One student called Joseph Fanelli the Mr. Rogers of human sexuality.

Whether they were identifying the Syracuse University instructor’s plain sweaters, friendly demeanor or straightforward ways of teaching, it’s clear that Fanelli has similar qualities to the popular children’s TV host, which might seem unusual given what Fanelli teaches at SU.

Fanelli, an instructor in SU’s child and family studies department, has been teaching auditorium-sized sections on human sexuality for more than 30 years. In that time, he’s taught more than 40,000 students at SU.

He has always lived in the central New York area, but his path to teaching human sexuality at SU was anything but conventional.

“Looking at it, I think to myself now, life is an interesting journey. You have to be thoughtful about it, but you have to be flexible because it never works out the way you expect it,” Fanelli said.

Fanelli was going to be a priest. He grew up in Endicott, New York in a conservative Catholic-Italian family. While his father worked long hours at the Endicott-Johnson Shoe Company, Fanelli spent time going to church with his grandfather.

He went on to receive his Masters of Divinity, the penultimate step in becoming a priest, but, in one of the hardest decisions of his life, Fanelli decided not to become ordained as a priest.

“I liked the ministry, I liked working with people,” he said. “I struggled with staying or leaving. Ultimately, it came down to making a decision based on calling.”

He knew his calling was of a different kind and decided he wanted to make his own ministry. After Fanelli dropped out, a friend suggested that he enroll in SU’s new master’s program for marriage and family therapy.

“That’s what I was interested in. Marriage and family therapy is all about relationships,” Fanelli said. “So I went from an I-Thou relationship to an I-You relationship, and I really loved it. I still love it, I still do it.”

When he was evaluating programs, he met Sol Gordon, an SU professor who previously taught human sexuality. Gordon, who died in 2008, took an interest in Fanelli and soon became his mentor. Their relationship turned Fanelli toward the human sexuality topics that he is known for around campus now.

“All that sex stuff, it was the last thing in the world I had any thought of doing,” Fanelli said. “My interest was family counseling and therapy. With Sol, it was a brand new opened door.”

In 1984, four years after he completed his doctorate, he got the call from SU to see if he would take over the retiring Gordon’s human sexuality course.

“I’m thinking, ‘You’ve got to be sh*tting me. I’m supposed to get on stage and just start lecturing?’” Fanelli said. “The only course I ever taught was when I was in the seminary, and I had a class of fourth graders who were deaf.”

And yet students have been responding to Fanelli ever since. Throughout his 31-year career, he went from one section of 300–400 students to two sections of human sexuality per semester.

Though the university has meant a lot to Fanelli, it’s the effect he can have on students that sticks with him. As a part of the course on human sexuality, students must submit a personal reflection at the end.

In his wallet, Fanelli jokes he’s not carrying a condom, but instead a crinkled piece of paper. On it a student had written, “(Human sexuality) is about the love that we feel for the people in our lives … This class did exactly what it set out to do: it showed me how to better love the people in my life, and how to show them that I love them.”

It’s that type of reaction and the hope to help students with their emotional awareness that fuels Fanelli and keeps alive his love for SU, teaching and human sexuality.

“The Orange has been really good to me and my class. What a gig. I get paid to talk about sex,” Fanelli said. “It’s the coolest thing.”

But SU isn’t important to just Fanelli — his family has ties to the university, too. His wife Jenny and his youngest son graduated from SU. When his twin granddaughters were born, Fanelli made sure to buy SU-branded outfits for them.

“SU is very much a part of the fabric of our family. It’s part of who we are and what we do,” Jenny Fanelli said. “His goal is make everybody laugh, but he takes that very seriously and he works very hard on making classes engaging and informative.”

As much as he has become a part of the university, the university has become a part of him too.

“My next car is going to be a Subaru XV Crosstrek because they have orange, the only orange car I could find. My patio furniture is orange. I even painted my fire hydrant orange,” Fanelli said. “I’ve been on campus since ’74. Syracuse has been a significant part of my life.”