington, D.C. had an intern opening,” David recalls. “He encouraged me to apply, as a farm boy and accounting student. I figured I had no chance of winning the position; he assured me I was a shoo-in. I got the position and spent two summers there.”
His first summer there was 1974, when Watergate had D.C and the country in turmoil, with President Richard Nixon resigning that August.
“To have lived through that at the nation’s capital was an incredible
experience. I walked through the National Mall, close to the White House and with a view of the Capitol Building, every morning on my way to work. Unforgettable.”
Though she can’t recall the name, Martha fondly remembers her quantitative analysis professor as one of her favorites.
“She invited all of us medical technology students to her house for a traditional and authentic Philippine meal at the end of the term,” she says. “It was delicious and we all had a great time.”
Paying success forward
Upon graduation, Martha and David would go on to successful careers in their respective fields. Martha put her major to good use as a medical technologist at several hospitals in the Rochester area as well as an
information analyst for ACM medical Laboratory, Inc. Studying accounting at Utica and serving as Vice President of the Accounting Society, David received the Outstanding Accounting Student Award from the Mohawk Valley Chapter of the National Association of Accountants when he was a senior. His experiences and knowledge were put to good use in a career spent in accounting in the Rochester area for companies that include Arthur Andersen, Photographic Sciences Corp., and QuadMark, Ltd., a subsidiary of Xerox.
For the past two decades, David has been a consultant and acting CFO for various companies in the Rochester area that do not require a full-time CFO but need leadership in the areas of accounting and finance.
“In so many ways we lost touch a bit with the University after graduation
(life, kids, careers – all that took precedence) until about 10 years or so ago,” David says. That’s when a member of Utica’s Advancement Division reached out and helped the couple get re-connected. The couple visited in 2008 and took an extensive tour of the campus. “Our tour, after about a 40-year hiatus, was eye-popping. We barely knew where we were or even recognized the place. The success of the leadership vision was evident.”
Martha and David enjoyed seeing all of the new buildings and dorms that have risen and the amazing growth of the campus since their own time at Utica.
“But when you consider that it has been over 40 years, I shouldn’t be surprised!” Martha says. “It has been great reconnecting.”
In 2020, the Lambs joined the Oneida
ADVANCEMENT UPDATES
“How sad to not be able to pursue an education merely because it wasn’t affordable.”
Square Society after establishing the Martha Sutton ’77 & David ’76 Lamb Endowed Scholarship. The scholarship is awarded to two students each year, one in accounting and one in chemistry, with priority given to students from Rochester-area schools.
The Lambs say they wanted to be part of helping the vision for Utica to move forward to help those with talent get the opportunity to show it.
“How sad to not be able to pursue an education merely because it wasn’t affordable,” explains David. “We wanted to do just a little to solve that problem. We want to see what good things our resources can do now!”
With the aid of a small inheritance David received from them, he and Martha were able to honor his parents by establishing a second scholarship in 2021 - the Gerald and Grace Lamb Nursing Scholarship, which is awarded annually to two students in the nursing program.
“When I was there, a credit hour was $60. Now things are so much more expensive, many kids would not be able to afford to attend,” says Martha. “Our ability to help enable someone to also attend Utica is very important to us.”
Meeting the recipients of their schol-
arships has been equally as important, with Martha noting how much she loves talking with the students and getting insight into what degrees they are pursuing and why.
“It’s been almost indescribably rewarding to see what these young people have already accomplished, and to hear what their dreams are for the future,” says David. “They seem so grown-up, and adult compared to how I now see myself at their age.”
The power of reconnecting
Since reconnecting, the couple have continued to maintain a close relationship with Utica, and in addition to their two endowed scholarships, often attending and hosting University events, including admissions events in the Rochester area. At Homecoming in 2023, they both received University Key Awards in recognition of their commitment to the University.
“It’s a way we can help others see what’s happening at Utica these days, and to perhaps help them to get re-engaged as we have,” explains David. “Dr. Todd, like those before him, has a vision for the University, and hearing it directly from the proverbial horse’s mouth is powerful.”
They even served as alumni delegates for the inauguration of President Todd
Pfannestiel in Fall 2023.
“That was a new experience, for sure,” says David. “We didn’t really know what to expect.”
He and Martha found the excitement of the crowd at the ceremonies to be nothing short of infectious. “What really sticks with me was the student body cheering for Dr. Todd as he left the field – we knew he had their support,” David says.
“All of the students quite obviously were excited for Dr. Todd to take over as the new President,” says Martha. They both implore anyone, from prospective students to alumni to take a campus tour and, like themselves, see how much growth has been happening at Utica University.
“The campus tour will be an eye opener,” says Martha. “The state-ofthe-art nursing lab was just a wow moment.”
“You will be amazed,” David says. “It has so much to offer. The campus is beautiful. Utica University has stateof-the-art learning opportunities and excellent scholar-athlete opportunities. I can almost guarantee you that Utica is so much more than what you thought it was.”
Sports Journalist Chuck Stogel ’70
Honored
When you look at the career trajectory of Chuck Stogel ’70, it’s not a long shot to say the public relations and journalism major scored a perfect game.
If so, that might very well make the Dave Anderson Spotlight Award the ultimate professional trophy. The White Plains, NY native and Utica University alum was honored with the award at the Metropolitan Golf Writer Association’s (MGWA) 71st National Awards Dinner.
Graduating from White Plains High School before attending then-Utica College, Chuck earned his PRJ degree and went straight to the newsroom, working as a newspaper reporter in various departments, including his favorite - sports. He was also a radio sports announcer and, in the little free time remaining, a live public announcer at numerous sporting and other events.
Taking on the reins of sports editor at the newspaper in his hometown of White Plains, Chuck joined the Executive Committee of the Loucks Games, an elite, nationally-renowned annual track and field competition that has been contested for more than half a century.
He became a member of the Metropolitan Golf Writers Association and was quickly offered a seat on the organization’s Board of Directors, spending several years as Board President as well as serving on numerous committees. In addition to these responsibilities, Chuck has somehow also found time to serve as a valued member of the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association while remaining a fixture at local college and high school games, where he still serves as the official scorekeeper and announcer.
Currently, Chuck lives with his wife, Chris, in White Plains. The couple have a son, Mitchell, and daughter-in-law, Maiara.
