Campus Champion

Professor of Philosophy Mecke Nagel protects those around her — offering a voice to the voiceless when civil liberties are threatened. This week is no different, with prison reform her current cause. The solitary confinement display in Memorial Library is a physical reminder of the conditions Mecke seeks to reveal and she’ll speak several times this week on the prison system, including 7 p.m. Thursday in Brockway Hall, Jacobus Lounge. Concerns tied to race, class, gender and sexuality also benefit from Mecke’s work and led to the creation of her community brainchild, United Voices of Cortland.

Don’t tell any relatives from the old country, but SUNY Cortland’s dining services provider will introduce its own tomato sauce this fall made almost entirely of local ingredients, including more than two tons of organic tomatoes grown in Central New York.

Auxiliary Services Corporation (ASC) has agreed to purchase one acre of farmable land in Preble, N.Y., from Main Street Farms in Homer, N.Y., which should produce roughly 5,000 pounds of Roma tomatoes. A limited supply of sauce — approximately 500 gallons — will be available in Neubig Hall, SUNY Cortland’s residential dining facility, to kick off the 2014-15 academic year.

“This sauce is going to be a pure New York state product, with almost everything coming from right here in Cortland County,” said William McNamara, the director of dining services for ASC. “If we’re going to do it, we want to do it the right way and we want to support the local economy.”

Everything from the tomatoes to the onions to the herbs and spices used in the sauce will be grown locally, McNamara said.

“With this, we know where the food is coming from and we’re going to get a fresher, more organic product,” McNamara said. “It’s coming right from the vine to us.”

ASC traditionally purchases bulk sauce, made from California tomatoes, from its food supply vendor. Not only will the special edition sauce pump dollars into a nearby business, the final product will taste fresher, McNamara said.

A local product, however, also means a higher cost. ASC will pay Main Street Farms approximately $5,000 to farm one acre of land, which should allow for the cultivation of roughly 4,000 tomato plants. Assuming 500 gallons of sauce come from that crop, each gallon will cost $9.71 in tomatoes alone.

ASC pays its vendor roughly $7 per gallon of traditional sauce, and that number includes both labor and containers. As part of a return-to-work employee orientation in August, ASC will turn the sauce making process into a team building exercise to prepare the new product.

“People often ask: ‘How come you’re not buying more local?’” McNamara said. “Well, if we bought everything local, people probably wouldn’t be able to afford a meal plan because it would cost too much.”

From left: Bill McNamara, director of dining services for ASC; Kelley Neville, executive chef for Neubig Dining; Pierre Gagnon, executive director of ASC; Joe Cook, senior dining manager for Neubig Dining; Allan Gandelman, of Main Street Farms; Bob Cat, of Main Street Farms.

The limited edition sauce should account for 5 percent of ASC’s annual supply, and McNamara estimated it would last through September. He pointed out that ASC hasn’t raised the price of student meal plans in four years while finding ways to increase efficiency and reduce waste.

“Our challenge always is balancing the cost of a meal plan and keeping the value there while doing the right thing,” he said.

This latest work project supports Main Street Farms, an urban aquaponics farm and plant nursery that launched in 2011. The farm grows organic products both in water and soil, using aquaponics techniques — a combination of aquaculture and hydroponics — to raise tilapia in tanks. The fish are fed and their waste-water is used to fertilize plants. The flora, in turn, clean the water for the fish in a closed loop cycle.

“They’re environmentally friendly and they’re part of our community,” McNamara said. “They’re able to do what we want and we believe in everything that they stand for.”

The tomato sauce experiment is a one-year trial run for ASC, with the hope to continue in the future.

“Obviously, the more you purchase of something, the cheaper the price,” McNamara said. “Hopefully this is the start.

“We’re looking at this as the potential start of a good partnership.”

SUNY Cortland has been recognized by the American Council on Education (ACE), the primary coordinating body for colleges and universities in the United States, as a national leader in using technology to globalize higher education.

ACE’s first-ever Internationalization Through Technology Award noted the College’s meaningful links with classrooms on five continents and its history of online international learning and video-conferencing in areas ranging from teacher education to economic development.

“We deeply appreciate this recognition of our early adoption of technology as a cost-effective way to internationalize our coursework and connect SUNY Cortland students with global concerns,” College President Erik J. Bitterbaum said. “Through this approach we can help prepare all of our students for the global workforce, even if they are not able to study abroad.”

Bitterbaum accepted the $5,000 award Monday at ACE’s annual meeting in San Diego, Calif. The honor, given to only three other educational institutions nationwide, was created and awarded by ACE, SUNY’s Center for Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) and Asahi Net International, a learning technology company.

“The SUNY COIL Center and the innovative use of technology by participating institutions provides students with unprecedented access to a globally-rich higher education experience without requiring travel abroad,” said SUNY Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher, who attended the ACE gathering. “By bringing this unique opportunity to students, college campuses and partnering institutions are enhancing the value of the degrees and programs they offer, and SUNY is proud to be a part of their efforts.”

For more than a decade, SUNY Cortland students have deepened their understanding of global affairs and foreign cultures by using technology to connect with instructors and students in other parts of the world.

