Profile of Alex Pagnani

Alex Pagnani, on-site director of the Duke TIP at UGA, sat down Wednesday morning and spoke press conference style with students from the "Media and the Message: Communicating in the Digital Age" course. This is a profile of Alex compiled from stories written by students in the course. Photo by Joy Hong.


Wake up at 7 a.m., go to work, answer phone calls, sit in meetings, eat, deal with angry parents, deal with sick kids, visit classes, leave to answer more phone calls, hit the sack at 2 a.m. Repeat.


When you first see Alex Pagnani, the On-Site Director for Duke TIP at the University of Georgia, you may not automatically realize that he is in charge of 150 people, but as soon as you see him answer his cell phone in one hand and write notes down on his iPhone in his other hand you know this is a busy man.

From August to May Pagnani is a full time Ph.D. student at the University of Georgia. He said coming to TIP is great because he gets to help gifted students in real life, which is what he is studying.

"It's one thing to learn [from a] book, say, it's another to actually work with gifted students," he said. He also said there are some great surprises that come with gifted students. "They look and sound like normal 15- or 16-year-old students, and then they say something so intellectual they just blow you away."

Although he is only working for Duke TIP as a summer job, Pagnani is already very involved with the program. The chance to be involved in both the academic and residential aspects of TIP is what motivated Pagnani to return as the On-Site Director for the UGA campus, instead of keeping his position as an Instructor like he has done the last two years.

While there are a few changes Pagnani said would be good improvements at TIP, he is happy with how TIP has run for its first term. He wishes that he could have spent more time in the classroom setting, but there have been many emergencies that all need to be addressed, so time didn't allow for it.

Because of his busy schedule, Pagnani doesn’t get much time for himself, but Pagnani's other interests include board games, reading, video games, computers and movies. He even has a Star Wars poster in his TIP office.

"I am a nerd in every possible way," Pagnani said. "I'm proud of my geek identity."

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Here are some "tweets" from Twitter from Pagnani's chat:


@DukeTipDawgs: Alex used to work in university housing for a few years; now a phd student in gifted education here at uga


@DukeTipDawgs: As on-site director "virtually everything that happens here I have a tiny degree of involvement in," Alex says. Also misses classroom a bit.


@DukeTipDawgs: Alex likes the food at UGA. It's really good compared to the other campuses. Can personally vouch double cheeseburgers are awesome.


@DukeTipDawgs: Alex will teach undergraduates the intro. to educational psychology course at UGA in the fall. Will be one of 7 instructors.


@DukeTipDawgs: Alex loves movies. Alex also pro wrestled to raise money for cystic fibrosis. Dressed in spandex and wrestled. Loves Star Wars. Likes fun.


@DukeTipDawgs: "I'm a huge dog fan." Once raised a German shepherd puppy for seeing eye program. His name was Ishmel (sp?).