Over the years, he’s put his passion for sports writing to use in numerous professional roles, including executive
sports editor of the Times Herald-Record in Middletown, NY; senior writer at Sports Inc. magazine; New York Bureau chief for The Sporting News; managing editor at Nielsen Magazines; a weekly golf columnist for pgatour.com and cbssports.com, as well as authoring a book on PGA Tour golf courses published by USA Today. All that work culminated at the Sleepy Hollow Country Club on October 11, 2023 when Chuck was recognized for his passionate commentary and perspective with the Dave Anderson Spotlight award.
“He has a true love for sports,” said MGWA President Brian Cromwell. “His work has reached a national audience, and he’s a sports journalism legend in Westchester County. His love of golf led him to the MGWA, and we are grateful for his leadership and his many years of service and dedication.”
Each year, the MGWA, which has celebrated the game of golf and promoted golf journalism since its inception in 1952, honors the sport’s champions and contributors at its National Awards Dinner. Named in memory of the late Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist and longtime MGWA board member, the Dave Anderson Spotlight award highlights “exemplary service by unique individuals in the golf community.”
TOP OF HER GAME: MAYA ANA CALLENDER ’ 16
Maya Ana Callender’s remarkable football journey from the Pioneers to the Patriots
In a word, it was big – her surroundings, the opportunity, the moment.
Maya Ana Callender ’16 gazed fixedly at the massiveness and luster of Gillette Stadium. The shine of the six championship rings inside the team facility could not escape her eyes.
It’s been more than a year since Callender showed up to One Patriot Place for her first day of work, and the thrill – a feeling of equal parts achievement and appreciation – has not receded. She can’t help but be reminded every day of where she is.
Maya Ana Callender is in the National Football League, working for one of its
most storied and successful franchises.
“Every morning when I walk in the building, it’s so cool just to see the stadium – big, bright,” she says. “That’s still very cool to me, and I don’t see that ever changing.”
The Utica University graduate made history in May 2023 when she was hired by the New England Patriots as a full-time member of the team’s scouting department.
Going into college, Callender knew she wanted to work in professional football in some way. “I thought I wanted to be the next Pam Oliver,” she says of the award-winning Fox Sports NFL commentator and sideline reporter. At Utica, she wasted no time setting out to find her path to a career in football. She hadn’t even yet settled into her residence hall when she opened her laptop, visited the student employment
website, and searched ’football.’ To her excitement, she discovered a student office assistant position with the football program. She immediately applied, and followed up with an e-mail to head football coach Blaise Faggiano. Impressed with the first-year student’s determination and professionalism, Faggiano hired the eager study following an in-person meeting.
Callender dove into the opportunity. Her responsibilities quickly grew. By the middle of her first season, she was named team manager and assisting head coach Blaise Faggiano and his staff on the sidelines on gamedays.
“Coach Faggiano let me do a little bit of everything. I helped out at recruiting events. I traveled with the team. I handled equipment. I set up practice. I broke down practice,” she says. “He gave me a lot of responsibility, which
allowed me to learn a lot more about the game, so by the time I was a senior, I was able to pinpoint and say, ’I really like operations. I really like recruiting. I want to do more of this.’”
Following graduation, Callender accepted a football operations graduate assistant position at Bellhaven University in Jackson, MS. When the school’s full-time director of football operations went on maternity leave, Callender was unexpectedly elevated to interim director for the 2016 season. After one season at Belhaven, she was hired at Princeton University, a Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) program, where she spent six years, first as an operations intern, then assistant director of football operations, and then ultimately becoming the first female director of football operations in the Ivy League.
It was at Princeton where she had the opportunity to interact with NFL scouts who would visit campus to evaluate the school’s professional prospects. Through those connections, she landed an internship in the Philadelphia Eagles scouting department during Princeton’s offseason. There, she worked under the Eagles former vice president for football operations Catherine Raîche, one of the highestranking female front office executives in the NFL. Callender saw in Raîche, who rose from an unpaid intern in the Canadian Football League to now assistant general manager with the Cleveland Browns, both a role model and a trailblazer.
“I was hooked,” Callender says. “I knew I wanted to be a scout in the NFL.”
Her career ambitions were, to say the least, lofty. There are fewer than 500
full-time scouting positions in the National Football League, only a small, albeit growing, fraction of which are filled by women.
Callender did not need a hammer to break through the glass ceiling of football. She credits Utica University for giving her the opportunities and opening her eyes to the possibility of seriously pursuing her passion as a career. In particular, it was Faggiano, whose mentorship extended far beyond knowledge of football operations and Xs and Os, who gave her the tools to break into the maledominated professional football industry.
“He allowed me to gain not only a deeper knowledge about the game, but gain confidence and gain a voice. He welcomed me in, and he didn’t just make me feel comfortable, he made me feel like it was my place – like I belong here,” she says. “After four years on his staff, I could walk into any place, any situation, knowing, ’I can do this.’”
In the fall of 2022, Callender participated in a virtual Women’s Summit for Careers in Football hosted by the Tampa Buccaneers. One of the speakers during the sessions was Buccaneers assistant general manager John Spytek. Afterwards, she e-mailed Spytek to introduce herself and let him know that she had applied for a highly competitive Nunn-Wooten Scouting Fellowship. The fellowship was founded by the NFL in 2015 to expose qualified candidates to a career in professional scouting and increase the pool of diverse talent in the scouting ranks. Callender was selected by the Buccaneers.
Following the fellowship experience in Tampa, Callender attended the 2023 NFL Combine in Indianapolis to volunteer with the Kansas Chiefs, at the invitation of several of the team’s scouting personnel whom she met
during the course of her internships with the Eagles and Buccaneers. While in Indianapolis, she met with members of the Patriots personnel department, and had the first of several interviews for a full-time scouting assistant position of their staff.
Callender was standing on practice field at Princeton in April 2023, getting ready for the Tigers’ annual spring game, when she got a phone call from Patriots Director of College Scouting Camren Williams offering her the position. “When I got (the call),” she recalls, “it was just like, ’You’ve been dreaming of something for so long, and it’s actually happening.”
It was a far cry from her football beginnings at the Bronx, NY park where a teenage Callender ran operations for her younger brother Malcolm’s flag football team. At the time, that meant filming practices and setting up the post-practice snacks. Today, Callender is earning a living identifying and evaluating potential players for a six-time Super Bowlwinning franchise.
“There are four (scouting assistants) altogether. We like to joke that we keep the program afloat,” she says. “We’re in-house scouts, which means we assist both the college and pro scouts. We’re really the back end, doing research on prospects, watching game film, and charting strengths and weaknesses. Basically, making sure we’re doing everything necessary to make sure we have evaluations on all the players in the NFL and in college. It’s important we know the type of person we are bringing into our building, and how they will help our team.”
