The Prof:
Our fine, feathered friend
by Michael Shute ’93

In fall 1991, as Rowan’s football program began to blossom into a nationally recognized power, a question frequently posed by the out-of-town press was, “So what’s a Prof anyway?”

It is a legitimate question if you don’t know the history behind Rowan University and its roots as a training ground for educators—first as Glassboro Normal School and then as the New Jersey State Teachers College at Glassboro. But the Prof has been a part of the Glassboro campus since 1957 and over the years has been depicted in many ways—and not just as the athletic mascot.

With the University showing off its new Profs athletics logos and mascot this fall, Rowan Magazine takes a nostalgic look at the Prof, its reincarnations and the ways students integrated it with everyday ’Boro life since its humble beginning 50 years ago.

“It took a while for Professor Owl to take hold,” said Claude DiGenova ’60 M’71, the first student to wear the Prof costume. “But during my time, the owl became the symbol of the Varsity Club. Don Pasquale ’59 sketched the owl and we bought ourselves jackets, and the owl endured as long as those jackets were around. It was not a real popular mascot. It didn’t equate to something like the Notre Dame leprechaun, but at that time, the students were given the latitude to try something different—and it worked.”

Everybody’s owl
Though misunderstood and ridiculed for looking too studious to represent college teams as serious athletic contenders, the Prof has enjoyed some popularity away from campus sports. In the 1987 yearbook, several illustrations with the owl motif include academic garb and accessories. The woodcut-style art was embossed on the cover of the 1989 Oak.

Who hatched?
This 1957 clipping from The Whit dispelled the idea of a cheerleading chicken (perhaps a precursor to the eventual accusations of the Prof looking like a chicken hawk). When Glassboro State Teachers College adopted “Professor Owl” as its mascot, freshman Claude DiGenova was the Prof’s alter ego, on hand to help lead cheers at varsity basketball home games (there was no football program).

Dorm room decor
Tacked to a dorm room wall or waved at a game, this vintage felt pennant showed a book-waving Prof who wasn’t afraid to ruffle a few feathers.

Prof pride
North-south rivalry inspired a ’67 cartoonist named Gino to show GSC’s domination of Trenton State College. The Profs’ last win over TSC on the gridiron had occurred in 1948, then a football program hiatus lasted until 1963. When varsity play resumed under Coach Richard Wackar, the Profs finally topped their arch-rival on Oct. 7, 1967, with a 21-0 victory after three straight losses to the Lions. With Rowan’s 14-6 win this season, the Profs lead the all-time series 31-15-2.

After dark
In 1987 Student Activities Board members decided to address student complaints about the lack of weekend activities on campus. The Night Owl name for the biweekly open mic and comedy shows in the Rathskeller probably derived as much from the bird’s habits as college students’ social schedules, but there was probably at least a hint of the Prof personality in the owl motif.

“I had led some cheers in the freshman orientation contest between the freshman and sophomore classes,” said DiGenova, who played the role of Professor Owl during his first two years in college. “A few of the fellows asked me to consider going out for cheerleading, so I approached Mrs. Colby, who was the adviser, and I became outfitted as the mascot.”

DiGenova recalled cooperating for the Prof’s first publicity photo, seemingly taking flight. “The cheerleading team was practicing out on the field,” he said. “I just jumped up and they took the picture. There was no trampoline or acrobatics involved.”

Returning to campus as a Profs fan after graduating, DiGenova said the mascot just wasn’t the same. “I recall in the 1970s where the owl body was pretty much discarded and what appeared to be young ladies would show up wearing the head and gold robes once or twice at football games.”

The owl of enlightenment
After the Venue’s College of Doom issue tested the limits of 70s school spirit propriety, student satirists followed with an issue “that freshmen could take home to their parents,” said Doug Kirby ’79. Once again, the Prof persona moved (or in this case, was owl-napped) from the athletic arena to belong to the campus in general. In fact, Kirby said that the Venue staff had its own owl mascot—a plastic garden decoy that roosted in the office and became known as Professor Hooties. With a Rapidograph pen in hand and tongue in cheek, Kirby brought Professor Hooties to life in Venue’s “public relations issue” to decry poor campus morale and suggest the a college-wide chant, “Glassboro is great” until everyone was happy.

Whose news?
As a student newspaper, The Whit touts its independent voice, but for a few years it chose to identify itself at least somewhat with the increasingly prominent Prof. Reduced to its simplest elements in line art, a capped and tasseled owl head adorned the banner of The Whit from 1983 to 1987.

Masked mascot
The 1985 Oak saluted Brian Kass ’85 with a profile headlined, “WHO was that very large overgrown bird WHO made the fans smile and cheer?” Kass was “Mr. Who, the official mascot of GSC.” It was the second incarnation of a live mascot after the Prof hibernated in the mid-1970s.

“We really didn’t have a mascot at the time,” Kass said. “My friend, Mary Danielsen ’85, and I went to Philly, bought some material and designed a costume that looked a little more like a bat than an owl. It was basically a couple of wings and a black Lone Ranger-style mask with a little yellow beak attached. The school gave painters caps to all the freshmen and we took one of those caps and she sewed a couple of ears on it.

“I ran around at the football games for fun and ran on the track a couple of times when we’d score a touchdown,” he said. “Dr. Briglia [the athletic director] stopped me and told me to get off the track. I wasn’t an official mascot and I was sort of getting in the way of things. But a short time later, it was decided that it was time for us to have a mascot and they went out and spent the money to get a real uniform and that’s how I started doing it officially.”

Kass said Karen Enderly ’86 filled in when he couldn’t make it to games. “Of all the things I ever did, this is what everyone remembers me for,” says Kass who was WGLS station manager, an SGA senator, a writer for Avant and a campus tour guide, among other things. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. The fact that I’m remembered at all is amazing.”

Standard strut
In the mid-90s, Rowan’s teams were gaining in stature and the need for a standard rendering of the Prof for uniforms and promotions became apparent. Cindy Crane ’95 remembers working with Sports Information Director Sheila Stevenson and Publications Director Ed Ziegler M’69 on the project. “We looked at mascots from other schools, got a book about owls and then I pieced together body parts digitally,” she said. “It was line art in black and white.” With a jersey over its muscle-bound torso and no cap, gown or eyeglasses to confuse anyone about being bookish, the professorial Prof was officially gone. In 1996, Chris Cullmann ’99 and Rob Cappoli ’97 refined the illustration and added color. The beefed-up mascot strutted through the next 10 years with few changes and appeared on the faces of wristwatches given to the ’96 men’s basketball team when they won the Division III National Championship.

Extreme makeover, Prof edition
After nearly 50 years of explaining the origin of the Prof to opposing teams, sports reporters and our own new students and faculty, most Rowan insiders have the story down cold—even if it’s tough to convince observers that our scholar-inspired Profs can hold their own against teams with intimidating monikers like Cougars, Scarlet Raiders and Red Dragons. But the Prof is part of the fabric of campus life and in 2006, Athletic Director Joy Heritage Solomen ’69, M’75 commissioned a redesign of the figure and typography that identify sports teams. The new Prof boasts a fierce scowl, swooping wings and talons that look like they mean business. Above, women’s soccer midfielder Jamie Weist ’07 was one of the first athletes to wear a uniform with the new look in the fall season.