By Heidi Kurpiela


“If you’ve ever had one teacher who has really made a difference than you know where I’m coming from,” Cory Morrison told his theatre class last week as he urged students to sign his petition.

So far Morrison has 500 signatures. His goal: to ensure that his favorite teacher will have a job next fall.

His favorite teacher is Tom Stender, an adjunct furniture design teacher who, according to his students and colleagues works just as hard and maybe just as often as any full-time teacher. Yet Stender has been an adjunct for two years now and he can no longer make a living off the part-time position.

The problem is that Buffalo State College can’t afford to give him a full-time one either.

“He’s pretty much got a full-time load,” says Morrison, who is petitioning the school board to give his teacher the full-time pay and status he deserves.

Retired art teacher Jackie Rotundo says; “I know a good teacher when I see one. He gets so little pay as it is. He’s practically volunteering his time.”
Morrison says in the two years that Stender has been teaching the entire design department has benefited.

Morrison says: “He helps people who aren’t even in his class. The quality of work has skyrocketed! Before Tom came half of us were ready to abandon the program. Now I’ve grown tremendously…and I built this chair with no 90 degree angles—I never would have done it without his help.”

Rotundo agrees; “Cory’s work has really blossomed. Tom just inspires students to go above and beyond. He has such an avant-garde style.”

His style is unique. Table legs are perfectly slanted as if pulled from the set of a Tim Burton film; chairs have spiral backs like intricate harp strings and cabinets are round and open like big bellies.

On his Web site, Stender describes his craft like this:

“Furniture design has always been expressive, whether of opulence, motion, grace, or efficiency. At its best it can explore the tension between its evocative potential and its functional intention; yet the object remains undeniably a table, a chair, a cabinet.”

Stender, who grew up in Minnesota, came to Buffalo as a graduate student at the University of Buffalo. At UB he taught as an assistant in the English department.

“I loved it,” he says. “After I graduated I was designing studio furniture and looking for something exciting to fill in the spaces.”

That’s when he applied for a position as an adjunct at Buffalo State, where he’s taught junior and senior wood design to nearly the same set of students for four semesters.

“Working with the same group all the time means you can really see how they’ve progressed and it just knocks me out,” says Stender.

Barb Chaffee, secretary to the design department says, “The students are very lucky he’s here, but they seem to know that.”

Carol Townsend, chair of the design department, says the students really appreciate this teacher.
She says she is doing everything in her power to keep Stender.

“He’s scheduled to teach three different courses next fall,” Townsend says. “No one knows what’s going to happen with the budget situation then. If there is a cut, adjuncts are the first to go.”

“We have a number of adjuncts in our department and we’re not specifically targeting Tom. I think the issue is that the students want to see him (employed) on a permanent basis.”

Which is exactly what Stender and his students want.

“There’s no difference between what I’m doing and what other (full-time) teachers are doing,” says Stender.

Stender says it isn’t that his position is being eliminated, it’s that his position, as he puts it, “pays below minimum wage.”

“I love what I’m doing,” he says. “I’m good at it. But I can’t afford to keep doing it and that’s a shame.”

Townsend points out that if the tuition increase goes into effect next fall than hiring Stender full-time may be feasible.

Until then Morrison is on a mission.

“This petition will get me in to see the people I need to see,” says Morrison.

“I need to work my way up the ladder … all the way to President Howard. I won’t settle for anything else. The administration needs to know we care.”

Stender knows.

He says, “Cory called a meeting last Thursday and gave this really wonderful heart-warming speech. It was so nice of him. It just knocked me out.”

· Tom Stender’s Web site
· BSC’s wood design department’s homepage
· BSC wood designs: