Forty Years of Teaching Math, Computer Science and Engineering Science at a Community College- Part X - More Art

On Christmas Eve, 1981, I went in to the math department at SUNY Buffalo to get my paycheck. I earned $110 per week for roughly 10 hours of work. I taught 4 hours of recitation, did 2 hours in their math lab and had 4 office hours. It was a nice gig, considering I paid no tuition as well. 

In the commons were John Isbell and Stephen Schanuel, working some problem on the blackboard. It was 4:30 in the afternoon.  I would later pick my mom up, a recent widow, and take her to Church. Both Dr.Isbell and Dr. Schanuel were brilliant mathematicians. Their work is easy to find.  Along with F. William Levere, the three of them were part of a hiring binge in the 60's, where the push was to make U.B. the Berkeley of the east.  

Eventually these two would have a falling out, with one calling the other an "ineducable idiot."  Also later on, two other professors would get drunk at a party and come to blows over the definition of infinity. There are a lot of divisions in the foundations of math - constructivists, intuitionists, etc. -  with people staking their claims and willing to go to war over them. 

I would go on to really enjoy spending 16 hours per day, or more, doing theoretical math. I am sure Art did at one time as well. None the less, that image of these two geniuses going at it, while life passed them by, remained vivid in my mind.  There was a whole world of celebration going on a very short distance from Diefendorf Hall, down Main Street in Buffalo.  Stores were decorated, people were shopping, children were anticipating, and the taverns were full of Christmas cheer.  Yet, this was all these mathematicians had.  Right or wrong, I believed at the time that these professors' whole life had shrunk to a point, on which danced a few math problems that were of no more cosmic significance than the page of theorems about angels the Scholastics had proved, and that Erasmus spoke disparagingly  about in his seminal 1511 work, In Praise of Folly. 

G. K. Chesterton, in his magnificent work Orthodoxy, pointed out that it is always the logician who goes mad, and almost never the poet or the artist. Chesterton got that right. He went on to say that logicians (and mathematicians) live in a really small world, unlike the artists, who live in a much larger and wonderful world.  Logic does draw you in, with the prospect of certainty.  In the end the world of certainty is a very small one, indeed, and logicians often cannot escape that small confined space. I managed to escape. 

One professor I worked for in the department would lose their mind, and end up in a homeless shelter.  Another committed suicide a few short years after she taught me logic.  At the time I wondered if math made these people lose their minds, or if math attracted people who lost their minds.  Abstract math can be very isolating, especially when, if you are at the top of the field, there may be only a handful of people who fully understand and appreciate what it is you are doing.  Mathematicians can also be very arrogant.  It is not good for the soul to look down your nose at humanity, and especially the least among us.  

Art Hadley had a better life than these mathematicians. At one time he owned a Cessna.  And those who knew Art would agree that he often lived life to the fullest. 

It would not surprise me at all if by some metric, Art Hadley was brighter than both Dr. Isbell and Dr. Schanuel.  I also thought that if I did what Dr. Isbell and Dr. Schanuel did for 40 years, I might be a whole lot better at it than them - that is, if I did not go mad in the meantime.  Dr. Scott Williams, himself a well know topologist, told me I was by far the best graduate student he had in 20 years. 

Now, after 44 years, teaching at a community college worked out well for me. I certainly have no regrets.  There was a whole lot more to life than math. And many of the people who I trust the most, and respect  the most, and enjoy hanging out with the most, are the poets, the musicians and blue collar workers. All of these fine individuals know a lot about life. Teaching at a community college kept me in touch with humanity. 

More to come......

Forty Years of Teaching Math, Computer Science and Engineering Science at a Community College- Part IX - Tony Gullo

Tony Gullo came to NCCC in 1967, having a B.A. and M.A. in physical anthropology. From my student days all I remember is the name. Sometime later Tony told me of his involvement from the early days. His list was long, and from my recollection, Tony Gullo was omnipresent in college-wide affairs in the early stages of development of Nabisco Tech.