Callender has also kept a watchful eye on the vanguard of women breaking barriers and rising up the ranks throughout the NFL as well as other professional sports leagues. Raîche, according to many reports, projects as a strong bet to soon become the NFL’s first female general manager.
“It’s definitely nice to see that people are more open-minded, knowing you don’t need to have played the sport or have a certain background to be in this position,” Callender says. “I’m
where I am because the Patriots saw my dedication, my hard work, and my knowledge of the game. I think as more people and teams start looking at women and other potential employees in that way more opportunities will come, and it looks like that’s the direction it’s going, and so it’s very nice to see.”
Callender is careful not to see too far ahead, but looks forward to more opportunities in the future.
“I’ve always been someone who if I have a goal, I’m going to keep working hard and doing whatever I need to do to reach that goal,” she says. “Even though I’m with the Patriots, I still have a long way to go.
“(Ultimately) I want to be in a role where I work directly with the head coach, watching the daily needs of the team, watching film, scouting college football, knowing how to improve our roster. Ideally, a vice president for player personnel. I definitely want to be in that type of role.”
Maybe a general manager one day?
“Yeah, maybe a general manager or president of football operations,” she says of her end goal, sounding like when the moment comes, it will not be too big.
Class Notes
ALUMNI EVENTS
[1] Denver, CO, Alumni Reception
[2] Capital Region Inner Circle Dinner hosted by alumnus, and trustee emeritus, Thomas Cox ’69
[3] Atlanta Region Inner Circle Dinner hosted by alumnus, and current Trustee, Harry Cynkus ’71
[4] Rochester Region Inner Circle Dinner hosted by Alums David ’76 and Martha Lamb ’77
[5] Utica Pioneers Football- ECAC Bowl Game Parent and Alumni Tailgate, Geneva NY, November 18, 2024
[6] Health Professions Alumni Panel Speakers, April 17, 2024:
Dr. Terrence Li ’01
Dr. Maggie Wright ’10
Dr. Nikhil Panda, MBA ’02
[7] Sports Management Alumni Panel Speakers, April 17, 2024:
Jacqueline Higgins Guzman ’07
Mike DeBetta ’08
Samantha Bentley ’17
[8] Boilermaker 2024 - Utica University Water Station, July 14, 2024
A Conversation with Larry Platt ’87, Producer of the Most-Watched Documentary Ever in the U.S.
Larry Platt ’87 is a producer of “Kelce,” the Emmy Award-winning documentary about Philadelphia Eagles star Jason Kelce and his struggle with the decision of whether to retire from professional football. The film premiered on September 12 and had the biggest first three days ever for a documentary film in the U.S.
A Philadelphia media fixture since the early 1990s, Platt is co-executive director of the Philadelphia Citizen, the nonprofit, solutions-oriented civic news organization he co-founded in 2015. That same year, Platt authored with ESPN sportscaster Stuart Scott the New York Times bestseller Every Day I Fight, a memoir of the late Scott’s cancer fight. He is the author of several other acclaimed books, most involving professional sports figures, and his work has been published in New York Times
Magazine, GQ, and Men’s Journal, among other national publications
Utica Magazine sat down with Platt to discuss “Kelce,” its incredible reception, and his foray into documentary film.
Utica Magazine: “Kelce” is Prime Video’s most-watched documentary ever in the U.S. To what do your attribute the film’s incredible reception? Has its success surprised you?
Larry Platt: I don’t think any of us thought it would be received the way it was. First and foremost, the film works because in an age of pre-packaged celebrity, Jason and, especially, his wife, Kylie, are so very real. There’s no artifice with either of them. Over something
like two years, they just let a camera crew embed in their lives. That takes a courage and a comfort in one’s own skin that is increasingly rare. And that gets to the other reason I think the film went viral – the husband and wife directing/ producing team of Don Argott and Sheena Joyce. Don is a cinematographer with a great eye and the look of the film is more creative than the typical sports doc. Sheena’s very real relationship with Kylie – who was initially not interested in being on-camera – was key to getting the subjects to forget that a camera crew was capturing their every move.
UM: Much of your career has been in print media and, more recently, digital publishing. How did this project, and your involvement in it, come to be?
LP: I had produced a previous little-watched documentary called “We Town” that Sports Illustrated bought. Jason and executive producer (and former Eagle) Connor Barwin came to me and said they wanted to do a doc that chronicles an athlete handling retirement. A few years back, I’d done a long feature (article) for Sports Illustrated on that very topic, called “Life After The Game.” Jason, Connor, and I had dinner, I mapped out for them the process, and we agreed to partner on this project – and we were off. The first step was hiring a director. We interviewed filmmakers and found Don and Sheena.
The project started as a chronicle of a 35-year-old world-class athlete facing the end –confronting losing the only thing that had ever given him any sense of personal identity. As the Eagles’ magical season culminating in a Super Bowl loss went on, that thesis morphed into more of a straight-ahead football narrative, but the theme of Jason’s impending decision to play or not to play remained and gave the story some added emotional weight.
LP: I’ve had the great good fortune of chronicling arguably the two most popular and fan-friendly athletes in Philadelphia history: Allen Iverson and Jason Kelce. And while they would seem to be very different, I think it’s their similarities that endear them to the Philly sports fan. They’re both warriors, underdogs, guys who used the doubts of others as their fuel to greatness. Philadelphia – which lost being the financial capital of America to New York and serving as the political capital of the nation to D.C. – still has the same type of chip on its shoulder. There are some athletes who can’t cut it in Philly – way back in the ’80s, all-star catcher Lance Parrish crumbled under fan critique – but guys like Iverson and Kelce, in their toughness and raw humanity, are tailor made to succeed here.
UM: You’ve often examined the intersection between sports and culture. What spurred your passion for that topic? To what extent does Jason Kelce’s story transcend sports?
UM: As a storyteller, what is it about Jason Kelce’s story that captivated you?
LP: Initially, I was intrigued by the subject – a deep dive into the very weird phenomenon of athlete retirement. Who else retires at 35? But then as I got to know Jason, I found a terrific character – he’s so curious and introspective and readily emotional. Quickly, I became convinced that he was leading man material, which is to say, a protagonist that others – football fans or not – would want to root for on a very personal level.
UM: The city of Philadelphia is often characterized – and sometimes criticized – as a tough and excessively spirited sports town. Yet, it is a city that also embraces its sports heroes, many of whose relationships with the city you’ve written about. What did you find so unique about Jason Kelce’s connection with the city?
