Campus Champion

One of the most active people running around the College’s athletic fields during the summer isn’t a competitor, but a busy Athletics Department staff member who is relied on for a little bit of everything. Larry Miller ’11 has served as the assistant director of summer sports camps for the past several weeks, juggling many of the day-to-day duties that involve young athletes training on campus. And during New York Jets Training Camp, it’s not uncommon he's hanging banners or executing behind-the-scenes work. With any job tied to athletics, there’s a good chance Larry does it — and does it well.

Students begin returning to SUNY Cortland on Friday, Aug. 23. In all, College officials expect approximately 7,200 students to be enrolled for the fall semester. Classes begin on Monday, Aug. 26.

On Thursday, Aug. 22, the campus will open its 16 residence halls, the West Campus Apartments and Leadership House to approximately 100 new residential students who did not attend the summer orientation program.

With the exception of some upper class members and returning students occupying the new Dragon Hall residential facility, the majority of new residential students will move in the following day. Most returning residential students will occupy their rooms Saturday, Aug. 24, through Sunday, Aug. 25.

Between Friday and Sunday, access will be limited on Prospect Terrace and from Graham Avenue to Neubig Road, which winds past the SUNY Cortland residence halls to the Broadway intersection. Traffic will proceed one-way, in a westerly, downhill direction from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. during this time. On Friday, university police will limit traffic solely to first-year or transfer students moving into the residences. Neubig Road will be closed to traffic from 5 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. during all three move-in days.

Move In Day is all about getting everythng settled in at the residence hall for the student in your family so he or she can have an enjoyable and productive semester.

Parents or guardians who are helping their new or returning student move into a residence hall should approach from Graham Avenue, quickly unload their vehicle, and proceed immediately to the Park Center and Professional Studies Building parking lots. Bus service will be available between the parking lots, Corey Union and the residence halls. Faculty, staff and others with business on the campus are encouraged to park at Park Center and the Professional Studies Building and use the bus service.

Faculty and staff are invited to join the Welcome Team that includes many early returning fall varsity athletes and helps new students move into the residence halls from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. There are two shifts each day: 8 a.m. to noon and noon to 4 p.m. Volunteers can choose to sign up for one or two shifts. To sign up today, faculty and staff may log in to their online myRedDragon account, select the Faculty/Staff tab and look for the Welcoming Team Signup link on the lower left. Volunteers will receive a “Dragon Haller” t-shirt for making the move-in process welcoming and easy.

On Thursday, Aug. 22, all faculty, professional and classified staff members are invited to attend SUNY Cortland President Erik J. Bitterbaum’s annual opening address and faculty meetings at 8 a.m. in the Corey Union Function Room. The president will speak and senior administrators will introduce new faculty and staff members and report on their respective areas.

Enlisting the help of a cart, one family helps their daughter with her move into a residence hall for the fall semester.

Marking the start of another academic year, the Fall 2013 Academic Convocation begins at 4 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 25, in the Park Center Alumni Arena. The hour-long ceremony is designed for all first-year and new transfer students. All SUNY Cortland faculty and professional staff are encouraged to attend.

Welcome Week will offer a number of events geared to help new students connect with the campus community and assist them in their transition and adjustment to college life. For more information about Welcome Week events, contact Campus Activities and Corey Union at 607-753-5574.

On campus, the truly unprecedented level of facility changes continues. Portable trailers in various locations will continue to provide the campus community with temporary faculty and staff office and classroom space for the coming year.

Contractors are on time to complete for the fall semester the College’s newest, 229-bed residence hall. Named Dragon Hall, the facility is located at the end of Hayes and Hendrick halls facing Casey and Smith Towers. Inside it resembles the eight-year-old Glass Tower Hall at the opposite end of the quad. The residence will offer many of the same student amenities while demonstrating environmental sustainability.

Also completed is Phase I of a campus-wide electrical infrastructure upgrade, involving the improvement of a substation near the Route 281 entrance.

The two-year project to install individual boilers in each building and retire the less energy efficient, central steam plant located behind Old Main will be finished before the heating season begins.

At the Bowers Hall site, the College’s primary science facility after one year continues to undergo expansion and renovation of the Bowers I wing. A new planetarium building is rising beside the main buildings. The entire project is slated for completion in January.

