HE’LL BE AROUND FOR AWHILE

Share this:

—-By Frederick A. Hurst—-
Dr. John B. Cook is the youngest Springfield Technical Community College (STCC) president since the college was founded in 1967 with Edmond Garvey as its first president. Garvey was followed by Robert C. Geitz (1974-1981), Leonard J. Collamore (1981-1983), Andrew M. Scibelli (1983-2004) and Dr. Ira H. Rubenzahl, who served for twelve years from 2004 to 2016 before retiring and opening up the vacancy for Dr. Cook.
The combined services of these distinguished men leaves a substantial legacy for Dr. Cook to maintain and grow but from the early looks of things, Dr. Cook is up to the challenge. From the enthusiasm of staff and faculty, he appears to have moved seamlessly into his new presidency and has quickly merged into the socio-economic fabric of Springfield and its greater metropolitan area.

STCC’s 6th President, Dr. John B. Cook, speaks at his inauguration on Thursday, April 27, 2017

Dr. Cook stopped by the Point of View office earlier in the year and we talked about his planned approach to his new job. He made it clear to me that his approach would not deviate from the collegial pattern he has always followed and which has made him successful over the years. His goal, he said, is to be available and to do a lot of listening by holding office hours and town hall and community meetings and working with businesses like CRRC and MGM to determine how STCC students can best be prepared to meet their needs.
As should be expected of a college president, students are at the center of his concerns and he is particularly concerned about the “equity piece,” i.e., are minorities successful and are their accomplishments equal. “Socio-Economic diversity” is important to him and is something he can relate to from personal experience.
Dr. Cook was born in Lowville, a small town of about 3,500 in northern New York and raised not too far away in Oneonta with a population of about 14,000. Both parents were first time college graduates with four children, two girls and two boys. Dr. Cook was the second oldest. All four have professional degrees at the Masters level or above. Overall, life for Dr. Cook and his siblings was pretty stable but he recalls when things were not so good and he qualified for the school free lunch program in which his mother was too proud to allow him to participate.
Dr. Cook recalls when his father, who had the misfortune of being lowest in seniority, lost his college health education job after eight years through “retrenchment.” He recovered and became an elementary school principal but the interim period was a bit tough. His mother now works as a nurse practitioner after first obtaining a master’s and doctorate and teaching in a nursing program. His parents’ parents were immigrants, one Irish and the others a mix of Italian, German and English.
Dr. Cook attended Oneonta high school where he participated in various sports following in the footsteps of his father who was a football player. He played soccer and was a winter ski racer and, notably, he claims – as do all of us former avid golfers – to have once been a pretty good golfer with a 12 handicap. He earned his B.S. at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York in psychology and anthropology and went on to earn his M.A. in Community and Social Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Fifteen years later he earned his PhD at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, New Hampshire in education with a specialty in curriculum and instruction. It seems fair to say that Dr. Cook was well credentialed for a college president’s job and his experience measures up to his credentials.

STCC 50th Anniversary Gala at the Springfield Marriott, Friday, April 28 Left to right: STCC Works Scholarship recipients Nicholas Martinez, Emily Velez, President John B. Cook, STCC Works Scholarship recipient Mohamed Gabriel, Executive Director of Institutional Advancement & Foundation Rima Dael