LP: When you think of it, cities make no logical sense. Let’s take all these people, from all different backgrounds, and have them basically live on top of one another: What could go wrong? Well, it turns out that one of the ways we take that hodge podge of humanity and turn it into the e pluribus unum creed is through our games. Sports just may be our last mass communitarian shared value. I’ve seen white Republicans in Armani suits high-fiving Black hip-hoppers upon an Iverson crossover, and blue collar truck drivers and women from tiny Bryn Mawr College crying together upon Jason Kelce’s emotional farewell speech. We don’t have much that brings us together anymore, as so many of our institutions have crumbled under our recent political and cultural divisions. But when I’m at a Sixers or Eagles game, my neighbors and I are still united in common purpose – that’s a much needed feeling these days.
CLASS NOTES
Dan Chmielewski ’83, Irvine, CA, agency, “Madison Alexander PR” celebrated its 20th Anniversary and swept the three Cybersecurity Awards that honor PR firms this year. Those include: Cybersecurity PR Agency of the Year category of the 2024 Cybersecurity Excellence Awards, the Global Infosec Awards 2024 Cutting Edge PR Firm for Infosecurity Companies and Paula Brici Most Innovative PR Executive for Infosecurity Companies by Cyber Defense Media Group, and lastly, the Agency of the Year for Cybersecurity (Public Relations) Gold by Globee Awards®.
[1] Lisa A. Crayton ’85, (PR/J) celebrated the release of her 18th book for children, “Only Light Can Do that: 60 Days of MLK - Devotions for Kids,” published by Tommy Nelson, an imprint of HarperCollins Christian Publishing. Co-authored by Sharifa Stevens and illustrated by Camilla Ru, it is designed to inspire faith and encourage social justice activism through an exploration of Dr. King’s life and legacy.
[2] Dr. David Byrd ’93, accepted a position as Editor in Chief of Naval Aviation News, the U.S. Navy’s oldest magazine dedicated to aviation, and earned a doctorate in Information and Interaction Design from the University of Baltimore.
Amy (Hibbert) Perry ’93, Burlington, VT, is director of development & communications for the Living Well Group. The Living Well Group is a nonprofit organization that operates two residential care homes in Vermont.
Lauren Mattia ’98, Utica, NY, became a founding partner in a new company - Digital Infrastructure Advisors, LLC. in September 2023.
Jaime (Spencer) Edelmann ’99, Nesconset, NY, is the president of Miss Jaime, O.T., P.C.
Mike Duignan ’01, Manlius, NY, is the inaugural Director of SUNY Morrisville’s ACE (Advancing Completion through Engagement) Program. Mike assumed this role in January 2024.
Sara Furlong ’06, Hamilton, NY, was named Director of University Marketing and Communications at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Marcy, NY in January 2024. In this role she is responsible for the oversight and direction of the communications and marketing team, and development, refinement, support, and deployment of various communications strategies, campaigns and vehicles to lead the promotion of SUNY Poly.
Michelle Ironside Kinville ’06, has been elected to the Madison County Board of Supervisors, representing the City of Oneida Wards 4, 5, and 6. Michelle took office on January 1, 2024.
Maria Karina (Ochoa) Cantales ’06, of Utica, NY, published a book titled Fables of the World with her firstgrade students at the Science Academy of New York Charter School. A family and school partnership, the book is dedicated to all the children of the world after the conflicts of Europe and the Middle East. Maria would like to thank her
Utica Professor magazine writing professor who she says planted the seed in her to write and believed that the sky was the limit for their students.
Sarah (Calyton) Roselli ’06, G ’14, of Clinton, NY, celebrated 18 years with the Tilton School at the House of the Good Shepherd, serving as a Special Education Teacher before taking on the role of Assistant principal.
David Cole ’06 G’07, graduated from Bentley University on May 17, 2024 with a Master of Business Administration in Strategic Healthcare Management.
Stephanie “Tooke” Baran ’08, recently earned membership in the Comfort Tyler Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, DAR.
Jennifer (Rayno) Benn ’08, has been promoted to serve as the Director of Development and Public Relations for The Neighborhood Center in Utica, NY where she will create more opportunities for exposure of The Neighborhood Center’s work through social media, news coverage, and outreach businesses to increase awareness of the agency’s services for the many individuals that remain in dire need.
Nicole (Wemple) Pare ’10, Rensselaer, NY, was promoted to Assistant Director, FA Operations of FA Solutions LLC, a Higher Education financial aid servicing provider.
Jared Keyte ’12, serves as a Defensive Assistant Coach for the NCAA Division I-FBS football program at Rutgers University. Keyte’s coaching career has also seen him serve on staffs at Utica University, Springfield College, and the University of Maine.
[3] Evelyn Kurzac ’14, G ’15, Kenosha, WI is a Special Education Teacher in Kenosha, WI. A member of the Utica Pioneer Athletics Hall of Fame Class of 2020, Evelyn and her wife Erika welcomed a son, Rowan, in June 2023.
Jason Nova ’14, Danbury CT, was named as the Executive Aide to the Mayor of Danbury in December 2023. Immediately preceding this, he served as the Field Organizer for then-candidate for Mayor, Roberto Alves.
Alyssa Sacco Waters ’15, Utica, NY was named Executive Director of the Center for Leadership Excellence in February 2024.
Andrew Russell ’16, Flowery Branch, GA, is Cash App’s senior financial crimes investigator.
Ashton Villenueve ’16 G’18, Guilderland, NY, accepted a position as Property Manager at The United Group of Companies in October 2023. Rose Zaloom ’16, earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Rochester in December 2022 and in August 2023, published an essay titled “’Slack in [Neither] Tongue [Nor] Performance’: The Duchess’s Maternal Authority and Incestuous Revenge in The Revenger’s Tragedy” in the Routledge anthology Boundaries of Violence. She currently works as a Technical Writer.
Kathleen Arcuri ’17, Utica, NY, is an assistant district attorney for the Oneida County District Attorney’s Office. Kathleen is also a member of the Western New England School of Law Board of Alumni.
Josh Landy ’17, Baltimore, MD, is a
Senior Risk Associate on the Commercial Risk Infrastructure, Governance, and Reporting Team at Capital One.