The Dowd Fine Arts Center has undergone more than a year of mostly internal renovations and is set to be finished and reopened for the spring semester. The large, new addition on top won’t include classrooms but it will bring air conditioning to the building, which now houses a dance studio. Until it reopens, the classes, concerts and gallery exhibitions that normally occur within will continue to be held elsewhere on campus, and, in the case of Dowd Gallery programs and exhibitions, off campus at the Main Street SUNY Cortland facility.

Work that began last fall continues on the crown jewel of the planned campus construction, the new $56 million Student Life Center. Located on the site of the former Carl “Chugger” Davis Field near the heart of campus, this multi-purpose building will greatly expand student recreational, club and social life opportunities when it is finished as expected by December 2014 to open in January 2015. The road that ran past the construction site, Pashley Drive, was closed for extensive renovation part of last year. The recently reopened thoroughfare no longer features parking but is serving all traffic as well as cyclists with a new bike path.            

Any conversations about SUNY Cortland’s training camp ties to the NFL often involve the College’s partnership with the New York Jets.

But now, thanks to football team defensive coordinator Ola Adams, there’s a new story to tell.

The promising 27-year-old coach will participate in the Bill Walsh NFL Minority Coaching Fellowship program with the Chicago Bears when their training camp begins Thursday, July 25. He’s one of five fellowship recipients the team selected to observe and participate in preseason practice at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Ill.

The goal is to deliver a slice of professional experience to talented minority coaches who hope to one day obtain a full-time coaching job in the NFL — a career dream for Adams.

“(The fellowship) means a lot,” said Adams, who graduated from Concord University (W. Va.) in 2008 and assisted at SUNY Cortland in 2009 before returning as the College’s defensive coordinator in 2011. “I had been trying for five years and I know it’s the opportunity that I need to get my foot in the door.”

If anyone under the age of 30 can speak to perseverance, it’s Adams, who grew up in a low-income section of northern Virginia with a single mother working double shifts to provide for her family. He used football “as a vehicle to get through life,” improving his once-average marks in the classroom to earn a college scholarship.

But it didn’t end with a stellar Div. II career at Concord that saw him earn all-conference accolades or with a tryout for the Washington Redskins as a free safety. He knew he wanted to pass along the gifts associated with the game to younger players. One of the earliest opportunities came at SUNY Cortland, although not with ease.

Adams’ car broke down in the middle of Pennsylvania on the way to his first interview with head coach Dan MacNeill in 2009. He called his mother from the road and debated postponing the interview.

“I told her I just wanted to come home,” Adams said. “She was like: ‘No, we’re going to make this happen. We’re going to get you a Greyhound ticket and you’re going to make it up there.’”

He interviewed on three hours of sleep and struck up a relationship with MacNeill that has become one of the budding coach’s most treasured.

When he was hired as SUNY Cortland's defensive coordinator at age 24, Ola Adams became the youngest coordinator in the country at the time.

“I tell people all the time that my relationship with Coach Mac is special to me,” Adams said. “Just for us to be able to come together and for him to be able to believe in me at such a young age, it says a lot about the kind of person he is.”

He spent a year at the College as a defensive backs coach before taking the same job at Glenville State (W. Va.) in 2010. When Glenville State’s defensive coordinator position opened up after one season, Adams was intrigued and prepared using MacNeill as a sounding board for an hour-long mock interview.

Ultimately, that job went to someone else. But MacNeill came calling shortly afterwards and drew Adams’ attention to the same position at SUNY Cortland. At 24 years old, he became the youngest coordinator in the country at the time.

In two seasons with Adams leading its defense, SUNY Cortland’s football team has posted a collective 18-4 record. More importantly, the young assistant has continued to develop a reputation built on his own success and the ability he sees in others.

In February, for instance, he was selected to participate in the NFL-NCAA Coaches Academy in Charlotte, N.C., another seminar for football’s up-and-comers. Then a few weeks later, he spent a day at the Finger Lakes Residential Center, a juvenile detention facility, speaking to youngsters who grew up surrounded by the same challenges he once faced.

“The first thing that I asked those kids … was to raise their hands if they grew up in a single-parent home,” Adams said. “Every group, almost every kid raised his hand and it opened the door for me to say: ‘Hey, that’s not an excuse for you to be getting in trouble and ending up in here. I was in the same boat as you.’”

As the latest example of Adams’ willingness to persevere, look no further than the prestigious training camp fellowship.

In 2009, the year he arrived in Cortland, he applied for the same fellowship with all 32 NFL teams and received rejection letters from all of them. He made a giant poster out of many of them, then pinned it to the ceiling above his bed.

