He Left His Mark

“Dean Valentini was a friendly, approachable, ever-constant presence during my four years at Columbia. One always got the sense that the students were his favorite part of the job. It was apparent that he not only cared deeply, but was always actively looking for ways to improve the Columbia education. To that end, he never once said no to a request — large or small — for assistance from this over-eager ’club kid’, who dedicated his college time to the student group CORE: Columbia Organization of Rising Entrepreneurs.

“His accessibility alone would have been enough to endear him to me but the real kicker was that he and I shared a common-ish background: him from one side of Appalachia in rural southwestern Ohio, me from the other side in rural western Virginia. He was the dean, but he was also the first person I met at Columbia who had come from anywhere like where I had come from, and that was, quite simply, pretty cool.

“He left his mark, never lost his ‘Aw, shucks’ or his Beginner’s Mind and Columbia is a better school and a better education because of it!”