WHO’s WHO @VCU: Meet Joseph Marolla

In his 30 years at VCU, Joseph Marolla has served as a professor, department chair, director of the Center for Teaching Excellence and, since last July, the acting vice provost for instruction.

Despite all this, Marolla said his passion remains the same – the students.

“I still get excited when I go into a classroom,” he said. “I feel the adrenaline that you feel if you like to do that.

“For me, it’s always the students, changing people’s lives.”

As director of the Center for Teaching Excellence, Marolla works to improve classroom instruction and student learning through faculty workshops, small grant programs, technological improvements and a faculty mentorship program, which started with 18 participants and now includes 55 faculty members.

“We have the opportunity to do some very special things,” Marolla said about the center, which has the support of VCU’s president, administration and faculty, who, he said, also consider learning as important as research.

Now in the newly created position of vice provost for instruction, Marolla holds an additional set of responsibilities, which include the development of the University College and the Honors College, two parts of the VCU 2020 Strategic Plan.

Though his numerous positions keep him very busy, Marolla said he loves to golf and always looks for new outdoor activities.

“More than anything else I enjoy going back to Colorado and being in the mountains,” he said. “I’m very comfortable just being there – I don’t have to do anything. But I walk in the mountains. I mountain bike.

“To me, that’s as good as it gets.”

Laura Moriarty, acting associate vice provost for academic affairs, served on the committee that elected Marolla the director of the center. She said he was perfect for the position.

“He just had this understanding of what needed to be done, and he really seemed energized by it and willing to do it,” she said.

Moriarty, who has worked with Marolla for 10 years, described him as very approachable, caring and dedicated to student involvement.

“He enjoys being around students, likes to see them advance, likes to see them grow,” she said. For example, she said Marolla is still teaching after 30 years and was always willing to take on a challenging class like Sociology 101.

“His pulse is on the student body because he’s there teaching them,” Moriarty said.

Marolla, who was born in Providence, R.I., holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Denver and a master’s degree from the University of Rhode Island. He has done extensive research in the field of sociology, which includes a major study of incarcerated rapists, a long study on self-esteem and most recently, the sociology of sports.

The interest in the sociology of sports developed from a lifetime of playing sports – everything from basketball to racing bikes. Marolla said when his daughter began playing basketball, he became very interested in what was happening to her as an elite athlete.

When discussing his research, Marolla became very serious and reflective. His self-esteem research, he said, helps him to better understand students. Though difficult, his combined fields of work and study give Marolla much to consider, including the current state of society.

“We are a culture that technologically has so advanced over the last 100 years. But socially, culturally . we still go to war to solve our problems, we still rape, still do the same things we did 100 years ago.

“It’s disappointing in that sense. Maybe it will be this century that advancement happens,” he said.

Graduate sociology student Misha Derrig, who took a class with Marolla and worked with him at the Center for Teaching Excellence, said his intensity and intelligence translate to students as well.

“He can make a conversation about normal everyday activities and turn it into a sociological phenomenon,” she said. “He’s extremely intelligent and has accomplished a lot in his life, but yet he talks to you like you are right up there with him.”

Working with Marolla, Derrig said, was always fun. She said he threw birthday parties for his co-workers and made cards out of paper towels.

“Dr. Marolla is extremely personable,” she said. “It’s like you’re in it with him.”

This relatable quality may come from Marolla’s early life in Providence.

“I’m a working class kid,” Marolla said. “As a kid, I lived over a bowling alley. No one in my family had a college education.”

The mission of VCU, he said, has kept him here for 30 years.

“VCU is a university of opportunity. A lot of different people are given the opportunity to get an education,” said Marolla, including many first-generation college students like him. He said this makes VCU a difficult place to be a teacher because students need a great deal of help, but he added the reward is much higher because of it.

“As a faculty member, I’ve taught more than 10,000 students,” he said. “After all that, I am still very enthusiastic about teaching, still get very excited.

“I’m very happy that my career went that way that I’m still excited about what I do.”