John Scileppi Oral History Transcript
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Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
1
John Scileppi
Marist College
Poughkeepsie, NY
Transcribed by Erin Kelly
For the Marist College Archives and Special Collections
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
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Transcript: John Scileppi
Interviewee:
John Scileppi
Interviewer:
Gus Nolan
Interview date:
25 June 2002
Location:
Marist Archives and Special Collections Reading Room
Topic:
Marist College History
Subject Headings:
Marist Brothers - United States - History
Marist College History
Marist College (Poughkeepsie, New York)
Marist College Social Aspects
Summary:
In the following interview, Dr. John A. Scileppi reflects on his years at
Marist College teaching in the psychology department. The interview begins with a brief
background of Dr. John Scileppi’s educational years and his transition to teaching at
Marist College. Dr. Scileppi speaks of his early teaching assignments given to him by
Dan Kirk, including courses on The Theories of Personality and The Psychology of
Interpersonal Communication and he continues to several of the same courses he
previously taught twenty-nine years earlier. Dr. John Scileppi also speaks of the
transition to the core program as well as several influential colleagues at Marist College.
The interview end with Dr. John Scileppi’s hopes for the future of Marist College.
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
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“BEGINNING OF INTERVIEW”
Gus Nolan:
This interview is with Dr. John Scileppi of the Psychology Department.
He’s the director of the graduate aspect of that. The interview is taking place in the
James Cannavino Library at Marist College. It is about 1:15 in the afternoon. Good
afternoon John.
Dr. John A. Scileppi:
Good afternoon Gus.
GN:
John, will you please tell us your full name?
JAS:
Yes, John A. Scileppi and well, I guess my middle initial A. is for my father whose
first name is Adolf.
GN:
Okay, were you named after any member of your family?
JAS:
Not formally. There was another John Scileppi who was a judge who was the
cousin of my father and it’s possible that I was named after him but I was never really
told that so I think that just my folks just picked the name. It’s a common one at the time.
GN:
Where and when were you born?
JAS:
I was born on August 30, 1946 in Bethany Deconesse Hospital in Queens, on the
border of Brooklyn and Queens, New York.
GN:
Okay. Do you have any siblings, any brothers or sisters?
JAS:
Yes, I’ve got two sisters. My older one is JoAnn Lang. She lives in Washington
and is a special education teacher and my other sister, Jane, lives in New York City and
in Swanage, England and she just retired from the New York City Public School System.
GN:
When you say Washington is that Washington D.C.?
JAS:
Washington D.C. Sorry about that.
GN:
Okay, and your parents’ names and their occupations?
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
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JAS:
My father is Adolf G. Scileppi. He has been a physician having received his MD
in 1934. He’s now ninety-six years old [Laughter] and is living in Florida. My mother
Marie Theresa Scileppi, her maiden name was Sacarro and she was a school teacher in
the New York System, New York City Public School System and she died last
September.
GN:
What about your early education? Do you recall where you went to grammar
school?
JAS:
Sure.
GN:
And then high school?
JAS:
Yes. I guess interestingly I am the product of almost completely of Catholic
education from first grade through my Doctorate. As a matter of fact, the only places that
I did not get religious education was kindergarten at PS91 in Queens, in Glendale,
Queens and driver education in Carmel High School. And I don’t know my wife says
that I’m not a lot of fun and I can’t drive very well [Laughter] so I suppose the Catholic
part of the education was better. My elementary school was St. Pancras, St. Pancras
Elementary School in Glendale and then I went to high school at Archbishop Molloy
High School, a Marist Brothers high school that we were discussing before Gus. You
taught there the year before I got there and then I was here at Marist and I take my four
years undergraduate then I did… Then I went to Loyola University for my… Loyola
University of Chicago for my Master’s and Doctorate.
GN:
Okay. We’ll come back to the college in a few minutes but let’s just stay a little bit
more on the personal. You were with the Marist Brothers for a number of years and then
you decided to leave them and take on another way of life. In the course of time you
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
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came across Lynn. Can you say something about that marriage, where it took place,
when and the happy product of it? [Laughter]
JAS:
Yes. I’m married to Lynn Ruggiero and we got married on November 27, 1982 at
St. Peter and Paul Church in Waterbury, Connecticut.
GN:
Remember the date?
JAS:
Yes, November 27
th
.
GN:
Oh.
JAS:
Yea, right. You were there [Laughter] along with Liz and we lived in
Poughkeepsie and Hyde Park since then and in 1990, our son Luke was born and on June
23, 1990 and so he’s currently twelve years old as of two days ago.
GN:
Not yet a teenager.
JAS:
Nope, no.
GN:
Those joys await you. [Laughter]
JAS:
Oh yea, very much so. [Laughter]
GN:
Okay. Now you’re one of the unique people that we have to talk to in terms of their
college education and the college education being here at Marist. Could you say
something about your days at Marist when you came as a student? What year was that
and who was here?
JAS:
I started out at Marist in September of 1963. I guess the first time I set foot on
campus would have been in 1962. I talked with Brother John Malachy who was the
Director of Admissions at the time and he went through many other roles here at the
college and elsewhere later on. I was also recruited from Molloy by Tom Wade and I
think I talked with John Malachy first but Tom Wade was the person who came to
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
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Molloy. I got interested in Marist for two reasons. One, they had this beautiful
schematic picture of this new unusually shaped building, Donnelly Hall which looked
like a flying saucer. [Laughter] And I said to myself, any one that would design a
building like that for a college must be a very innovative and creative kind of a place”
and that had that in a display I guess at Molloy and I passed it frequently. And then I was
looking also at the quality of the teachers that I had at Molloy. I knew it then as I know
now that they were a very fine group of educators. Terry Jones and Ronald Marcellin
and Neil Richard and all sorts of others, Kevin Dominic and the list goes on and on of
people that I can still remember, many of whom are deceased. But they were fine, fine
teachers. Scared the living daylights out of me frequently but [Laughter] they did take a
personal interest in that they were hard and demanding and challenging and it was a very
worthwhile education. So I said to myself, if that group of people learned at Marist
College and you know, all of them did, then I felt that that would be a good reason to
come to Poughkeepsie. My folks had a summer place country home maybe twenty-five,
thirty miles away and so Poughkeepsie was a place that I had known some things about
so I thought that that would be a good place to go to. And I found that I had a number of
classmates who also came to Marist although they came through the Brothers. And then
we were just talking about this earlier, a number of people in my homeroom in high
school joined the Marist Brothers and then came.
GN:
Is that where those S’s appear?
JAS:
Yea, that’s right. [Laughter] We’re all alphabetically oriented so Henry Sawicki,
Joseph Scanlon and myself were all in the same homeroom. Ed Molloy and the other two
became Marist Brothers. I was at the time called a retarded vocation [Laughter] because
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
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I was coming in after college and you know, that my coming to Marist was only to some
degree affected by my then lukewarm interest in thinking in terms of joining the Marist
Brothers.
GN:
But when you came here, you really had a leaning towards the medical
profession? You thought you…
JAS:
Yes.
GN:
Might be studying medicine as your father had before you.
JAS:
Yes, yes. I think that as a young boy, my father always told me that whenever
anyone asked what I wanted to do [Laughter] to indicate that it would be medicine and so
I always kind of thought of that and I think going to college, going through high school
and for the first years, the first three years of college, I never really questioned that as a
goal. I just said I guess that’s what I’m supposed to do in life is to become a medical
doctor and so I was a pre-med/ biology major and I can… Just before this interview I was
talking to you that I had applied for early admission into medical school for admission
after my junior year and I went for interviews at three places, Syracuse, Downstate,
which I think was in Brooklyn and I want to say something like Columbia but I’m not
positive. I can’t remember it anymore. But I recall the interview I did was at Syracuse.
One of the, I don’t know, third year students decided that he was the person who was
going to take me around in Syracuse and at Upstate Medical Center and he wanted to
show me this cadaver and then he wanted to show me that the human intestine is twenty-
six feet long. And at that point I decided this was not a career for me. [Laughter] I
could just see myself interacting with a patient, blood, guts, I’m not really interested.
[Laughing] And so that was one of those life defining moments I guess. You know, I
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
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decided to instead major in Psychology. I had taken a lot of Psychology courses already
anyway and I had some very fine Psychology teachers.
GN:
Could you mention some of those now and tell us those who were the Marist staff
then and some who are still here?
