Ones to Watch: Long Island Colleges and Universities

By Claude Solnik

Linda Ardito

Provost, chief administrative officer,

Dowling College

Ardito is responsible for Dowling’s schools of arts and sciences, business, education and aviation, reporting directly to President Robert Gaffney. She has received various honors and awards, including being named honorary president of the International Association for Greek Philosophy. She is writing a book titled “Music and Early Greek Myth.”

Tom Azzara

Associate athletic director,

Farmingdale State College of New York

Azzara schedules competitions for the school’s 18 intercollegiate teams, maintains the competition and physical education budget and supervises coaches, summer camp programs and home athletic contests. Azzara, who arrived at Farmingdale State in 1992 as sports information director, is also head golf coach at the 6,200-student school.

Nora V. Demleitner

Interim dean,

Hofstra University School of Law

Demleitner took on her new role in March after being a member of the law school faculty since 2001 and vice dean for academic affairs for the past year. She received her juris doctorate from Yale Law School and then clerked for the Hon. Samuel A. Alito Jr. when he was a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She’s taught as a visiting professor at the University of Michigan Law School, the University of Freiburg, Germany, St. Thomas University School of Law in Miami and the Sant’ Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy.

Claude E. Gagna

Associate professor, life sciences,

New York Institute of Technology

Gagna has developed and patented new techniques used to isolate different types of cell DNA, parents with considerable applications in the fields of molecular biology, clinical research, drug discovery and nanotechnology (he’s also developed a special surface conducive to holding DNA samples). NYIT said Gagna’s inventions can help pharmaceutical companies produce drugs that target specific genes. After studying at St. Peters College and Fairleigh Dickinson University, he completed his postdoctoral work at New York University, where he earned a doctor of philosophy in anatomy.

Lawrence B. Martin

Dean of the Graduate School,

Stony Brook University

In addition to being dean of the Graduate School since 1993, Martin is associate provost for analysis and planning and a professor of both anthropology and anatomy. He served on the Association of American Universities Scholarly Advisory Board during an assessment of university education and is a past president of the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools. During his tenure as dean, Graduate School enrollment has grown by about 40 percent at Stony Brook and several new degrees have launched, including PhD programs in biochemistry, structural biology, biomedical engineering, comparative literature and social welfare.

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