The Saybrook Forum

Vince Pellegrino named Saybrook's interim Vice President for Academic Affairs

As a doctoral student in Education Law and Policy studies, there was no need for Vince Pellegrino to push any boundaries with his dissertation.  He could have done something rote, conservative, and safe.
 
Instead, he found himself working on a qualitative, humanistic, study of symbolic language in the civil rights movement, viewed through a feminist perspective. 

“Plato describes the context for learning as other people, because learning involves understanding, deeply understanding, what other people mean,” Vince says.  “So I examined speeches from the civil rights era to capture the context of meanings about words used like color or gender, and the symbolic issues they raised during that time.”
  
Why did he do it?  Why did he go so far out of his way to write a dissertation that involved qualitative research and potential political ramifications? 
 
“It was having good faculty members push me along to do deep exploration of my topic, and at the end still love it, not hate it,” he says.  “That made all the difference.  I value that engaged learning, and the way it was made available to me.”
 
Today Vince Pellegrino is Saybrook’s Interim Vice President of Academic Affairs, and he says the experience of his dissertation helps him understand the value of Saybrook’s values, and its model of education.

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