By ALEXANDER WHEELER
Features Editor
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How long can you picture doing the thing that you love to do? Imagine doing it for close to 40 years.
Raymond Coco, a professor in the Computer Science Department at The College of Saint Rose, has been teaching since November 1978 and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon.
The Chronicle was pleased to be able to sit down with Coco, where he proceeded to tell us the unabridged story of how he got where he is.
A native of St. Johnsville, NY, Coco went to Union College in the hopes of pursuing his childhood dream.
“When I was a wee and tiny lad, I had a chemistry set, and I made all kinds of wonderful things like gun powder and rocket fuel. I thought for my entire high school career that I wanted to be a chemist, so I went to Union as a chemistry major and was sure that I was going to go to work for some chemical company and do something good for mankind, like synthesize a new drug,” Coco said.
“Then I decided I should go to graduate school. I was in the mood to educate, and I thought that if I ever left I would never come back to it. My adviser at Union in my senior year left to become the department chair at Geneseo. He sent me a correspondence, asking me what I was going to do after I graduate, and said “Would you please come here? I need help. Would you consider coming here and doing your master’s?””
At that point in his life, Coco still thought he was “going to save the world.”
“I got there, and in addition to taking more courses I was assigned to teach some chemistry labs, and I got into the labs and thought, I like this.”
At the end of the first semester at Geneseo, a faculty member arrived from New Delhi who had been working with these then-brand-new computers. That faculty member wanted to do some mathematical modeling in chemistry by using a computer, and needed a graduate student to work with him. Coco was that graduate student.
“I started going over to the computer center of Geneseo, which was about as big as this room,” he said, indicating the Albertus classroom we were sitting in.
“I picked up the manual for the computer. I started spending 12 hours a day over in the computer center–I found something new that was fun–playing with that beast,” he said, pointing toward the computer the room.
“Suddenly, the man who worked in the computer center whose job it was to oversee academic computing just up and quit –no notice,” said Coco.
Coco was offered the position under the assurance that his chemistry courses would be taken care of, along with a full-time salary in order to take the computer job.
“I started teaching the computer courses. I never went back to chemistry. I got so enthralled with the beast and what it could do– she gave me the job permanently. I stayed at Geneseo for four years –until ’78.”
That was when he came to the Capital Region. “I picked up the Chronicle of Higher Ed one day, and saw that there was a job for someone at SUNY Albany as a programmer and an instructor. That was in November of 1978, and I spent from then until September 2007 at SUNY Albany in the Computer Science Department.”
Those 29 years wore him out. “Then I retired. I thought–I’m old enough to collect my state pension and go fishing. I lasted two weeks. I couldn’t stand it. The students were what kept me active all of those years, so I went back to work as an adjunct. I started working at Sage, Bryant and Stratton, Hudson Valley, Saint Rose, and Siena. For all of the years since, I’ve been at multiple places… and that is the story of my life up until this point.”
When asked what his favorite aspect of teaching is, Coco said, “It keeps me young. It keeps me up to date with the technology, because I feel that I should be, in part to the students in order to relay the very latest pieces of information. It keeps me up to date in the field, and I don’t feel 66 years old–I am, but I don’t feel it.”`
