Sitting in his office in the warmth of Santa Paula, Calif. Wally Bobkiewicz’s mind will often drift to the snowy campus of Syracuse University.

Bobkiewicz was on campus last Wednesday for the dedication of Newhouse III and the Board of Trustees induction Thursday. By day, he is the city manager of Santa Paula, Calif. – ironically, ‘the citrus capital of the world’ – but his other job is president of SU’s Alumni Association.

He is the first Alumni Association president to have only attended SU for graduate school. Bobkiewicz received his master’s degree in public administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in 1989.

He began his term on July 1 and will serve a two-year term. On Friday, he was inducted into the Board of Trustees – a de facto honor for the sitting Alumni Association president.

Bobkiewicz is exuberantly excited about everything Orange. He summarized the position of president as ‘the official cheerleader for alumni and alumni issues.’

His agenda for the association extends far beyond just cheerleading. Bobkiewicz took the task of setting priorities for himself and the Alumni Association: To celebrate Orange, create and maintain life-long connections and ensure the stewardship of the future.

Andrea Latchem, assistant vice president of alumni relations, said Bobkiewicz will be taking the leadership at a time when the Office of Alumni Relations is being ‘somewhat reorganized.’

For Bobkiewicz, it is all about keeping alumni in the loop.

‘We have literally hundreds of thousands of alums all around the United States and around the world who don’t get back to Syracuse very often and don’t understand all the very exciting things that are happening,’ he said. ‘I think it’s also important that we celebrate the individual achievements of our alumni.’

That would involve a lot of individual celebrations, as SU currently estimates an alumni base of more than 225,000. This massive body is represented by a 44-member board, chaired by Bobkiewicz, with a range of alumni from those who graduated in the 1950s to students from the class of 2000 and beyond.

There is also Lauren D’Angelo, a senior policy studies and geography major, who has served as one of three student representative to the alumni board for the last three years. And she has noticed how diverse SU’s alumni are.

‘Not everyone is local. There are people from California and Texas,’ she said. ‘There is an age range, a career range.’

SU’s large network of alumni will be a central element to Chancellor Nancy Cantor’s fundraising campaign, with the expected goal of $1 billion, which will be officially launched on Nov. 2.

‘Chancellor Cantor has been very smart with how she’s positioning this campaign,’ Bobkiewicz said. ‘She’s saying this is not the job of the university’s administration to raise this money. It’s the job of its friends and alumni to continue to support that.’

‘I think you’re going to see alumni stepping up of all shapes and sizes, from all parts of the United States and all over the world saying that ‘we want to be a part of this,” he said.

Bobkiewicz often focuses on the geographical diversity of SU alumni, maybe because he is from California and distant from the strongest alumni bases in New York and Boston. He says Californians ‘don’t know how to react’ when they discover he is president of the SU Alumni Association.

His California roots have affected his leadership style, said Latchem, from the Office of Alumni Relations.

‘His focus is somewhat different because he lives in California,’ she said. As opposed to his East Coast predecessors, ‘he is more active when he is on campus.’

His mission is to make it well known how large the body of former Orange men and women actually is.

‘I think students need to leave here realizing they are part of a larger whole. I think sometimes students feel, ‘OK, I’ve done my time, paid my money and now I’m out of here,’ Bobkiewicz said. ‘But I think we, as a university, need to do more to make sure there’s that connection there.’

Student representative D’Angelo has seen this effort take hold already in Bobkiewicz’s short tenure.

‘The office and he are working to get programming that alumni and students can get together and learn form each other,’ D’Angelo said.

Bobkiewicz graduated from SU 19 years later than the last president, Neil Gold, a 1970 graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences. But even Latchem isn’t sure whether his younger age will help him connect with students.

Either way, they are on his mind.

SU needs to continue to make student life a priority, Bobkiewicz said. He pointed to the new gym in Marshall Square Mall and the new dormitory on the DellPlain lawn as signs the university recognizes this.

Bobkiewicz also wants to limit monetary barriers that prevent students from attending and is looking for money from the fundraising campaign to bolster scholarship funds.

And that is the unique perspective of an alumnus. Bobkiewicz attended SU, unlike many of the university’s governing administrators. He lived on University Avenue – the location of his former house is now a parking lot – and took classes in Maxwell. His favorite professor is retired Dr. Bernard Jump, who was called ‘Bunny,’ despite his stereotypical academic look, Bobkiewicz said.

‘As a university, we need to continue looking at what the needs of students are, and not just on the academic side but also on the student life side,’ he said. ‘But there is still more to be done. Because as students come here, they really want to make sure they have the best in academics. They also want to make sure they have good dining facilities, good places to live.’

And for the next two years, Bobkiewicz will be working on that.

Published on September 24, 2007 at 12:00 pm