Certain things are a given when a college is formed. Other things are elective, like accreditations, union contracts, management domains, etc., and land wherever the people involved define the shape of things to come. Many of those things were formed inside Tony Gullo's brain and carried out by his will. 

I knew Tony as my Faculty Association President, from fall of 1985 to spring of 2006, when Tony retired.  In the fall of 1985, younger faculty were being impoverished by past circumstances that were beyond faculty control, and particularly beyond Tony's control.  By 2006 we had a faculty contract that was fair for all. It was not a perfect contract, but it was a herculean effort that took place, and was no doubt the best that anyone could have carried out.  In my case, that contract allowed me to support a family of 6 on one income and to earn an honest living doing what I truly enjoy.  My salary was on par with k-12 educators in the area, and that did not happen because of the good will of the county. 

Over 20 years ago I was the Chairman of the Board of Christian Education at St. John Lutheran School in Wheatfield. We went through a National Lutheran School accreditation at the time.  The benchmark for expenditures was that at least 70% of revenue was to be spent directly on instruction. If expenditures fell below 70%, our accreditation would not be renewed. Community colleges have similar benchmarks, nationally at about 40% and California having a state guideline of 50%.

The lower figure for CC's is to be expected. For one, most Lutheran schools are provided a building rent free, with capital expenditures being underwritten by a sponsoring congregation. And, CC's maintain a strong support staff that includes counselors and librarians, and more expenditures on lab/tech equipment than the average elementary school. 

Tony steadfastly made sure that funding from tuition, state and county was appropriately spent on faculty/instruction.  I don't have any hard figures from that era, but a good educated guess would be 40-50% being spent on instruction, perhaps more at times.  

Not too long ago, maybe 2018 or so,  one of our trustees complained that 30% of our budget was being spent on instruction. The complaint was that 30% is too high!  The true figure is probably below 30%, since many capital projects seem to be funded outside the budget. And, the senior faculty prosper while the new faculty do not. The gap is wide and growing, unimpeded. 

What he current state of affairs would be had Tony stayed on for another 20 years is anyone's guess, but the fact is that when Tony was on the job, money landed squarely where it was supposed to. I would guess there was constant pressure to do otherwise. 

My Lutheran theology tells me that all are sinful, and corrupt to a certain degree, but Tony's actions would seen to contradict that point. He was seemingly incorruptible, in steadfastly carrying out his duties as union boss.  There were a few disturbances in the early days of the Faculty Association, but they were quickly put down, and the honest edifice of union leadership allowed the whole faculty to prosper. He was surrounded by a few other bulldogs, who were as honest as the day is long - in particular Bryce McMichael, another man who I thoroughly respect. 

Forty Years of Teaching Math, Computer Science and Engineering Science at a Community College- Part VIII - Arthur Hadley

 

There are certain difficult concepts in math that are fully comprehended by few. Calculus is difficult enough, but the field of Real Analysis is theoretical calculus, and Topology is theoretical Real Analysis. And there are further abstractions.

None of this was beyond the reach of Arthur Hadley. Art came to NCCC in the late 60's.  The exact date eludes me as I gave away all my old yearbooks, so I'll go with 1967.  Art is on my very short list of brilliant people I have known. 

Art came here from a Ph.D. program in theoretical math at SUNY Albany.  Art finished a couple years of his Ph.D. and could easily have finished the Ph.D., but told me the pay was better at NCCC than at SUNY Albany, and he enjoyed the culture and freedom that he had here. 

I knew Art well when I started in 1985.  I talked to him whenever I would stop by and he was interested in my progress, well into graduate school. Art was also my Calculus II teacher at NCCC in the spring of 1978 at night. Of course, I noticed immediately how intelligent he was. Every Calculus II class was followed by an optional lab in M-Building, also known as the Marlboro Inn. There was always plenty of beer involved, followed by a few games of pool. I lived down the street from M-Building so I could walk home from Calculus Lab.  

