A Bountiful Legacy

The Ivy League and the firefighting profession might seem worlds apart, but not so at the ILR School.

Lecturer Lee Adler, for one, has been working with firefighters for decades, conducting research on issues facing their profession and supporting training needs.

He also teaches their children, some of whom are ILR freshmen.

To the front of a meeting room in the ILR Conference Center last week, Adler called three Class of 2015 members.

From New York, Florida and New Jersey, these are the sons, grandsons and nephews of firefighters, he told 52 members of the New York State Professional Fire Fighters Association at ILR for their 14th annual training session.

Adler explained how Alex Gimenez '15, Adam Kirsch '15 and Eddie McNeilis '15 were members of his ILR Freshman Colloquium last fall.

In groups of about a dozen, all freshmen are introduced to ILR's curriculum through the one-credit colloquium course, led by an ILR faculty member who also serves as adviser to those students. 

Adler said that the progeny of firefighter families landed in his colloquium through chance.

He considers Gimenez, Kirsch and McNeilis part of a long-running ILR research and training relationship with the firefighting profession.

That link received a boost in 2011, Adler said, from ILR Undergraduate Admissions Director Cathleen Sheils, the daughter of a Portsmouth, R.I., firefighter.

She spoke to firefighters on campus for ILR training. Sheils encouraged them, Adler recalled, to urge their children to consider an ILR education. She shared that ILR values the experiences students from firefighter families bring to the school.

Adler, standing among two generations of firefighter families touched by ILR, last week followed up on Sheils' remarks as he introduced the students.

"Here's Page Two of the story -- the bountiful legacy."