YSU honors retired faculty at luncheon

YOUNGSTOWN — Hassan A. Ronaghy may live in California now, but his heart is still in Youngstown.

More specifically, the retired professor of economics still has a strong love for Youngstown State University — where he taught for 28 years until his retirement in 1993.

All of his family lives in California “and it’s not as cold,” he said when asked why he chose to move across the country after retirement.

But Ronaghy makes it a point to get back to Youngstown about once a year and meet with old friends from the YSU family.

“It’s kind of my place here,” he said Monday as he joined some 60 other former faculty members at a special Centennial Emeritus Faculty Luncheon in Kilcawley Center, part of YSU’s 100th anniversary celebration.

“Through all of the change and through the many evolutions of YSU over the years, the one constant is the faculty,” said YSU President David C. Sweet, who gave the former faculty members an update on the status of the university and its development plans.

“The faculty is the glue, the gravitational force that holds it all together. Even when they retire, their legacy keeps this place going. A piece of every one of them lives on at YSU, and always will,” he said.

Emeritus status can be conferred on YSU faculty and professional/administrative staff who retire from YSU with at least 10 years of meritorious service and upon the recommendation of the president.

Ronaghy, a native of Iran, believes YSU is heading in the right direction as it embarks on its second century of education.

Universities are “the brightest spot” in the United States, he said, adding that it pains him to see how the U.S. is viewed by people in other counties as he travels abroad.

“I explain to people that America is not what you see,” he said. “[There is] lots of care and love here.”

Alfred Bright, who lives in Liberty, retired as an art professor in 2006, but he still teaches here.

He’s doing some “extended teaching” now, spending one semester a year on campus and vowing to “stay involved.”

Bright, who holds an undergraduate degree from YSU and spent a total of 42 years as a faculty member, was YSU’s first black full-service faculty member when he came aboard as a faculty member in 1964.

He was the founder and first director of the university’s Black Studies Program (now the Africana Studies Program) from 1971 to 1987 and recalled how the effort to create that program had the backing of Dr. Albert Pugsley, YSU president at the time, and a number of other faculty and staff members who were involved in the civil rights movement.

Many of the top black American leaders in the movement came to speak at YSU, Bright said, recalling that Ralph Abernathy, Maya Angelou and Jesse Jackson were among the visitors.

The program worked to increase the enrollment of minority students and the hiring of minority faculty, he said, adding that Pugsley continued to support that effort, at one point issuing a directive for all departments to bring in black candidates for job vacancies.

“We got some very good people to come in, in all areas,” Bright said.

Hugh Earnhart of Poland served as a history professor, assistant dean of Arts and Sciences and director of the Oral History Program during his years on campus. He came to YSU from Urbana, Ohio, in 1963 and retired in 1996.

Of all the posts he held, professor of history was his favorite, he said, explaining that it allowed him to talk to students every day and gave him the opportunity to use what he had spent years learning.

Earnhart recalled that he came to YSU at the time that President Howard Jones was taking the school into the state system of higher education. It was an opportunity to come in on the ground floor, he said.

YSU students receive as good an undergraduate education here as anywhere else in the country, Earnhart said, including Harvard in that category.

The difference is the quality of graduate schools, he said.

He’s kept tabs on what’s happening at YSU since his retirement and said he intends to continue doing so, despite the fact that most of his history colleagues are now retired as well.

gwin@vindy.com