I really did live an idyllic life that year. Every day was a new adventure of learning - everything from Aristotle to Newton - and I had the freedom of an adult, had a good set of friends and all this happened in my hometown.  Most important of all, I was getting a much better education than my peers who had left town for "a real college".  My friends were going into debt and I always had plenty of cash to spend. Ironically, but not surprisingly, I was the only one in my circle of friends who graduated in 4 years.  I also was accepted into 3 Ph.D. programs for theoretical math, each with a full tuition scholarship and a generous assistantship. 

We also had a number of interesting speakers at NCCC, including Alan Zweibel, who was one of the original writers from SNL and a UB grad.  Cross Country was also going well.  Coach Jim Mezhir knew how to get us runners to respond, and he was the best coach I ever had. The whole XC team was close, with lots of comradery, and we all got along very well.  The following fall we would win our conference and finish near the front in some major invitationals. 

When I arrived in the fall of 1985,  during one of my first encounters with Art, he said, " I'll bet I scored higher on my GRE math than you did." I had my transcripts and GRE scores in a manila folder, which I happened to have handy, and showed him my perfect 800.  Art had scored 780, and had never met anyone with a higher score. He got such a kick out of that episode. Each year Art would return to our annual Ken Raymond Math Award ceremony, where I was always the MC, and Art would tell that story with a chuckle. 

Art was always a good friend and offered a lot of valuable career advice, all of which turned out to be sound. 

In my 4th, 5th and 6th year of teaching at NCCC I took over the main sequence in Computer Science - Programming Logic I & II, and Data Structures.  In doing so I updated the language from Pascal to Modula-2, and developed all my own projects, aligning students' work with ACM and IEEE standards. Freshman enrollment increased from 13 to 39. To keep current I learned  four more languages, including non-imperative (AI) languages of Prolog and LISP.  

To learn Modula-2 I developed a program where a user opened windows with various financial formulas.  In each window the user could enter 3 variables and solve for the 4th. Then the program could be prompted to print out a lesson on how to do the work with pencil and paper.  On top of that I built a macro language so the user could write a program to use the opened financial functions to build solutions to more complicated financial problems.  And, I developed a debugger for the macro programming  language.  This was all done on an MS-DOS platform, before Windows was widely used.  The next step would have been to generalize this program into other areas of applied math. It really was innovative, and I believe no one has done anything like this since. 

I had engaged my comp. sci. students, having them work on worthwhile projects.  SUNY Buffalo had students solve the Eight Queens problem, so I assigned the more difficult problem of the Knights Tour. Two transferred to U.B. and worked on their hand writing recognition project for the USPS. Another student named Jesse developed a relational database. And a Chinese student named Tom Wang did all our classes in one year, and then did another year at RIT, finishing his 4-year comp. sci. degree. in 2 years  I still have a gift Tom gave me. Tom already had a Ph.D. in physics from University of Beijing.  

When it came time for a promotion, Academic Affairs told me I was "not doing enough for the college".  I was not sure what "the college" was.  Perhaps there was another college that no one told me about.  This system did take some getting used to.  

Art gave me a lot pf practical advice during this period that kept my head screwed on straight.  Art very bluntly mentioned that what I teach does not matter, and how I teach it does not matter either. It is what happens outside the classroom, and how many favors I can do for the admin. 

During that era our remedial math and English teachers reached full professor in 11 or 12 years, while I took 20. It was not a level playing field. Why?

How can you compare teaching Data Structures, Programming Logic II, Calculus III, Linear Algebra and Calculus I to teaching 3 sections of Arithmetic and 2 sections or Precalc?  You can't because remedial arithmetic consisted of sitting in the front while students worked through their books and occasionally took a test, which was graded in class using a right-or-wrong answer key.  The remedial teachers had lots of time to burn.  One at ECC had so much time to burn that he worked for various publishers while his remedial students did their work.  Remedial teachers could serve on multiple committees, and do all the political lobbying required to climb the ladder, and still be out the door by 3, and not taking any work home with them. 

