Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Cannioto '36, First Masters Degree Recipient!

   Alexander Cannioto '36, pictured here, was the first person to be awarded a Masters degree at Brockport, receiving the Masters in Education in January 1950. He was a 1936 graduate of the old Brockport Normal School, which then was a three year program giving a license to teach, but not a bachelors degree. He finished the work for a bachelors and received that in 1945. At the time he received his masters degree, he was teaching in the East Rochester school district. This is a great example of the rapid changes happening in Brockport in that era, when within a few years the school had gone from being a Normal school to a Teachers College granting the bachelors to giving masters degrees starting in 1950.

   In his Normal school years Alexander had been very active. He was in the Phi Alpha Zeta fraternity, Magpies (the drama group,) Blanket Tax Committee (forerunner to the student government of today,) he was on the baseball team, managed the basketball team and was class president.

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