JAS:
Yea, which really amazes me, the large number of people who are still here after
all these years. In my first year I was privileged to have Richard LaPietra in Chemistry
and Jerry White in History and Ed O’Keefe in Psychology and just to go back to think in
terms of my first semester, fall of 1963, three of my professors [Laughter] as a freshman
are still here. I had some wonderful other people. Frank Swetz who then went onto
Pennsylvania, University of Penn I think it was in Math and I had numerous others, some
of whom are not still here. I had as my dorm proctor Bob Lewis who just retired and
later on I had Andrew Molloy for Organic Chemistry. I had Brian Desilets for Physics. I
had Richard again for…
GN:
Not Chemistry, you passed it the first time?
JAS:
Oh yea, yea, yea. [Laughter] But for another course, I’m trying to remember what
the other course was. It was probably one of the other sciences. It may have been
Physics. And then I had Tom Casey in Philosophy and then I had Dan Kirk in
Psychology. As a sophomore, he had an extremely challenging course using… based on
the theory of David Ausubel in ego development and he later on became fairly close
friends with David Ausubel and co-authored a book revising the book that we had used in
our course. And then Bill Eidle was also one of my teachers for a few of my courses in
both Experimental Psychology as well as in what we called The Mind, Body and
Problem, which is basically a course in Physiological Psychology and drugs and
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
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behavior. But yea, these individuals are still very much part of my life and I was
certainly impressed by the level of rigor in their classes. None of them were easy. That I
remember, John Malachy came to see me right around the time my first midterms in the
fall semester of 1963. I was a freshman and he said that he was going to Molloy for a
school visit and he wanted to get a sense of how those students who had gone the year
before were doing. And I said to him, “Gosh Brother John, I think… I think I’m going to
pass but I’m not really sure.” You know but it was really, I had no idea and I did very
well on all the rest of it but the challenge was there in that there was nothing in the bag as
it were, as far as grades were going and that… That was all the way through college too
that the idea was that there was always another challenge and you could never rest on
your morals and it was a very good experience for really getting as far as you could.
GN:
You’re in a unique position to be able to comment now if you would something of
the level of the ability of the students or the work produced by them, what you can
command of students now and what was commanded of you. Will you draw any
parallels about that, papers done for instance?
JAS:
Yea, I think one of the first experiences that we had during freshman orientation
which was not a socializing time but much more concerned about academics. Brother
Paul Stokes is the… He died about twelve, fourteen years ago I guess now, was the Dean
of Students and he brought all the freshman, it must’ve been perhaps 250 or 300 together
in the old gym that’s now the Marian Hall and I think he gave us a rather stern talk on
what to expect. One of the aspects of his talk and perhaps this is used in many places, I
don’t know if it’s used anymore, was used then but it was the only time I had ever heard
it so I thought it was important and he said to each of us to look to your left, then look to
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
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your right and that one of the three of you will not be here next year. And it was… You
know, I looked at the others and they looked pretty smart. [Laughter] And so I was kind
of wondering who it was going to be but that kind of started me on the idea that I better
do well academically. Interestingly and looking back at it, oh I think my classmates were
very nice people and all the rest of it. I don’t think that they were geniuses by any means
and we’re told now as faculty that the incoming class is the best class coming in and that
they have much higher SAT scores and indeed they might but there, as a teacher, there is
no way that I could be demanding what was demanded of me as a student. The culture of
the United States as well as the culture of the college has changed and I don’t think
Marist is unique in that but the students that were my classmates were by and large, first
generation college students and still there are lots of students now who are first
generation college students but I would expect that there are fewer now than there were
then. That those students… Well, I don’t think that we talked about graduate school, then
and now, certainly we are but that again becomes the culture. Still though, I think that we
never expected that you could go to a teacher and get a grade changed and whatever was
stated, that was it. Even if it was a mistake, that was it. [Laughter] And now it becomes
a question of negotiation at times and I know this issue in my email for example. I got a
far larger, greater number of people who are asking “How come I got this grade?” So I
go to respond and I didn’t change any grades. But I mean, I don’t remember ever asking.
[Laughter] Yea, right. It was just two days ago.
GN:
Let’s move onto your graduate school. Where did you go to graduate school and
what did you study there?
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
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JAS:
I went to Loyola University of Chicago to study Psychology. After deciding not to
become a medical doctor and then deciding to go into Psychology, around that same time
I became interested perhaps more in the fall of my senior year, I became interested in the
Brothers, in joining the Brothers. And the reason why this is pertinent is that at the time
the training houses of the Brothers were in flux. In the late 1960’s there was a lot of
transition going on and I was told to prepare to go to New York City, Boston or Chicago
and so I applied to graduate schools in each of those areas. I applied to Fordham and
NYU and Columbia in the city, New York City. I think Boston College and Boston
University and then in Chicago I applied to Loyola and Northwestern. I got accepted to
go all those except Northwestern and somehow I got accepted at DePaul. I never really
quite understood. [Laughter] I didn’t apply. [Laughter] And so I think that someone in
the Brothers must have said “Oh gosh, we’re going to set up a house in Chicago. I don’t
know if Scileppi has done anything. I’ll call someone at DePaul,” you know or whatever.
So I felt nice about that but [Laughter] one of the interesting things too is that I didn’t
know what field of Psychology that I wanted and so some places says I applied for Social
Psych. Another place is Clinical Psych and different fields. Xerox machines were not
very common then and I was kind of young. I graduated college at twenties so I must
have been you know, just turning twenty or at nineteen at the time I was applying. I
failed to keep a record of where I had applied and what I had said and so I was the last
person to arrive at a meeting at Loyola and the then chair, a guy named Ron Walker
realized. You know, he had his roster and he said, are you… I was the last one there. He
said, “Oh, you must be John Scileppi. You’re in Clinical.” And I thought he had made
the mistake so I said “No, I’m in Social” and it turned out that he had set me up for to be
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
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an assistant with the head of the Clinical Psych program but then I was too embarrassed
to admit that I had made the mistake. [Laughter] So I became a Social Psychologist.
[Laughter]
GN:
Another important day in your life.
JAS:
Yea, right, one of those life defining moments. That was an “Oh, shucks!”
moment. [Laughter] No, I’m happy with the choice that I had made.
GN:
After you finished your studies, where did you start your first work, your first
assignments?
JAS:
Let’s see, first I had to split up my graduate work and to doing Novitiate and so I
had left early from Loyola having not taken all the courses but then was able to still get
my Master’s degree for I was a Novice in Cold Spring and then I went back and I
finished the Doctorate. And my first job was at St. Xavier College. I was interested in
teaching and as a matter of fact, I guess the very first thing I did was to be a guidance
counselor at Marist High School in Chicago. I was a bit more liberal than the people in
the staff at Marist High School and the principal was really worried about what I was
doing with the students. As a guidance counselor, I took a very Rogerian perspective and
a rather conservative directive approach to education. And so my first job was partly the
result of Brother Patrick [Cisteril], the principal of Marist High School playing golf with
the president at St. Xavier College, a guy named Harry Marmion and I guess Pat gave a
good word for me to the president and there was a real problem because they told me
they asked the Chair of Psychology, a woman named Carroll LaPedra to call and I wasn’t
listed in the phonebook because I was in the Marist Brother’s house and so I was listed
under Marist Brothers but she didn’t know that so… Apparently two or three weeks went
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
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by and I didn’t know any of this and then I actually applied not knowing any of the things
that were happening and then she was able to contact me. But that worked out nicely and
I started working at St. Xavier College. The place nearly closed. I remember that first, it
must have been November, there was an eager enthusiastic and worried and you know,
the usual scared sense that you have in your first assignment to do anything to want to do
it well. And the president brought all the faculty into their auditorium and said “If the
utility company decides to ask for their bill, we’ll have to close” and so [Laughter] I was
a little bit concerned. They did better but after going through that, this would be a great
chance then to be innovative and there’s no sense in being conservative and traditional
and so I started a program. We had a complication in December and I said, “What we
really got to do here at St. Xavier is to change the whole educational system.” And I
figured that they were going to laugh at me, being a rather young twenty-four year old
teacher and all that sort of thing. Anyway, the faculty accepted the idea and I started a
new freshman program there called the XL program, Xavier Learning. It’s very
innovative and very student-centered and project oriented and had just about every new
idea that was mentioned. It was a very popular program and in my second year I was
directing that and I was contracted for my third year. However, right after I got my job at
St. Xavier College, Dan Kirk called, wrote and told me the interesting things that he was
doing there. I was really interested because he was starting a Master’s program in
Community Psych but I felt that I should really stay in Chicago. I was doing some things
that I liked to do out there and then he wrote again in ’73 and at that time the Brother’s
house was closing and so I figured that there was less reason to stay in Chicago. I had
started the freestyle school in a broader district on the south side of Chicago dealing with
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
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diverse population of inner city and University of Chicago faculty’s children so it was a
nice kind of way to kind of bridge the gap between the two. And that was going very
well but then when they closed the house on me, then I was no longer in that
neighborhood and so I figured this might be a good time for a move and since Dan Kirk
had written and asked me to apply, I did and I then applied and was accepted to teach
here. I was already contracted for my third year at St. Xavier but the dean allowed me to
break the contract on the idea that I was a Marist Brother and that was a Marist School.
