Carol Genese

Carol Genese declines a freshly baked tape-it-on-the-thigh-because-that”™s-where-it”™s-going-to-end-up delicacy offered by Monroe College”™s chef Daniel Hinder as she walks through the school”™s kitchen.

Entering the kitchen aka classroom of the school”™s New Rochelle campus is sort of like entering a real-life version of Hieronymus Bosch”™s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights. There”™s temptations to the left and the right. And the “devils” in this scene are wearing white uniforms and toques.

Genese could easily accept their temptations, but she says it would mean adding another mile to her daily early morning run. A friend in the school”™s criminal justice program says she”™s a statistic waiting to happen; Genese does her runs before the sun rises at 4 a.m. and she doesn”™t use a flashlight because she doesn”™t want to attract attention.

Call her a stealth runner.

She recharges her tight petite frame for the energy she”™ll expend as she moves through her 12-hour day as dean of the office of career advancement. Seven miles in 62 minutes is her normal run. It”™s a pace she keeps at school as she moves quickly through the hallways. Behind her desk she exudes energy; and a quick smile. She can also talk a mile a minute about the positive aspects of the school and the advantages of using her department. She helps students get “real world” knowledge on job interviews, networking, internships and writing resumes, among others. Genese calls it helping students manage their “soft skills.”

The school also hosts job fairs and on-campus recruitments. A recent job fair attracted 700 students over 2Â½ hours. Genese smiles. She acknowledges that the office of career advancement is a work in progress, but if it progresses at its current speed, more smiles are in the offing.

Genese grew up in a working-class family in Queens. When she turned 16 she was expected to get a job and quit school. She had other plans. She did take a job as a cashier at a Waldbaum”™s supermarket, working the 3 to 11 shift, and paying her father a portion of her wages; but she also kept going to school. Studying pre-law at Lehman College, she decided against becoming a lawyer and chose to be a teacher, cutting her teeth at the last all-boys junior high school in the Bronx, Creston School. She rose through the ranks and earned a master”™s degree in urban studies, then a cutting-edge degree, from Queens College. She became an assistant principal in Community School District 10, where she was in charge of teacher training.

She took some time off in the 1980s to raise her two children. She also started cooking. And while waiting to pick up her children at day camp, she started watching adults play tennis at courts adjacent to the camp. She figured she could do that and started running to build up her endurance, but found she couldn”™t run around the block without stopping. But the endurance slowly came. She built on it and since the age of 30 has been running.

She also built on her cooking expertise back then, too, taking on catering assignments for parties and banquets. She would bake through the night. As she tweaked her recipes, she eventually developed high-end baked goods, which she named Carol”™s Cravings, selling to area restaurants. With her success and love of cooking, a friend suggested she go back to teaching, but this time culinary classes. She began by teaching food and beverage management at Nassau County Community College. Then it was back to school for her; earning a master”™s degree in food service administration from New York University. A doctorate followed and then she was an assistant professor in SUNY Farmingdale”™s restaurant program until it was shut down. She then spent 11 years overseeing the culinary and hospitality programs at New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn, which turned out an impressive lineup of alumni including chefs Danny Meyer (Union Square CafÃ©), Bill Yosses (White House executive pastry chef) and Michael LomonacoÂ (Porter House New York) among others.

The job was cushy by her own admittance. And she had tenure.

But budget constraints and bureaucracy were also part of the job. A friend told her about a vice president post at Monroe College. She took a ride and spent an hour talking with Stephen Jerome, Monroe”™s president. She walked out of his office and called her husband. “I just met the man I want to work for, for the rest of my life.”

So in 2000, she went from working 12 hours a week to 12 hours a day. No regrets, “My energy goes into the students, not politics.”

And, of course, her energy is reinvigorated through her daily runs.