As a student at Northwestern in the 1980s, Associate Director of University Housing Mark D’Arienzo thought his work-study job was just a way to earn some extra cash. Little did he know he would still be working on campus almost 20 years later.
“I never thought I’d be here this long,” D’Arienzo said. “I’m nine months away from getting my Twenty Year Award. I didn’t want to be here for my Five Year Pin.”
D’Arienzo isn’t the only member of the faculty and staff who decided to remain at NU after graduation. Some, like D’Arienzo, work in the offices where they worked as undergraduates, while others came back to teach the same classes they took as students.
“I didn’t think this was a permanent job,” said D’Arienzo, who also received a master’s degree from the School of Communication, in 1991. “But then the university started ‘green-mailing’ me, meaning they sent me money to show up.”
Despite mixed feelings about staying at NU, D’Arienzo said his years as an undergraduate have helped him understand the concerns
people have about undergraduate housing.
When D’Arienzo lived in the then-brand new South-Mid Quads, his roommate did not show up, leaving the sophomore with a “dingle” — a double with one person living in the room.
“I understand why students want a room to themselves,” he said. “And it’s nice when unexpected things happen.”
While D’Arienzo’s career at NU began by accident, for Eli Finkel, an assistant professor of psychology, working at NU is a dream come true.
“I am like the poster child for Northwestern,” said Finkel, Weinberg ’97. “I still bleed purple and white.”
Even though Finkel said his new job is “every bit as fun” as his years as a student, the two positions are impossible to compare.
“My responsibilities are different,” Finkel said. “As an undergraduate I just had to concentrate on my studies and enjoy life. Now I need to educate students and publish research.”
While Finkel has taught at NU for only five years, philosophy Prof. Kenneth Seeskin has worked at his alma mater for more than half of his life. Seeskin, Weinberg ’68, remembers protesting the Vietnam War at The Rock with four other students.
“Most people at Northwestern were not concerned with that issue,” he said. “The campus is much more politically active now then it was then.”
But political activism wasn’t the only difference between NU students past and present. Seeskin said the most contentious issue on campus was whether or not to allow men and women “to visit each other in their rooms if the door was open and they had all four feet on the floor.”
Regardless of their purple pride, some students said they would never want to make a career out of their time at NU.
“(Other than) a professorship or maybe director of Norris (University Center) who makes a six-figure salary, if I’m still working at Northwestern after graduation, I might have to end my own life,” said Dyer Vann, a McCormick senior and student manager at Norris.
