{"id":51853,"date":"2011-12-07T10:09:27","date_gmt":"2011-12-07T15:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=51853"},"modified":"2015-10-02T12:35:28","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T16:35:28","slug":"business-school-alum-finds-success-gives-back-to-uconn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2011\/12\/business-school-alum-finds-success-gives-back-to-uconn\/","title":{"rendered":"Business School Alum Finds Success, Gives Back to UConn"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mohamed<\/a>
Mohamed Hussein, head of the accounting department, left, and donors Glenna and James Agonis. (Ariel Dowski ’14 (CLAS)\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It took Jim Agonis a while to get through UConn, dropping out occasionally to wait on tables and earn money for the next semester. Seven years later, he was successful, graduating from the School of Business with a bachelor of science degree.<\/p>\n

It took a while to get his career going, too. \u201cI earned more as a waiter in college than I did during the first five years of my professional career,\u201d says Agonis. But he succeeded at that as well, working his way up to group vice president of the Kaman Corp., a Fortune 500 company in Bloomfield, then moving to Florida as a partner for one company, buying another, making it grow, selling it, and retiring as a wealthy man.<\/p>\n

Agonis now spends most of his time traveling and fishing around the world with his wife Glenna, and supporting charitable organizations, including an orphanage in Costa Rica, for which he is the principal supporter.<\/p>\n

He hasn\u2019t forgotten the tough years, though. \u201cI have tremendous empathy for the student struggling with academics because of a paper route or an afterschool job. It would be my dream to help someone like that get through school,\u201d says Agonis, who with Glenna made a gift of $100,000 to the Accounting Endowment for Excellence in the School of Business.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m extremely proud of my UConn education. It gave me the technical and administrative skills to become a CPA and group vice president of finance at Kaman Corp., and eventually CEO\/President of my own corporation, Airkaman Cecil Inc.,\u201d says Agonis. \u201cUConn provided the foundation, and I\u2019ll be forever grateful to its faculty and advisors for my success.\u201d<\/p>\n

Agonis is especially grateful for the guidance he received in arranging his course load so if he had to drop out, he could come back and pick up where he left off, without losing a lot of time or credit. He\u2019s also grateful he could start at the campus in Stamford, where he lived, and then transition to the Storrs campus, as a more affordable route.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s exciting to see the direction the University has taken in recent years with the recruitment of top faculty and the physical transformation of the campus,\u201d says Agonis. \u201cDuring the 70\u2019s, when I told people in Washington, D.C., I went to UConn, they said, \u2018It must have been really cold in Alaska.\u2019 Now, everyone recognizes UConn as one of the country\u2019s top 20 public research universities and as a sports powerhouse,\u201d says Agonis, a devoted fan of the woman\u2019s basketball program.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a wise guy in my early days,\u201d he says. \u201cA lot of people never thought I\u2019d graduate, much less achieve what I did. My wife and I make this donation in gratitude for all those at UConn who educated me and put me on the path of success.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Accounting Endowment for Excellence is used to support scholarships for existing accounting majors, and professional development, course innovation, and research for faculty, among other things. \u201cPhilanthropic support is crucial in the current economic environment,\u201d says Mohamed E. Hussein, professor and head of the accounting department. \u201cHowever, Jim\u2019s value to our students and alums exceeds even his substantial gift. We can all learn from his professional career, as well as his philanthropic and civic contributions. He is a role model par excellence.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A successful alum, who waited tables as a student and took seven years to graduate, has donated to a scholarship fund in the accounting department.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":51780,"comment_status":"open","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":[1862,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[43],"class_list":["post-51853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-busn","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 18:09:55","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\/51853","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51853"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104895,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51853\/revisions\/104895"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/51780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51853"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=51853"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=51853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}