Career of service has led Polizzi to lead new online Doctor of Education program

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Joseph Polizzi, who this past summer was named director of the new online Doctor of Education program — a joint venture between the Penn State College of Education and Penn State World Campus, said he believes his role in life is the same as any educator: It’s about serving students to the best of his ability.

It’s a mindset that has been fomented by a life and career dedicated to serving students, and years of experience — personal, educational and professional. It has given him exposure to those whose perspectives differ from his — something he said he credits for making him a better person and a better educator.

Polizzi’s early years were spent in the New York metropolitan area. Born in Brooklyn, but growing up on Long Island, Polizzi attended graduate school at nearby Hofstra University. To help support himself, he said, he worked as a night custodian at several iconic locations in the Big Apple, including the New York Stock Exchange, the United Nations building and Two Penn Plaza.

But it was something one of his co-workers said to him one night at his custodian job — one at which he earned the nickname “Joe College” from his colleagues — that has always stuck with him, he said.

“I said ‘I want to go and teach abroad. I want to travel the world and be a teacher,’” Polizzi recalled. “And I’ll never forget what my co-worker said — ‘Why do you want to go do that? We have enough problems here in New York. Why don’t you work on those problems? Why don’t you work with kids here in New York City?’ And I never forgot that.”

Polizzi initially got to work in New York; his first classroom job was teaching English to students in grades 7 through 12 in the New York City public school system, first in the Bronx and then Brooklyn. For many of his students, English was not their first language.

He remembers it as an eye-opening experience.

“I had a lot to learn, and also a lot to understand about my students,” Polizzi said. “African American and Latino students as well as a large immigrant population from all over the world made up the majority of the students I taught. So, I felt part of something very much larger than myself.”

He said it was a feeling that helped him realize he didn’t want to limit his impact as a teacher. He eventually got his chance to go abroad and teach in Hungary before returning to the U.S.

Educationally, he has had a multitude of experiences. Polizzi is a Fulbright Scholar and served a fellowship in the New York State Senate after earning his bachelor’s degree in English from Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York; his master’s in secondary education from Hofstra; and eventually his doctorate in educational administration/leadership from Penn State.

His varied background of professional and educational experiences, he said, has sharpened his ability to listen — something he sees as one of the most important skills an educator can have. Listening, he explained, is the way to learn about people and what is important to them, especially the “hard parts,” as Polizzi puts it.

He said he first became aware of this ability as a third-grader when it was pointed out to him while his class visited the school’s library.

“The librarian would read a mystery story and we would have to listen to it,” Polizzi recalled. “And I’ll never forget that the librarian came up to me, tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Joe, you’re a very good listener.’”

That listening skill has served him well throughout his career and recently prompted him to co-author a book, “Understanding Suffering in Schools: Shining a Light on the Dark Places of Education,” which includes testimonies from former students on the ways they experienced suffering in school. Polizzi's said the goal is to demonstrate how suffering can profoundly affect one’s academic growth and development — or worse.

“The one thing I’ve learned about a career in education is it’s never about me,” Polizzi said. “It’s always about what the student needs. I’ve always believed that.”

Now back at Penn State, he is tasked with stewarding a newly-launched online Doctor of Education program, a collaboration between the College of Education and Penn State World Campus.

The program welcomed its first cohort of 30 students from an applicant pool of around six times that many. Having that many candidates for so few spots makes the standards for admittance very high, he said, but it also means Polizzi is under pressure to help deliver an educational experience worthy of that type of selectivity.

The secret, he said, is remembering what led him to a career in education in the first place — service.

“As a professional, who is it that I’m serving in the work that I do?” Polizzi said. “At different points in my career, I’ve been in service to different groups of people. And now in the role as director of the education doctoral program here at Penn State, I see myself as being in service to the Penn State community at large and those who would like to become part of it.”

And, luckily, because he works for a world-class institution like Penn State, he won’t have to do it alone, he said.

“The Penn State College of Education is phenomenal,” Polizzi said. “More than 200 faculty members working with Dean Kim Lawless, working with (Associate Dean for Graduate and Undergraduate Studies) Rayne Sperling. I’m humbled, and I’m honored to be part of this faculty.

“Penn State is bigger than me. It’s so much bigger than you or me. And just to be a part of it is so exciting.”