Newly installed leader Joe Bertolino discusses what Stockton University offers to first-generation, traditional and non-traditional students, what students want and need, and the tipping point that brought him back to New Jersey
GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP —On April 12, Joe Bertolino was officially installed as president of Stockton University. He has held the office since July 1, 2023, but that Friday featured an inauguration, a party-like atmosphere of celebration for the educator who wants to position the university as the destination of choice for traditional, non-traditional and first-generation college students in southern New Jersey.
Last week, President Joe, as he likes to be called on campus because of his informal style, sat down with the Sentinel to talk about his own background, the tilting point that helped bring him to Stockton, a philosophy of education that actually was formed as a camp counselor, what students want and what he believes they need beyond earning a degree.
“The pivotal moment”
A conversation between his father and his late mother helped convince Bertolino to pursue the presidency at Stockton University.
“The pivotal moment was my dad,” he said.
When Stockton officials initially contacted him about applying, he demurred. He had been president at Southern Connecticut State University for seven years and wasn’t looking to move, convinced that was his last job in higher education. Prior to that he was president of Lyndon State College in Vermont and had been a vice president at Queens College/City University of New York and a dean at Barnard College, among his more than 30 years working in higher education.
When he told his father, Joseph A. Bertolino Jr., that Stockton had called him a couple of times, the father reminded his son that his mother, Eileen M. Bertolino, who had died a few years earlier, was a non-traditional alumna of the college, a fact he already knew.
His father told him, “’Well, I’m going to have to discuss this with your mother,’” Bertolino said. (His father’s daily routine is going to Mass and then the cemetery.)
“He calls me back that evening and says, ‘Your mother and I have talked about this and we agree it’s time for you to come home.’”
Bertolino’s father still lives in the home in Glendora, N.J., where Bertolino grew up. Bertolino and his husband, Bil Leipold, vice chancellor for enrollment services and experience at Rutgers University-Newark, have a home in New Jersey, in the Asbury Park area, but the two have often been separated by their jobs.
“I often joke the secret to our 31-year relationship is that we haven’t lived with each other for most of it,” Bertolino said, laughing. “He is there. I was up in Connecticut.”
But he had promised his husband that at some point, if an opportunity that made sense arose in New Jersey, maybe they would consider it.
After that talk with his father, Bertolino decided to explore the idea of applying to become Stockton’s president.
He knew the university had a good reputation and he knew the two previous presidents — Harvey Kesselman (2015-2023) and Herman J. Saatkamp Jr. (2003-2015) — “had really moved the institution forward,” Bertolino said. “It had a good reputation for interdisciplinary studies in particular. It was a pretty cool format in comparison to what other universities had done.”
Another selling point is that Stockton would become the third regional public higher education institution he would lead.
“Public higher ed is really important to me, particularly on a regional level,” he said. “We serve primarily students from working-class families.”
Since arriving at Stockton in July, he was reminded of how many South Jersey connections he had. Although he grew up here, he spent the past 30 years working in Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont and Connecticut.
“So many folks have come out of the woodwork from so many parts of my life from South Jersey. And that’s just been an amazing experience,” he said.
“I’m one of those folks who believes you’re going to be where you’re supposed to be. I don’t really believe in coincidences, so to speak. I was like, ‘OK, Mom, I don’t know what you’re up to, but we’re going to go with it.’
“It’s been great. The folks here are terrific. The student population is terrific. It’s very much like my previous institution in terms of makeup and size, which I love.”
Social worker by training
President Joe’s office is not a formal or cold environment. Rather, it exudes personality. There is a desk in one corner and shelves filled with books, photographs and tchotchkes taking up most of one wall. A large section of the office is a living room of sorts with a chair, sofa and coffee table. There is a row of posters from Broadway plays and numerous other items hanging on the walls.
“I’m a social worker by training,” he explained. “Over the years I have found that folks are intimated by the president’s office. I’m not really that intimidating and I don’t take myself that seriously. I like the living room component. Come, sit down, have a conversation.”
He said everything on the walls or shelves, including items students have given him over the years, has a story behind it.
