IN MEMORIAM
Dan Larkin, Retired Provost,
Expert On Canals, NY History
Editor’s Note: Dan Larkin, the beloved former long-time provost and perhaps the last active faculty member who taught at Old Main, died Thursday, Oct. 2, at Fox Hospital. He was 76. He retired as provost at the end of June 2011, but continued to teach his popular course on New York State history until earlier this year. Raised in Rome, the Erie Canal was one of his professional specialties. Here is a profile published on May 27, 2011, when he stepped down at the campus’ top academic officer.
ONEONTA – When young Dan Larkin arrived at SUNY Oneonta in 1965, he spent his first year teaching history scholars inside the now-long-gone “Old Main.”
The next year, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller launched his uber-ambitious plans for the SUNY system and, between 1966 and 1971, the Oneonta campus we know today rose on a wooded hillside.
When locals asked young Larkin where he worked and he told them, they would reply, “Oh, you’re up at the Normal School,” the original 1889 teachers’ college replaced by today’s multi-department institution of higher education. (Cavernous “Old Main,” site of today’s Old Main Apartments at the top of Elm Street, was demolished in 1977.)
That, as you might imagine, is just a fraction of the institutional memory F. Daniel Larkin, provost and vice president of academic affairs, has absorbed during his 46-year career, all of it – except 13 months at SUNY headquarters in Albany – in the City of the Hills. He is retiring at the end of June.
In all that time, there were many personal flashpoints, but one institutional flashpoint in particular: That day in 1996, soon after Larkin had been promoted to dean of continuing education, when then-president Alan Donovan gathered his team together and declared, “We’ve got to make some changes around here.”
Donovan was reacting to new data showing that only 60 percent of the freshman class was returning – many due to poor grades. In other words, he said in a separate interview, 400 of every 1,000 students were disappearing. In the 15 years since, the retention rate has risen to 85 percent, Donovan said.
“It was a team effort,” said Larkin of the campaign that raised Oneonta to one of the top three SUNY campuses, breathing down Geneseo’s institutional neck. “And I’m not just saying that because it’s something to say. Everybody pulled together.”
Donovan, however, was particularly praiseful of his former provost’s contribution: “He interviewed every single candidate who came onto the campus. That took a great deal of time. During his time as provost, he had a role in bringing in all the new faculty members – dozens and dozens, or more – and strengthening the faculty over time.”
For his part, Larkin calls Donovan’s move “very daring,” since holding applicants to higher standards – “selectivity” – could have meant smaller classes and less tuition, which the college was counting on to meet its obligations. As it happened, Donovan’s gamble paid off.
Dan Larkin was born in Rome, crossing point of both the New York Central and the Erie Canal. As a boy, he and pals would ride their bikes down to the locks or up to the passenger terminal, and this exposure to the romance of travel may have led to his professional interest in the history of transportation.
“Even as a kid I was interested in all of this traffic – going somewhere,” he said. In those pre-TV days, the radio likewise provoked the lad’s imagination: You had to imagine what the Green Hornet looked like. Plus, his parents – his dad managed two plants in what was then called “The Copper City” – had history books lining the walls at home.
These influences found Larkin, after graduating from Rome Free Academy in the late 1950s, heading off to SUNY Brockport to study social sciences and education. He went on to SUNY Albany for a master’s that gave him permanent certification to teach in public schools – he never did – and then another master’s in history.
His Ph.D., also from Albany, resulted in a dissertation on a famed rail and canal engineer that Larkin expanded into what he considers his best book, “John B. Jervis: An American Engineering Pioneer,” published by the Iowa State University Press as part of its History of Technology Series.
He’s also written several books on the Erie Canal and New York’s railroads, and also extensively in the New York State Encyclopedia on his areas of specialty.
While at Albany, he met his future wife, Grace. They later raised two daughters in Oneonta, Katherine Larkin of Bolton Landing, and Susan Gillette, who with her family lives near her parents Winney Hill Road neighborhood. (The girls, and their husbands, were all partially educated in the SUNY system. “We’re a SUNY family,” the patriarch said.)
Interviewed by the estimable Dr. William B. “Burke” Fink in 1965 – “it was much less formal then” – Larkin was hired and moved to a city that was still dominated by the railroad, the yards and world’s-biggest roundhouse.
He still seems in awe talking about Nelson Rockefeller’s ambition: buildings spring up, “cadres” of faculty are hired every year, “and all over the state, the Oneonta experience is being duplicated.”
Those glory days sputtered in 1972 – the Area Studies Department (it focused on the Middle and Far East) was abolished, the only time in Larkin’s memory that happened.
As the years went by, Larkin kept moving up the ladder. By 1981, he was history department chair. In 1985, he was tapped by SUNY headquarters as interim associate provost for academic affairs for the system, and spent 13 months there. But he turned down a permanent appointment and returned here.
It was a net gain, however: “It’s always good to know the territory. I know it was helpful once I became an administrator.”
As provost – the second in command; officer-in-charge when the president is off campus – Larkin gained a reputation for calming troubled waters. He would show up in fractious situations and “pour maple syrup on everyone in the room,” recalled David W. Brenner, the retired SUNY dean and former Oneonta mayor. “Then they would talk.”
“He’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever worked with,” said Donovan, (who also let on that Larkin is an old-car buff, owner of a 1936 Cadillac, the type movie gangsters would ride around in.)
When Larkin starts talking about teaching, though, you sense that’s his first professional love, and he says as much, recounting e-mails showing up in his inbox with some regularity from students of decades ago recounting what they learned from him.
He is particularly proud of being promoted to the rank of Distinguished Service Professor; when Donovan promoted him to interim (later permanent) provost and vice president in 1999, Larkin only accepted with the assurance he would retain that rank.
“You take a stone and throw it in a pond, and all the ripples go out,” he reflected. “All of those lines are lives that you have effected.”
On June 30, Larkin will leave the corner office on the top floor of the Netzer Administration building – he looks out on Alumni Field House – but he won’t be gone, just taking up more modest quarters on the first floor.
He plans to continue teaching his New York State History course, but you better plan ahead: It’s already full for this fall.
Larkin’s memory that happened.
As the years went by, Larkin kept moving up the ladder. By 1981, he was history department chair. In 1985, he was tapped by SUNY headquarters as interim associate provost for academic affairs for the system, and spent 13 months there. But he turned down a permanent appointment and returned here.
It was a net gain, however: “It’s always good to know the territory. I know it was helpful once I became an administrator.”
As provost – the second in command; officer-in-charge when the president is off campus – Larkin gained a reputation for calming troubled waters. He would show up in fractious situations and “pour maple syrup on everyone in the room,” recalled David W. Brenner, the retired SUNY dean and former Oneonta mayor. “Then they would talk.”
“He’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever worked with,” said Donovan, (who also let on that Larkin is an old-car buff, owner of a 1936 Cadillac, the type movie gangsters would ride around in.)
When Larkin starts talking about teaching, though, you sense that’s his first professional love, and he says as much, recounting e-mails showing up in his inbox with some regularity from students of decades ago recounting what they learned from him.
He is particularly proud of being promoted to the rank of Distinguished Service Professor; when Donovan promoted him to interim (later permanent) provost and vice president in 1999, Larkin only accepted with the assurance he would retain that rank.
“You take a stone and throw it in a pond, and all the ripples go out,” he reflected. “All of those lines are lives that you have effected.”
On June 30, Larkin will leave the corner office on the top floor of the Netzer Administration building – he looks out on Alumni Field House – but he won’t be gone, just taking up more modest quarters on the first floor.
He plans to continue teaching his New York State History course, but you better plan ahead: It’s already full for this fall.