Word: sammartino
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Italian-born pastry cook, Sammartino graduated from City College, studied at the Sorbonne, finally became an associate of the now defunct experimental New College at Teachers College, Columbia. There, in the mid-'30s he took part in a survey of high-school principals around Rutherford, found them agreed that too many of their students were missing out on a college education either because they could not afford to go to a campus away from home or because they could not get the training they wanted. In 1941 Sammartino and a group of the principals began discussing plans...
...Nuts." The time was hardly propitious. The armed services were draining U.S. campuses of their students, and one college official bluntly warned Sammartino: "Everybody else is either cutting down or folding up. You must be nuts." The first year, Fairleigh Dickinson managed to attract only 60 day and 90 night students. But balding President Sammartino offered something special to the community. He made local high-school principals his board of educational directors, evolved with them a curriculum that could be tailored to what local high-school seniors seemed to want and need. By 1945 his enrollment had jumped...
...community grew, so did the college. Though it offered basic liberal arts, it placed heavy emphasis on training students for careers. Its keynote from the start was flexibility. If an electronics or engineering student wanted to study only part of the year and work the rest, Sammartino would arrange with a local industry...
...might be expected, the college at first had to take its share of abuse. "If you can't get into college," local wags would say, "you can always go to Fairleigh Dickinson." But nearby industries continued to give Sammartino support, and his ten-acre campus flourished. He added a two-year nursing course, a school of dental hygiene, courses in hotel and restaurant management. In 1954 he took over the dying (150 students) Bergen Junior College in nearby Teaneck, included both campuses in the single full-fledged four-year college. He persuaded a steady stream of celebrities...
...success. It has had more than 2,000 applications for the 950 vacancies in its coming freshman class, will hit a total enrollment of 7,250. Meanwhile, the number of companies competing for F.D. graduates has gone up from twelve in 1953 to 87. After 14 years, Peter Sammartino may not have created a candidate for the Ivy League, but he has built an institution that suits his community. "Somebody," says he, "has to pioneer in providing a college education for the increased number who want it at a price within their means. That is what we are attempting...