Adam DiStefano G. ’17, Richmond, VA, was recently named the Director of Threat and Security Posture Management at eSentire, a firm providing Managed Risk, Managed Detection and Response and Incident Response services. Adam also authored his first book, The ABC’S of Cyber Security: Total Cyber Security for Small and Medium Sized Businesses, in early 2024.
Anthony Bierra-Anderson ’18, G’22, was named as the Assistant Director of the Institute for College Preparation in the Center for Multicultural Equity & Access at Georgetown University in May 2024. Anthony previously served in similar capacities at Howard University.
Ed Combs ’18, Trenton, IL, works at Dell Technologies as a senior principal engineer solutions architect.
Abigail Mosenthin ’18, Dolgeville, NY, is a Public Health Educator for the Otsego County Department of Health in Otsego County, NY, and also serves as an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Health at Hartwick College. She will earn her Doctorate in Public Health in Fall 2024 from Capella University.
Nicole (Bartolomie) Nucci ’18 G’22, Utica NY, is the Director of Business Development for Upstate New York for National Health Care Associates. She is also a Licensed Real Estate Salesperson through Coldwell Banker Prime Properties. Nicole and her husband
Bonded for Life: The Enduring Friendship of Utica University Sorority Sisters
Submitted by Jaime Edelmann ’99
In the spring of 1996, a group of young women at thenUtica College came together, united by their shared aspirations and the bonds of sisterhood. Little did we know that more than two decades later, our friendships would not only endure but also deepen, despite the miles that now separate us. Spread across the country, our circle of friends remains unbroken, thanks to the marvels of modern technology and our unwavering commitment to each other.
We, a close-knit group of sorority sisters, still talk almost daily using the Marco Polo app. This virtual lifeline allows us to share the minutiae of our lives, offer support during tough times, and celebrate each other’s successes. From breakups and marriages to childbirth and child-rearing, we have stood by one another, offering unwavering support and a shoulder to lean on.
Most of us pursued careers in occupational therapy, a field that embodies our collective spirit of care and dedication. Our professional paths have led to remarkable achievements. Hope Silvis Carraci is a director at the American Occupational Therapy Association, guiding the profession with her visionary leadership. Laura Bogarski Rowan has made a name for herself as an advocate and renowned pelvic health therapist, championing women’s health issues. Jaime Spencer Edelmann, an OT blogger at Miss Jaime OT, tirelessly advocates for equal rights for school occupational therapists, ensuring that the voices of her colleagues are heard.
Recently, our group faced a challenging moment when Jaime battled breast cancer. True to form, the girls rallied to support their friend. Once her treatments concluded, Jaime called for an “I’m done with cancer” girls’ trip—a celebration of life, friendship, and resilience. Hope, Laura, Jaime, Theresa Salenski Allendar, Dena Gray Rich, Tanya Fleming Soroko, Andrea Gambardella, Melissa Becker Gray all flew to St. Augustine, Florida, for a much-needed reunion. Renting a mansion by the beach, we spent our days basking in the sun, collecting shells, shopping, laughing, reminiscing, and savoring the joy of being together. It was a reminder that no matter how much time passes or how far apart we may be, our bond remains as strong as ever.
Our story is one of enduring friendship that began at Utica and has flourished over the years. We are a testament to the power of sisterhood and the strength that comes from having a supportive network of friends. As occupational therapists and entrepreneurs, we have achieved much individually, but it is our collective journey that truly defines us. We are the best of friends, and our journey together is far from over.
In a world that is constantly changing, our sisterhood provides a comforting constant—a reminder that we are never alone. Whether we are celebrating milestones or navigating life’s challenges, we know we can always count on each other. Our story is not just about the past 25 years; it is about a lifelong commitment to friendship, support, and love that all started at Utica.
Vinnie Nucci ’10 have two children, Dominic and Dean. Tyena Garcia ’19, Yonkers, NY, started a new position as a Tax Associate at Deloitte in October 2024. In May 2024, Ms. Garcia earned her MS in Accounting from the Zicklin School of Business of CUNY Baruch.
Alex Horvatits G.’19, Baltimore, MD, is the Offensive Coordinator and Wide Receivers Coach for Johns Hopkins University Football. Fall 2023 was Alex’s first season as the Offensive Coordinator; a season in which the Blue Jays made it to the Quarterfinals in the NCAA Division III playoffs.
Melanie MacDonald ’19, Seattle, WA, is the director of rehabilitation for Caldera Care.
Wendi Brown G ’20, Fort Meade, MD, accepted a position as Wargame Planner at U.S. Cyber Command under Booz Allen Hamilton.
Daniel Cieplenski ’21, New York Mills, NY, is the owner of the Roselawn Restaurant, LLC.
Celeste Gessner ’21, is the Weekend Anchor with CBS 7 News in Odessa, TX. In addition to anchoring, she produces the broadcasts. This includes finding new local content, cutting video, stacking the show, and managing the weekend reporter.
Nicolas Yzaguirre ’22, New York Mills, NY, is a lead cyber test engineer for Booz Allen Hamilton.
Michael Campbell Jr. ’23, New York City, NY, was named as an Operations Associate at
Success Academy Charter Schools in June 2024.
Alexander Christian ’23, Utica, NY, is an Information Technology Specialist II for the New York State Insurance Fund in Albany, NY.
Corey Lichtman ’23, Gainesville, Florida, was named as a Communications Assistant at the University Athletic Association of the University of Florida. In this role he will serve as the primary contact for the nine time reigning American Athletic Conference Champion University of Florida Gators Lacrosse team.
Isabella Raux ’23, Ithaca, NY, is a Anesthesia Student Technician and Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine Candidate, Class of 2027, at Cornell University. Isabella credits Dr. Pack, Dr. Damashek, Dr. Buchanan, and Dr. Aaronson for helping to equip and guide her for her successes after graduation.
Sean Robert ’23, Wynantskill, NY, is the community & social services director for the Town of North Greenbush.
Hannah Beckman ’24, New York, NY, was named Media and Community Relations Coordinator of the New York Sirens of the Professional Women’s Hockey League in September 2024.
BIRTHS & ADDITIONS
[1] Adam Nell ’18 and Jacqueline (O’Brien) Nell ’19, of Vernon, NY welcomed a baby boy, Logan Scott Nell, on January 10, 2024.
[2] Allison Matlak (Wagner) ’20, Utica NY, and her husband Eddie, welcomed a daughter, Sylvie, in October 2023.
WEDDINGS
[3] Alyssa Sacco Waters ’15 and Mark Waters G’16, were wed in August 2024.
[4] Thomas ’19 and Casie ’19 (Farrell) Crowley, were wed in October 2023.
