Donor news

CCPA announces landmark gift to benefit Community Schools

Room will be named to honor memory of enthusiastic educator

Image: Students discuss a group project in what will be the Charlie K. Community Schools Room.
Students discuss a group project in what will be the Charlie K. Community Schools Room. Image Credit: Jonathan Cohen.
Charlie Kochersberger was a loving and skilled educator committed to PreK-12 education, said those who knew him. But his time working with students was cut short.

In 2007, at age 28, he took his own life after a three-year battle with heroin addiction, according to his parents, Janet C. Watrous and Robert C. Kochersberger Jr.

They retired recently, making the timing right to increase their support of Binghamton University’s College of Community and Public Affairs (CCPA), with a gift to benefit a program they hope will honor Charlie’s memory, Kochersberger said.

Their gift is the largest single gift ever made to the Binghamton Fund for CCPA.

“They are some of the kindest, most heartfelt people one can ever meet,” CCPA Dean Laura Bronstein said. “They love and are committed to making the world a better place through education at Binghamton University.”

CCPA is using the support to advance the Binghamton University Community Schools (BUCS) program. In recognition of the donors’ generosity, BUCS’ home on the first floor of the University Downtown Center will be named the Charlie K. Community Schools Room.

Charlie Kochersberger Charlie’s first job after graduating from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., in 2001, was as a teacher assistant with kindergarten and first-grade students. He was named teacher assistant of the year in 2003, and began a graduate program in elementary counseling at North Carolina State University in 2005. But in between those years, he became addicted to heroin, and “the demons of addiction were just too much for him,” his father said.

“We hope that his spirit and enthusiastic embrace of his public school can be reflected in the work done by the students in the community schools program,” Kochersberger said. “It would be great if some of the work done by community schools helps even one student avoid the horror of addiction.”

The gift will make a direct impact on the program and the people it serves, said BUCS Director Luann Kida ’01, MA ’03.

BUCS manages the needs of 10 school districts in Broome County, where Binghamton University is located, and one school in Chemung County.