The_Rambler_2000-04-30

              Dr. Vinciguerra Now Acting President
of SUNY Farmingdale By Christopher Collora
In perhaps the biggest development
since SUNY Farmingdale President Dr.
Cipriani announced his retirement last
fall. Dr. Michael J.Vinciguerra recently
announced that he has been appointed as
Acting President by the Board of
Tnistees. No decisions have been made
by the Presidential Search Committee on
the candidates as of yet (one of which is
Dr. Vinciguerra). However in order to
stabilize the administration, as the search
continues, an interim President was
needed. Dr. Vinciguerra formally pre-formed
the role of Acting President in
the Spring 1999 semester while Dr.
Cipriani took a leave of absence.
Dr. Vmciguerra has held the position of
Provost since 1987. As Provost he was
involved ip campus-wide strate^c plan-ning
that transformed SUNY
Farmingdale from a two-year to four-year
college, served as chief Academic
Officer with additional responsibilities
for Student Affairs Division, Learning
Resources, and Admissions, and was
instrumental in the development of the
biotechnology research park at SUNY
Farmingdale. He came to SUNY
Farmingdale in 1970 as an Assistant
Professor of Chemistry. Since then he
has advanced to Division Chair for the
School of Arts and Sciences in 1976,
Assistant Vice President for Academic
Affairs in 1979, and Vice President for
Academic Affairs in 1983 He has been
very active in his service for the college
and surrounding community I recently
interviewed Dr Vmciguerra, here are his
responses:
Q: What were your career goals when
you were younger?
Dr. Vmciguerra; Certainly not to be the
President of a College. When 1 was very
young, one thing that was impressed on
to me was that you needed to go to col-lege,
and you needed to major in some-thing
that would lead to a job My father
wanted me to do accounting and I was a
good math student in school, so I thought
about being an actuary... but in college
(lona), I took a chemistry course and I
really enjoyed it because it used math
in a way I could see, feel, and conceive
and it was a little less abstract then
what I was used to... So I decided to
do that because there was a good job
market for chemists"
Q: How did you get to SUNY
Farmingdale?
Dr. V: When I was graduating in 1966,
the chemistry job market was not that
great, but I also enjoyed touring and
teaching as well So I was going to
teach at a Catholic High School, but the
day 1 was going to sign my contract,
the night before I got a telegram that I
had got an industrial assistantship at
Adelphi for graduate work, so I called
them up and accepted... and 1 wound
up going into teaching chemistry as a
career.. Towards the end of my Ph D.
research in 1970.1 heard that the
College at Farmingdale, which I never
heard of in my lifetime, was building its
Liberal Arts program and they needed
chemistry faculty... And I told my wife,
"Let's go there until 1 finish writing up
my thesis and then we'll look for some-thing
seriously... and that was thirty
years ago and I stayed here because I
love this place, I love what it does and
the people who make it work."
Q: What is your funniest or most unusual
experience on campus?
Dr. V: "We decided to quite a few years
ago that it would be good to develop the
relationship between the faculty, staff,
and students So we put a game together
between the faculty, staff and the Varsity
Basketball team... and having grown up
in the Bronx, hoops was a big thing, and
1 certainly volunteered to play. So I vyas
the starting center for the faculty/staff
team which played our Varsity
Basketball team which was just as good
then as it is now... I jumped the tip and
got first game and probably last game...
and since the Dean of students was the
ref, he held the pants of the center for the
varsity center so he didn't jump far and I
won that tip... I even scored the first
basket for the team..."
Q: What is your opinion of the student
body and how have you seen the college
change over the years?
Dr. V: "The student body by and large, is
that they are a serious group of students
who have a pretty good sense of what
they want to do when they leave proba-bly
more then I did... and they really
have to woric hard to balance their lives,
so they're more focused on what they
want and why they're here. The changes
I've seen are two mtyor areas. One is a
paralleled social change throughout other
colleges in the .lation. In terms of atti-tude,
the students have changed tremen-dously
from the 70's to the 90's from
people who went to college with great
extent of social causes driving and moti-vating
them to the point where the dollar
and consumerism became a little more
important, and now I think that there is a
trend back... I believe that like a pendu-lum,
the attitudes shift back and forth. I
think that attitude wise there seems to be
more commitment and consciousness of
social issues (today)."
Q What are your goals for the future of
Farmingdale?
Dr V. : "I said when I was before the
Board of Trustees that I pledge to do my
best to make Farmingdale the best poly-technic
institution in this region of the
state and in the whole North East and I
mean that, I want to make this place the
best at what it does and that's in the area
of broadly defined technical education. I
pledge my full energies towards that...
and how I want to use that eneiigy is in
three main ways: 1. To give the tools to
our faculty and staff to provide the best
programs and services to do the types of
Continue Page 8
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