Posted: 04/18/07

Goodbye, Hello
Jennie Cernosia steps down as the Assistant Dean of Students/Director of Student Activities after 29 years

Michelle Bookless | multimedia editor
mbookless2@smcvt.edu

The following is the first of a two-part series about the resignation of Jennie Cernosia as the Assistant Dean of Students and Director of Student Life.

The yellow brick road has reached its end and Jennie Cernosia is hanging up her size seven red ruby slippers after a 29 year journey. Although she is leaving St. Michael's College as the Assistant Dean of Students and the Director of Student Activites, she won't be gone forever. After all, there's no place like home.

Cernosia has been working at St. Michael's for 29 years and is known for her many accomplishments such as putting on successful annual concerts and helping found the Early Learning Center on North Campus. (Photo courtesy of Denise Tougas)

Although Cernosia officially announced her resignation last September, she says the change has been planned for about three years.

“When it became clear that he [her youngest son, Peter] was going to graduate in December, I had decided last spring that I was only going to be here one more year,” she says.

Experiential learning

Cernosia, a smiling, bubbly “Wizard of Oz” fan, grew up in Illinois and went to both undergraduate and graduate school at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Ill. After completing her graduate studies in higher education, she worked as the Director of Student Activities at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte. After two years, Cernosia and her husband decided to relocate and move to Vermont. It was then that Cernosia started her job at St. Michael’s back in 1978.

Dean of Students Mike Samara hired Cernosia after his first year at St. Michael’s and says her warm, enthusiastic personality was what first stood out to him.

“I was looking for someone who could unconditionally fulfill the role of being a confidante for the student body," Samara says. "Knowing that my job forces me to say 'no' at times, I was looking for a person who could connect at the heart with students and say “yes” much of the time.”

Cernosia’s job entails disciplinary responsibilities such as heading up committees, re-working the student handbook along with alcohol and other general policies. Still, most students think of her more as the face of student events and a first-year seminar Peace and Justice professor.

Fr. Mike Cronogue, S.S.E. is a close friend of Cernosia’s, and says that her teaching style is motivating and describes it as "experiential learning." He says she revamped the Peace and Justice first-year seminar by incorporating Friday trips to the St. Francis Xavier School in Winooski.

“She really loves teaching in an inordinate way,” Cronogue says. “She likes it in a way that is refreshing to anybody who’s been teaching for a long time.”

Indeed, Cernosia says that one of the main reasons she is resigning is to focus on teaching.

“I wanted to spend more time preparing and working on first year seminar; I’ll be teaching two classes next fall,” she says. “It just felt like it was time for me to think about what else I wanted to do.”

For Samara, Cernosia’s resignation means something entirely different.

“For 29 years I’ve basically had a wonderful professionally trusting relationship,” he says. “I totally trust Jennie and her judgment in that position. There are little things that I’m realizing that, gosh, I don’t know about that anymore, I better ask Jenn before she leaves.”

Cernosia is pictured above with two orientation leaders in the 1996 Orientation program. (Photo courtesy of Hilltop)

Children and pumpkins

Cernosia says one of her favorite accomplishments was helping to install the St. Michael’s Early Learning Center on North Campus with history professor Frank Nicosia in 1982.

Still, others have their own ideas about some of Cernoisa's greatest accomplishments. Cronogue says he believes one of Cernosia’s greatest accomplishments was having her children, Peter and Mark, and being able to balance family and work.

“She modeled not only somebody who worked full time, but was also a mother and a wife,” Cronogue says. “[She] had a life with the campus and a life with the family and she was able to do her best to integrate. She would offer that model to young women; that you can have a successful family life and also a successful career.”

Cernosia says that she was extremely happy that both of her children attended St. Michael’s and graduated with successful academic careers at the college. Also she says she is proud of the ethics statement for programming she helped author in the mid-80s. She says that the school still uses the statement which was based on the values of the school.

Still, Lora Kelley, a sophomore work-study student in the office of student activities and one of Cernosia’s former first-year seminar students says she remembers a different success most vividly.

“My favorite moment with Jennie was working with her on the Halloween dance,” Kelley says. “Just seeing her standing in the background, and all the success, all the hard work that we’d done, really made me feel good.”

Cernosia says that some of the favorite parts of her job are the most difficult ones the big weekends that take a lot of planning such as Halloween, P-Day, Senior Week, and the annual concerts. She also says that some of the best and most vivid times of her career have coincided with the worst times, such as tragedies on campus.

She says, during these times "St. Mike’s becomes the best that St. Mike’s ever is. Everybody goes to the chapel for one reason and one reason only, to remember and pray for that student or those people on that day who passed away. It’s just an expectation.”

Farewell to a friend

Cronogue says he will miss his best friend being so close by, but knows Cernosia has had a major impact on the students at the school and has taught him a lot throughout their years of friendship.

Throughout her 29 years at the college, Cernosia has been involved in many programs and is particularly linked with the Orientation Leader program. Pictured above are Cernosia and junior Alex Monahan. (Photo courtesy of Denise Tougas)

“Jennie’s been really good at empowering students,” he says. “She certainly taught me that if you give students a task they can do phenomenally and they can also fail, but education comes through in finding people to do the best that they can to draw out their strengths and weaknesses and she’s good at doing that.”

Kelley agrees with Cronogue and says she will certainly not forget the effect Cernosia has had on her college experience.

“She was one of the most valuable people that I had met during my first year here on campus,” Kelley says. “She was always so kind and she was always there for me whenever I needed her even if I was just sending out her e-mails or if I needed help with a friend or my extracurricular activities.”

Although Samara says he’ll miss her, he knows Cernosia will be helpful in the transition next fall.

“Jennie has been a mentor, model, older sister, and Mom rolled into one for the past 29 years,” he says. “We will surely miss her, not only for what she has done, but for who she is.”