I stepped down from teaching Computer Science. I might have continued but the math department had hired me to take over all the advanced courses as senior members retired, which I did, and doing that along with comp. sci. was exhausting, especially when management was largely disinterested of what I was doing. 

Other significant figures in computer science were John Baldwin, Bart Nigro and Mark Constantino. The story I was told about Bart Nigro was he was brilliant, but was chased away by a heavy-handed dean who foisted a banking computer upon us, and a few other colleges across New York.  That banking computer did not even have a FORTRAN compiler, which was needed for teaching a few classes at NCCC.  Art told me plenty of stories about that dean, who pretended to have knowledge that superseded  anyone on the faculty. 

In 38.5 years of teaching at NCCC I can't think of a single administrator who was well versed in the hard sciences.  By hard sciences, I mean math, physics, chemistry or engineering science. That was definitely true with academic affairs.  There was a benefit to this.  No one seemed to know what I was doing, and I managed to stay out of harm's way for 38.5 years.  Art told me when to duck, and what not to step in. I had a good mentor in Art Hadley. 

Forty Years of Teaching Math, Computer Science and Engineering Science at a Community College- Part VII, Remedial Math

Sometime in the mid 70's NCCC added a remedial math program that began with arithmetic, and continued with algebra.  The program was self paced, and a student could review k-9th grade math in one semester. That allowed a seamless transition to whatever math requirement a curriculum required, with the exception of some STEM curricula that would have further requirements. 

The original intention of the program was a review for non-traditional students who had been out of school for a long time.  In that regard the program worked very well.  I taught the course at night a few times, and the students were quite motivated, with many of them working through three books in 15 weeks.  The three books took students from 1st grade up through 9th grade algebra and a bit beyond. 

By the 90's remedial math during the day had expanded to 15-20 sections of arithmetic, mostly inhabited with 18-year-olds.  Arithmetic and algebra were also separated, increasing the requirement to two semesters for most students. Such students were put in a holding pattern for a year or so, after which they could enroll in courses in their intended major. 

Paul Kwitowski and I had another idea. We intended on putting together 1-hr courses for various curricula that would be taken concurrently with whatever quantitative courses were in a student's major.  An accounting student, for instance, would take a concurrent 1-hr course (meeting once per week), whereby the instructor would intensively cover the necessary math for the week.  That way the accounting instructor would not get bogged down with math, could concentrate on accounting, and the students would not be put in a 1-year holding pattern. 

This program never got off the ground.  I did put together a course called "Math For Physics" that students would take concurrently with Calc-Based Physics.  There were other compelling reasons for teaching this course, which I won't get into. The course worked well in cutting down attrition for physics - customarily 80-90% at NCCC - and was run once.  After that it was cancelled by Academic Affairs.  Doc opened it, and the admin closed it.  This cycle went on a couple times, until I was "caught" teaching the class. The math department at the time had an average class size of 21.6 - highest in the college - and NCCC was well into having resources being moved from across the college to Fine Arts.  By Gerry Miller's admission, he built the most comprehensive Fine Arts program in the state. The "comprehensive" part was due to cannibalized resources from other divisions. 

How much were we asking to bootstrap this program?  The pay for one credit hour was $450 at the time, so we were asking for $450x3=$1,350 per semester, initially.  That money and more would have been repaid through tuition and state aid.  At the time classes with 6-10 students in our division were being cancelled in favor of classes in Fine Arts with anywhere from 1-3 students. 

In return, NCCC would have had countless students for two full years, instead of one or two semesters of remedial math. 

Around the same time we were given computers for our offices.  Each division was asked to come up with a 5-year plan.  Our division was asked to take the lead on this initiative, since we had all the computer nerds on campus.  

Doc and a few of us met a couple times per week and produced a long document, detailing what we would do with the computers, and how we could offer training for the remainder of the college. What ever remuneration was involved would have been minimal.