He pointed out his favorite item, a framed picture that sits by his computer. It was taken in 1987 when he was 22, had graduated from college and was in the seminary for a while. The diocese placed him at St. James High School (since closed) in Carney’s Point in Salem County. In the photo, the young Bertolino is surrounded by a group of graduates, students he taught as their religion teacher. He still keeps in touch with them.
Pointing to one young man in the photo, he notes he is the godfather to his three sons, who are now all in their mid to late 20s.
“I keep it here because it is my daily reminder of where I started,” he said.
The value of a college education: Better earning over a lifetime, broader perspective
President Joe is a believer in the value of a college education, but he does not devalue working in the trades. However, he sees the advantage of a college education, even if in non-traditional form, for those like his nephew who is studying plumbing at Gloucester County Institute of Technology.
“If your passion are the trades, then by all means,” he said. “And there’s certainly demand.”
Statistically speaking, he notes that students who have some type of post-secondary education, whether its technical, community college or a four-year degree, will earn significantly more longer term.”
“I also remind folks that my nephew wants to be a plumber, but someday your body will say to you, ‘I’d rather own the plumbing company or be the supervisor as opposed to the person actually doing it because I’ll be tired.’ And so my hope is to bridge that with post-secondary education.
“How can we bring individuals who have been trained in the trades to then get a skill set in business or something else that allows them to continue their trade but also be successful longer term,” he said.
Bertolino knows that young people aren’t always thinking long term, feeling confident in what they may be earning at the moment.
“I often am concerned because I’ll hear students say, ‘I don’t need this. I’m making all kinds of bucks.’ That’s true,” he said, “but you’re also living in your parents’ basement and you have no benefits and no retirement. You’re 20-something years old or you’re a teenager, you don’t think of any of that, but when you’re our age, you will. Focusing on the longer term is important.”
Fighting polarization
“We live in a world that is polarized in all directions and so I do hope that when students come here to Stockton, my goal is to ensure that they’re learning to take the time to listen to a variety of perspectives and to share their own,” Bertolino said. “Not to agree, but to be respectful of each other and maybe learn from and teach others.”
President Joe references “the five pillars.”
“During a difficult time in society I often talk about the five pillars. If you’re going to be part of this community I have an expectation you’re going to treat people with dignity, respect, kindness, compassion and civility. I don’t think that is an unreasonable request regardless of what you believe or where you fall or who you are. … I do hope that education can help in that vein.”
Offsetting the expense
Stockton University costs about $15,500 a year in tuition and fees for state residents this academic year. To live on campus, room and board adds almost $14,000. That’s nearly $30,000 a year (or $37,400 for out-of-state students).
President Joe doesn’t blame a lot of students for not wanting to take out loans for their education, but said there are other avenues for them to consider.
Beyond aid provided by the institution and the state and federal governments, there are millions of untapped scholarship and support dollars “simply because people don’t look. I think if people put in the work at the front end to look for those dollars, I think there are some opportunities there.”
In addition, student loans can be forgiven depending on the field students enter.
Cura personalis … and a lesson from camp
Bertolino said his philosophy hasn’t changed over the decades but his own understanding of it and how he executes that philosophy have matured.
“I think my philosophy in working with young people and students really developed at camp because I was the most unlikely camp counselor you could get,” he said, laughing.
After his first year of college, he was looking for a summer job and saw an ad for camp counselors at YMCA Camp Ockanickon. When he went there to fill out the application, the interviewer asked him if he had ever been to camp. He hadn’t.
Did he know how to swim? No. Sports? No. Boating? Nope. “He went down the list and ‘no, no, no, no.’ Arts and crafts? Maybe. He said, ‘Why are you here?’ I said, ‘because I need a job and think I’d be pretty good with kids.’”
In a surprise to him, he was hired. “And thus began what is now my 40-year relationship with the YMCA of the Pines.
When he was hired he learned “it doesn’t matter what your skill set was, that at least at this place, at the Y in particular, there’s a place for everybody at camp. That really resonated with me. They’re going to give me a chance.
“And I think that helped shape my philosophy because I spent most of my time giving kids an opportunity, giving kids a chance. Accepting them wherever they are, which then led me to going into education.
