UMass Magazine Online

Fall 2003

Departments

Around the Pond

Features

Experiencing Jeff Corwin

Drawing on the past

Clean-up at the old Davis Mine

Around the Pond

Get a student life!

Nikolas Markantonatos ’04




	Touring student businesses: Michael Gargano with Rachel Dahlberg ’05(right), underwriting director of WMUA. (photo by Ben Barnhart)

IT'S LATE SEPTEMBER AND MICHAEL Gargano, the new vice chancellor for student affairs and campus life, is chomping on a Kit Kat bar (he keeps his refrigerator stocked with candy to encourage students to visit him). An ebullient man with closely cropped hair, he has only been at UMass Amherst since early summer but he talks about the university’s future with pride and clarity.

“It’s a hidden gem. Nobody recognizes how great this place really is because everyone wants to see the warts,” he says.

Gargano, 49, with a bachelor’s in marketing from the University of Hartford and a doctorate in higher education administration from George Washington University, says he wasn’t looking for a new job. He left George Washington as vice president for academic and support services to come to UMass for two reasons: He wanted a new challenge and, upon his first visit to the university, he was utterly charmed by the student body.

Along with Chancellor John V. Lombardi and the management team at the university, Gargano hopes to bring UMass from regional/quasi-national to national/international recognition. His method for getting there? His Students First campaign, which aims to “connect the university to the student, and the student back to the university.”
He believes that to gain a valuable education a student must have a classroom education, a campus education and a community education – and the three must be linked.

Gargano isn’t short on other ideas. These include: encouraging students to do internships and co-ops and to get engaged in community service; pushing students to vote in campus and national elections; having freshman orientation leaders address the types of issues and concerns that freshman students will face; bringing big-name entertainers to campus. And he’d like to boost school spirit by encouraging students, faculty and alumni to learn and sing the fight song.

He also wants to make UMass more family-oriented by marketing the university to both students and parents. It’s like co-purchasing, he says, where the parent and student have equal say. He’s working on creating an office of parent services within student affairs that will alleviate parents’ anxieties and make orientation more family-friendly. And, of course, he’s making sure the telephones in his office are answered in a consistent and polite manner.

Gargano has already encountered several obstacles. Issues with the Student Government Association over not wanting to recognize appointed seats in the senate this academic year, along with riots in Southwest sparked by the Red Sox’s post-season winning streak, serve as a reminder that Gargano’s position isn’t all about eating candy bars.

“With any new job, there comes a host of new challenges,” he says. “Challenges that you can anticipate and some that you may not be able to anticipate.”

Finally, Gargano says, one of the biggest imperfections of the university is – well – lack of student life. “We have to create student life on campus,” he says. “That is a major priority. There is no life on campus. I wouldn’t run from that. … I think we need late-night programming, and when I say late-night I mean going to 2, 3 o’clock in the morning.”

So far students seem to be embracing this go-getter, but Gargano understands the limits he may encounter, especially when finances are tight.

“The state only allows you to dream so far,” he says, which is why private donations and corporate donations and other types of gifts are so important.

[top of page]

It's a big, big deal

Big Deal: Larger photo

Passing the $100 million milestone

Milestone: More images

Speaking of the weather

Weather: More images

Ground Zero: Of memory & memorials

Ground Zero: Larger image

The lotus leaf, the moth's eye and cars that clean themselves

Lotus: Larger image

A good way to live