When Dennis Finocchiaro, Cabrini College graduate of 1998, was asked in the winter by his former Cabrini communications professor, the recently retired Cathy Yungmann, to teach, he responded very quickly. “Yes, I’d love to!” the alum said.
Finocchiaro began teaching at Cabrini in January, teaching a video production class on Monday and Wednesday nights. Although it has only been a little over a month into his tenure at his alma mater, he already feels that it is special.
“This is easily the most fun I have had teaching at the college level,” Finocchiaro, who teaches English classes at four other local colleges and universities, said.Â
This is the first time Finocchiaro has taught a video class at the college level. He formerly taught video at Sun Valley High School in Aston, Pa. before coming to Cabrini.
“[The biggest difference between the two] probably is that the people here are looking at it more as a profession. At the school district level, they take it because it’s fun. Here you are talking about people who may want to do this for a living. So you change the way you teach it a little bit. Maybe you make it a little more strict at making sure everybody is learning every position because, in the world of video, there are so many different jobs,” Finocchiaro said.
“Every class we have with him is just fun because he is not a strict teacher, he is pretty laid back and you could tell he trusts us with all the equipment, which is huge,” freshman communication major Ryan Berry told Loquitur.Â
Finocchiaro knows that from experience.
While teaching at five different schools, he also works for the National Hockey League (NHL) as a statistician. He works at just about every hockey game played at the Wells Fargo Center, the home of the Philadelphia Flyers updating NHL.com’s live boxscores. While working stats at games, Finocchiaro also runs the video equipment so the rest of the stats team can go back and watch a replay if they need clarification on a play or they want to see everybody on the ice for a particular goal. Finocchiaro admits that his video background helps him immensely in that role.
“When you love hockey and you get to work at the game it’s not even work,” the veteran of six years said. “I’m sitting there watching that game and I’m thinking, Â IÂ can’t believe I’m getting paid for this!”
The Path to Teaching
By all accounts, Finocchiaro did not expect to become a teacher.
“I kinda just fell into the job of teaching,” he said.
While he was working a school district studio a few years back, he was asked if he wanted to run the place and be in charge by the school. “I thought, sure, why not?” Finocchiaro said. As he started to run the studio more and the more he was working with students in that studio he realized that teaching those students would be fun to do. Many of those students are now working in radio and television, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Finocchiaro fell in love with teaching and when he paired his love of video and his newest love together, it made a lot of sense for him.
“In [teaching] video production, I think the best part is watching one of the students who are sitting at a job and when they get up when it’s over, you can tell by their face that they got it, that they know they did it right and they are excited about it,” Finocchiaro said. “I just got to see this today, we had five directors go today and every single one of them afterward you know they breathe that sigh of relief, and, you know, as the director you see all of your mistakes and you forget about all the spots that you got right, but these guys, it’s so much fun to watch that they walk away from the job and they get it.”
When asked if he wanted to teach more video classes here at Cabrini, he couldn’t even help but to smile.
“I would love to, I think it would be a blast. I am having so much fun teaching this video class. I would love to teach more,” he said.
Photo by John Williams