“Every day, when I woke up and went to sleep, it was the first and last thing that I saw,” said Adams, who was never sad or angry with the process, only motivated by it. “It was like: ‘Hey, they’re writing back to me. I’m a step closer.’ And that’s how I looked at it.”

Four years later, in typical Ola Adams fashion, the persistence will pay off over the next three weeks with the NFL’s Bears, a team known for its defensive prowess. He’s about to participate in a program that has trained many of football’s greatest coaches, including Super Bowl winners Tony Dungy and Mike Tomlin.

“I don’t take any of it for granted at all,” Adams said. “I’m just going to take full advantage of the opportunity. That’s what it's always been about: trying to make the most of every opportunity.”

Area school administrators will gather on the SUNY Cortland campus on Wednesday, Aug. 14, to discuss a form of teacher evaluation that is fast gaining momentum as an effective way to help educators identify their own strengths and weaknesses.

The novel approach, evidence-based observation for teacher evaluation, and other pressing topics of interest to district and building administrators, curriculum teams, certificate of advanced studies candidates and curriculum area coordinators are part of the 2013 Francis J. Cheney Educational Leadership Summer Conference. The event takes place from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in Sperry Center.   

The free conference is geared for all area school administrators, future administrators and students enrolled in SUNY Cortland’s Educational Leadership Department. Louise M. Conley, Ph.D., and the Cortland College Foundation, are the conference sponsors.

Participant registration is required to attend the conference. To register for the event, which includes lunch and refreshments, or to receive more information, contact the Educational Leadership Department by calling 607-753-2444 or by emailing janice.eaton@cortland.edu.

The conference marks its fifth year as an annual event. At this year’s conference, titled “Evidence-Based Observation for Teacher Evaluation,” the educational administrators informally will discuss areas where educational leadership may be demonstrated, such as:

• Defining what is evidence-based observation;

• Explaining the reasons to conduct evidence-based observation;

• Understanding how evidence-based observation differs from current practice;

• Knowing what an evaluator should look for when observing a lesson; and,

• Recognizing what constitutes “good evidence.”

Exploring the topic with attendees will be Barbara Phillips, Broome-Tioga Board of Cooperative Educational Services and Race To The Top Network Team coordinator; and Denise Cook, elementary principal in the Deposit Central School District.

Kevin Mack, who chairs the Educational Leadership Department, works with an 11-member advisory board composed of regional school administrators to organize the one-day summer conference. He views it as an opportunity for school principals and other leaders to foster fair and effective teacher evaluations.

“This training is not rubric specific,” Mack said. “Instead, participants will practice collecting evidence based on specific categories and criteria that are common in each of the New York state-approved rubrics.”

The day will feature a large group discussion led by Phillips and Cook followed by small group discussions facilitated by members of the advisory team. The arrangement is designed to encourage the free exchange of ideas in a small group setting.

Named after Francis J. Cheney, who served as Cortland Normal School principal from 1891 until his death in 1912, the educational conference was created and funded by Cheney’s granddaughter, Louise M. Conley of Princeton, N.J. Conley chairs the Cortland College Foundation Board of Directors.

The conference’s mission is to create a learning community for educational leaders that enhances and supports the success of all students through ongoing professional development, refinement of leadership skills and networking. 

SUNY Cortland will open its 2013-14 academic year with the pomp and circumstance of the Academic Convocation on Sunday afternoon, Aug. 25, in the Park Center Alumni Arena.

All first-year and new transfer students, along with the SUNY Cortland faculty, librarians and professional staff, are invited to participate in this hourlong event, which will begin at 4 p.m.

“Academic Convocation at SUNY Cortland marks the beginning of a student’s academic journey,” said SUNY Cortland President Erik J. Bitterbaum. “An important milestone, the event affords faculty and staff the opportunity to formally welcome incoming students to the College. In addition, the ceremony reflects the supportive role of the entire campus community in ensuring academic achievement.”

The Academic Convocation processional begins with the all-College gonfalonier, who leads in the faculty, followed by the Schools of Arts and Sciences, Professional Studies and Education gonfaloniers. Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Mark Prus will carry the all-College gonfalon, while the gonfalons representing SUNY Cortland’s three schools will be carried by Andrea Lachance, dean of the School of Education; R. Bruce Mattingly, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences; and John Cottone, dean of the School of Professional Studies.

The processional concludes when the mace-bearer brings in the platform party, which consists of members of the College’s administration and faculty leadership, the College Council, visiting dignitaries and honorees. Robert Darling, distinguished teaching professor of geology, will carry the mace, a ceremonial staff used as a symbol of authority.