IN MEMORIAM
Carl R. Yettru ’49, New Paltz, NY, September 8, 2023.
Dr. George Barlow ’50, Dublin, OH, October 8, 2023.
Jerome O. Cooley ’50, Cicero, NY, January 31, 2024.
Dr. Frank L. DeGeorge ’50, Long Beach, CA, May 19, 2022.
Stanley Feltman ’50, Coram, NY, September 23, 2021.
Paul H. Heiland Sr. ’50, Utica, NY, September 8, 2024.
Richard E. Hufnail ’50, Owings Mills, MD, January 21, 2021.
Morris N. Artessa ’51, Indian Shores, FL, September 19, 2023.
Robert F. Dwyer ’51, Redding, CT, July 14, 2023.
Harry R. Kahler ’51, Lutherville Timonium, MD, January 14, 2023.
Robert D. Krieger ’51, Fort Myers, FL, October 31, 2022.
Francis J. Mazzacua ’51, Shippensburg, PA, May 19, 2023.
James R. McGee ’51, Larchmont, NY, May 22, 2021.
John J. McGuane, Jr. ’51, Lakewood, OH, March 17, 2024.
Dr. William Rosenfeld ’51, Utica, NY, May 14, 2023.
John P. Bradley ’52, Santa Fe, NM, December 16, 2020.
Barbara J. Carr ’52, Punta Gorda, FL, October 25, 2023.
Seymour Fleisher ’52, Boca Raton, FL, August 27, 2022.
Yolanda Font ’52, Palo Alto, CA, February 3, 2024.
John M. Haynes Jr. ’52, Asheville, NC, October 22, 2022.
Donald C. McLoughlin ’52, Rome, NY, April 8, 2024.
Robert C. Roback ’52, New Hartford, NY, July 26, 2024.
Robert A. Rowden ’52, Bedminster, NJ, July 28, 2020.
Barbara Schulefand ’52, Buffalo, NY, November 19, 2023.
Martin Stern ’52, Oceanside, CA, February 5, 2024.
Walter Zielenski ’52, Holland Patent, NY, December 13, 2023.
Dr. Karl Neumann ’53, Lake Success, NY, February 23, 2021.
Dr. Henry G. Talerico Jr. ’53, Oriskany, NY, November 27, 2022.
Alice M. Truscello ’53, Geneva, NY, May 17, 2024.
Barbara A. Briggs ’54, Corning, NY, January 31, 2023.
W. James Greene ’54, San Diego, CA, January 7, 2024.
Hon. Andrew V. Siracuse ’54, Penfield, NY, April 5, 2023.
Dr. Marvin H. Sitrin ’54, Cranbury, NJ, February 20, 2024.
Bernard J. Sullivan ’54, Ontario, NY, August 14, 2023.
Walter L. Uerz ’54, Latham, NY, June 19, 2024.
Adrian S. Briggs ’55, Lee, NY, August 3, 2024.
Raymond M. Kosiewicz ’55, Yorkville, NY, December 2, 2023.
Sandra G. Haponski ’56, The Villages, FL, August 4, 2023.
Peter P. Pacitto ’56, DeWitt, NY, November 16, 2022.
Jane E. Papageorgis ’56, Vancouver, BC, November 4, 2020.
William J. Clarke ’57, Chico, CA, December 10, 2021.
William Goodman ’57, Whitesboro, NY, April 28, 2024.
Joseph R. Natiella ’57, Bonita Springs, FL, September 18, 2024.
Norman Pensero ’57, Utica, NY, April 27, 2023.
Stanley J. Walerski ’57, New York Mills, NY, March 6, 2024.
Christine Kowalewski ’58, Sheboygan Falls, WI, March 18, 2022.
Robert F. Long ’58, Utica, NY, January 28, 2023.
Fred M. Maliga ’58, Wilmington, NC, October 5, 2023.
Stewart C. Pelton ’58, Bradenton, FL, May 2, 2021.
Joseph A. Piccoli ’58, Liverpool, NY, January 31, 2024.
Bohdan J. Rabij ’58, Utica, NY, May 9, 2023.
John E. Schmutz ’58, Ormond Beach, FL, July 29, 2022.
Howard J. Terrillion ’58, Dallas, TX, December 6, 2023.
John S. Zumpano Sr. ’58, Utica, NY, February 21, 2023.
Philip A. Card ’59, Schuyler, NY, July 23, 2023.
Charles W. McIntyre ’59, Endicott, NY, September 4, 2024.
Vincent C. Scarafile ’59, New Hartford, NY, August 14, 2023.
Edward E. Cossette ’60, Oneida, NY, August 21, 2024.
Richard F. Stofle ’60, Fairport, NY, November 30, 2020.
Patricia Fritzsch ’61, Webster, NY, January 21, 2024.
Theodore R. Johnson ’61, Clinton, NY, October 5, 2023.
John R. Moore ’61, Remsen, NY, July 29, 2024.
Raymond F. Novak ’61, Fayetteville, NY, May 19, 2024.
Fredda Silverstein ’61, Rochester, NY, February 1, 2022.
Barbara G. Starnes ’61, Clinton, NY, February 10, 2024.
Joyce L. Armstrong ’62, West Winfield, NY, May 21, 2023.
Allyn R. Earl ’62, Clinton, NY, September 21,2024.
John H. Kennedy ’62, Red Hook, NY, January 12, 2023.
Jason Levine ’62, Reseda, CA, May 29, 2023.
Gerald Porcelli ’62, Utica, NY, January 1, 2024.
Bernard J. Roswig ’62, Los Angeles, CA, February 19, 2024.
Richard J. Stemmer ’62, Utica, NY, March 3, 2024.
Margaret Tubbert Farrington ’62, The Villages, FL, October 2, 2024.
Thomas D. Borgia ’63, Ilion, NY, April 20, 2024.
Dr. Graham D. Coveyduck ’63, Denver, CO, June 26, 2023.
Charles L. Davis ’63, Erieville, NY, April 4, 2024.
Elizabeth H. Goodale ’63, Richfield Springs, NY, May 17, 2024.
Professor Randall Huta ’63, Piseco, NY, February 7, 2024.
Francis J. Jweid ’63, Utica, NY, November 21, 2022.
Thomas M. McNally ’63, Daytona Beach, FL, April 16, 2023.
Michael J. O’Hara ’63, Granby, CT, February 25, 2024.
Frank A. Scarano ’63, Utica, NY, February 21, 2024.
