![Jerry Salandro]( "Jerry Salandro")
When Gibsonia resident Jerry Salandro was a graduate student at IUP in the 1970s, he did research that was the basis of advanced digital video technology now used in education and athletic programs across the country.
Salandro, president and CEO of IRIS Technologies in Greensburg, and his wife, Leslie, recently donated to IUP the end result of that research, a Landro play analyzer.
In his research, Salandro found that students retained knowledge at a 70 percent higher rate when visual examples could be provided along with classroom lecture. His finding would change how Salandro would train students and employees throughout his career.
"I'm grateful not only for the education and groundwork I did here for this program but also for the integral support and cooperation of IUP faculty and staff in the initial test version of Landro," Salandro said.
“We very much appreciate Mr. and Mrs. Salandro’s generosity,” said Robert Davies, vice president for University Relations at IUP and executive director of the Foundation for IUP. “This equipment will serve to better prepare our students for careers in counseling and will provide that margin of excellence in our already outstanding College of Education and Educational Technology. We are also very proud of Mr. Salandro’s success as one of our alumni and are very honored to have been in partnership with IRIS as a test site for the Landro technology.”
For the past five years, Claire Dandeneau and Lorraine Guth, faculty members in the IUP Counseling Department graduate program, have used a Landro playback analysis model for counseling. Salandro said Dandeneau and Guth's use of the technology, along with the work of Lloyd Onyett and Chris Barber, technology support employees at IUP, has been "invaluable in building the success of the use of this technology in education."
Salandro also credited David Stein and Karen Stein, faculty members in the Special Education and Clinical Services Department who specialize in speech and hearing disorders, for their support of the use of Landro technology.
Recently, Salandro was recognized by the university for his achievements with a Distinguished Alumni Award, the highest honor IUP bestows on alumni, which has been given to fewer than 250 of 120,000 alumni.
After graduating from IUP in 1976, Salandro taught science to grades seven through ten and served as the first media director for the Hempfield School District near Greensburg. He went on to work as a training supervisor for Volkswagen Manufacturing Corporation, using his software and technology expertise to train and educate five thousand employees. It was, he said, the largest hiring and training effort accomplished in Pennsylvania at that time.
In 1980, when color photographs typically took a week to develop, Salandro created a franchise concept for getting pictures developed in one hour. Soon after, he developed the first equipment to transfer photos, slides, and home movies to videotape. On the advent of home media servers and personal video recorders, Salandro developed methods to transfer older media to the digital media format.
Salandro is also responsible for designing the world’s first touch-screen PC controls for the broadcast and cable television industries. He has more than fifty-six patent claims, with more than twenty others pending. His technology and products are being used across the country in places like the Pentagon, NASA, Disney World, and Comcast, as well as in colleges and high schools.
Currently, Salandro serves as a business and training coach at IRIS and at other companies, schools, and universities across the nation. He is also an accomplished and sought-after public speaker on the topics of teaching technologies and ethical business practices.
Salandro was named Business Person of the Year by Westmoreland Economic Development Corporation in 1996. He received the Business Ethics Award from the American Business Ethics Association in 2003, and, in 2004, the Distinguished Alumni Award from California University of Pennsylvania, where he received his bachelor's degree. He serves on the MBA Business Board of Advisors at Seton Hill University and is a past executive director of the Boy Scouts of America.
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