When interviewed about his experience, Dr. Cook low keys it. At least he low-keyed it with me and I had no reason to believe it was an act. Rather, it seemed to be a reflection of genuine humility of the type often found in people who are comfortable with themselves. But when I reviewed his resume I understood a key reason he was hired as STCC’s president. It affirmed that he is superbly qualified with levels of experience that a man of his young age would not normally have accumulated.
But I must admit, I had one concern and I pressed him hard on it. In essence, I wanted to know how a fair-haired, middle class White guy, born in a little White northern town of 3,500 and raised in a not much larger one of 14,000, whose work history was in universities in the rolling, green hills of New Hampshire where Black and Hispanics were almost as rare as the Massachusetts mountain lion, could succeed in a majority-minority city in a community college that was also majority-minority and located smack in the inner city.
Admittedly, my probe was partially in jest. I was more interested in how Dr. Cook would respond than I was in the question. Obviously, a person doesn’t have to be from the inner city to contribute to the inner city and at a certain level, color and ethnicity become irrelevant on all sides. I sensed that he was at that level which is why I asked. Dr. Cook’s response and my subsequent inquiries, including discussions with other people with whom he has interacted, suggest that I was right.
As it turns out, Dr. Cook is not unfamiliar with urban life or multicultural life. He not only attended UMass Lowell but it is where he returned many years later to do the case study for his doctoral dissertation. Lowell is a city of about 110,000. It is located in Middlesex County and is the fourth largest city in Massachusetts, and the second-largest in the Boston Metropolitan Statistical Area. During the Cambodian Genocide, the city took in an influx of refugees and is now the home of America’s second-largest Cambodian-American population. Its population includes 49.3% White, 20.2% Asian-American, 17.3% Hispanic, 6.8% African-American and the rest are from “other” races including 6,000 people of African heritage. UMass Lowell is located in downtown Lowell and is home to about18,000 students, 73% of whom live within the city. Its student body is composed of 9% Asian-American, 5.5% African-American, 8.9% Hispanic and 54% White, and you might say it is where Dr. Cook earned his racial and ethnic bonafides.
But he was pretty well grounded even before he finished his dissertation. Before entering UMass Lowell for his Master’s, and while a student at Lawrence University where he earned his Bachelor of Science, Dr. Cook interned in Africa where he observed the problem of poaching and strategized with local officials on how to protect the animals. After completing his Master’s, he worked from 2000 to 2008 as a Research and Evaluation Coordinator for Granite State College where he had oversight for a statewide partnership between the college and the New Hampshire Division for Children, Youth and Families. It was an award-winning program called the Education and Training Partnership involving training for foster and adoptive parents and individuals working in the field of public child welfare and juvenile justice.
From 2008 to 2012, as part of the adjunct faculty at Granite State College in Concord, New Hampshire, Dr. Cook taught research and psychology classes and mentored individual students. During most of the same period, he worked as Faculty Coordinator (Department Chair) responsible for two campuses after which he became Assistant Dean of Faculty, a role in which he served for a year before being hired as Vice President of Academic Affairs at Manchester Community College in Manchester, New Hampshire where he served with distinction until he was hired, in 2016, to serve as president of Springfield Technical Community College.
Good things are happening at STCC, some started by his predecessor that Dr. Cook opted to continue and others initiated by Dr. Cook, who has made some faculty and staff adjustments that have pleased folks I knew before his arrival who haven’t hesitated to express their pleasure. He has also overseen the process by which STCC recently gained accreditation for its Health, Information and Technology degree program, the awarding of a five-year $3.4 million grant to boost Hispanic low-income STEM graduates and the building renovations for the Ira H. Rubenzahl Student Learning Center which, when completed, “will, (by 2018), become the center of campus life” combining student administrative services, library and social spaces all under one roof.
Additionally, STCC has been awarded $499,785 from the state to expand its laser electro-optics technology and mechanical engineering technology programs and some of its graduates are being hired by CRRC and are among the group being sent to China to train. Also, STCC has combined with Holyoke Community College, under the TWO (Training and Workforce Options) program, to prepare students for jobs at MGM when it opens in 2018.
Dr. Cook is involved in many more collaborations in Springfield and he has made himself available to the community. But what stands out the most about him is that he seems to have always been around. He certainly didn’t make a Trump-like splash or even a Clinton-like one for that matter. He seems to have just eased seamlessly into the fabric of Greater Springfield and become a functional part of its promising future.
Dr. Cook, whose new home is in Springfield’s Forest Park neighborhood, started at STCC in August of 2016 and was formally inaugurated as its sixth president on April 27, 2017 and presided over STCC’s 50th Anniversary reception the next night at the Springfield Marriott. It’s comforting to know that he will be around for awhile―as one anniversary guest speaker remarked: “long enough to look like a college president and not be mistaken for a student!” ■

Recent Stories

  • What Does My Community Need?

    When I was pregnant, my husband and I wanted to give birth and welcome our baby in our home. We looked in Springfield – and then in the adjacent towns in the lower valley – for a homebirth midwife to assist us. There wasn’t one. We needed to search for that service in the upper…

The Outwin

Upcoming Events

[tribe_events view=”photo” tribe-bar=”false” events_per_page=”2″]


Af-Am Point of View Recent Issues

March 2024

Cover of the March 2024 issue of Af-Am Point of View News Magazine

February 2024

Cover of the February 2024 issue of Af-Am Point of View News Magazine

January 2024

Cover of the January 2024 issue of Af-Am Point of View News Magazine

December 2023

Cover of the December 2023 issue of Af-Am Point of View News Magazine

See More Past Issues of Af-Am Point of View Newsmagazine

Advertise with Af-Am Point of View

Ener-G-Save