GN:
So then you returned here? What year was that now?
JAS:
1973.
GN:
So you arrived at Marist to teach in ’73?
JAS:
Yes, yes.
GN:
And what were your first teaching assignments here?
JAS:
Dan Kirk had an ironic sense of humor which I always appreciated. He gave me
courses that I never had as a student [Laughter] and so I had to learn them from scratch
and some of them I’m still teaching and I feel very good in terms of that. Over the course
of the years, I’ve taught about thirty different courses but that first year I was teaching
Theories of Personality. I was teaching a graduate course in Research Methods and I was
teaching another graduate course in the Social Psychology of Learning, what are the
different factors that affect how a student learns and it was fun because in each of those I
could investigate the areas new without having a lot of excess baggage. I knew the
general field but I never taught those kinds of courses and then in the spring I was
teaching a course in the Social Psychology of Groups and it’s interesting how almost
thirty years or twenty-nine years later, I’m still teaching The Personality, I’m still very
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
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eager and active in research although I’m not teaching a Research course and I still teach
a course in this and It’s a group-oriented course, The Psychology of Interpersonal
Communication. And they all go back twenty-nine years. Those are some of the things
that I was teaching.
GN:
Very interesting.
JAS:
Yea, yea.
GN:
What about some of the committee work that you’ve been involved in?
JAS:
I was elected to committees I guess right from the first time I could stand for
election starting out in the Grievance Committee and then I got on the Academic Affairs
Committee and I was Chair of that a couple of times, three times and then I was elected
to the FEC, the Faculty Executive Committee and then I probably had a role in committee
services that I did. The longest tenure was on the Rank and Tenure Committee, which
was I think the committee from hell. [Laughter] No, it was a very needed committee but
it’s the kind of committee that no matter what you do…
GN:
Tough decisions.
JAS:
In that you make tough decisions and people’s lives are in the balance, you know,
certainly. And then more recently, I’ve been on Sabbaticals and Research Committee
and over the years many Search committees and ad hoc committees and…
GN:
Let’s direct attention to one area, the Core program, the capping program. Can you
say something about that please?
JAS:
The Core program was something I was very much interested in. First, the core
that Ed O’Keefe was spearheading maybe back in 1977 or thereabouts and what I liked…
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
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I thought that there were some really interesting areas. First I thought that the sixty-sixty
program was without educational justification. It’s…
GN:
Come out of a disaster. [Laughter] We’ve had that expression before.
JAS:
Yea, right. And so I was very happy that Ed was coming up with it. At the time
Xavier Ryan was also very much involved. I was happy that one of the foundation
courses, the Introduction to Philosophy, dealt with the four modes of consciousness.
Ironically just tonight I’m going to be teaching Carl Jung and Jung talked about the four
functions of the psyche and for a person to be whole, the person needs to be able to
function in each of those areas and it turns out the four functions of the psyche and the
four modes of consciousness…
GN:
Are parallel.
JAS:
Yea, they are. You know, they’re very strongly parallel and so I thought it was a
great idea. I remember a group of students in Psychology and myself were advocating
strongly for that core and I think that we gave at a party with a cake which had an apple
core, you know, [Laughter] on it was a picture of an apple core. And that the… As the
core then developed it seemed to be inadequate, in the right direction but inadequate and
so by 1982, 1983, the core needed to be revised. And in ’83, ’84, it was revised. I was
the Chair of AAC at the time and Andrew Molloy was the academic vice-president of the
dean and I recall having many meetings with faculty in small groups and doing all sorts
of things to advocate for the new core, the new… What we now call the Core Liberal
Studies had certain advantages taking first the same idea of the seventy-seven core and I
presented it as an evolution and as an organic program that would continue to evolve.
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
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The biggest change was, actually two changes. The first was to have more courses, two
courses in each area instead of one course in each area.
GN:
Right. So the idea was that there’d be a widespread, that students have two courses
in Literature, two in Math, two in Social Sciences, two in History so they wouldn’t
graduate from Marist without ever having had a History course or without ever having a
Math course?
JAS:
That’s right.
GN:
That was the rationale behind it.
JAS:
That was and also I saw it as connecting to the four modes of
consciousness so that as the students would learn, learn each of the modes, they would
have an opportunity to explore those modes more fully by taking courses in literature or
courses in philosophy or courses in…
GN:
Science.
JAS:
Science, etcetera. And the other innovation in the ’83 core was the, the capping
course and that the idea was education tends… Coming actually from Andrew Carnegie
in the 1890’s, 1900’s that the reason why we have 120 credits, they used to be called
Carnegie credits because the Carnegie Foundation would only fund those colleges that
had 120 credits. It caused a great disintegration of learning in that people were just
looking for forty three-credit units, didn’t always have three credits but to have 120
credits and there was no integrating peace and the idea of the capping course would be
that students would be, would be the integrators themselves with some assistance and
guidance from a faculty member who would take the foundation, take all the distributive
courses and tie in those same themes to the major. It was, I don’t want to say grandiose.
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
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[Laughter] It was challenging and I think that it’s now been close to twenty years later I
guess that the core was if I recall, the core was voted in, Core Liberal Studies in
December of ’83 and then the first time it was actually implemented would have probably
been the fall of ’84 and even there, that would have been with freshman and so it was a
gradual limitation. But then I see the, the same topics being discussed each year and I
think that that’s part of the organic part of it, that there was no way that we could have
come up with a complete system that would have said this course should improve with X,
Y and Z and this course should improve with A, B and C etcetera and that that it’s still
evolving but the basic framework hasn’t changed. And my belief is, I think I may have
even mentioned in trying to support the Core Liberal Studies at the time, that the college
was moving away from the liberal arts and was developing into many professional
programs and the computorary and business area and the technological area and that if we
didn’t come up with a core then, there’s no way that we would have been able to do it
after that because we wouldn’t have been able to get a fifty percent of the faculty to move
in any one direction.
GN:
Okay. Let’s change the focus a little bit now and talk about the student body. How
would you contrast the student body today with your day in terms of maturity,
scholarship, the balance of male and female students on campus? [Laughter] In your
day, there was none.
JAS:
The last question, that’s really easy. [Laughter] There were only males at the
college although I remember some times that the fire alarms would go off in the
dormitories and somehow the first people out would always be women. I just could
never figure out. [Laughter] But I mean, there were no women when I was a student. I
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
19
assumed that they were, that women probably came first through the evening division but
they may have had women in the evening division but I wasn’t knowledgeable about that.
You know, having most of my classes in the daytime. I think that the students were in
one sense, entering students were not very different as far as, as their standards, academic
standards. Well, if anything maybe they’re higher now. I don’t know although it seemed
that everyone then read well, wrote well, knew basic mathematical skills well but we
never, we never thought much of that. We just assumed well of course, you went through
twelve years of elementary and secondary school and you would’ve learned that. Now, I
know when I talk to the faculty who teach Statistics and Psychological Research Methods
that they’ll ask some question like “What’s the average of these three numbers, 3, 4 and
5?” and the students haven’t a clue as to how to be able to figure that out and somehow
we would’ve all known that, [Laughter] you know, before. But we’re told that the SAT
scores are higher now than they were then and I have no reason to [dispute] them.
GN:
Which is larger, a quarter or a third? [Laughter]
JAS:
Well, gee I mean, four is bigger isn’t it? [Laughter] Gus, those kinds of things
make me really scared and so it seems that students are less prepared with the basics now
but seem to have higher SAT scores now than they did before.
GN:
Okay, let me ask about another area because time is running on. Let’s talk about
the administration and the changes that you have experienced. You were here for a
number of years under Dr. Foy and then he was followed by Dr. Murray. Let’s talk about
Dr. Foy. How would you describe your experiences with him and what were his
characteristics of administration?