“I wouldn’t be sitting here in this chair if it weren’t for the YMCA of the Pines … and I think for me the philosophy — I didn’t have a word for it then but I do now — the philosophy was an ethic of care.”
What he went on to learn at the University of Scranton was cura personalis — “care for the whole person, regardless of where they are.”
“That has been my philosophy, my mantra. There is a bench at camp that has my name on it and says, ‘Come sit, talk, and I will listen.’ I think I became the counselors’ counselor at some point.”
A community of opportunity: Talk to each other, reach out to the community
“For me, leadership, and for that matter, life, it’s all about relationships. The ones you have, the ones you navigate, the ones you’re trying to build, the ones you may need to end. That is a skill set that I think people learn when they are given space and opportunity to interact with others of all different backgrounds,” he said.
As president, he wants to build “a community of opportunity” at Stockton, a whole experience that is beyond getting a degree.
“My hope is that by exposing students or setting up space and opportunities to see, hear, learn, connect, that helps to create a better citizen, create a better person, particularly since we all tend to be locked behind a screen.
“I always worry that if we don’t use technology effectively, then people forget how to communicate with each other and build relationships that aren’t superficial.”
Beyond getting students to interact with each other on campus, President Joe wants them to reach out beyond the campus.
“I take very seriously our responsibility, our moral responsibility, quite frankly, to be a good neighbor and be in and of the community and an active participant in the community.”
Different challenges now for a university president
“I will be entering my 13th year as college president and it certainly isn’t the same as it was when I first started,” Bertolino said.
One difference is that “the polarization has only grown and that makes it harder to bring people together to engage in conversation, civil discourse. And the politics of the presidency have also grown significantly.”
He said his peers “were all holding our breath” watching to see what would happen when the Columbia University president was called before Congress last week. Nemat Shafik was asked to testify about protecting students from anti-semitism that has been magnified by unrest on campuses since Hamas attacked Israel Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and kidnapping 250 more, and Israel responded by invading Gaza in a military action that has since killed more than 32,000 Palestinians.
Referencing the bigger protests at places such as Columbia, he acknowledged, “those types of things happen pretty regularly at a smaller scale even at an institution like Stockton. You’re constantly being challenged. And it’s more politically aggressive than it used to be,” Bertolino said. There is also pressure from outside campus.
“I also think in the 1980s and ’90s, enrollment was strong and most statehouses just funded higher ed. Then in the last 20 years the pushback has grown. What is our return on investment? What are we training our students to do? I think there has been a lot of political pushback there,” he said.
He sees social media and the COVID-19 pandemic as the biggest contributing factors.
“Everyone is one tweet away from unemployment. I’m always the president, no matter where I am. And I’m OK with that, but again I’m 13 years in so I think that at some point you get accustomed to that being part of your life and routine,” he said.
“There is always, for college presidents, this expectation that you’re going to take certain positions. That wasn’t always the case. I don’t remember 20-plus years ago universities in general, not just college presidents, commenting on or taking a particular position on certain issues.”
Bertolino said he believes that was because “the viewpoint was that all perspectives were going to be debated on the college campuses.”
In addition, he said, “the pandemic has changed everything. It has changed the way folks look at the world, how they work, how they look at their career trajectory, what they want to study. I think folks have been tired. It’s been exhausting. I don’t know if folks have been able to bounce back entirely.”
Exposing students to other views, letting them share their own views
“I have to remind faculty and staff of this all the time that we are responsible for all of our students here. There are a lot of students here who are from the region and have a particular world view.
“How do we honor those students, allow them to feel accepted and valued here, so they can share their world view while simultaneously being exposed to a different world view? That’s on both sides,” he said. “I think for me, it makes the work all the more rewarding.”
He said after Oct. 7, the university brought Muslim and Jewish students together.
“The students spent hours talking to each other. They didn’t leave the table agreeing, but they spent time together engaged in the conversation. That’s our job.”