Our proposal was rejected in whole. And our division was the very last to get computers in our office. At the time I was teaching the main sequence in computer science - Computer Programming Logic I&II and Data Structures - and went some time without a computer in my office, while the rest of the college did, including the HPE teachers!  Many of my comp sci students were surprised by this. I was embarrassed. 

Paul Kwitowski and Gerry Miller had a conflict that went back more than a decade.  Paul had led an effort to get Gerry Miller removed as academic dean. I assume that was the reason why Paul Kwitowski's sound initiatives were all blocked for the whole duration of the 90's.  Doc had a Ph.D. in chemistry and Gerry Miller was a former middle school teacher. Doc thought someone in that position should have academic credentials themselves. 

Doc also tried, repeatedly and unsuccessfully, to showcase our successful math and science students. We had a lot.

Over twenty years later Dan Miller in the math department would do an exhaustive study, and conclude that our 18-year-old students stood a better chance of graduating WITHOUT remedial math. The statistics were both startling and compelling. Apparently students were pretty good at figuring out math on the fly, and being in a 1-year holding pattern would discourage a high percentage to the point of causing them to drop out.  After that, remedial math at NCCC was mostly dismantled, with the exception of a couple sections for non-traditional students who wanted a review. 

Doc and I were right.  Our program would have worked famously.  Hundreds, if not thousands of students were hurt by our initiative being thwarted. 

Innovation in the 90's was a Sisyphean struggle.  But, the pay was decent and I enjoyed teaching my classes. 

There is a silver lining to this story................

Forty Years of Teaching Math, Computer Science and Engineering Science at a Community College- Part VI

Gerry Miller was president of NCCC from 1989 to 1999. The best way to paint a picture of President Miller is with broad strokes. Up close it is easy to find fault with anyone, after all.  But, if you look at anything too closely, it is easy to miss the big picture.  And so it is with Gerry Miller. 

The state and county were quite generous in funding the college when President Miller took over in 1989.  Tech and business were funded at a 20% premium, and the state was also generous with funding corporate training, community ed, learning labs, etc. Shortly after President Miller took office he used 700k in surplus corporate training money to purchase computers for our offices.  That would be about 1.8 million today.  It is difficult to imagine almost 2 million just laying around in today's tight funding scenario. 

George Pataki became governor in 1992, on the heels of a recession and three years into Miller's Presidency. Pataki was not kind to community colleges. He eliminated the 20% premium for tech and business, cut state aid for ancillary programs and slashed state aid for regular instruction.  Cuts were so deep that by the late 90's state comptroller H. Carl McCall pleaded with the state to restore CC funding. Well after the '91 recession ended, and prosperity followed, funding remained flat, although public k-12 did very well. Public k-12 had a stronger lobby than us, after all. 

Throughout this period President Miller's mantra was that "funding cuts will not touch the classroom." President Miller made good on that promise to the end. Faculty and staff got regular raises and hiring and retention continued, unimpeded. Of course, other budgets suffered, but something had to give. 

President Miller was in love with NCCC. He was always involved with students, and had a certain excitement that comes with loving the vibe and being part of the energy that came with a growing college that was full of life. 

President Miller loved seeing students socializing in the cafeteria.  President Miller loved seeing students engaged in the classroom. President Miller loved walking the hallways, and seeing a living, breathing, thinking organism called a community college.  President Miller was on fire with enthusiasm. 

President Miller came from theater, and the theater program was exemplary. Everyone I knew from the Sanborn area gave the theater program rave reviews and were uniformly shocked at the quality of each and every play.  Yes, shocked is the appropriate word here. 

During that era and after, Tech programs across the state shrank, or folded all together.  At NCCC we went from a high of 14 full time employees to a present low of 2.  In the 90's NCCC had ABET accreditation for numerous programs, both day and night. Many of those programs are gone, and what programs remain are not accredited. The effect was no different at Finger Lakes, Jamestown and others. 

The decimation of tech at the CC in New York falls squarely on the shoulders of George Pataki, and also on Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo ran for governor on a platform of being an education governor, and then cut state aid to community colleges by 25% shortly after taking office. 