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
20
JAS:
Certainly a very friendly and very accessible and academically-oriented. He did
not rely on the authority of his office but rather he was a teacher in the classroom first as
a Mathematics teacher and the math majors were just always dying to have him. Again,
he was challenging, all the rest of it but he was known as an educator. He was a teacher.
He was also a person who was not ashamed to get dirty, to roll up his sleeves and pitch in
and do a lot of the work, even some of the physical work. I have an uncle who worked in
Poughkeepsie in the internal revenue office and apparently his office caught up to say
that they old furniture and so they asked if the college would want it and so a truck came
the next day and Linus was one of the people changing things. My uncle was talking
with the people and said “Oh, my name is Victor Scileppi. What’s your name?” “Oh,
my name is Dr. Linus Foy” and he was just seeming… You know, he was really taken
aback by that. And I recall that story very much because it kind of said to me that this
was not a person who was up on some pedestal who had to… You know, a real… We all
treat him with respect. There’s no question. We all knew that he was a very fine person
but it wasn’t because he was president. He was just a nice person, a very intelligent
person, very… Had wonderful vision. Both as a student and as a faculty, I trusted Linus.
The college had a lot of substance, that decisions were made for good academic reasons.
I did some… As a first year or second year teacher, I was asked to do a survey for to see
whether or not there was an interest in the Nursing program and I was very interested
in… Linus came to the meeting where I was presenting it to Richard LaPietra and not
only to faculty, to the…
GN:
Administration.
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
21
JAS:
Administration. And he was there and he asked, he was very knowledgeable about
my study. He had read it and he was asking some very fun questions in that there was
just a… I saw him as a straight-shooter academic and trustworthy. And talking prior, you
know, certainly I know that the college financially was not in the best of shapes in those
days. That wasn’t a big thing. Revenue came second. The academic, educational quality
of the program came first and under Linus’s tenure, we started the graduate programs and
we offered a lot of the programs that are still being offered today and a lot of the
innovations were already there like the internship and the undergraduate psych program
and the communications programs were started by Linus. And I think unfortunately
Boards of Trustees have fiduciary responsibility to the college and that the board decided
to then choose someone who would help us financially and it’s hard to throw stones. I’m
sitting in this very nice room here in Cannavino Library and it’s nice that we had $25
million to spend for, you know, for a library that I don’t think that we would have been
able to do and that the grounds looked very nice and that the… Now I understand we use
professionals for contractors and construction.
GN:
Right. Times have changed. [Laughter]
JAS:
Yea, right.
GN:
One has to have a license now [Laughter] and has to be qualified to do this. So Dr.
Murray has brought these qualities to the college, a much more professional fundraising I
suppose we’d say…
JAS:
Yes, certainly.
GN:
And then the actual construction, going to not the Brothers but rather for us to do
this for their livelihood. [Laughter]
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
22
JAS:
Not that I minded. As I mentioned, I came because of the unique building of
Donnelly Hall.
GN:
And finally into these last areas, what about your role in the development of this
college department and the Master’s program, are you happy with the way that has gone
or were there some changes that you had wished that would have been implemented and
somehow didn’t happen, didn’t have to happen?
JAS:
On the whole, yea, I’m very happy with the way that things have turned out in that
we, not only in Psychology, but I think throughout the college that we have some very
fine programs. And yes, I’m very involved in the graduate program and I recall that there
were times when the college looked upon the graduate programs as a real drain on
resources and now I see that it’s a revenue enhancing area that it was never before. And I
felt good that we’ve been able to, you know, make the program larger. In terms of things
that I would have liked to have happen that didn’t happen, just as Dan Kirk was getting
sick, we were developing a Doctoral program and indeed we had gone through
developing a Doctoral program and we had developed the program on paper and the
faculty as I recall had voted in favor of it and the trustees had accepted it but it never got
accepted by the state. We got it up to that point by the state. It turned out to be not
accepted for political reasons. There was an engineering program that we wanted and
that New Paltz wanted and it turned out that we had developed a satellite program using
New York Institute of Technology and apparently the word that we got was that the then
governor was very unhappy that a private institution received this program where a
public institution did not and so he basically told the regions not to give Marist anything
and we were the next program that came. We had a five year program, a very innovative
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
23
program that had been accepted but somehow the state lost the paperwork on that so as
soon as we applied to the Doctoral program they said “You know, you’ve got this five
year program. We’ve never heard about that.” And then when we withdrew our
Doctoral proposal, all of a sudden they found the paperwork for the five year program
and everything is fine with it. Now we’re actually developing another proposal for a
Doctoral program and who knows whether or not this will carry. One of the problems in
Psychology is that to become a licensed practitioner, a person needs a Doctorate in
Psychology. We offer a Master’s degree. That means that our students are at a
disadvantage. They can work in agencies but they can’t practice independently and this
conversation is happening at an interesting time because in the state there is a bill to
license Master’s level practitioners. The bill passed unanimously in the Senate last
Thursday and is scheduled to be taken up by the Assembly today. If that bill passes then
our students will no longer be second class citizens.
GN:
Has the governor agreed to sign it? Do you know?
JAS:
Well, if… No, but the governor doesn’t have to agree to sign it until it’s passed by
both houses.
GN:
I see.
JAS:
And if it passes the Assembly today, it certainly would be very likely given that it
passed unanimously in the Senate. It would be unwise for a governor to try to veto a bill
that passed so successfully. It might take a year to… I feel a little bit like Moses in the
promised land. Friday is my last day as director of the Master’s program in Psychology.
I would certainly love to have that bill passed. [Laughter]
GN:
As a parting gift?
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
24
JAS:
Right, exactly. And it would then make my successor’s job a lot easier for
recruiting students but the program is growing. It’s about maybe four or five times the
size that it was in 1990 when I took it on and I think we’ll grow very fast, again, once that
bill passes. And School of Psych and Ed Psych are also programs that we offer now.
GN:
Okay. Marist has certainly grown and has become a rather story of success in the
twenty-five years since you first came to this area. What would you say are the key
points and is it likely to continue?
JAS:
I think… It certainly… When I talk to anyone in the community, everyone who’s
lived here for a long time does talk about how Marist’s reputation, how its size, how
quality of its programs, the quality of its sports activities has improved. And certainly I
think that there are enough outcomes that we could use for that. It’s also going… It’s
also improved on the national level. When I meet people elsewhere in the United States,
that they’ve certainly, they’ve heard of Marist whether it’s through the polling, the
MIPO, whether it’s because of our sports teams or indeed whether it’s because of the
graduates that we’re producing. Our connections with IBM certainly and I think we have
Brian Desilets to thank for that as well as Paul Ambrose actually. And then 1940’s when
IBM first came to Poughkeepsie and Paul’s got some great stories which I’m sure that
he’s talked to you about. But now, to realize that our graduates are throughout the world
and that I’ve heard that we are as a college, when IBMer’s consider where they are
alumni of, I’m trying to think of the right way of saying that in terms of English,
[Laughter] that Marist is the second largest college for their alums, meaning... And which
I thought was a pretty interesting place if they’re all scattered through many but because
so many people…
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
25
GN:
Come to Poughkeepsie.
JAS:
Come to Poughkeepsie and then they got their undergraduate degree here
so whenever they think of helping their alma mater with interesting programs, [Laughter]
Marist gets help by that and I think that that certainly has helped our reputation.
GN:
And physically being located on the Hudson, seventy-five miles from New
York City?
JAS:
Admissions always tells us that that’s important. [Laughter]
GN:
Yes.
JAS:
Location, location, location. [Laughter]
GN:
Fine, and in conclusion John, is there anything I didn’t ask you that you think you’d
like to add to this conversation?
JAS:
The only thing that I would want to encourage is that when I came to Marist, there
was certain, as a student, there was certainly an interest in educating the total person.
Even the rules and regulations and everything were involved in making sure that we were
responsible, well-disciplined individuals who would become fine citizens and I remember
many, many people, faculty, administration that would emphasize that and I still see that
going on in terms of the core, both the ‘77 core as well as the current core. I still see that
with the Templeton award that we received. I see that admission statement and I would
hope that we continue to be concerned about educating the total person. I am unhappy
that we’ve lost the close sense of community that we once had but that I hope we
continue to look at the total person and not just, you know, the people who are going to
be academically successful.
GN:
Good. Thank you very much John.
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
26
JAS:
Thank you.
