Departments
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Week of 5 September 1997 |
Vol. I, No. 2 |
Feature Article
Local son new community relations director
Hello, Joe
by Marguerite Lamb
When asked what he thinks will be his greatest challenge as the University's new director of community relations, Joseph Walsh says, only half jokingly, "Replacing a legend." During his first weeks on the job, he says, he attended some half-dozen testimonial dinners honoring his predecessor, Joseph Amorosino (see "Good-bye, Joe," page one).
But if anyone seems fit to fill the shoes of the man who is credited with greatly improving town-gown relations during his 11-plus years on the job, it is Walsh.
The two share more than first names. Amorosino left behind a 27-year basketball coaching career (including two years as a Terriers assistant coach) to become BU's community relations director in 1986. Similarly, Walsh comes to the job by way of Emerson College's athletic department, where for the past three years he had served as director, and from 1992 to 1994 coached the women's basketball team. Before that he spent a year at Harvard University as assistant coach of the women's basketball team, and from 1986 to 1990 he coached girls' basketball at St. Columbkille's High School in Brighton. "I've been involved in coaching for the past 22 years now, at one level or another," says Walsh.
"I'm replacing the Phil Jackson of community relations here," he says, likening Amorosino's BU record to that of the coach who has led the Bulls to five NBA championship titles in the past seven years.
A challenge to be sure, but Walsh comes to the game with an important edge: home-court advantage.
Born and raised in Allston, Walsh now lives in Oak Square in Brighton with his wife, Deborah, and two sons, Joseph, Jr., 19, and Ted, 11. Mrs. Walsh is a teacher at the Garfield Elementary School in Brighton.
Through sports, the Walshes have been active in the Allston-Brighton neighborhood for more than two decades. When statewide cutbacks threatened city athletic leagues there in the early 1980s, Walsh stepped forward to keep at least a handful of programs alive. He started the Allston-Brighton Athletic Committee, which offers basketball and softball for teenage boys and girls, a women's basketball summer league, now boasting more than 200 members, and a Bitty Ball basketball league for kids ages 7 to 10. He and his wife still coach Bitty Ball during the winter, while during the summer they run a basketball camp for 7- to 11-year-olds in Allston.
So why the move from the sidelines to the sidewalks? "In three years at Emerson College, I helped to take what was perhaps the worst Division III athletic program in the country and make it respectable," says Walsh. Respectable, he found, was good enough for Emerson, but not for him: he wanted to continue building the college's athletic programs and facilities, but the college had other priorities.
"At age 40, I felt I was too young to just sit at a job that wasn't presenting any new challenges," he says. "Being a local son, I thought this job at BU might be a good match for me."
Walsh says his primary responsibilities will be working with BU's director of judicial affairs, Daryl DeLuca, in managing off-campus student behavior issues, representing the University's goals and plans to its neighbors, and perhaps most important, being visible and accessible to the people of Allston and Brighton, Brookline and the Fenway by forging ties with local leaders and community organizations.
"My main concern will be to keep open the lines of communication between the University and the community," says Walsh, noting that open dialogue is particularly important now, when the University is seeking the approval of its neighbors for a new 10-year Master Plan for the development of the Charles River Campus. Coincidentally, Amorosino also spent his first days here lobbying for community approval of BU's first Master Plan. But while in 1986 Amorosino faced the challenge of helping to get all parties to the negotiating table, Walsh today has the task of keeping them there.
He also inherits another Amorosino legacy: in BU's Ride-Along Program, Walsh accompanies late night Boston police patrols to make sure the students are being good neighbors.
"I think the University has been extraordinarily responsive to the community's concerns," says Sgt. William Fogerty of Boston's Police Department's District 14 Station in Brighton. "The Ride-Along Program works because the students see a familiar face from the University. The students know that if they ignore requests to quiet down they will face disciplinary action."
Walsh's experiences so far leave him optimistic. "Relations are good," he observes. "And so they should be: everything I've seen tells me that this institution does not dodge its responsibilities to the community. Part of my job will be to remind people of that -- to let them know that we do want to be a good neighbor."