Page 91 - LBHS Reunion Album V3

Carl Viola

I was born in Bronx, New York and moved to New Jersey when I was six. I attended Our
Lady Star of the Sea Grammar School before attending L.B.H.S. The first in my family to
attend college, I received my Bachelors from Richard Stockton State College and my
Masters from Fairleigh Dickinson University. I also attended the Institution for Higher
Education Management and a summer program on negotiating at Harvard.

I served as a Navy Hospital Corpsman for four years, assigned to the marines in 1968-69,
th
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and assigned to the 2 Battalion, 5 Marines in Vietnam. I received two purple hearts
during my tour in Vietnam. While attending college, I started an on-campus Veteran
fraternity and eventually started a Veteran’s program that went on to be a statewide and
national veteran’s organization—The N.J. and The National Association of Veteran
Program Administrators.

I joined the N.J. Department of Higher Education’s Veteran’s State Approving Agency in
1979 and devoted the next thirty years of my professional career to serving veterans and
higher education administration.

I joined Fairleigh Dickinson University as the Assistant to the President for Strategic
Planning in 1990 and held a series of increasingly more responsible positions retiring in
2009 as the University’s Executive Vice President. Among my greatest accomplishments
at the University were achieving the University’s first surplus budget in 17 years,
overseeing over 250 million dollars of capital projects, and starting a branch campus in
Vancouver, British Columbia.

I have two lovely daughters and two grandchildren.

I ran my first half marathon when I was 60 and enjoy running, reading, golf, the beach
and traveling.