“END OF INTERVIEW”
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
1
John Scileppi
Marist College
Poughkeepsie, NY
Transcribed by Erin Kelly
For the Marist College Archives and Special Collections
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
2
Transcript: John Scileppi
Interviewee:
John Scileppi
Interviewer:
Gus Nolan
Interview date:
25 June 2002
Location:
Marist Archives and Special Collections Reading Room
Topic:
Marist College History
Subject Headings:
Marist Brothers - United States - History
Marist College History
Marist College (Poughkeepsie, New York)
Marist College Social Aspects
Summary:
In the following interview, Dr. John A. Scileppi reflects on his years at
Marist College teaching in the psychology department. The interview begins with a brief
background of Dr. John Scileppi’s educational years and his transition to teaching at
Marist College. Dr. Scileppi speaks of his early teaching assignments given to him by
Dan Kirk, including courses on The Theories of Personality and The Psychology of
Interpersonal Communication and he continues to several of the same courses he
previously taught twenty-nine years earlier. Dr. John Scileppi also speaks of the
transition to the core program as well as several influential colleagues at Marist College.
The interview end with Dr. John Scileppi’s hopes for the future of Marist College.
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
3
“BEGINNING OF INTERVIEW”
Gus Nolan:
This interview is with Dr. John Scileppi of the Psychology Department.
He’s the director of the graduate aspect of that. The interview is taking place in the
James Cannavino Library at Marist College. It is about 1:15 in the afternoon. Good
afternoon John.
Dr. John A. Scileppi:
Good afternoon Gus.
GN:
John, will you please tell us your full name?
JAS:
Yes, John A. Scileppi and well, I guess my middle initial A. is for my father whose
first name is Adolf.
GN:
Okay, were you named after any member of your family?
JAS:
Not formally. There was another John Scileppi who was a judge who was the
cousin of my father and it’s possible that I was named after him but I was never really
told that so I think that just my folks just picked the name. It’s a common one at the time.
GN:
Where and when were you born?
JAS:
I was born on August 30, 1946 in Bethany Deconesse Hospital in Queens, on the
border of Brooklyn and Queens, New York.
GN:
Okay. Do you have any siblings, any brothers or sisters?
JAS:
Yes, I’ve got two sisters. My older one is JoAnn Lang. She lives in Washington
and is a special education teacher and my other sister, Jane, lives in New York City and
in Swanage, England and she just retired from the New York City Public School System.
GN:
When you say Washington is that Washington D.C.?
JAS:
Washington D.C. Sorry about that.
GN:
Okay, and your parents’ names and their occupations?
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
4
JAS:
My father is Adolf G. Scileppi. He has been a physician having received his MD
in 1934. He’s now ninety-six years old [Laughter] and is living in Florida. My mother
Marie Theresa Scileppi, her maiden name was Sacarro and she was a school teacher in
the New York System, New York City Public School System and she died last
September.
GN:
What about your early education? Do you recall where you went to grammar
school?
JAS:
Sure.
GN:
And then high school?
JAS:
Yes. I guess interestingly I am the product of almost completely of Catholic
education from first grade through my Doctorate. As a matter of fact, the only places that
I did not get religious education was kindergarten at PS91 in Queens, in Glendale,
Queens and driver education in Carmel High School. And I don’t know my wife says
that I’m not a lot of fun and I can’t drive very well [Laughter] so I suppose the Catholic
part of the education was better. My elementary school was St. Pancras, St. Pancras
Elementary School in Glendale and then I went to high school at Archbishop Molloy
High School, a Marist Brothers high school that we were discussing before Gus. You
taught there the year before I got there and then I was here at Marist and I take my four
years undergraduate then I did… Then I went to Loyola University for my… Loyola
University of Chicago for my Master’s and Doctorate.
GN:
Okay. We’ll come back to the college in a few minutes but let’s just stay a little bit
more on the personal. You were with the Marist Brothers for a number of years and then
you decided to leave them and take on another way of life. In the course of time you
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
5
came across Lynn. Can you say something about that marriage, where it took place,
when and the happy product of it? [Laughter]
JAS:
Yes. I’m married to Lynn Ruggiero and we got married on November 27, 1982 at
St. Peter and Paul Church in Waterbury, Connecticut.
GN:
Remember the date?
JAS:
Yes, November 27
th
.
GN:
Oh.
JAS:
Yea, right. You were there [Laughter] along with Liz and we lived in
Poughkeepsie and Hyde Park since then and in 1990, our son Luke was born and on June
23, 1990 and so he’s currently twelve years old as of two days ago.
GN:
Not yet a teenager.
JAS:
Nope, no.
GN:
Those joys await you. [Laughter]
JAS:
Oh yea, very much so. [Laughter]
GN:
Okay. Now you’re one of the unique people that we have to talk to in terms of their
college education and the college education being here at Marist. Could you say
something about your days at Marist when you came as a student? What year was that
and who was here?
JAS:
I started out at Marist in September of 1963. I guess the first time I set foot on
campus would have been in 1962. I talked with Brother John Malachy who was the
Director of Admissions at the time and he went through many other roles here at the
college and elsewhere later on. I was also recruited from Molloy by Tom Wade and I
think I talked with John Malachy first but Tom Wade was the person who came to
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
6
Molloy. I got interested in Marist for two reasons. One, they had this beautiful
schematic picture of this new unusually shaped building, Donnelly Hall which looked
like a flying saucer. [Laughter] And I said to myself, any one that would design a
building like that for a college must be a very innovative and creative kind of a place”
and that had that in a display I guess at Molloy and I passed it frequently. And then I was
looking also at the quality of the teachers that I had at Molloy. I knew it then as I know
now that they were a very fine group of educators. Terry Jones and Ronald Marcellin
and Neil Richard and all sorts of others, Kevin Dominic and the list goes on and on of
people that I can still remember, many of whom are deceased. But they were fine, fine
teachers. Scared the living daylights out of me frequently but [Laughter] they did take a
personal interest in that they were hard and demanding and challenging and it was a very
worthwhile education. So I said to myself, if that group of people learned at Marist
College and you know, all of them did, then I felt that that would be a good reason to
come to Poughkeepsie. My folks had a summer place country home maybe twenty-five,
thirty miles away and so Poughkeepsie was a place that I had known some things about
so I thought that that would be a good place to go to. And I found that I had a number of
classmates who also came to Marist although they came through the Brothers. And then
we were just talking about this earlier, a number of people in my homeroom in high
school joined the Marist Brothers and then came.
GN:
Is that where those S’s appear?
JAS:
Yea, that’s right. [Laughter] We’re all alphabetically oriented so Henry Sawicki,
Joseph Scanlon and myself were all in the same homeroom. Ed Molloy and the other two
became Marist Brothers. I was at the time called a retarded vocation [Laughter] because
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
7
I was coming in after college and you know, that my coming to Marist was only to some
degree affected by my then lukewarm interest in thinking in terms of joining the Marist
Brothers.
GN:
But when you came here, you really had a leaning towards the medical
profession? You thought you…
JAS:
Yes.
GN:
Might be studying medicine as your father had before you.
JAS:
Yes, yes. I think that as a young boy, my father always told me that whenever
anyone asked what I wanted to do [Laughter] to indicate that it would be medicine and so
I always kind of thought of that and I think going to college, going through high school
and for the first years, the first three years of college, I never really questioned that as a
goal. I just said I guess that’s what I’m supposed to do in life is to become a medical
doctor and so I was a pre-med/ biology major and I can… Just before this interview I was
talking to you that I had applied for early admission into medical school for admission
after my junior year and I went for interviews at three places, Syracuse, Downstate,
which I think was in Brooklyn and I want to say something like Columbia but I’m not
positive. I can’t remember it anymore. But I recall the interview I did was at Syracuse.
One of the, I don’t know, third year students decided that he was the person who was
going to take me around in Syracuse and at Upstate Medical Center and he wanted to
show me this cadaver and then he wanted to show me that the human intestine is twenty-
six feet long. And at that point I decided this was not a career for me. [Laughter] I
could just see myself interacting with a patient, blood, guts, I’m not really interested.
[Laughing] And so that was one of those life defining moments I guess. You know, I
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
8
decided to instead major in Psychology. I had taken a lot of Psychology courses already
anyway and I had some very fine Psychology teachers.
GN:
Could you mention some of those now and tell us those who were the Marist staff
then and some who are still here?