Carl H. Schmitt ’63, Utica, NY, December 29, 2023.
Nicholas Cardinale ’64, Whitesboro, NY, February 20, 2024.
Vincent A. Cicconi ’64, Annapolis, MD, September 16, 2024.
Nancy Gall ’64, Beaumont, CA, August 6, 2023.
Duglas F. Gillard ’64, Lyndonville, NY, February 7, 2012.
Patricia A. Hook ’64, Utica, NY, March 31, 2024.
Arlington P. Jetter ’64, Utica, NY, May 1, 2024.
Christine F. McCarthy ’64, New Hartford, NY, June 30, 2024.
William Van Shufflin, Sr. ’64, Oriskany, NY, March 12, 2024.
Marjorie N. Youker ’64, Dolgeville, NY, February 7, 2024.
Robert W. Armstrong ’65, West Winfield, NY, May 20, 2023.
Angela Brooks ’65, New Hartford, NY, January 15, 2023.
David C. Greene ’65, Appleton, WI, September 20, 2024.
Philip J. Scampone ’65, Utica, NY, July 26, 2023.
Patricia Tocatlian ’65, Morristown, NY, July 7, 2024.
W. Garth Warner ’65, Oneida, NY, August 19, 2023.
James D. Adasek ’66, New York Mills, NY, July 8, 2024.
Marie J. Costa ’66, New Hartford, NY, November 17, 2023.
Enola Dickson ’66, Utica, NY, June 24, 2023.
John P. Farrell ’66, Utica, NY, June 2, 2024.
Edward J. McDonald ’66, Tucson, AZ, April 20, 2023.
Ralph M. Risley ’66, Deerfield, NY, December 26, 2022.
Patricia Seidel-Isett ’66, Utica, NY, August 30, 2022.
Miriam Balutis ’67, Arlington, VA, August
22, 2023.
Lorna M. Kaier ’67, Rome, NY, April 3, 2024.
Dr. Linda Rose Barr ’67, New Hartford, NY, January 17, 2024.
Ralph G. Sayles ’67, Oneida, NY, November 18, 2023.
Carlton H. Austin ’68, New Hartford, NY, February 10, 2023.
Edwin R. Baldwin ’68, Fairhaven, MA, February 24, 2024.
Clayton A. Boucher ’68, Remsen, NY, March 8, 2024.
Barbara A. Keyes ’68, New Hartford, NY, November 27, 2021.
Bruce J. MacLain ’68, Whitesboro, NY, March 30, 2024.
Moritz P. Rothschild ’68, Albany, NY, November 23, 2022.
Donald J. Wagner ’68, Utica, NY, December 17, 2023.
Richard R. Burmeister ’69, Southbury, MA, July 27, 2024.
Judith A. Goldstone ’69, Whitesboro, NY, April 27, 2024.
William J. Griffin ’69, Utica, NY, August 18, 2024.
Gerald W. Loftis ’69, Conroe, TX, February 27, 2024.
James L. Salsbury ’69, Bedford, NH, February 23, 2024.
Stanley R. Swier ’69, Barrington, NH, August 5, 2024.
William Trapanick ’69, New Hartford, NY, September 2, 2023.
Richard F. Bohlke ’70, Geneseo, NY, March 3, 2023.
Kenneth L. Elow ’70, Alpine, CA, October 24, 2022.
Brian Fovel ’70, Park City, UT, January 4, 2021.
Don L. Kieloch ’70, Liverpool, NY, August 6, 2022.
Janet (Bacon Moore) Kirby ’70 , Geneva, NY, December 25, 2023.
Marjorie R. McAnuff ’70, Ilion, NY, April 24, 2024.
Joyce B. Rice ’70, Oviedo, FL, October 21, 2021.
Patricia Doughty ’71, New Hartford, NY, March 12, 2024.
Dr. Mary Anne Hutchinson ’71, Rome, NY, June 26, 2024.
Patrick M. Parish ’71, Batavia, NY, September 18, 2024.
William H. Smith ’71, Endicott, NY, December 20, 2023.
Stephen E. Zapisek ’71, Whitesboro, NY, August 9, 2023.
Gary Agnello ’72, Sarasota, FL, October 3, 2023.
James A. Carroll Jr. ’72, Bradenton, FL, August 21, 2021.
Roger A. Csajko ’72, Clearwater Beach, FL, June 16, 2023.
John P. Lovell ’72, Portland, OR, March 4, 2023.
Timothy A. Moore ’72, Marcy, NY, July 4, 2023.
H. Roger Dean ’73, Bethlehem Township, PA, March 28, 2024.
Bobbie Dillman ’73, Aiken, SC, April 4, 2024.
Frank Palmisano ’73, New Hartford, NY, December 13, 2023
Lawrence F. Wright ’73, Leland, NC, April 25, 2023.
Joseph P. Britell ’74, Stratford, CT, January 4, 2020.
Gary R. Campbell ’74, Utica, NY, October 10, 2024.
George E. Flint ’74, Oneida, NY, May 30, 2024.
Jim Kapsales ’74, Sedona, AZ, May 16, 2023.
Donald F. McKee ’74, North Port, FL, July 1, 2021.
Diane J. Nobles ’74, New Hartford, NY, April 26, 2024.
David E. Reichert ’74, Holland Patent, NY, February 16, 2024.
Frank S. Griffo Jr. ’75, Rome, NY, April 1, 2024.
Gladys F. Rogers ’75, New Hartford, NY, February 29, 2024.
Matt E. Schneyer ’75, Homer, AK, 2023.
William Robert Shaul ’75, Palatine Bridge, NY, May 5, 2022.
Ronni Shulman Mallozzi ’75, North Venice, FL, December 12, 2023.
William Warner ’75, Seminole, FL, April 9, 2024.
Bobbi M. Willson ’75, Verona, NY, August 5, 2023.
Gerard J. Heintz ’76, Whitesboro, NY,
September 15, 2023.
Brice R. Kistler ’76, Utica, NY, April 14, 2024.
Jeffrey B. Senft ’76, Salt Point, NY, October 25, 2023.
Dr. Theresa R. Brush ’77, Bridgewater, MA, February 29, 2024.
Alfred M. Gorney Jr. ’77, Utica, NY, September 10, 2023.
Vincent S. Maneen ’77, Whitesboro, NY, December 8, 2023.
Thomas J. O’Brien Jr. ’77, Mayfield, NY, February 6, 2024.
Wilson D. Jones ’78, Rome, NY, January 12, 2024.
