Newsday (Nassau Edition) from Hempstead, New York • 27

I 27 COLLEGES OF TECHNOLOGY for Farming Schools of Past New Mission hours as a restaurant chef he decided to go back to school and change careers Vergis thought the tough academic program at a four-year college would be too much for him was back to school for the first time I wanted to go to a two-year says Vergis who has a B-pluB average at Delhi He hopes to transfer to Cortland campus and become a high school athletic coach such as the By Robert Fresco 8XAFT WRITER Late in August Mary Ellen Duncan the new president of College of Technology at Delhi walked over to the student union to talk to the 1000 members of her first freshman class The campus is on the northwest edge of the Catskills with a view of the wooded slopes of Sherwood Mountain But as she waited to speak Duncan heard voices in the audience that reminded her of her own Suffolk County roots Duncan recalls: asked is from West where she graduated high school in 1959 find any from West blip but I found many from other towns in the area I can recognize the accent So at Delhi I hear Long Islanders quite a The Delhi campus opened in 1913 one of five upstate SUNY two-year schools started early in the century chiefly to train farmers The others were at Alfred Canton Cobbleskill and Morris-ville These days more than a quarter of 2300 students come from Long Island and New York City and nobody on campus is mqjoring in agriculture In fact the chief mission of all five schools has nothing to do with milking cows or growing crops Most focus on technology and liberal arts SUNY officials say their main role is to educate students whose grades are too low for them to get into four-year schools but who still want to go away to college SUNY provost Joseph Burke says the five schools really quite good institutions for students who had not worked up to their full potential in high Michael Vergis 23 graduated from Walt Whitman High School in Huntington Station in 1986 ment trainee at a Bohemia restaurant learned in a real life she says Like Farmingdale all five upstate technical schools gradually altered their curriculums as New York economy grew ever more industrial and less agricultural Last year only 13 percent of their students were enrolled in farm-related programs In fact only two of the schools Cobbleskill and Morrisville still have the word in their names To some students the rural atmosphere at Delhi and the other upstate technical schools is as much of an attraction as the practical training But some downstaters do not feel comfortable with life at small rural campuses Holly Trezler president of student government at Morrisville this past year who comes from Ithaca says a lot harder for the students from Long Island and New York City to come here because the place is so small My previous roommate was from Long Island and had a very very hard time adjusting She come back this Trexler says best thing about the place is says James Stewart professor of social science at Delhi also the worst One can come here and escape from a lot of the cares of the But there is also a downside are in the Catskills the weather can turn very bad in the winter Stewart says students can worry about getting back to the David Pokrm Duncan In addition to liberal arts programs one Vergis is in courses at Delhi range from home construction to restaurant management If the programs sound like those offered at community colleges it is no accident' definitely an overlap in the Duncan says But there is also a mqjor difference Community college students are usually commuters with outside jobs In community colleges Duncan says students a problem as far as time They have families pulling on them work pulling on them very difficult to get that kind of commitment to the learning 'Most students at the upstate technical colleges are full-time students so they are able to take courses whenever they are offered For example at Delhi students actually run a restaurant four days a week Newadajr Mary Ellen breakfast and Duncan says just teach you the says Shannon Odell 21 of Bohemia who worked in that restaurant and graduated from Delhi in De cember with an associate degree in food services Odell is now earning $400 a week as a manage- By his own admission he was an indifferent student who got Last year tired of long THE SERIES AT A GLANCE SUNDAY A Drain ilnfiiffllli 1 MONDAY The Academic Slide TUESDAY Crumbling Campuses WEDNESDAY The Research Gap THURSDAY The Flagship Fight FRIDAY California Dreaming lege but his annual salary is only $42629 light of the standard of living on Long Island that is he said get that for doing my baric teaching from twelve to sixteen hours a week Routinely I teach two extra courses each semester in evening college and I teach summer Winn said This brings his pay up to (55000 But there is a cost very heavy teaching load makes it very hard to give enough time to individual he said Despite the heavy load Winn has no intention of leaving the college genuinely like to work with he said just like to be compensated in a fair Both faculty union and state officials say there is a historical reason for the low pay at Farmingdale As long as anyone can remember the salary scale for two-year technical schools has been the lowest in the system The result is that pay at Farmingdale is roughly equal to that at the other two-year campuses which are all upstate in rural areas where living costs are far lower Campus officials complain this system lnda to inequities recognize regional differences in utility costs in housing just the basic cost of operatiens-'t-betsween Long Islapd -and upstate said Vinceguerra Low pay probably the biggest cause of the morale problem on our Under normal conditions shift toward becoming a four-year school might lead to the long awaited pay increases campus officials say But campus officials say that in the current budget crisis the change in the status is unlikely to solve the salary problem George LaRosa vice-president for administration said the college simply does not have the money support substantially higher salaries than what we are now The budget problem also threatens to Blow shift toward its new high-tech programs caught in the middle of a changeover and in a major Ci-CiDriani priani said mon- ey and the resources that we had saved in anticipation of our mission change have been ea- ten up by the budget teachers also are upset and frustrated lot of the faculty is Smiles said decades ago the campus had a nice mood to Now he said there is about growth in certain areas the four-year programs for example and everything rise is being cut quite sure whsfthQPBflPpflvii bii'ioTt cji nO il eiLdnirr-j jTHIS WEEKLong Island Campuses' SUNDAY Stony Rrook (Plus a Special Section: SUNY pus look at the system) A Consumer Guide A campus-by-cam- TODAY Farmingdale TOMORROW Old Westbury Old innovative programs are drawing the kind of ethnic diversity demographers predict for campuses of the future Yet the college is plagued by the worst graduation performance among four-year schools NEWSDAY MONDAY MAY 4 1992- CONCLUSIONiThe Future WEDNESDAY SUNY 2000.