Kevin Halpin, associate professor of performing arts, will deliver the Academic Convocation address. Speakers will include Bitterbaum; Prus; and senior Leighmarie Weber, president of the Student Government Association; senior business economics major Connor Berg and junior childhood education major Boyan Cox; and a representative of the Cortland College Foundation.

Marina Gorelaya will provide the processional and recessional music. Senior sociology major Deston Hudson will sing the national anthem, and senior musical theatre major Melissa Pipher will sing the Alma Mater. Several returning students have volunteered to serve as student marshals.

The concept for an opening academic convocation, modeled after a ceremony held during Cortland’s earlier years, was developed from a recommendation by the College’s Cultural and Intellectual Climate Committee. The tradition, restarted in 2003, is coordinated through the President’s Office. An academic convocation website can be found at cortland.edu/academic-convocation.

Do you have what it takes to become a SUNY Cortland master teacher?

Applications for the new designation - which includes a four-year, $15,000 annual stipend and an opportunity to positively change the course of secondary math and science education in New York State - were posted online this week at http://www.suny.edu/MasterTeacher.

But high-achieving, middle and high school teachers interested in the program need to move fast.  The deadline for submissions is Aug. 1.

 The master teacher program seeks to reward and develop exceptional teachers in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and math) by sharing their expertise, methods and insight with teachers throughout the region.

 Applicants must have four years teaching experience and be currently working with grades 6-12, teaching a course load with at least 60 percent math or science classes.

 Earlier this year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo named SUNY Cortland ¾ home to New York’s largest accredited teacher-education program ¾ one of four regional program hubs. As such, the College will coordinate 50 to 60 master teachers from the Central New York area, starting this fall.

It will host monthly meetings for participants and coordinate peer mentoring, strategy sharing and content development for the Central New York region. SUNY Cortland, like all host campuses, will partner with a nearby research institution, adding additional resources for development. SUNY Cortland will partner with Binghamton University or Syracuse University.

In addition to Cortland, the other SUNY campuses selected for the launch of the program were SUNY Plattsburgh, SUNY New Paltz and Buffalo State College.  Six other regional hubs will be added in the spring of 2014.

"We want the best possible teachers in every New York classroom teaching our children," said Gov. Cuomo. "As part of the state's work to transform our education system and put students first, we are committed to investing in great teachers to educate our students and create a highly-trained workforce to drive our future economy. This program will reward those teachers who work harder and whose students perform better."

It’s hard to believe now, but scorching temperatures and New York Jets Training Camp preparations will eventually give way to milder weather and the start of fall semester classes.

And when that happens, SUNY Cortland will treat its employees to a fall tailgate event open to all faculty and staff members.

Fall Festival, an afternoon offering free food and entertainment, takes place Saturday, Sept. 7, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. inside the College’s Park Center Alumni Arena and in a nearby parking lot, if weather permits. It’s a way to catch up with friends on campus and make introductions to new ones.

Employees are invited to bring their families and guests. Catered food will be provided and entertainment, including music and bounce houses, will be supplied with all ages in mind.

The event, funded by the Vice President for Finance and Management Office, is free for everyone.

Attendees will receive free entry to the SUNY Cortland football team’s season opener, which kicks off at 1 p.m. against Buffalo State, and Cortland’s field hockey game against Farmingdale at 1 p.m. There’s no obligation to attend either game.

Watch for R.S.V.P. information, which will be distributed through email and a campus mailing in August.

Campus Artist and Lecture Series (CALS) Lecture Grant Applications are now available for the 2013-14 academic year.

Applications are eligible for a maximum award of $500 and are open to any club, program or department. These lecture grants will not cover performances of any kind.

Applications must be received by Wednesday, Sept. 4, in order to be considered for September, October, November and/or December 2013 lecture programs. Applications received after this date may not be eligible for any fall semester funds remaining.

For more information or to request a hard copy of the CALS Lecture Grant Application, contact Sandra Wohlleber by email or at 607-753-5574.

President Erik J. Bitterbaum has announced that the opening meeting of the Fall 2013 semester is scheduled on Thursday, Aug. 22. The meeting will begin with light refreshments at 8 a.m. in the Corey Union Function Room.

Detailed information including an agenda and response form will be sent via email.

All classified, UUP and M/C campus community members are invited to attend. 

For more information, refer to the email or call the President’s Office at 607-753-2201.