The Final Exam is your chance to get to know leaders in the industry. For the March/April 2024 issue, Campus Rec Magazine spoke with Al Gentilini, the director of Campus Recreation at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg (USF St. Petersburg).
1. How did you get started in the industry?
I’ve always been involved with the recreation industry in some capacity whether through participation, student employment, or organizing and directing youth sports camps. It would therefore have been a natural progression to start working in campus recreation. However, it happened by chance during my graduate assistantship (GA). When applying for assistantships, recreation was not listed in my top three because I already had experience in that area. I wanted to round out my resume a little bit more in Student Affairs. As luck would have it, I missed the open house interview day and was left without an assistantship. One of the recreation GA’s had vacated their position the week before school started and, thankfully, I was able to slide right in. As they say, the rest is history.
2. How would you go about describing campus recreation at USF St. Petersburg?
The best way to describe Campus Recreation on our campus is growth. It’s growing and continues to grow fast. Campus Recreation became a stand-alone department just five years ago when I came aboard. Since its inception, we’ve built it from scratch and have come a long way. With the support of the USF Saint Petersburg administration and our Student Government, we’ve been able to expand some of our facilities, increase the number of professional and student staff, and offer a wide range of programs, events and student development opportunities.
3. What has been one of the biggest challenges you have faced throughout your career?
I would say retaining professional staff, especially at a smaller campus, has been my greatest challenge. All strong leaders want to support their professional staff in their career development, but this becomes challenging when there’s not a lot of room for internal advancement. Combining this with economic struggles, many staff members have chosen to move on to a different university quickly or exit the higher education field altogether for a higher salary.
4. What has been one of the biggest accomplishments of your career?
Building a robust recreation department from scratch is something I’m very proud of. However, my biggest accomplishments are the many relationships with students and professional staff I have fostered over the years. I’ve been fortunate to work with some amazing people and retain those relationships over time. I frequently receive calls for professional and personal advice, invitations to former student’s weddings, and even invites to their children’s birthday parties. Each time it happens, I’m delighted and honored to continue to be part of their lives.
5. What is one lesson you have learned that other recreation professionals might benefit from?
The biggest lesson I’ve learned — and thankfully it was early in my career — is we need to remember work is only one-third of our day. There’s so much going on in a person’s life we may not know anything about. We have to see the staff member as a person and not just an employee. Empathy and understanding, along with being honest and straightforward, will go a long way in helping the employees feel they matter and are seen.
6. What is one fun fact about yourself others may not know?
I’m a single father of a 7-year-old who is the center of my world. She brings me joy and laughter every day. So much so I’ve started documenting and posting some of our conversations to create a book for her one day. I’m also starting a podcast soon so I can have recordings of our conversations that one day her kids can listen to as they grow up.
