FIYou: Tonette S. Rocco


Name: Tonette S. Rocco

Tonette S. Rocco

Hometown: Columbus, OH

Job Title/Department: Professor of Adult Education and Human Resource Development, College of Education

Campus: MMC

In a nutshell (what do you do in your position?): I write a lot with a lot of people, I teach and I direct the Office of Academic Writing and Publication Support. Our goal is to help graduate students and faculty from across the university to improve their writing skills.We sit side-by-side and go through a manuscript. We’ll work on organization, word choice and clarity – things that are important to the writing process.

Also, I am the steering committee chair of the South Florida Education Research Conference, which counts as its members most of the universities and colleges in Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties.

Number of years at FIU: 14

What do you enjoy most about your job? I enjoy working with students and helping them and faculty publish.

What should faculty, staff and students know about the College of Education? We sponsor a really good conference every year that is a professional academic conference. It gives students and faculty a nice venue to share their research locally. For students, it’s an opportunity to share their research without a lot of expense.

Where is your favorite spot on campus? Chili’s. I love their chips.

What is one thing you wish everyone knew about FIU? It’s the best-kept secret in the nation. It’s a very good university with very good faculty and it’s very reasonable to attend.

How do you help make FIU Worlds Ahead? I work in a field, Human Resource Development, where most of the faculty are men. And here I am, the only woman on the team that co-edited the “Handbook of Human Resource Development: the Discipline and the Field” and the “Routledge Companion to Human Resource Development,” which has an international focus. On both projects, my male colleagues come from prominent schools and now FIU’s name is out there on books prominent in the field that will be used in classrooms across the country and read by vice presidents of HR in various corporations.

I’m also working on two more books on writing because there’s still a need for this. When I wanted to become part of the faculty back in 1997, I was told that you have to write and publish. Well, then I asked ‘How do you get published?’ and the answer from most professors was ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Everyone expects you – by virtue of having a doctorate – to know how to get published.

Family snapshot: My husband and daughter live in Ohio, where she is a member of the faculty at Ashland University. I also have a granddaughter who is 6 months old.

First paying job: I was a dental assistant for my father in Cleveland, Ohio. Back then, I wanted to be a dentist but my father discouraged me from going into dentistry. I was good at patient education – I got people to brush and floss that just abhorred the idea. Had I become a dentist, I think I still would have ended up with a Ph.D. in something and I still would have ended up as a faculty member at a university. I love helping people, and now I help in a different way – getting students to write and get published.

Favorite TV show: I don’t watch TV at all. I watched “Monk” when I had the flu.

What is playing on your iPod? I listen to books on tape. Right now, I’m listening to Outlander. I started to listen to books for leisure reading.

Your proudest accomplishment: Becoming part of the faculty at FIU and the award for service I received from the Board of Trustees at The Ohio State University.

What do you do when you are not working at FIU? I’m at home working. I work from home and I work a lot. I’ve turned back around writing projects every night since I got over the flu a bit more than a week ago. I probably am working on 20 projects at a time in various stages. Most are active. For me publishing my writing fulfills my childhood goal of becoming a writer.