Two Appointed to Higher Education Board
For Release: Wednesday, Sept. 15, 1999, 3:00 pm.
HARTFORD, Sept. 15 - Two community leaders were sworn in
this afternoon as members of the Board of Governors for Higher Education, the state
coordinating agency for colleges and universities.
Leonard S. Cohen of West Hartford, and Patricia McCann Vissepó of New Haven
join nine others serving on the Board. They were sworn in at an afternoon meeting of the
Board of Governors by Alice V. Meyer of Easton, Board chair.
Cohen is a writer and teacher who previously owned several financial and marketing
services companies. He is active in West Hartford where he has served as chairman of the
Pension Board among other town posts. He also was a member of the Connecticut Commission
on the Arts, a director and trustee of Mount Sinai Hospital and a corporator of Hartford
Hospital. He earned his doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois
and also has a master’s in business administration from the University of Hartford.
He was appointed to the Board by state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin B. Sullivan (D-West
Hartford).
McCann is executive director of Casa Otoñal Housing Corporation and Casa Otoñal,
Inc., a comprehensive human services organization and housing facility in New Haven. Among
her many civic and volunteer activities, she serves on the New Haven Board of Education
which she chaired from 1991-97. She also serves on the Steering Committee for Vision for a
Greater New Haven and on the New Audiences Committee for Long Wharf Theatre in addition to
the United Way of Greater New Haven and the Board of Directors of Planned Parenthood of
Connecticut. A columnist for local newspapers, she is a graduate of City College of New
York and was appointed to the Board by Governor John G. Rowland.
Other members of the Board of Governors are: Albert Vertefeuille of Lebanon,
Vice-Chair; James H. Bates, Lakeville; William A. Bevacqua, Trumbull; Dorothea E. Brennan,
Fairfield; Lile R. Gibbons, Greenwich; Joan R. Kemler, West Hartford; Dorothy B. Leib, New
London; and Harry H. Penner, Jr., Guildford.
Contact: Connie Fraser
(860)947-1801
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