Dr. Cotter retires after teaching 57 years
Author, poet, and educator James Finn Cotter, the longest-serving professor in the history of Mount Saint Mary College, retired from teaching recently after 57 years of dedication and outstanding service.
"I believe a new era is about to develop for higher education, and younger minds and hearts can deal with it better than I," Cotter explained. "I know the Mount will continue to grow."
Cotter, a professor of English with the Division of Arts and Letters, began his tenure with the college in 1963. In his nearly six decades with the Mount, Cotter has taught in or chaired the divisions of Humanities, Arts and Letters, and Religious Studies and Philosophy. His legacy is truly part of the DNA of the college, from his administrative service to the thousands of students on which he imparted a love of literature.
"Walking into a classroom had been as natural as eating, drinking, and breathing," Cotter explained. "I enjoy the poems we will discuss, the plays we will read, the stories we will analyze. The task is there before us, we are the readers and responders. Without us, there would be no Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Donne, Keats, Hopkins, Dickinson, Frost, or Salinger...Of course, I will miss the classroom, but my memories are real and remain in me alive and well."
When Cotter arrived at the Mount in the fall of 1963, there were fewer than 250 students. Now, more than 2,200 students take Mount courses.
In 1966, Irene Nunnari, who had taught at Academia San José in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, was invited to direct Public Relations at the college and serve as an adjunct professor. It was Cotter who requested that Nunnari join the full-time faculty in the fall of 1967. Nunnari would go on to become one of the most cherished and longest-serving professors the Mount has ever known.
"I owe my own 48-year career at the Mount to Dr. Cotter," said Nunnari, a professor emerita of the college. "In the entire history of the Mount, from the day it was founded until forever, there will never be another James F. Cotter, who...in his own words, 'welcomed the light of knowledge and searched for the height of truth.'"
The Cotter campaign
The Mount recently created the "$57K for 57 Years" donation campaign, which seeks to honor Cotter by raising $57,000 for Mount scholarships. For more information or to donate, please visit www.msmc.edu/57years