Remembering "The Doctor": Dr. Ernest Notar

Dr. Ernest Notar

The first president of Niagara County Community College was Dr. Ernest Notar.  A civil engineer by trade, Dr. Notar was formerly a Dean at Erie Tech, which is now Erie Community College.  The following episodes in history were told by Dr. Kenneth Raymond on May 2nd, 2013, after the annual math award ceremony held at NCCC.  Some facts were also provided previously by professor emeritus Dave Brown, and later by Dr. John O. Hunter, who was a faculty member from 1963-1969, and then Dean from 1969-1978.

Dr. Notar and Students
Dr. Notar quite often would pull a long-haired student aside, give him some money and tell him to get a haircut.

The Furnace
While there must have been a lot of excitement surrounding the formation of NCCC in downtown Niagara Falls, adequate funding wasn't always easy to secure. As noted by Dr. Hunter, there were plenty of contentious moments between the college and the county, and conditions were sometimes less than optimal. In such a climate, Dr. Notar showed how truly resourceful he could be.

During one of the first winters at Nabisco Tech the furnace broke down in C-Building.  Subsequently secretaries wore gloves while they typed, students shivered while they learned calculus and faculty became increasingly irritated. Out of frustration the C-Building faculty submitted a work order to have electric heaters installed in the rooms. Shortly thereafter Dr. Notar arrived and fixed the furnace himself.

Blackboards
In the early days many of the rooms didn't have blackboards. Some were equipt with  easels and pads of paper to write on, and the blackboards that were there were of poor quality and couldn't easily be erased. In a possibly humorous gesture, the early math faculty suggested holding a beer blast to raise money for blackboards. Word of the pending beer blast reached Dr. Notar fairly soon, and miraculously the blackboards arrived.

Dr. Notar, or "The Doctor" as he was called, would often ask the county for money, and it would sometimes appear.  Nabisco Tech was the pride and joy of the county legislature, and there no doubt were a number of photo-ops during the formative stages. According to Dr. Raymond a lot of the funding for Nabisco Tech was secured in this impromptu fashion.

Why would a gesture such as a beer blast be humorous? Everyone knew that Dr. Notar was a very conservative Baptist. In the early days certain bars in downtown Niagara Falls were off limits to faculty.  There also was no card playing allowed in the cafeteria. And, the early math faculty definitely were not heavy drinkers - but, they most certainly did have a great sense of humor.  They also had an enormous amount of respect for "The Doctor."

Dr. Notar's Legacy

Although I never met Dr. Notar, I have come to believe that his legacy was what everyone else did. The legacy of the Notar era was that Notar created many eras.  There was the era of chemistry with  Dr. Kwitowski, the era of biofeedback with James Abbondanza, and the era of CADD with Don Voisenet, and Bob Baxter, and Graham Millar, and the list goes on.

As my colleague Pascal Zanzano once said, the faculty, if allowed, will create.  That was Dr, Notar's legacy.  That is the measure of his greatness. He recruited talent, and unleashed their creativity.