An Argentinean immigrant, a diplomat’s
son, and a U.S. Air Force pilot walk into a college ... while
that may seem like an intriguing setup to a joke, what these
men have done for NYIT is no laughing matter. And what the
college has meant to them, these veteran employees say, is
equally significant.
Forty years ago, among those joining our community were an
eclectic group of talented men—all of whom still call
NYIT home.
SPANNING THE GLOBE …
When Professor Sam Pinkerton, Ph.D., lectures about dictatorships,
he speaks from experience. He lived in German-occupied France
during World War II for the better part of a year. He was
able to get out, he says, because he was a U.S. citizen—not
that he had lived in the United States during much of his
childhood. The son of a U.S. diplomat, he was born in Africa
and lived in Europe long enough to forget English.
His globetrotting background served as a solid foundation
for Pinkerton’s work as a social sciences professor
at NYIT. For many years, he taught a one-year course on the
history of the world. “Now, that’s hard,”
he says. “You have to understand that nobody knows the
history of the entire world.”
Pinkerton says he got his position at NYIT by answering an
ad in The New York Times. He came for a lunch interview,
and his wife ended up calling the college after 9 p.m. to
see what had happened to her husband. An impressive candidate,
he had been offered the job during the interview and spent
the afternoon and evening discussing details and negotiating
his salary.
When he joined NYIT, there were just 13 departments run by
13 chairs. As chair of social sciences, Pinkerton helped create
the college’s core curriculum and also made some of
the hard decisions—such as how to stop students who
cheated on exams by meeting in the bathroom, he says with
a smile.
Pinkerton has always worked on the Manhattan campus, first
when it was based in an old Knights of Pythias Hall and now
at the Columbus Circle location. Compared with all the cities
he’s lived in around the world, New York is his favorite,
he says. “I can get anything I want 24 hours a day.”
After all these years, he still enjoys debating with students.
“I love teaching. It keeps me young. There are always
new ideas.”
When asked about his retirement plans, Pinkerton says, “What
would I do if I retired? I’d go to a cemetery, that’s
what.”
His peer, Professor Rifat Tabi, Ph.D., has a different idea
for retirement. “I’m an avid skier, and I’m
told that in Austria, after 80, you can ski for free. That’s
my goal.”
Tabi, a professor of mechanical engineering, grew up in Crimea
(now Ukraine) and lost most of his family when the Russians
under Joseph Stalin deported the country’s Tatar/Turkic
population to Siberia and Central Asia. A highlight of his
career was being invited as a guest of the Academy of Sciences
of the U.S.S.R. in Kazan in 1990. Soon after, the country
collapsed. “I had nothing to do with it,” he says
jokingly, but with an edge that hints of continued pain.
In 2002, Tabi received one of academia’s highest honors:
being named a Fulbright scholar. The Fulbright program, the
U.S. government’s flagship international exchange program,
is sponsored by the State Department. The grant allowed Tabi
to lecture on advanced energy systems design and to train
energy analysts at Istanbul Technical University in Turkey.
In both 1970 and 1984, Tabi received the Best Teacher Award
from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He says
it is his students who keep him coming back year after year.
“Despite the fact that I got all this gray hair from
my students, I take great pride in their successes,”
he admits. “And when students come back and say thank
you, that makes up for everything.”
In February, Tabi received an e-mail that perfectly illustrates
this point. “You are one of those people who truly impacts
an individual’s life for the better. Thank you for imparting
your knowledge to me and for teaching me the skills to be
successful,” writes Henry O. Perez (B.S. ’93),
who continues to reach out to his former professor to learn
about NYIT students and recent graduates who might be ideal
employees for his company, Wendel Energy Systems.
FAN FAVORITE
Professor Daniel Kane receives his fair share of fan mail
as well. With an impish grin, he says, “I’m usually
pretty popular. I give students a lot of work, but I also
make it fun.”
Born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., Kane started his engineering
career by making his own toys. “I had to,” he
says. “If I wanted a scooter, I made one.” He’d
create an angle iron by cutting apart an old bed frame. Not
an easy thing to do, but the hard work was worth it, he says.
“Kids today are deprived because everything is built
for them. They aren’t forced to use their capabilities.”
Kane turned his childhood avocation into a vocation. He says
his lab is “sort of like a hobby shop,” and each
semester he looks forward to introducing new students to the
field he still loves.
The professor has long practiced engineering outside the classroom
as well, working for several major transportation companies
over the years. He feels this has benefited his students.
“Many textbooks are written by people who have never
practiced,” he says. “I inject the real world
into the classroom.”
And into NYIT as well. It was Kane who started the faculty’s
union, a chapter of the American Association of University
Professors. “I just wanted to make sure everyone was
protected,” he says.
Kane says NYIT’s greatest strength is the administration’s
ability to adapt to change. “When the big industries
started to leave Long Island, the college started a medical
school. When computer science was in vogue, we made sure to
capitalize on it. It seems whenever society changes, NYIT
is ready to alter its departments to meet those needs.”