He related the story of how when he was in college, Republican President Ronald Reagan and Democratic Speaker of the House Thomas “Tip” O’Neill were friends in spite of their different political views. Although they would disagree in public, once a week they would get together, have a drink and a cigar, and try to figure out the win-win for everyone.
“I never forgot that,” Bertolino said. “I think that for the most part folks appreciate when you’re willing to listen and be respectful.”
What students want and need has changed
Bertolino has witnessed changes over his years in higher education in what institutions provide and what students want.
The need for non-academic services has grown significantly in the past 20 years. There are demands placed on institutions to not only educate students in the classroom, and offer extracurricular and growth opportunities, but also paid internships and professional experience.
“I also think that students expect more flexibility than ever before and easier pathways toward the completion of a degree, more expedited pathways to completion of a degree. Hence the programs like dual enrollment in the high schools,” he said. “There are 2,500 students in dual enrollment here at Stockton. We have 2,500 high school students taking Stockton courses at their high schools and getting credit for those. That allows students to already have X number of credits under their belt even before they walk into their door.”
There are other things universities must provide.
“The demand for mental health and counseling and advising services has grown significantly. The need for assisting students who may be food-insecure, housing-insecure, financially insecure — all of those have grown.
“We have become in many respects a city unto ourselves,” he said.
“Students and parents, family members, others, have an expectation that we are going to provide multi-layered services and opportunities in the community,” he said.
“Add to that the state and federal legal requirements have also increased significantly. You may find that there are far more staff in some administrative areas than there used to be. That is not just to serve students, but also meet our obligations ensuring we are remaining compliant.”
Diverse student body, flexible academic program, and the college of choice
President Joe wants students — traditional and non-traditional — to know Stockton University is a place where they will be valued, that he wants it to become the college of choice.
“They will be accepted for who they are and where they’re at any stage of their lives. You’ll hear from students in this community that they feel seen here.
“Unlike a large research institution, there’s something about this place that was created to help students build their own degree program, to have maximum flexibility and to experience a variety of different professors in different disciplines,” he said.
“What’s particularly fascinating about this place is nearly 50 percent of students are students of color. … Over 40 percent of our students are Pell-eligible, so they are students of need. And just under 50 percent of our students are first generation. That is a special spot for Stockton because the way we have shaped our first-generation college student program here is that students actually introduce themselves as first-generation college students. They take a great deal of pride in that.”
President Joe wants to make Stockton the college of choice for first-generation students.
“For non-traditional students and for that matter, any student, our program here is pretty flexible and pretty interdisciplinary,” he said. “There is a lot you can build on your own.”
The interdisciplinary and flexible nature was intentional 50 years ago, Bertolino explained, “because the goal was to serve a more non-traditional student. If you look carefully at the physical structure of the campus, it’s called the academic spine. All these buildings are interconnected. That was intentional. Because every aspect of the institution is connected in some way, shape or form.
“Faculty are not dispersed by department here. You can walk into a faculty suite and you’re going to have four or five faculty members, each from a different discipline. That is intentional. It’s unique. And there are certainly advantages and disadvantages of that, but I think it is pure Stockton.”
He points out that students who are looking for a “smaller, personal relationship-focused community, we’re the only game in town. At one time it would have been Stockton and Glassboro — now Rowan — but Rowan is a different entity now.
“And we are the only public regional university in the area. The next closest is going to be The College of New Jersey in Trenton. I think that is appealing. I also think that as we create a new strategic plan, I think we’ll be spending a lot of time talking about the identity of the campuses. You have Galloway on 1600 acres of Pinelands and then you have Atlantic City right on the beach. I think that provides a lot of opportunity for folks.”
Talking about the strategic plan the university is undertaking, he said the work ahead will be how best to partner with Atlantic City, the state, AtlantiCare. Stockton, he said, “can’t be a standalone entity.”
During his installation (as quoted in a release from the university), Bertolino said, “Our vision is for Stockton to become the college of choice in South Jersey. The first choice for prospective first-year and transfer students. The destination of choice for renowned faculty and academic trailblazers. The college of choice for partnerships with local and regional leaders in business. The first choice for donors, friends and supporters to contribute to our work.”
–STORY and PHOTO by DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
