Louis Sinopoli Passes Away

January 8, 2014

The AARC was saddened to learn of the death on Jan. 8 of Louis Sinopoli, EdD, RRT, AE-C, FAARC.

“The entire AARC community, including educators across the nation, are mourning Dr. Sinopoli’s loss,” says AARC President George Gaebler, MSEd, RRT, FAARC. “His contributions to advancing the educational standing of our profession are great.”

Renowned throughout respiratory care for his ability to innovate, Dr. Sinopoli will particularly be remembered for the work he did to advance respiratory care into the world of defensible, statistically validated competency examinations. Working with the NBRC, where he served as both a volunteer and as a Board Trustee over many years, he was instrumental in upgrading the quality of the RT written examination, making it possible for the profession to move to the forefront of competency-based testing years ahead of similar professions.

A devoted advocate of distance learning strategies, Dr. Sinopoli was also one of the earliest RT educators to adopt the principles of computer-based instruction, and he shared his expertise with the AARC on many projects.

When the AARC was awarded several significant federal grants to develop instructional and curriculum tools for respiratory therapy training programs in the 1970s, Dr. Sinopoli played a major role as well. The work that came out of those grants went a long way towards providing much needed resources to enhance the quality of entry level programs across the country.

Louis Sinopoli grew up in Bayonne, NJ, and first learned about the profession of respiratory care when his karate instructor, who was also a medical technologist, gave him a job in the inhalation therapy department at a local hospital. He fell in love with the profession and went on to earn his bachelor of science degree in respiratory care and instruction technology from the State University of New York, Empire State College in 1975.

He taught in the RT program at Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, NY, for seven years before moving to California, where he earned his doctorate from UCLA in 1981, specializing in research methods and evaluation. He was awarded the Association’s highest honor, the Jimmy A. Young Medal, in 2004.

Dr. Sinopoli’s final post in the profession was as program director and professor of the respiratory care program at El Camino College in Torrance, CA.