IF YOU BUILD IT …
Professor Aly Dadras joined NYIT just before Professor Anthony
Di Santo. In fact, one of Dadras’ first acts was to
hire Di Santo. Together, they helped build the college’s
architecture program. Di Santo remembers his first classes
at the former Knights of Pythias location—architecture
was housed on the 10th floor with no windows—then at
an old Woolworth’s store on Amsterdam Avenue, and finally
spending the rest of his tenure on the Old Westbury campus.
Dadras’ career path followed a similar arc with one
more stop—the Central Islip campus.
Di Santo says NYIT students have brought the biggest changes
over the decades. “As the school’s reputation
has grown, so has the caliber of our students.” And
that has made his job both harder and better. “We’ve
had to continuously make the program more challenging.”
As hand-drawing has given way to computer rendering in architecture
and design, Di Santo sees the technological advance as a blessing
and a curse to the profession. “It used to be that an
idea came down your arm and onto the paper. I think [designers]
lose a lot of that instantaneous thought,” he says.
“You can draw faster than you can work a computer program.
I tell my students ‘the computer is a tool—a great
tool—but it does not substitute your ability to be creative.’”
As for why he’s still here, Di Santo says, “I
still get a kick out of imparting knowledge. Teaching is fun;
otherwise, I wouldn’t have kept doing it for 40 years.”
NYIT’S OWN WINGMAN
For Gabriel Sunshine, Ph.D., 40 years of NYIT has been—in
a word—fun. But he also likes being part of something
dynamic and seeing how the college has grown from a small
institution into a global success. “It’s been
an interesting ride,” he says.
People who know Sunshine, a professor of physics, would not
be surprised by his use of a travel metaphor. The former U.S.
Air Force pilot, who served from 1956 to 1986 on active duty
and as an Air Force reservist, continues to fly friends, students,
and just about anybody else in his private twin-engine plane
or in one he rents.
The retired colonel was conducting atomic physics research
at another university when he met NYIT’s first president,
Alexander Schure, Ph.D. “The promise of what this school
was going to become convinced me to teach at NYIT,”
Sunshine says. “I have no regrets.”
No regrets but plenty of memories, including watching Schure
film a scene for the 1975 Robert Redford movie, Seven Days
of the Condor. “The movie was filmed in this building,”
he says, referring to Harry Schure Hall on the Old Westbury
campus.
Sunshine also founded the NYIT Faculty Club and was the college’s
first chairperson of the Department of Physics.
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Ernesto Perri emigrated from Argentina to the United States
with his mother in 1963. He survived the early years by working
in restaurants where his broken English didn’t matter,
but there was little stability and no health insurance. He
wanted more for his life and the children he dreamed of having.
In 1966, he applied to NYIT and has been working in the Department
of Facilities ever since.
Perri can tell stories about every building on the Old Westbury
campus—and most of the people. He says even though he
worked on many of the improvements—new buildings, new
parking lots, new plantings—it was like he was just
“floating through” the process; only now when
he looks at the campus and thinks about the culmination of
the work does the difference really register.
It is much easier for him to convey the difference working
at NYIT has made in his own life. He raised those children
he dreamed of—twin daughters, now 35 years old. He learned
to speak, read, and write English. And he feels pride in his
accomplishments. “To come from nothing to something—in
my mind, that’s everything.”
Fellow facilities veteran Miguel Diaz, who now works the night
shift at the Manhattan campus, worked at the Old Westbury
campus during the construction of the entire New York College
of Osteopathic Medicine (NYCOM) quad. And he was there the
day the college purchased the de Seversky Center, the Gold
Coast mansion that is now home to the offices of Development
and Alumni Relations as well as the Department of Communication
Arts, and serves as a fine dining and conference center.
“It’s been fun,” he says with a smile. “I’m
looking forward to the next 40 years.”
Diaz, who for many years was charged with running the Old
Westbury Waste Water Treatment Center, made friends with a
lot of the wildlife that inhabits the heavily wooded campus.
In particular, he remembers a family of geese that returned
to the college every year. One year, they never flew south.
A co-worker told Diaz to stop feeding them so they would go.
He tried that, but instead of leaving, the geese just pulled
on his pant legs until he relented.
Like Perri, Diaz was an immigrant. Soon after arriving here
from Cuba, his father joined NYIT as a landscaper. When Diaz
realized that his father was making more money than he was,
he joined the college as well.
A third Diaz generation also came to NYIT—this time
as a student. Diaz’s son, Michael (B.S. ’98),
earned a degree in computer science and is now working as
a programmer. “He’s making more than me now. That
was the idea, right?”
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"I love teaching.
It keeps me young. There are always new ideas."
-Sam Pinkerton
"When students come back and say
thank you, that makes up for everything."
-Rifat Tabi
"Many textbooks
are written by people who have never practiced. I inject the
real world into the classroom."
-Daniel Kane
"Teaching is
fun; otherwise, I wouldn't have kept doing it for 40 years."
-Anthony Di Santo
"The promise
of what this school was going to become convinced me to teach
at NYIT."
-Gabriel Sunshine
"To come from
nothing to something—in my mind, that's everything."
-Ernesto Perri
"It's been
fun. I'm looking forward to the next 40 years."
-Miguel Diaz
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