Don Bagin
Back in the 1950s, Don Bagin dreamed of playing in the major leagues. He was focused and tough enough to pitch and win his regional league’s championship game with a broken elbow. And he came close to his major league dream when Philadelphia Phillies scouts watched him pitch. But although they liked his curve, they wanted more heat from his fastball.

So he put that dream aside and instead built a career in education and public relations. He became an expert at handling communication curveballs, adjusting to professional change-ups and coaching others on the fine art of clear play-by-play and effective color reporting.

Bagin earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Villanova University. He started in education as a ninth-grade teacher working with kids struggling in math. “They were kids nobody wanted to teach. They hated math,” he recalls. “I looked for ways to teach the subject so they would be interested and understand the concepts. For general math permutations, we shot craps and they caught on.”

His unconventional approach to teaching worked and Bagin taught junior and senior high math while working part-time as a writer for the North Penn Reporter.

That’s when he saw the need for better communication between schools and the media. “I saw how school boards and administrators interacted with the public and how newspapers reported about schools. I’m an avid believer in better communication for better education. Without it, public support suffers and it ultimately affects the students. My goal was to break down the barriers to benefit everyone.”

With that perspective, Bagin began in earnest what would become his life’s work. He gained experience for a year as director of PR and personnel at Marple-Newtown (Penn.) Joint Schools. Then, President Thomas E. Robinson asked Bagin to join the College PR staff and teach in the communication program. He was also on loan from Glassboro State College to the State Department of Education where he served as director of editorial and informational services for one year.

“Tom Robinson was very supportive. We had a great mutual respect,” Bagin said. “As a president and educator, he saw the need for public relations for the College and the need to teach PR. No one else in the country was doing it. We thought it would be something big.”

In fact, it did become something big. It started in 1967 when Bagin established the graduate public relations program and its school public relations track. By 1970, when Bagin earned his doctorate at Temple and became the youngest full professor in Rowan’s history, GSC’s PR studies attracted students from nearby and as far away as Nigeria. He and his faculty colleagues also pioneered undergraduate public relations in the communication department, which eventually reorganized into disciplines with Bagin as chairman of PR/advertising in 1996.

Bagin’s expertise hasn’t been all academic. Perhaps the most practical and demanding test of his skills came early in his campus career when he got the call to coordinate public relations and host 1,400 members of the international press descending on Glassboro to cover the 1967 Summit at Hollybush. “We met in the Robinsons’ kitchen (at Hollybush) to decide what to do about press packets, lodging, everything. Everyone worked hard, students, staff and secretaries.”

When it was all over, Bagin figures he slept about three hours in three days. But it paid off when he surveyed the media (including the likes of Daniel Schorr and Jimmy Breslin) that his staff had served with just 16 hours’ notice. Nearly 90 percent rated the College PR effort at good or excellent and the White House press secretary offered “only the highest praise” in a thank-you letter to Bagin and his staff.

Retired and enjoying time with his children and grandkids, Bagin and his wife, Carole (his archivist and proofreader) are working on scrapbooks to chronicle his career. He was founder and CEO of the corporate newsletter communication briefings which was read by 300,000 people and translated into Chinese and Polish and he wrote 15 books and more than 300 articles on education and PR.

Bagin once said, “There’s a spirit we build with our graduates that makes them leaders.” Most would argue; it’s Bagin’s leadership that made their own dreams reality.

Len Surfustini
Dr. Leonard Serfustini has no qualms about where his life has taken him. “I’ve had a great career and if I had to do it, I’d do it all over again,” he said from his home in Henderson, Nev. The former chairman of the health and physical education department at then-Glassboro State College has lived there since he retired more than 20 years ago.

And although he formally retired in 1986, he hasn’t stopped teaching. “Doc,” as they call him at Club Sport, an athletic facility in Henderson, has taught water aerobics there since it opened.

In fact, athletics have always been a big part of Serfustini’s life. “I’ve been a highly competitive person all my life and participated in all kinds of sports. It’s a great environment.” And he’s still active. Along with teaching water aerobics, he plays golf, swims and attends football and basketball games at the University of Las Vegas. And he still follows the Rowan programs.

“I’ve been following it all the way,” he said. “It has expanded; the scheduling has gone up and it’s tremendous what the school has been able to accomplish in its respective league.

“We had a very large department back then because it included athletics, physical education, plus the general physical education program. We had the whole shebang but of course, as the years went on, it divided off.” Serfustini also coached golf and tennis at Glassboro.

Serfustini came to the ’Boro via the University of Buffalo where his 206 basketball victories are still a university record. In fact, in 2001, he was inducted into The Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame for his basketball coaching prowess.

At the time he was at Buffalo, there was tremendous unrest on the campus related to the Vietnam War.

“My son was serving in the Navy in Vietnam and I spoke up frequently (against protesters) because I resented what was being said or done. I finally decided I wasn’t the man for that place.

“Coming to Glassboro was a great opportunity for me, and I could never thank the people at Glassboro enough—Dr. Mark Chamberlain for one. He was as fine a gentleman as you would ever meet. I still correspond with him.

“Glassboro really had a family atmosphere among its staff. There was a group of about six of us who would swim together early every morning. It was quite a group and we got to enjoy each other’s friendship and working out.”

Serfustini and his wife, Clyde, celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in December. They met on a beach in Jacksonville, Fla., while he was stationed there in the Navy and she was working with the Navy Department. Three months later “Doc” finally got the nerve to ask her to dance.

For him and his wife, their son, Anthony, is “a real source of pride. He’s now a semi-retired orthopedic surgeon who served in Vietnam, Desert Storm and Iraq. When he sat us down and told us that he had been commissioned as a captain I was in awe. He gave up his practice to serve. I served in the Navy and I used to look at captains as gods. He said, ‘It’s OK, Dad, you don’t have to salute me.’”

During his time on campus, Serfustini was integral in preparing the initial design for the Recreation Center.

“We got permission from the student government to go ahead and have the building planned and designed,” Serfustini said. “Dr. Chamberlain was the president at the time and he was very supportive of the whole idea.” The Rec Center was completed and opened in the spring 1993 semester, but Serfustini has never seen the building.

“We had the complete design made in terms of the recreation hall and the pool and I think it carried through pretty well to the finished product but there were too many people involved with it from start to finish for me to take any credit for it.

“I’m just somebody who enjoyed my position, the people I was with, the programs and the success of students. I just took things as they came and enjoyed every minute of it, especially my 60 years of married life.”

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Alumni can honor retired faculty by donating to a scholarship fund and other investment. Call James Spencer at 856-256-5403 or visit the Rowan University Foundation.