Giovanni was born in Manhattan, New York in 1940, of immigrant Italian parents. He studied at Queens College (BA), Yale University (PhD), and at UC San Diego (Post-Doc studies). He spent the next 40 years teaching undergraduate/graduate courses in experimental psychology and research methods at universities in Beirut, Athens, Istanbul, and Izmir. He retired to San Diego in 2010 and has since completed four books about his travels in Italy, his parents' Italian hometown, and most recently a memoir about teaching, travel, and war during his 18 years in Beirut.
Below he shares how his Yale professors impacted his own teaching style and how he reconnected with the alumni community through Yale Alumni Association regional clubs.
What is your most enduring memory of your time at Yale?
As a graduate student and then a postdoc, I have many enduring memories of my time spent studying Psychology, but the outstanding one was the interdisciplinary research I did with the School of Medicine.
What is the biggest lesson you learned during your time at Yale and how does that shape who you are today?
I came to understand that I was part of the finest educational institution in the U.S., and I was never permitted to forget this. As a result, I was able to obtain long-term teaching positions in Lebanon and Turkey.
How did your time at Yale shape your identity?
In a recent memoir, I described my teaching style as a combination of those of my Yale mentor and of my Yale professors. This combination led to great success as a teacher of undergraduates and as a mentor of graduate students.
What does belonging mean to you and how did you find a sense of belonging at Yale and after?
"Belonging" back in the '60s was determined mostly by hard work on our research. Belonging meant that I could, over the years since my studies, still maintain contact with the past by communicating with former classmates.
How have you stayed engaged with the Yale community since graduating?
I lived abroad for 40 years and lost contact with Yale for a number of years. Istanbul has a working Yale Club, and so I participated in its activities. The greatest event of those years was Yale Week in Turkey in 2010, to which I was invited by the vice president of Bosphorus University (Istanbul). Since retirement, I have participated as a Board Member in the Yale Club of San Diego's activities.
What were your favorite spaces at Yale or in New Haven? Why?
I was at Yale when the School of Architecture building was completed. We would venture from the Hospital area to explore its orange carpeting and concrete walls and have late-night picnics beside the translucent marble of Beinecke Rare Book Library.
