This week’s Project 100+ memory comes from Joseph Rizzo.  He was born in Philadelphia and raised in Paulsboro, New Jersey.  His mother was a homemaker and hair dresser, and his father was a laborer.  Neither of them had finished high school.  He attended Catholic school until 8^th grade.  His mother wanted him to go to a Catholic high school, but both were far away, and Joe wanted to go to the local public school.  He attended and graduated from Paulsboro High School in 1970.  He entered Glassboro State College that Fall as a social studies major with education certification for grades 7-12.  He graduated in the Spring of 1974.  He got a job teaching social studies at the Delanco Middle School.  He only taught there for one year, but it was an important one as he met his wife, who was teaching elementary school at a building across the street.  He was let go after this first year, and he ended up becoming a teaching assistant at Reynolds Middle School in Hamilton Township in the Fall of 1975.  A few months into this job, he became a social studies teacher when another teacher went out on maternity leave.  He ended up teaching there from 1975 to 1981.  At this point, he left and became a teacher at the Garden State Correctional Facility in Yardville, New Jersey.  His wife was pregnant with their second child at the time, and he did this because the position paid $16,000 a year instead of the $13,000 a year that he made at Reynolds.  The pay was so high because they were desperate for teachers as it was the era of mass incarceration.  He had not envisioned leaving public school teaching, but the pay was too much to pass up.  This decision ended up changing his life.  At the start, he hated the job.  He knew nothing about prisons.  He realized that he had to figure it out. Over time, he did.  GSCF was a reform facility for young men that focused on educating, counseling, and treating the inmates for a return to society.  The state had a program where they would give partial financial support to get your master’s degree.  He took advantage of this and earned a master’s degree in social studies education as well as a principal’s certificate.  The graduate degree and the certificate allowed him to get promoted to an administrative role in 1984.  In 1991, he became Director of Education at GSCF.  Two years later, he became Assistant Superintendent of the prison.  In 2000, he became the prison administrator, or warden, of the Mountainview Youth Correctional Facility in Annandale, New Jersey.  He had never imagined that he would ever run a prison, but it ended up being something that was very rewarding to him.  It was not easy work.  It was sometimes dangerous.  He felt like that he made a genuine difference in the lives of many people connected to the prison. He was able to establish a Greyhound Dog rescue program at the facility.  He did this for five years before the Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Corrections asked him to go to help out at another facility, the Central Reception and Assignment Center in West Trenton, New Jersey.  He worked there as the prison administrator until 2007 when he retired from the state.  Despite retiring, however, he kept on working.  His first of these jobs was with Kintock, a private non-profit that contracts with the state to help released prisoners reenter society.  During this time, his wife recommended that he apply to teach criminal justice as an adjunct at Burlington County College.  He began to teach at BCC in 2009.  Later, he also taught at Mercer County Community College and at Rowan University.  He quit the Kintock job in 2011 and was soon teaching two or three courses every semester.  In 2016, he became a full-time professor and chair of the Criminal Justice Department at Burlington County College.  That same year, the College and Rowan University was beginning its partnership.  He continues as chair of the Department today. 

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I applied to the University of Delaware, Trenton State College, Villanova University, and Glassboro State College.  I really wanted to go to Villanova, but it was way beyond the financial means of my family.  I ended up going to Glassboro State because it was the only affordable option.  I got a scholarship for $500 that covered all my tuition.  My only costs were books and gas since I commuted.

My parents had not even finished high school, so my attending Glassboro State College for them was a dream, like someone else attending Harvard University.  My friends and I had actually visited the College in 1967 during the Johnson-Kosygin summit, but there were so many people there that I didn’t even catch a glimpse of either of them.  There were thousands of people trying to do the same thing, just like me and my friends.

I chose history and social studies because it was the subject I loved best. I still love it to this day. I took as many history classes as I possibly could.

A very important professor to me at Glassboro State College was Sidney Kessler. I had him for United States History to 1865 and a course on the Civil War and Reconstruction.  I had not known much about this conflict before the class, and it was eye-opening to me.  I remember learning things about slavery and racism that I had never known.  It helped reshape the way I saw the world and helped me see the world critically.  The course influenced my politics permanently.  He was a very good teacher.

I had four classes with Mary Taney, a former nun.  I took her for both sections of Western Civilization.  I remember that she started Western Civilization II with recent history and worked backwards from there.  I also took her for Ancient History and for Medieval History.  She was very engaging and very friendly.  She was enthusiastic and loved her subject. She was also very approachable.  I was always so excited to sit in on her classes.

One of my favorite classes at Glassboro State College was Russian history with Bob Hewsen.  I remember him telling everybody on the first day that no one in the class got an A and to withdraw if that was your only goal.  I stayed and ended up getting a B, but I absolutely loved the class and fell in love with the subject.  Dr. Hewsen was a great professor.  I couldn’t wait to go to class.  I kept this interest in Russian history for the rest of my life.  After I got married to my wife in 1975, I convinced her to go on a trip with me to the Soviet Union through our union, the New Jersey Education Association.  The trip was from December 26^th to January 1^st, 1976.  My wife and I were in our early 20s, and we soon found out why the trip was so cheap.  The weather was terrible, and I remember that almost no one spoke English.  However, it was incredibly memorable.  We visited both Moscow and Leningrad, and I still give talks about this trip all these years later.  I remember New Year’s Eve.  They were showing celebrations of the New Year all over the world, but when it came time to show how Americans celebrated the new year, the images were of the slums of New York City.  The message was clear: “capitalism at work.” 

I took Anne Edwards for a course called Age of Revolutions.  I remember that fascinating discussions about the 19^th century revolutions in Europe.  I know that I took her again, but I can’t remember the exact course, since it has been over 50 years!  I also had Marius Livingston for History of New Jersey in the summer.  Again, I thought he was a really good professor, and I enjoyed the class a lot.

I took Marv Creamer for Anglo-American Geography.  He was a great professor, and I learned so much in this course.  I loved his focus on cultural geography.  He was a nice person, and I really enjoyed my time in his class. I wish I had taken more with him.  He later went on to become world famous for his sailing around the world.

I had no idea at the time what my time at college experience was doing for me.  Looking back all these years later, I now recognize that I had a tremendous experience at Glassboro State.  When I entered in the Fall of 1970, I did not have a great amount of self-confidence.  The faculty and individuals I encountered mentored me and helped change that. They shaped me in profound ways.  My experiences at GSC also shaped my view of the world and how it worked.  I think that I am still teaching today because of how much I got out of my time in the classrooms of Glassboro State in the early 1970s.  I will say that I found that my teacher training helped me at all stages of my career in prisons.  There is more overlap that you might thinking in being well prepared to teach 8^th graders and being able to lead 500 employees at a prison.  When I began teaching at Rowan University as adjunct around 2010 or so, I was so proud to be back at my alma mater and able to share with my students that I as an alum.

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100+,” an ongoing collection of memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff that began as part of the celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University.  Due to interest in the project, the number of interviewees continues to grow.  Thanks to Laurie Lahey for helping proofread and edit the final versions.  Email carrigan@rowan.edu with questions or corrections.  You can find the Link to all of the Project 100 and Project 100+ entries on the Web:  https://chss.rowan.edu/departments/history/alumni_all/project_100+.html