Dr. Robert D. Lemieux ’78, Alder Creek, NY, May 18, 2022.
Col. Robert H. Robertson ’78, Ilion, NY, January 23, 2023.
Dennis R. Schultz ’78, Marlborough, CT, July 18, 2024.
Rachel Smith ’78, Hampton, VA, May 19, 2024.
Barbara Allen ’79, Utica, NY, June 28, 2023.
Stephen J. Powers ’79, New Hartford, NY, September 14, 2024.
Joseph S. Tarkowski II ’79, Whitesboro, NY, December 5, 2023.
Anthony J. De Salvo ’80, Baldwinsville, NY, July 30, 2023.
Francis W. Ficarro ’81, Boonville, NY, September 21, 2024.
Michael D’Amara ’82, Oakland Park, FL, September 19, 2024.
Dorothy Hilts ’82, Bend, OR, September 13, 2023.
Mark J. Phillips ’82, Okeechobee, FL, June 17, 2022.
Mary S. Gorney ’83, Utica, NY, June 14, 2024.
Andre M. Kallay ’83, New Hartford, NY, March 3, 2024.
Pamela A. Van Slyke ’83, Middleville, NY, December 5, 2021.
Michael L. Coyne ’84, Tioga, NY, May 29, 2023.
Anthony M. Greci ’84, Chesapeake, VA, September 2, 2023.
Donna L. Mead ’84, Homosassa, FL, December 26, 2023.
Steven R. Prioleau ’84, Saint Paul, MN, October 27, 2023.
Jacqueline F. Rockwood ’84, Orleans, MA, March 14, 2023.
Sandra E. Courto ’85, Chittenango, NY, December 17, 2023.
Lynn M. Ingham ’85, Bradenton, FL, April 5, 2024.
Jane E. Hyatt ’86, Kittery, ME, July 3, 2024.
Robert M. Burney ’88, Lowville, NY, December 9, 2023.
Virginia C. Beecher ’89, Clark Mills, NY, April 4, 2024.
Nancy L. Vecchio ’89, Watertown, NY, April 25, 2024.
Christina Dorward ’90, Muncy, PA, September 3, 2023.
Craig M. Chevrier ’91, Hinesburg, VT, September 1, 2023.
Carol A. Cooper ’91, Unadilla Forks, NY, January 18, 2024.
Elizabeth A. Owen ’91, Ballston Spa, NY, September 18, 2024.
Stephanie M. Dyer ’92, Little Falls, NY, January 6, 2024.
Michael R. Synek ’92, Utica, NY, April 13, 2024.
Teresa Flihan ’93, New Hartford, NY, December 9, 2023.
Thomas J. Rybka ’93, New York Mills, NY,
August 27, 2024.
Helen S. Wagner ’93, Utica, NY, August 17, 2023.
James E. Hollandt ’94, Endicott, NY, August 24, 2023.
Mary A. Clements ’95, Frankfort, NY, November 3, 2023.
Nora B. LaComb ’96, Cold Brook, NY, December 17, 2023.
Robert Janda ’97, Utica, NY, December 14, 2022.
Beverly J. Bubel ’98, Whitesboro, NY, July 5, 2024.
Martin Bruns ’99, Holland Patent, NY, April 18, 2024.
Heather H. Wry ’07, Saint Albans, VT, June 30, 2024.
Christopher C. Niemetz ’10, Camden, NY, February 11, 2024.
Morganne A. Jones ’15, New York Mills, NY, August 1, 2023.
Tyler D. Mosher ’20, Brewerton, NY, June 27, 2024.
UTICA UNIVERSITY FACULTY, STAFF, AND FRIENDS WHO HAVE PASSED
Donna Brown-Saporito, retired employee of the Registrar’s Office, Sauquoit, NY,
In Memoriam: Richard Rosen
The Utica University community mourns the loss of Professor Emeritus of History Dr. Richard Rosen, who passed away on December 29, 2023 at the age of 89 in San Francisco, California.
Professor Rosen joined the Utica faculty in 1967 and made a long and distinguished contribution to the academic community at Utica and beyond. He is remembered fondly as a teacher, scholar, colleague, and friend.
Born on June 26, 1934 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he moved to Chicago at the age of six, spending his formative years in the Windy City. Graduating from Von Steuben High School, he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Loyola University in Chicago, a Master’s Degree at Georgetown University, and a PhD in History from the University of California, Berkeley.
He began his teaching career at then-Utica College in 1967, where he would remain until his retirement as a full professor three decades later, teaching classes in Asian history and pursuing a research specialty in cultural movements of pre-war China. He was published
August 30, 2023.
Rev. Paul J. Drobin H’16, retired chaplain of the Newman Center, Utica, NY, September 27, 2024.
Virginia C. Loin, retired secretary to the library director, Deerfield, NY, April 7, 2024.
Pamela J. Pandolfi, retired employee of the Admissions Office, Clinton, NY, December 3, 2022.
Elizabeth Schremp, retired secretary, Fayetteville, NY, June 18, 2023.
Mary Tulip, retired administrative assistant, Punta Gorda, FL, October 5, 2024.
Rosemary Vomero, retired secretary, Estero, FL, May 13, 2023.
Richard Wright, retired professor of occupational therapy, May 26, 2022.
throughout his career, and served as the New York State Conference Chair for Asian Studies in 1975. In 1979, he filled a temporary position as the institution’s Director of Development.
In 1987, he took a year-long sabbatical from Utica in order to chair a group study through the Utica Rotary. He later served as President of the Rotary Club of San Francisco from 2003-2004 and Assistant Governor of Rotary District 5150 (San Francisco and San Mateo counties) from 2005-2006.
In the late 1980s, he was instrumental in the development of the China/U.S. academic exchange program at Utica and following his retirement he donated nearly 300 books on his specialty to the University.
Professor Rosen was active in politics throughout his life, working during his time at Georgetown University with U.S. Representative Charles A. Boyle. He served on Senator Hubert Humphrey’s 1964 vice presidential campaign and chaired local campaign efforts for Senator Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential bid. He also worked on the U.S. Senate campaign of New York’s Paul O’Dwyer and was chairman of Dominick Assaro’s successful mayoral campaign in the city of Utica.
Professor Rosen is survived by his loving wife Qing, daughters Debra and Emily, son Elliott, sister Linda and two granddaughters.
ON THE NATIONAL STAGE
Men’s Hockey comes within one goal of Utica’s first NCAA Championship
Photo by NML Creative