Patrick Dooley, Ph.D. is no stranger to world travel and is celebrating his last semester before retirement in Singapore, as a professor at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU).
Dooley has been a professor of philosophy at Bonaventure for 42 years. Despite his lengthy tenure, he did not plan to stay at the university.
“I chose here for a couple of years,” he said in an SBU News & Events headline in February. “And here I am, 46 years later.”
One of the first two Traditional Fulbright Fellows at St. Bonaventure, Dooley has received faculty awards for Teaching Excellence in 1988 and Professional Excellence in 1993.
Dooley has also been philosophy department chair twice during his tenure, a total of 11 years, and has been the chairperson of the Faculty Senate twice.
He is honored in Plassmann Hall, on a plaque commending of his service to the university during 1992-1994, during financial stress and presidential leadership struggle.
“I’ll miss the kids the most,” he said to Missel. “I’m 73, and to go in to class with their energy and enthusiasm keeps you young. You can get them so enthused.”
Joel Horowitz, Ph.D., said it was his college language requirement that gave him the idea to study Latin American history.
Horowitz, professor of history, plans to retire after 27 years of teaching at St. Bonaventure. He credited his trip to Mexico during his undergraduate career at the University of Pennsylvania to his love of Latin American history, specifically Argentinian history.
“It’s intriguing because there are real parallels with the United States as a country of immigrants, and I actually see the United States moving into a political situation that resembles Argentina, which is not a good thing,” Horowitz said.
He said while he will miss his students most during retirement, academia will still be in his future.
“I’m planning to write. I’m going to Argentina in September for a while, and I got invited to give a paper and do some research,” Horowitz said. “Eventually [my family and I] are going to move to the Boston area, and my goal is to write. I’ve got at least another book in me.”
Horowitz said he most enjoys teaching seminar courses in Latin American history because, “you actually get to deal with the students in a real way.”
Michael Russell, Ph.D., served on numerous marketing, curriculum, scholarship and long-range planning committees while he taught at St. Bonaventure for 32 years. He retired in December.
Russell received his bachelors, masters and doctorate degrees in education at Northern Illinois University.
In 1996, Russell received an award for Professional Excellence in Teaching. Russell served as the American Advertising Federation co- director for eight years and also was a director of the Oxford Program. He also authored, co-authored and presented numerous articles focusing on marketing education and advertisement.
After all his years of teaching, Russell’s biggest accomplishment was seeing his students succeed.
“It is especially rewarding to see alumni who have advanced in their careers,” Russell said.
The one thing according to Russell, he misses about Bonas is “working on individual projects with students and colleagues.”
But according to Russell, he has his hands full after retiring with having two grandchildren to keep him busy.
When asked what is the best part of retirement, Russell simply said “Having the choice to do whatever you want everyday!”
When you walk into a class being taught by Donald Swanz, you will be greeted with a flower drawn on the board with an inspiring message beside it, such as, “A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are made for.”
Swanz is a man of many hats, who received a J.D. from Georgetown University, a distinguished law career of fifty-five years and spent years serving his country in the military. He was also awarded for practicing law with the highest level of professional ethics.
In his 35 years teaching at St. Bonaventure, he sought not only to teach students business law, but also lessons in life. Anyone walking by a classroom he taught in knew it was his when they heard him make his students passionately and loudly repeat after him, a trait developed in his time in the military.
Swanz said he did not initially anticipate how rewarding it would be to work with younger generations.
“Something that was very important to recognize was the difference that everyone brings,” Swanz said.
Swanz said he plans to spend his time in retirement reading to the blind. In January he auditioned to be a reader for The Niagara Frontier Radio Reading Service, and at the end of May will begin recording. The program records volunteers reading from books and publications that are broadcasted to radios specifically for blind individuals.
Fifteen years ago, then dean of the Russell J. Jandoli School of Journalism and Mass Communication Lee Coppola asked Patrick Vecchio to be a full-time professor at St. Bonaventure.
“I was just a journalist who took the craft seriously and because of that I was given the opportunity to teach journalism on a full-time basis,” Vecchio said.
Now preparing to retire from teaching, Vecchio said he will miss working with students the most. He said he loves watching them start to believe in themselves and waiting for th
ose little moments where they start to “get it.”
“For every moment of frustration with students in the last 15 years there have been probably 500 moments of great joy,” he said. “I’ve been blessed to be able to do that work.”
Vecchio said along the way, plenty of people will try to make students feel bad about themselves. They might as well be their own best friends, he said.
He also said they should dream big, pursue the paths their hearts take them.
“I don’t think students realize just how fearless they are,” Vecchio said. “(It) will take them 15 or 20 years down the road before they’ll be able to say, ‘Whoa. I did that?’”
As his final semester comes to a close, Vecchio said he would like to be remembered as a person who tried to show students how to learn as opposed to teaching them, as somebody who worked hard on students’ behalf inside and outside the classroom.
Richard Simpson, Ph.D., said the learning was constant during his 46 years in the English department at Bonaventure.
Simpson, a graduate of Brigham Young University and Kent State University, taught a variety of courses from freshmen composition to master’s level courses. He focused on undergraduate courses on British Romantic writers and poetry writing.
Simpson said the fondest memories of his career center around learning more about the subjects he taught and the students and colleagues he worked with.
“Especially seeing magnificent literature start to work its way into the minds and bloodstreams of students,” Simpson said.
In retirement, Simpson, who spent his senior year of high school in Norway, said he plans to continue translating art-historical and art-critical material from Norwegian into English. Simpson also said he plans to continue producing jazz albums by major players in New York City and Los Angeles.
Simpson added that he hopes to travel frequently to visit his two sons and their families in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Catherine Leary was a mathematics professor at St. Bonaventure University for 20 years. She worked alongside her husband, Francis Christian Leary, who is also reitiring. Leary could not be reached for comment on her retirement plans and thoughts on her time at St. Bonaventure by press time.
Francis Christian Leary is retiring after 31 years in the mathematics department at Bonaventure, acting as the chair from 1994-1998. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Connecticut in 1971, a master’s from SUNY Albany in 1975 and a Ph.D. from SUNY Albany in 1979. Leary was the faculty moderator of Pi Mu Epsilon, the nation-al honorary mathematics society and a faculty moderator for the St. Bonaventure student chapter of the Mathematical Association of America. Leary served in the faculty senate twice and also served as the faculty athletics representative to the NCAA. He lives in Olean with his wife, Catherine Leary, also a mathematics instructor at the university, and their three children.Leary could not be reached for comment on his plans for retirement and thoughts on his time at St. Bonaventure by press time.