I used to e-mail Governor Cuomo from time to time.  I knew that nothing I wrote would be read by the governor. On one such occasion I told the governor that I hoped he would be like his dad, Mario, when he grew up. I guess I was venting.  Mario was good to community colleges, of course. 

That is how I remember President Miller.  His vision of a Niagara County Community College was what I wanted to be a part of. 

Forty Years of Teaching Math, Computer Science and Engineering Science at a Community College- Part V

Sometime in the 90's our department took a Myers-Briggs test. The presumption was that a little self reflection would help us get along.  One conclusion I remember was that everyone was bossy except me.  That explained a lot. 

As soon as I arrived in the fall of 1985 I made a few suggestions for improving things.  I was put in charge of Calculus III, after all, and there was a lot of missing content. There was nothing about cylindrical or spherical coordinates, little about multiple integration, and absolutely nothing about line integrals, surface integrals, flux, and the theorems of Green, Gauss and Stokes.  

Every bit of this content is important in multiple areas of STEM.  Without this content most students will steer clear of certain STEM fields, or at best, hang on white-knuckled. I mentioned each area in a department meeting and met uniform resistance.  One colleague mentioned that, "Our students already have enough to learn."  Another colleague, who taught remedial math, also piped in with, "We don't get good students here, so don't bother." 

Both of the above points are myths.  We get a surprising amount of talent at SUNY Niagara.  And, if students are given something worthwhile to work on, they will work surprisingly hard. 

My approach, from the beginning, was to figure out how to get students to master the most difficult content.  The easy content would take care of itself.  For almost 40 years I did so with very low attrition. 

While the Myers-Briggs test did show who was bossy, there was no measure of stubbornness. If there was, my score would have exceeded the sum total of the rest of the department.

Last year I had the pleasure of receiving a phone call from a former student who is a pharmaco-kineticist. He develops mathematical models for drug diffusion and interactions for new drugs, before they come to market. Such models are necessary because it is impossible to do tests for all possible contingencies.  I won't mention his name, for legal reasons. 

My friend said he needed some help with a 2-compartment drug diffusion model. He thought one of the terms in the system of differential equations was incorrect, but was not sure, and wanted to be certain before a publication.  This model has been used to build more complex models since 1940. Like a lot of these allied fields, there are few mathematicians, but many professionals that just use given equations without a whole lot of understanding. 

It turns out my friend was correct.  I rewrote the system of differential equations to make it more evident that he was indeed correct, and explained what every term meant.  The funny thing was, this system was similar to something I taught in my differential equations class. All that content that I added when I took over differential equations propelled my friend straight through his Ph.D. program in pharmaceutical chemistry.  

After I left that initial meeting with the math department, I put together an well-attended independent study course, which eventually became a special topics course, and ultimately was incorporated into our Calculus sequence. It took a while, but I had the last word. I knew I would. Calculus I & II needed to be reworked for a Calculus III makeover to be effective, so this venture could not be completed alone. At present our Calculus I-III syllabi match SUNY Buffalo's and pretty much any university, and our professors do a much better job teaching it than most. 

A few years before I retired, Mark Voisinet and I put together a list of successful STEM grads.  The list was close to 400 in length and was hastily put together. It is an impressive list that I will talk about at a later date. I am sure there are many hundreds more that we forgot, or just don't know about.  We were impressed.  No one outside of C-Building was, with the exception of Deb Brewer in the Foundation. 

Forty Years of Teaching Math, Computer Science and Engineering Science at a Community College- Part IV

 Dr. Donald Donato was the president of NCCC from 1979-1989. I arrived right in the middle, in the fall of 1985.  The prevailing opinion after I arrived was that Dr. Donato was a great president for his first five years, and not so great during the last five. 

There are conditions worth mentioning that gave rise to friction between Dr. Donato and the faculty. In the mid to late 70's New York paid up to 40% of the total cost of running a community college - likely about twice in real dollars what NYS presently is paying. A significant decrease in state funding began in 1992 when Gov. Pataki went to work in cutting our funding. Tech and business was also funded at a 20% premium, and the state was also generous in providing state aid for community ed., corporate training and attendance in learning centers. 

