Making Time for More Degrees

From African American Studies and Biotechnology to Psychology and Social Science, Montclair State University Adjunct Professor Joseph Segriff has an interest – and a degree – in it. Many of the 24 college degrees he’s earned from 13 colleges and universities over the last 35 years adorn his living room walls. To date, he’s attained three doctorates, one post-master’s Education Specialist degree, six master’s, two bachelor’s and 12 associate degrees, not to mention many certificates.

Why so many degrees?

“I like being a lifelong learner,” says Segriff, who has taught at Montclair for four years. “I like continuing my educational pursuits as a thinker and a learner.”

Segriff, who teaches two classes of Fundamentals of Speech in the School of Communication and Media, adds: “It’s like the Buddhists say, ‘The important time is now, the important place is here.’ And there’s nowhere I’d rather be than in a seat in a classroom or in front of students teaching.”

Not surprisingly, Segriff’s well-versed on a variety of subjects and finds psychology and biology particularly interesting. “Psychology addresses human issues in a way that biology doesn’t. But biology demands of itself, a certain degree of exactitude.” It also demands lots of math courses, which he admits are “not my strong suit,” particularly pre-calculus. He jokes that he’d rather get “the needle” than take pre-calc again.

A loquacious learner

Segriff’s supervisor, Assistant Professor Marylou Naumoff, coordinator of the School of Communication and Media’s Fundamentals of Speech Program, recalls that their first conversation during his job interview lasted about an hour and a half. “He’s very loquacious. He’s so smart and has so many interests.”

Segriff says he knew early on he wanted to stay in academia. He’s worked primarily part time as an adjunct, which allows him time to take classes, study and write papers (he once wrote six in one night).

It probably also helps that in addition to his part-time work schedule, he sleeps only three to four hours a night, something he says he’s done for the past 40-plus years. “So, I’ve been able to get a lot of work done,” he says, adding, “I have an enormous amount of energy.”

Segriff says he’s never sought degrees for jobs or money. “It’s kind of like stepping into your own shadow, and instead of escaping yourself, you become more of the self you imagine yourself to be. I think that has a lot to do with my educational journey and why I pursued more degrees. It’s just part of who I am.”

While his many degrees are one measurement of learning, self-efficacy – or his belief in his ability to be able to get it done – is his ultimate goal. “Self-esteem, for me, is not that important,” he says. “What’s really important is self-efficacy. And if you don’t have self-efficacy, in my view, you don’t own your accomplishments.”

Segriff’s love of learning, Naumoff says, is an admirable reminder of what a liberal arts education is all about. “It’s the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake and just a true intellectual thirst and curiosity that I find so wonderful and refreshing. Joseph embodies all of those values that we, as a university system, are trying to preserve and uphold and also still make relevant in a contemporary context. I love that Joseph is pursuing his passion, taking advantage of all the opportunities he can find just to learn more. It’s not like he has this specific end goal of getting a tenure track job. He just wants to keep feeding that brain of his.”

Degrees of knowledge

In the pursuit of that brain fuel, Segriff has most recently earned a dozen associate degrees, including 10 from 2020 to 2022, and seven in 2022 alone. Coursework was both in person and online.

A breakdown of Segriff’s degrees as of February 2023 include:

• Doctorates – [3] Two from Drew University, Doctor of Medical Humanities and Doctor of Letters, and one from University of Buffalo, PhD in English Education
• Post-master’s degree – [1] Education Specialist, Rutgers University
• Master’s – [6] Two from Plattsburgh State University College (now SUNY – Plattsburgh), of Arts in Liberal Studies: English Language and Literature; of Science in Education – Administration and Supervision; two from Fairleigh Dickinson University, General and Theoretical Psychology and Administrative Science; and one each from Kean University, Psychology; and Monmouth University, Psychological Counseling, respectively; (He needs to complete an internship in order to obtain a seventh master’s.)
• Bachelor’s – [2] Anthropology and English, Plattsburgh State University College;
• Associate degrees – [12] Six from Hudson County Community College in Health Services, Sociology, History, Psychology, Biology and Biotechnology; two from Salem Community College Liberal Arts and Health Science, and one each from Bergen Community College, Cinema Studies; Clinton Community College, Humanities and Social Science; Social Science, Middlesex College, African American Studies; and Warren County Community College, Social Science. Mostly, he graduated with honors.
• He’s currently taking classes at Reading Area Community College and Essex County College, where he expects to graduate with an Associate of Arts in Psychology and an Associate of Science, respectively, this spring.

As for the community college degrees, Segriff says it’s a matter of economics; it’s cheaper to take community college courses than courses at a university. “It’s definitely more affordable, and it allows me to go into some areas that I know if I was to go in those areas as a grad student, I wouldn’t be prepared. So, I can delve a little bit into biology, biotechnology without having to worry about really doing very poorly because I’m not going to get a job in that area. I’m interested in getting a degree and being able to say, ‘Hey, you know, I did OK in biology. I wouldn’t get to medical school but I’m not looking for that.’” He did more than OK – he graduated with honors.

“As impractical as I am, spending money chasing degrees I don’t even need, the thing is it kicks into my self-efficacy, and that makes me happy,” he says.

Segriff has also taught at several of the schools where he’s studied, and the subjects he’s taught – at 22 different colleges and universities – are as varied as his degrees. While the majority have been writing courses (he’s a poet, book chapter writer and an award-winning essayist), he’s taught everything from remedial reading and neuropsychology to English and public speaking.

“Public speaking is the course I like teaching best of all because it’s the one course that when you teach students just that one semester, you’re right down in the foxhole with them. I tell my students the very first day of class, ‘A week from now you have to weather all those eyeballs looking at you and that’s hard to do because you’re thinking that they’re looking in the crawl spaces of your mind and they know something about you; they don’t,’” he says. “You have to look right back at them and control the energy. When you’re a speaker, you have a relationship with your audience.”

His vast knowledge and teaching method may make for an “adjustment period” for his speech students, Naumoff says, “because he’s asking bigger questions. Maybe they weren’t coming into the course used to being self-reflective or pulling things from different historical events.” Not surprisingly, Segriff urges his students to learn about those subjects.

The early years

A native of Saranac Lake, New York, Segriff’s educational sojourn started at Clinton Community College in Plattsburgh, where he also taught in the early 1990s.

Segriff says he was a good but not excellent high school student. In college, he started making amends for being more of a jock and less of a star pupil (he played high school baseball and went to Ithaca College on a baseball scholarship). “I wanted to make up for the years I felt I wasted when I could have been very high on the honor roll,” he says, adding that he became an excellent student in college, making mostly As.

Time is valuable

As for any future areas of interest and study, he says: “A master’s in virology would be very interesting to me. It’s fascinating, when you look at bacteria through a microscope; it first looks like artwork, and you kind of realize how small we are in this world. And once you recognize how insignificant you are, that’s the entry level to make your life more significant.”

The 67-year-old Segriff says he’ll never have to look back at his life and wonder if he did enough. “I’ve done a lot. Even if I didn’t go for another class or another degree, I’ll still be plenty satisfied. We have a debit card on our time. I mean, I could be gone tomorrow. What’s far more important than money is time. And you have to spend time doing what really appeals to you.”

Story by Staff Writer Sylvia A. Martinez. Photos by John J. LaRosa.