JAS:
Yea, which really amazes me, the large number of people who are still here after
all these years. In my first year I was privileged to have Richard LaPietra in Chemistry
and Jerry White in History and Ed O’Keefe in Psychology and just to go back to think in
terms of my first semester, fall of 1963, three of my professors [Laughter] as a freshman
are still here. I had some wonderful other people. Frank Swetz who then went onto
Pennsylvania, University of Penn I think it was in Math and I had numerous others, some
of whom are not still here. I had as my dorm proctor Bob Lewis who just retired and
later on I had Andrew Molloy for Organic Chemistry. I had Brian Desilets for Physics. I
had Richard again for…
GN:
Not Chemistry, you passed it the first time?
JAS:
Oh yea, yea, yea. [Laughter] But for another course, I’m trying to remember what
the other course was. It was probably one of the other sciences. It may have been
Physics. And then I had Tom Casey in Philosophy and then I had Dan Kirk in
Psychology. As a sophomore, he had an extremely challenging course using… based on
the theory of David Ausubel in ego development and he later on became fairly close
friends with David Ausubel and co-authored a book revising the book that we had used in
our course. And then Bill Eidle was also one of my teachers for a few of my courses in
both Experimental Psychology as well as in what we called The Mind, Body and
Problem, which is basically a course in Physiological Psychology and drugs and
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
9
behavior. But yea, these individuals are still very much part of my life and I was
certainly impressed by the level of rigor in their classes. None of them were easy. That I
remember, John Malachy came to see me right around the time my first midterms in the
fall semester of 1963. I was a freshman and he said that he was going to Molloy for a
school visit and he wanted to get a sense of how those students who had gone the year
before were doing. And I said to him, “Gosh Brother John, I think… I think I’m going to
pass but I’m not really sure.” You know but it was really, I had no idea and I did very
well on all the rest of it but the challenge was there in that there was nothing in the bag as
it were, as far as grades were going and that… That was all the way through college too
that the idea was that there was always another challenge and you could never rest on
your morals and it was a very good experience for really getting as far as you could.
GN:
You’re in a unique position to be able to comment now if you would something of
the level of the ability of the students or the work produced by them, what you can
command of students now and what was commanded of you. Will you draw any
parallels about that, papers done for instance?
JAS:
Yea, I think one of the first experiences that we had during freshman orientation
which was not a socializing time but much more concerned about academics. Brother
Paul Stokes is the… He died about twelve, fourteen years ago I guess now, was the Dean
of Students and he brought all the freshman, it must’ve been perhaps 250 or 300 together
in the old gym that’s now the Marian Hall and I think he gave us a rather stern talk on
what to expect. One of the aspects of his talk and perhaps this is used in many places, I
don’t know if it’s used anymore, was used then but it was the only time I had ever heard
it so I thought it was important and he said to each of us to look to your left, then look to
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
10
your right and that one of the three of you will not be here next year. And it was… You
know, I looked at the others and they looked pretty smart. [Laughter] And so I was kind
of wondering who it was going to be but that kind of started me on the idea that I better
do well academically. Interestingly and looking back at it, oh I think my classmates were
very nice people and all the rest of it. I don’t think that they were geniuses by any means
and we’re told now as faculty that the incoming class is the best class coming in and that
they have much higher SAT scores and indeed they might but there, as a teacher, there is
no way that I could be demanding what was demanded of me as a student. The culture of
the United States as well as the culture of the college has changed and I don’t think
Marist is unique in that but the students that were my classmates were by and large, first
generation college students and still there are lots of students now who are first
generation college students but I would expect that there are fewer now than there were
then. That those students… Well, I don’t think that we talked about graduate school, then
and now, certainly we are but that again becomes the culture. Still though, I think that we
never expected that you could go to a teacher and get a grade changed and whatever was
stated, that was it. Even if it was a mistake, that was it. [Laughter] And now it becomes
a question of negotiation at times and I know this issue in my email for example. I got a
far larger, greater number of people who are asking “How come I got this grade?” So I
go to respond and I didn’t change any grades. But I mean, I don’t remember ever asking.
[Laughter] Yea, right. It was just two days ago.
GN:
Let’s move onto your graduate school. Where did you go to graduate school and
what did you study there?
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
11
JAS:
I went to Loyola University of Chicago to study Psychology. After deciding not to
become a medical doctor and then deciding to go into Psychology, around that same time
I became interested perhaps more in the fall of my senior year, I became interested in the
Brothers, in joining the Brothers. And the reason why this is pertinent is that at the time
the training houses of the Brothers were in flux. In the late 1960’s there was a lot of
transition going on and I was told to prepare to go to New York City, Boston or Chicago
and so I applied to graduate schools in each of those areas. I applied to Fordham and
NYU and Columbia in the city, New York City. I think Boston College and Boston
University and then in Chicago I applied to Loyola and Northwestern. I got accepted to
go all those except Northwestern and somehow I got accepted at DePaul. I never really
quite understood. [Laughter] I didn’t apply. [Laughter] And so I think that someone in
the Brothers must have said “Oh gosh, we’re going to set up a house in Chicago. I don’t
know if Scileppi has done anything. I’ll call someone at DePaul,” you know or whatever.
So I felt nice about that but [Laughter] one of the interesting things too is that I didn’t
know what field of Psychology that I wanted and so some places says I applied for Social
Psych. Another place is Clinical Psych and different fields. Xerox machines were not
very common then and I was kind of young. I graduated college at twenties so I must
have been you know, just turning twenty or at nineteen at the time I was applying. I
failed to keep a record of where I had applied and what I had said and so I was the last
person to arrive at a meeting at Loyola and the then chair, a guy named Ron Walker
realized. You know, he had his roster and he said, are you… I was the last one there. He
said, “Oh, you must be John Scileppi. You’re in Clinical.” And I thought he had made
the mistake so I said “No, I’m in Social” and it turned out that he had set me up for to be
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
12
an assistant with the head of the Clinical Psych program but then I was too embarrassed
to admit that I had made the mistake. [Laughter] So I became a Social Psychologist.
[Laughter]
GN:
Another important day in your life.
JAS:
Yea, right, one of those life defining moments. That was an “Oh, shucks!”
moment. [Laughter] No, I’m happy with the choice that I had made.
GN:
After you finished your studies, where did you start your first work, your first
assignments?
JAS:
Let’s see, first I had to split up my graduate work and to doing Novitiate and so I
had left early from Loyola having not taken all the courses but then was able to still get
my Master’s degree for I was a Novice in Cold Spring and then I went back and I
finished the Doctorate. And my first job was at St. Xavier College. I was interested in
teaching and as a matter of fact, I guess the very first thing I did was to be a guidance
counselor at Marist High School in Chicago. I was a bit more liberal than the people in
the staff at Marist High School and the principal was really worried about what I was
doing with the students. As a guidance counselor, I took a very Rogerian perspective and
a rather conservative directive approach to education. And so my first job was partly the
result of Brother Patrick [Cisteril], the principal of Marist High School playing golf with
the president at St. Xavier College, a guy named Harry Marmion and I guess Pat gave a
good word for me to the president and there was a real problem because they told me
they asked the Chair of Psychology, a woman named Carroll LaPedra to call and I wasn’t
listed in the phonebook because I was in the Marist Brother’s house and so I was listed
under Marist Brothers but she didn’t know that so… Apparently two or three weeks went
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
13
by and I didn’t know any of this and then I actually applied not knowing any of the things
that were happening and then she was able to contact me. But that worked out nicely and
I started working at St. Xavier College. The place nearly closed. I remember that first, it
must have been November, there was an eager enthusiastic and worried and you know,
the usual scared sense that you have in your first assignment to do anything to want to do
it well. And the president brought all the faculty into their auditorium and said “If the
utility company decides to ask for their bill, we’ll have to close” and so [Laughter] I was
a little bit concerned. They did better but after going through that, this would be a great
chance then to be innovative and there’s no sense in being conservative and traditional
and so I started a program. We had a complication in December and I said, “What we
really got to do here at St. Xavier is to change the whole educational system.” And I
figured that they were going to laugh at me, being a rather young twenty-four year old
teacher and all that sort of thing. Anyway, the faculty accepted the idea and I started a
new freshman program there called the XL program, Xavier Learning. It’s very
innovative and very student-centered and project oriented and had just about every new
idea that was mentioned. It was a very popular program and in my second year I was
directing that and I was contracted for my third year. However, right after I got my job at
St. Xavier College, Dan Kirk called, wrote and told me the interesting things that he was
doing there. I was really interested because he was starting a Master’s program in
Community Psych but I felt that I should really stay in Chicago. I was doing some things
that I liked to do out there and then he wrote again in ’73 and at that time the Brother’s
house was closing and so I figured that there was less reason to stay in Chicago. I had
started the freestyle school in a broader district on the south side of Chicago dealing with
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
14
diverse population of inner city and University of Chicago faculty’s children so it was a
nice kind of way to kind of bridge the gap between the two. And that was going very
well but then when they closed the house on me, then I was no longer in that
neighborhood and so I figured this might be a good time for a move and since Dan Kirk
had written and asked me to apply, I did and I then applied and was accepted to teach
here. I was already contracted for my third year at St. Xavier but the dean allowed me to
break the contract on the idea that I was a Marist Brother and that was a Marist School.
GN:
So then you returned here? What year was that now?
JAS:
1973.
GN:
So you arrived at Marist to teach in ’73?
JAS:
Yes, yes.
GN:
And what were your first teaching assignments here?
JAS:
Dan Kirk had an ironic sense of humor which I always appreciated. He gave me
courses that I never had as a student [Laughter] and so I had to learn them from scratch
and some of them I’m still teaching and I feel very good in terms of that. Over the course
of the years, I’ve taught about thirty different courses but that first year I was teaching
Theories of Personality. I was teaching a graduate course in Research Methods and I was
teaching another graduate course in the Social Psychology of Learning, what are the
different factors that affect how a student learns and it was fun because in each of those I
could investigate the areas new without having a lot of excess baggage. I knew the
general field but I never taught those kinds of courses and then in the spring I was
teaching a course in the Social Psychology of Groups and it’s interesting how almost
thirty years or twenty-nine years later, I’m still teaching The Personality, I’m still very
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
15
eager and active in research although I’m not teaching a Research course and I still teach
a course in this and It’s a group-oriented course, The Psychology of Interpersonal
Communication. And they all go back twenty-nine years. Those are some of the things
that I was teaching.
GN:
Very interesting.
JAS:
Yea, yea.
GN:
What about some of the committee work that you’ve been involved in?
JAS:
I was elected to committees I guess right from the first time I could stand for
election starting out in the Grievance Committee and then I got on the Academic Affairs
Committee and I was Chair of that a couple of times, three times and then I was elected
to the FEC, the Faculty Executive Committee and then I probably had a role in committee
services that I did. The longest tenure was on the Rank and Tenure Committee, which
was I think the committee from hell. [Laughter] No, it was a very needed committee but
it’s the kind of committee that no matter what you do…
GN:
Tough decisions.
JAS:
In that you make tough decisions and people’s lives are in the balance, you know,
certainly. And then more recently, I’ve been on Sabbaticals and Research Committee
and over the years many Search committees and ad hoc committees and…
GN:
Let’s direct attention to one area, the Core program, the capping program. Can you
say something about that please?
JAS:
The Core program was something I was very much interested in. First, the core
that Ed O’Keefe was spearheading maybe back in 1977 or thereabouts and what I liked…
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
16
I thought that there were some really interesting areas. First I thought that the sixty-sixty
program was without educational justification. It’s…
GN:
Come out of a disaster. [Laughter] We’ve had that expression before.
JAS:
Yea, right. And so I was very happy that Ed was coming up with it. At the time
Xavier Ryan was also very much involved. I was happy that one of the foundation
courses, the Introduction to Philosophy, dealt with the four modes of consciousness.
Ironically just tonight I’m going to be teaching Carl Jung and Jung talked about the four
functions of the psyche and for a person to be whole, the person needs to be able to
function in each of those areas and it turns out the four functions of the psyche and the
four modes of consciousness…
GN:
Are parallel.
JAS:
Yea, they are. You know, they’re very strongly parallel and so I thought it was a
great idea. I remember a group of students in Psychology and myself were advocating
strongly for that core and I think that we gave at a party with a cake which had an apple
core, you know, [Laughter] on it was a picture of an apple core. And that the… As the
core then developed it seemed to be inadequate, in the right direction but inadequate and
so by 1982, 1983, the core needed to be revised. And in ’83, ’84, it was revised. I was
the Chair of AAC at the time and Andrew Molloy was the academic vice-president of the
dean and I recall having many meetings with faculty in small groups and doing all sorts
of things to advocate for the new core, the new… What we now call the Core Liberal
Studies had certain advantages taking first the same idea of the seventy-seven core and I
presented it as an evolution and as an organic program that would continue to evolve.
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
17
The biggest change was, actually two changes. The first was to have more courses, two
courses in each area instead of one course in each area.
GN:
Right. So the idea was that there’d be a widespread, that students have two courses
in Literature, two in Math, two in Social Sciences, two in History so they wouldn’t
graduate from Marist without ever having had a History course or without ever having a
Math course?
JAS:
That’s right.
GN:
That was the rationale behind it.
JAS:
That was and also I saw it as connecting to the four modes of
consciousness so that as the students would learn, learn each of the modes, they would
have an opportunity to explore those modes more fully by taking courses in literature or
courses in philosophy or courses in…
GN:
Science.
JAS:
Science, etcetera. And the other innovation in the ’83 core was the, the capping
course and that the idea was education tends… Coming actually from Andrew Carnegie
in the 1890’s, 1900’s that the reason why we have 120 credits, they used to be called
Carnegie credits because the Carnegie Foundation would only fund those colleges that
had 120 credits. It caused a great disintegration of learning in that people were just
looking for forty three-credit units, didn’t always have three credits but to have 120
credits and there was no integrating peace and the idea of the capping course would be
that students would be, would be the integrators themselves with some assistance and
guidance from a faculty member who would take the foundation, take all the distributive
courses and tie in those same themes to the major. It was, I don’t want to say grandiose.
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
18
[Laughter] It was challenging and I think that it’s now been close to twenty years later I
guess that the core was if I recall, the core was voted in, Core Liberal Studies in
December of ’83 and then the first time it was actually implemented would have probably
been the fall of ’84 and even there, that would have been with freshman and so it was a
gradual limitation. But then I see the, the same topics being discussed each year and I
think that that’s part of the organic part of it, that there was no way that we could have
come up with a complete system that would have said this course should improve with X,
Y and Z and this course should improve with A, B and C etcetera and that that it’s still
evolving but the basic framework hasn’t changed. And my belief is, I think I may have
even mentioned in trying to support the Core Liberal Studies at the time, that the college
was moving away from the liberal arts and was developing into many professional
programs and the computorary and business area and the technological area and that if we
didn’t come up with a core then, there’s no way that we would have been able to do it
after that because we wouldn’t have been able to get a fifty percent of the faculty to move
in any one direction.
GN:
Okay. Let’s change the focus a little bit now and talk about the student body. How
would you contrast the student body today with your day in terms of maturity,
scholarship, the balance of male and female students on campus? [Laughter] In your
day, there was none.
JAS:
The last question, that’s really easy. [Laughter] There were only males at the
college although I remember some times that the fire alarms would go off in the
dormitories and somehow the first people out would always be women. I just could
never figure out. [Laughter] But I mean, there were no women when I was a student. I
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
19
assumed that they were, that women probably came first through the evening division but
they may have had women in the evening division but I wasn’t knowledgeable about that.
You know, having most of my classes in the daytime. I think that the students were in
one sense, entering students were not very different as far as, as their standards, academic
standards. Well, if anything maybe they’re higher now. I don’t know although it seemed
that everyone then read well, wrote well, knew basic mathematical skills well but we
never, we never thought much of that. We just assumed well of course, you went through
twelve years of elementary and secondary school and you would’ve learned that. Now, I
know when I talk to the faculty who teach Statistics and Psychological Research Methods
that they’ll ask some question like “What’s the average of these three numbers, 3, 4 and
5?” and the students haven’t a clue as to how to be able to figure that out and somehow
we would’ve all known that, [Laughter] you know, before. But we’re told that the SAT
scores are higher now than they were then and I have no reason to [dispute] them.
GN:
Which is larger, a quarter or a third? [Laughter]
JAS:
Well, gee I mean, four is bigger isn’t it? [Laughter] Gus, those kinds of things
make me really scared and so it seems that students are less prepared with the basics now
but seem to have higher SAT scores now than they did before.
GN:
Okay, let me ask about another area because time is running on. Let’s talk about
the administration and the changes that you have experienced. You were here for a
number of years under Dr. Foy and then he was followed by Dr. Murray. Let’s talk about
Dr. Foy. How would you describe your experiences with him and what were his
characteristics of administration?
