Don Zingale wants closer ties between the community and SUNY Cobleskill––and he means that to be more than an empty pledge.
To use his phrase from a previous administrative post, the new college president is looking at a “comuniversity.”
As fall classes begin this week, Dr. Zingale is continuing projects that will draw town and gown closer together, and he’s beginning new initiatives.
Dr. Zingale has plowed ahead with plans to open a downtown college café in early September, redesigned a vice president’s role to target community relations and has slated meetings and events to do the same.
“We want to bring the two populations together,” he said in an interview Monday. “We––the college–-are here for all the stakeholders, and that includes the town.”
The most noticeable change will be the college store and café, Coby’s Café, which will open soon in the former Coffee Cabin?????? storefront on Main Street.
Provost Anne Myers started the effort early this year, and Dr. Zingale is seeing it through.
Though the café will draw students downtown, it will also serve the community. Dr. Zingale also plans it as the site for one of his first “38 at 38” casual community-college get-togethers.
The “38 at 38” tag comes from the president’s house on High Street. The home is listed as “Building 38” on the college’s physical map, and Dr. Zingale will have many of the get-togethers there.
To that end, he’s having landscape students redesign the lawn and gardens, adding a large patio to better suit the “38 at 38” format.
“It will be a learning lab rather than the president’s backyard,” Dr. Zingale said.
Steve Ackerknecht, vice president for student affairs, will become vice president of collegiate life.
Besides overseeing student life outside the classroom, Mr. Ackerknecht will also be “the go-to guy” for community requests for help from the college.
Formerly, the requests went to whomever the caller sought. Now, Mr. Ackerknecht will coordinate such requests.
“He’ll be able to see what’s related, make judgments and move stalled agendas,” Dr. Zingale said.
Mr. Ackerknecht will also be the college rep in community organizations, though Dr. Zingale will attend some meetings.
The new president also described three focus points he wants the campus to center on. One is “Real Life: Real Learning,” a slogan stressing SUNY Cobleskill’s practical education and employability of students. Another is the second century charter renewal, which plans for the college’s 100th anniversary in 2011.
The third is “call us first,” a thrust to put the college’s phone number “on everybody’s speed-dial,” Dr. Zingale said.
“We want to be a destination for jobs, or if a farmer needs technical information, call us first,” he added.
It’s along those lines that he sees the college’s role downtown and beyond.
“We want to look at the services we could be providing, like business incubation,” Dr. Zingale said. “The café is like that, demonstrating that we actually know what we’re talking about.”
Having closer ties means the college will be more attentive to what’s going on in Cobleskill. For instance, SUNY may coordinate its meat and plant sales with the Festival and Renaissance farmers’ markets downtown, he said.
Efforts like those, Dr. Zingale said, will make the Route 7 bridge by Stewart’s more of a gateway than an obstacle between downtown and the college.
As a dean at a California college, Dr. Zingale developed such integral ties with the community that he called the concept a “comuniveristy.” The same could happen in Cobleskill, he hopes.
“We want to work with the community, and we should be doing work that engages the community,” he said.