New president sees new potential for SUCO

Oct. 9—The State University College at Oneonta's new president, Alberto J. F. Cardelle, is settling in his new home and office, and told The Daily Star this week he made the right choice to apply for the position.

"After four to five weeks, my initial assessment about the college's strong foundation is very true," he said.

Cardelle said he wanted to become a college president and the opportunity at SUNY Oneonta came up. He said one of his colleagues at Fitchburg State University in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, had taught at SUNY Oneonta and spoke highly of the college.

"SUNY Oneonta resembled and looked a lot like the other institutions I worked at," he said. "Then I read the mission statement of the college. It's 13 words long and it's perfect." (It reads: "We nurture a community where students grow intellectually, thrive socially and live purposefully.")

He said he set short-term goals for his first year as president. The first goal is to "be able to complete this academic year safely," the second is to "promote the strong programs SUNY Oneonta offers," and third to "rebuild bridges with the community."

Last fall, SUNY Oneonta was home to the SUNY system's worst COVID-19 outbreak, with more than 700 students infected. The campus was closed for the remainder of the semester and President Barbara Jean Morris resigned amid the fallout. Cardelle takes over for interim President Dennis Craig.

Cardelle said the first part of his career was in international public health working for the World Health Organization and United Nations. He said he worked for 10 years in 20 different countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, and spent a majority of that time in Guatemala and Nicaragua educating and studying communicable diseases and child health.

He said he worked on a year-long United Nations Children's Fund project studying why residents in a Nicaragua village had a high incidence of bronchitis. The village was near a sugar processing plant and it turned out the soot from the burning sugar was causing the illnesses, he said. Some of the homes in the village were moved away from where the soot fell, he said.

Another project he talked about was helping four small villages in Guatemala combat child mortality by teaching child health and nutrition to the residents. He said he showed women how to keep their children hydrated when they were sick. He said the root problem in the villages was poverty, so they helped set up a chicken raising project.

He said he liked his job, but he didn't like being away from his young family when he had to travel for work, so he decided to change careers and teach others how to administer public health. He then worked at East Stroudsburg University in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, he said.

Cardelle, who grew up in Miami, Florida, said he became interested in public health after hearing a lecture from a doctor working in public health while attending Tulane University in New Orleans. He was studying biology and pre-med, but said he was enjoying political science and economic courses he was taking as much as the science courses. He said the public health degree at Tulane was under the Latin American studies major, so he switched majors and got a degree in biology and Latin American studies.

Cardelle said his parents immigrated from Cuba and he was a first-generation American college student. He said his parents took some college classes in Cuba, and said they believed a private education is better than a public education. However, Cardelle said he "graduated with a lot of debt and became a big champion for public education. I would have gotten the same education at a public college."

He said he was impressed with the different majors SUNY Oneonta offers and likes that it has a sturdy foundation in liberal arts.

"I think all of our programs are very strong," he said. "If you look at the statistics at Oneonta, there has been a steady increase in enrollment and a high retention rate. This showed me that Oneonta had a strong foundation. This is not the case in the country or in New England."

He said he wants to see SUNY Oneonta as an anchor institution in the community.

"We have 900 employees and over 5,000 students," he said. "We cannot not use that human capital to go beyond the campus. As a public higher education facility, it is our responsibility."

He mentioned the student teachers that teach at districts throughout the tri-county area, the students that work at Bugbee Children's Center and the environmental and ecology students who do research in the area as examples of how the college helps the community.

He said he has held meet and greets with students and staff and is about a third of the way through meeting everybody at the college. He has introduced himself to the Oneonta Common Council and ran the 5K in Sunday's Pit Run.

"Maybe next year I'll run the 10K," he said.

He said he and his wife are still moving into their house, which he "loves the fact that I live on campus. It allows me to be part of the campus and I can attend lectures and shows and that's wonderful."

This weekend he said he was headed back to Massachusetts to box and label the last items for the moving company. He said his wife's last day of work as a vice president for workforce development at a community college was last Friday. They have three grown daughters, "two are engineers and one is a computer scientist," he said.

He encouraged residents to come to the college for the upcoming Mills lecture and gallery openings.

Vicky Klukkert, staff writer, can be reached at vklukkert@thedailystar.com or 607-441-7221. Follow her @DS_VickyK on Twitter.