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
20
JAS:
Certainly a very friendly and very accessible and academically-oriented. He did
not rely on the authority of his office but rather he was a teacher in the classroom first as
a Mathematics teacher and the math majors were just always dying to have him. Again,
he was challenging, all the rest of it but he was known as an educator. He was a teacher.
He was also a person who was not ashamed to get dirty, to roll up his sleeves and pitch in
and do a lot of the work, even some of the physical work. I have an uncle who worked in
Poughkeepsie in the internal revenue office and apparently his office caught up to say
that they old furniture and so they asked if the college would want it and so a truck came
the next day and Linus was one of the people changing things. My uncle was talking
with the people and said “Oh, my name is Victor Scileppi. What’s your name?” “Oh,
my name is Dr. Linus Foy” and he was just seeming… You know, he was really taken
aback by that. And I recall that story very much because it kind of said to me that this
was not a person who was up on some pedestal who had to… You know, a real… We all
treat him with respect. There’s no question. We all knew that he was a very fine person
but it wasn’t because he was president. He was just a nice person, a very intelligent
person, very… Had wonderful vision. Both as a student and as a faculty, I trusted Linus.
The college had a lot of substance, that decisions were made for good academic reasons.
I did some… As a first year or second year teacher, I was asked to do a survey for to see
whether or not there was an interest in the Nursing program and I was very interested
in… Linus came to the meeting where I was presenting it to Richard LaPietra and not
only to faculty, to the…
GN:
Administration.
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
21
JAS:
Administration. And he was there and he asked, he was very knowledgeable about
my study. He had read it and he was asking some very fun questions in that there was
just a… I saw him as a straight-shooter academic and trustworthy. And talking prior, you
know, certainly I know that the college financially was not in the best of shapes in those
days. That wasn’t a big thing. Revenue came second. The academic, educational quality
of the program came first and under Linus’s tenure, we started the graduate programs and
we offered a lot of the programs that are still being offered today and a lot of the
innovations were already there like the internship and the undergraduate psych program
and the communications programs were started by Linus. And I think unfortunately
Boards of Trustees have fiduciary responsibility to the college and that the board decided
to then choose someone who would help us financially and it’s hard to throw stones. I’m
sitting in this very nice room here in Cannavino Library and it’s nice that we had $25
million to spend for, you know, for a library that I don’t think that we would have been
able to do and that the grounds looked very nice and that the… Now I understand we use
professionals for contractors and construction.
GN:
Right. Times have changed. [Laughter]
JAS:
Yea, right.
GN:
One has to have a license now [Laughter] and has to be qualified to do this. So Dr.
Murray has brought these qualities to the college, a much more professional fundraising I
suppose we’d say…
JAS:
Yes, certainly.
GN:
And then the actual construction, going to not the Brothers but rather for us to do
this for their livelihood. [Laughter]
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
22
JAS:
Not that I minded. As I mentioned, I came because of the unique building of
Donnelly Hall.
GN:
And finally into these last areas, what about your role in the development of this
college department and the Master’s program, are you happy with the way that has gone
or were there some changes that you had wished that would have been implemented and
somehow didn’t happen, didn’t have to happen?
JAS:
On the whole, yea, I’m very happy with the way that things have turned out in that
we, not only in Psychology, but I think throughout the college that we have some very
fine programs. And yes, I’m very involved in the graduate program and I recall that there
were times when the college looked upon the graduate programs as a real drain on
resources and now I see that it’s a revenue enhancing area that it was never before. And I
felt good that we’ve been able to, you know, make the program larger. In terms of things
that I would have liked to have happen that didn’t happen, just as Dan Kirk was getting
sick, we were developing a Doctoral program and indeed we had gone through
developing a Doctoral program and we had developed the program on paper and the
faculty as I recall had voted in favor of it and the trustees had accepted it but it never got
accepted by the state. We got it up to that point by the state. It turned out to be not
accepted for political reasons. There was an engineering program that we wanted and
that New Paltz wanted and it turned out that we had developed a satellite program using
New York Institute of Technology and apparently the word that we got was that the then
governor was very unhappy that a private institution received this program where a
public institution did not and so he basically told the regions not to give Marist anything
and we were the next program that came. We had a five year program, a very innovative
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
23
program that had been accepted but somehow the state lost the paperwork on that so as
soon as we applied to the Doctoral program they said “You know, you’ve got this five
year program. We’ve never heard about that.” And then when we withdrew our
Doctoral proposal, all of a sudden they found the paperwork for the five year program
and everything is fine with it. Now we’re actually developing another proposal for a
Doctoral program and who knows whether or not this will carry. One of the problems in
Psychology is that to become a licensed practitioner, a person needs a Doctorate in
Psychology. We offer a Master’s degree. That means that our students are at a
disadvantage. They can work in agencies but they can’t practice independently and this
conversation is happening at an interesting time because in the state there is a bill to
license Master’s level practitioners. The bill passed unanimously in the Senate last
Thursday and is scheduled to be taken up by the Assembly today. If that bill passes then
our students will no longer be second class citizens.
GN:
Has the governor agreed to sign it? Do you know?
JAS:
Well, if… No, but the governor doesn’t have to agree to sign it until it’s passed by
both houses.
GN:
I see.
JAS:
And if it passes the Assembly today, it certainly would be very likely given that it
passed unanimously in the Senate. It would be unwise for a governor to try to veto a bill
that passed so successfully. It might take a year to… I feel a little bit like Moses in the
promised land. Friday is my last day as director of the Master’s program in Psychology.
I would certainly love to have that bill passed. [Laughter]
GN:
As a parting gift?
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
24
JAS:
Right, exactly. And it would then make my successor’s job a lot easier for
recruiting students but the program is growing. It’s about maybe four or five times the
size that it was in 1990 when I took it on and I think we’ll grow very fast, again, once that
bill passes. And School of Psych and Ed Psych are also programs that we offer now.
GN:
Okay. Marist has certainly grown and has become a rather story of success in the
twenty-five years since you first came to this area. What would you say are the key
points and is it likely to continue?
JAS:
I think… It certainly… When I talk to anyone in the community, everyone who’s
lived here for a long time does talk about how Marist’s reputation, how its size, how
quality of its programs, the quality of its sports activities has improved. And certainly I
think that there are enough outcomes that we could use for that. It’s also going… It’s
also improved on the national level. When I meet people elsewhere in the United States,
that they’ve certainly, they’ve heard of Marist whether it’s through the polling, the
MIPO, whether it’s because of our sports teams or indeed whether it’s because of the
graduates that we’re producing. Our connections with IBM certainly and I think we have
Brian Desilets to thank for that as well as Paul Ambrose actually. And then 1940’s when
IBM first came to Poughkeepsie and Paul’s got some great stories which I’m sure that
he’s talked to you about. But now, to realize that our graduates are throughout the world
and that I’ve heard that we are as a college, when IBMer’s consider where they are
alumni of, I’m trying to think of the right way of saying that in terms of English,
[Laughter] that Marist is the second largest college for their alums, meaning... And which
I thought was a pretty interesting place if they’re all scattered through many but because
so many people…
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
25
GN:
Come to Poughkeepsie.
JAS:
Come to Poughkeepsie and then they got their undergraduate degree here
so whenever they think of helping their alma mater with interesting programs, [Laughter]
Marist gets help by that and I think that that certainly has helped our reputation.
GN:
And physically being located on the Hudson, seventy-five miles from New
York City?
JAS:
Admissions always tells us that that’s important. [Laughter]
GN:
Yes.
JAS:
Location, location, location. [Laughter]
GN:
Fine, and in conclusion John, is there anything I didn’t ask you that you think you’d
like to add to this conversation?
JAS:
The only thing that I would want to encourage is that when I came to Marist, there
was certain, as a student, there was certainly an interest in educating the total person.
Even the rules and regulations and everything were involved in making sure that we were
responsible, well-disciplined individuals who would become fine citizens and I remember
many, many people, faculty, administration that would emphasize that and I still see that
going on in terms of the core, both the ‘77 core as well as the current core. I still see that
with the Templeton award that we received. I see that admission statement and I would
hope that we continue to be concerned about educating the total person. I am unhappy
that we’ve lost the close sense of community that we once had but that I hope we
continue to look at the total person and not just, you know, the people who are going to
be academically successful.
GN:
Good. Thank you very much John.
Interviewee: John Scileppi June 25, 2002
Interviewer: Gus Nolan MHP
26
JAS:
Thank you.
“END OF INTERVIEW”