Geno Auriemma, coach of the NCAA women\u2019s basketball champions, encouraged more than 200 Neag School of Education graduates to merge the arts and sciences into their approach as teachers.<\/p>\n
\u201cTake the science that you learned, add the creative art that\u2019s in your soul, and I think you\u2019re on your way to become a good teacher,\u201d Auriemma said to the Mother\u2019s Day crowd in the Jorgensen Auditorium. An audience member punctuated his point with a loud handclap, and Auriemma responded, \u201cYeah, I like that, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Women\u2019s Basketball Hall of Fame coach was introduced by Neag Dean Thomas DeFranco, who outlined Auriemma\u2019s prowess on the court \u2013 seven NCAA titles, 78 straight wins, four undefeated seasons, five-time national coach of the year, and \u201cmore importantly, inducted into the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame,\u201d the dean quipped about their shared heritage.<\/p>\n
DeFranco relayed an anecdote about the coach\u2019s generosity in helping the dean recruit a top specialist to Neag and praised Auriemma as an educator. \u201cEvery recruited freshman on the women\u2019s basketball team who has finished her eligibility at Storrs has graduated with a degree. I\u2019m sure he is equally proud of that statistic as he is about seven NCAA titles,\u201d DeFranco said.<\/p>\n
As if to punctuate the point, Auriemma started his talk by calling out to Jacquie Fernandes, a senior guard on his team who was earning a Neag degree that day.<\/p>\n
Auriemma, an immigrant to the United States from Italy at the age of 7, spoke of the impact of teachers on his life. \u201cThe most important people in my life were my teachers. If it wasn\u2019t for them I would not have been able to assimilate myself into this culture and to help my parents assimilate themselves into this culture. My teachers taught me everything that I know to this day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later he returned to this theme, saying, \u201cWhat I\u2019m going to encourage you to do is to be for some of the people, if not all, that you come in contact with \u2026that when they are 56 years old \u2013 my age \u2013 they will remember you as the biggest impact on their life.\u201d<\/p>\n
The coach\u2019s speech was peppered with his trademark humor. He noted the on-stage presence of the president of the Neag Alumni Society Sandra Justin, apparently to establish the graduates\u2019 initiation as alumni. \u201cYou\u2019re a Husky forever,\u201d he joked, \u201cas long as your checks don\u2019t bounce.\u201d<\/p>\n
But his message overall was straight from the heart, straight from his own experience.<\/p>\n
He asked the graduates if their responsibilities once they become teachers would be to the principal, the parents or the school board. \u201cNo. Your responsibilities, the way I look at it, is every student that comes to your class either has the potential for greatness, and it\u2019s up to you to make sure they\u2019re great, or they have the potential to be good, and it\u2019s your job to make sure that they\u2019re good. If you have any other responsibilities other than that, then I think you\u2019re in for the wrong reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he delivered his parting advice: \u201cDon\u2019t ever take no for an answer. When someone says you can\u2019t do this, that\u2019s your first step in getting it done.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Geno Auriemma, coach of the NCAA women\u2019s basketball champions, encouraged more than 200 Neag School of Education graduates to merge the arts and sciences into their approach as teachers. \u201cTake the science that you learned, add the creative art that\u2019s in your soul, and I think you\u2019re on your way to become a good teacher,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1855],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2455],"class_list":["post-206934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neag"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-01 08:44:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206934"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206935,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206934\/revisions\/206935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206934"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=206934"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=206934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}