By Gregory Zeller
A Stony Brook University alumnus is pumping a decade of support into the Staller Center for the Arts.
Ronkonkoma law firm Campolo, Middleton & McCormick LLP will donate $450,000 to support scholarships and arts programs at the Staller Center through a 10-year “gift commitment,” according to the firm.
The gift continues CMM’s run as “an annual major corporate supporter of the Staller Center for the Arts live season and Stony Brook Film Festival,” CMM added.
It was arranged by SBU grad (BA, history) and CMM Managing Partner Joe Campolo, a past president of the university’s Alumni Association and member of both the Staller Center Advisory Board and the Long Island High Technology Incubator Board of Directors.
Among the projects earmarked in the latest CMM gift: the Alumni Association Past President’s Scholarship program, new sound systems for the Staller Center’s main-stage theater and recital hall and the Joseph N. Campolo Award for Legal Studies.
The Staller Center said in a statement that gifts like the CMM donation directly benefit arts and education outreach across the Long Island community.
“The new sound system that CMM funded was a much-needed upgrade to both theaters and creates a new sleek look and dynamic sound performance,” the statement added. “The Staller Center for the Arts is extremely thankful to Joe Campolo and his CMM colleagues for their unwavering dedication to helping keep the arts thriving.”
Campolo isn’t the only CMM partner to personally support SBU. Senior Partner Scott Middleton – also a university grad (BA, political science) and past president of the SBU Alumni Association, now a member of the university’s Intercollegiate Athletic Board and the Stony Brook Children’s Hospital Task Force – is the namesake of SBU’s Middleton Family Student Athletic Alumni Award.
The 10-year donation also deepens CMM’s commitment to philanthropy. In 2018, the Ronkonkoma firm launched CMM Cares, an initiative designed to rally financial donations and volunteerism around community efforts.