There was also a deep divide among young and old faculty.  In 1985 older faculty were all at the top of the pay scale, at roughly $40,500.  I started out at $19,300, and would never reach $28,000, under the contract that was in place. Classmates from college had already exceeded what would be my top pay at the end of my career, and my classmates had a better benefit package- I had no dental, no vision, had pretty high copays and had to pay for vaccinations for my growing family. Our pension was pretty good but that did not pay the bills. 

As time went on, the top of the pay scale was moving away from us younger faculty, and those at the top were quite happy to take the lion's share of  money appropriated for faculty pay. Sometime in the mid 70's a contract had been imposed on the faculty by the county.  A merit system was promised by the county, whereby new faculty could reach the top.  That promise was never kept. 

Things were so contentious that at one faculty meeting Bob Olans from History explained that faculty at the top needed bigger raises than those at the bottom because he shopped at Jenss, while us folks at the bottom shopped at K-Mart. 

Mike Laymen, after almost having a stroke, stood up and threatened to take over the union with younger faculty, and would propose to the county that everyone gets paid the same amount. Mike had the backing to do so, and would have done this if things continued as they were for much longer. 

I don't remember much about Dr. Donato, being that I was spending most of my time figuring out how to teach, but one thing I do remember was his obsession of  cheaply running NCCC. At all-college meetings  Dr. Donato always mentioned that we were the second cheapest CC in the state, on a per student basis. I think he wanted to be the cheapest.  Maybe that was his obsession. I have no idea what he would have done with all the extra money, but he was paying his wife generously for driving senior citizens around town -  well over 50% more than I was making, by the way.  

Things became more contentious when we went 10 months without a contract - a contract at the time that was negotiated directly with the county - and Donato stuck his nose in and stalled negotiations. Dr. Donato took his case to the public, and went on radio (WLVL?) and called the faculty a "bunch of greedy bastards."  My wife, who was teaching 2nd grade at St. Matthew Lutheran School in NT, was on track to make more than me very soon, if Donato and the county had their way.  Donato must have curried the favor of the county because during his stay, the county was able to dip way below their 1/3 share of funding that was supposed to be in place. That was a bad habit for the county - a habit from which the county never recovered. 

Dr. Donato should have offered us a contract roll over for six years, simply because older faculty were being replaced with cheaper young faculty as they retired. I assume he wanted to stall negotiations indefinitely, not replace retirees, etc., which would be the cheapest of all.  Dr. Donato's intention was that my meager salary be frozen, and that it go backwards in purchasing power.  One suggestion by Donato was that the starting salary be frozen, which would allow us new faculty to move away from the bottom!

By 1989 I decided that there was no future for me in teaching, at least at NCCC. After having my 2nd child my wife had stopped teaching and I was a hair above qualifying for food stamps. I sent out a few resumes, had a couple offers, and seriously considered leaving. I also talked to the computer science chair at U.B. about doing a Ph.D. I had their verbal blessing and would have easily been admitted. U.B. had a strong computer vision group that proved useful at Xerox and should have been useful at Kodak, had they not balked at cutting into their film business, giving Fuji an edge they could never overcome. 

There is one more story worth telling, as it was told to me by the late Ken Raymond on two different occasions. 

Ken mentioned that at Donato's first faculty meeting he told faculty he had an open door policy, and was eager to hear from faculty from around the college. So, Ken made an appointment for a meeting.  When Ken walked into Dr. Donato's office, Donato locked the door behind him and sat down, and berated Ken. According to Ken, Donato said "What makes you think I give a shit about what you people think......." 

Prior to leading NCCC, Donato had been president at Quinsigamond Community College. He was let go for striking a faculty member. 

On a Monday morning I came to work, only to find out that Dr. Donato was hastily put on administrative leave. I won't comment on what malfeasance was involved. There was hope.