As one of the first colleges in the State University of New York system to embrace and champion collaborative online international learning (COIL), SUNY Cortland has connected its students with people and perspectives in classrooms on the other side of the planet. Its students have explored social control with peers living in former Soviet republics. They have studied international economics and professional writing in virtual classrooms with students in Turkey and partnered with classes in Colombia, Brazil and China for classes in teaching English as a second language. Prospective student teachers have video-conferenced with school administrators and classrooms in Australia, and Cortland professors have used technology to connect students with Siberia, Japan, the Netherlands and other distant places.

As a founding partner of SUNY’s Global Workforce Project, the College has been instrumental in the creation of tools to help internationalize college courses in majors ranging from geography to sport management. In addition, SUNY Cortland has been a leader in using technology to make foreign language instruction more accessible, partnering with SUNY Brockport to use videoconferencing to offer Mandarin Chinese classes taught in Cortland to Brockport students.

Cortland has long been a pioneer in using the Internet to assist foreign language instructors at all levels of American education, creating online programs and tools that are widely used. Two SUNY Cortland modern language professors, Jean LeLoup and Robert Ponterio, founded FLTeach, an online forum for language instructors, in 1994. It has since evolved into a respected, online community for 5,400 language teachers in 80 countries.

"This award honors the great work done by our colleagues at SUNY Cortland in a wide variety of fields, and I would like to congratulate them all,” said Alexandru Balas, director of the College’s James M. Clark Center for International Education. “I want this award to serve as the foundation for a more purposeful and campus-wide internationalization through technology campaign at SUNY Cortland."

The Clark Center is the campus coordinating body for all international education, research and service efforts at SUNY Cortland. It works in collaboration with the College’s International Programs Office, which provides study abroad opportunities to hundreds of students each year.

SUNY Cortland has one of the strongest study abroad programs in the SUNY system and has committed to doubling the number of students who travel to foreign countries as part of their education by 2019. Recent agreements with partner institutions have included a commitment to pursue online learning opportunities as well as hosting students.

Details of SUNY Cortland’s leadership efforts to enhance global awareness and understanding through technology include:

COIL

Craig Little, a distinguished service professor in SUNY Cortland’s Anthropology/Sociology Department, was among the founders of the SUNY COIL Center. He partnered with educators in Belarus State University and Moscow State University in 2004 to offer a collaborative sociology course in social control using the SUNY Learning Network. That effort was so successful it has been offered eight times since, and been expanded to include Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia.

Several other COIL initiatives have since evolved over a spectrum of fields. Associate Professor German Zarate-Hoyos, chair of SUNY Cortland’s economics department, partnered with a colleague at Anadalu University in Turkey to offer this class to students at both institutions through videoconferencing in 2012 and 2013.

English professors Vicki Boynton and David Franke collaborated with Anadolu University in Turkey and Capital Normal University in China, respectively, to create COIL modules that used Skype and other online connections to pair aspiring travel writers at Cortland with students learning to write English in Turkey and China. Boynton is currently working on establishing a similar program in Morocco.

Associate Professor Paulo Quaglio partners with English language students in Brazil and Colombia to give SUNY Cortland student teachers an opportunity to create lesson plans and practice teaching through Skype. Associate Professor Hongli Fan partnered with an instructor at Capital Normal University in 2012 to offer a class where students from both countries communicated to each other via email as part of regular assignments. This year, Fan is working with a new partner at Yuncheng University in China to co-teach a similar online course.

SUNY Global Workforce Project

In 2009, the College -- led by Assistant Professor William Skipper, chair of Cortland’s Anthropology/Sociology Department -- partnered with the College at Brockport and the SUNY Levin Institute to develop globalization modules on topics that instructors in a variety of fields can work into their courses such as sustainability, nationalism and trade. After a dozen SUNY Cortland instructors successfully piloted the program in 23 courses, the project in 2012 was put online in the form of a Website hosted by the Levin Institute. Globalization101.org makes the curriculum available to faculty at all 64 SUNY campuses.

Individual initiatives

The School of Education has used videoconferencing for more than a decade to connect pre-service student teachers with their host schools and classrooms in Australia. 

Distinguished Service Professor Henry Steck, a longtime member of SUNY Cortland’s political science faculty, and Lecturer Karen Hempstead, a faculty member in the School of Education, held a teleconference on educational reforms with colleagues at Omsk State Pedagogical University in Southwestern Siberia. The 2010 event was attended by SUNY Cortland faculty and students and will be used as a model for future international faculty seminars.

Associate Professor of Art and Art History Martine Barnaby and her SUNY Cortland students last fall participated in an online talk with Copenhagen-based artist Simon Høgsberg, whose multi-media work was displayed in the College’s Beard Gallery in downtown Cortland.

UPDATE: Tickets for Spring Fling headliner J. Cole sold out Tuesday, March 25.

SUNY Cortland has landed Grammy-nominated hip hop artist J. Cole for its annual Spring Fling concert scheduled for Saturday, May 3.

The 29-year-old North Carolina native, who has produced two albums to reach No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 list, will perform in the College’s Park Center.

Tickets, which cost $20 for SUNY Cortland students and $30 for the public, will be available on a limited basis, with students receiving first priority. They go on sale Sunday, March 23, and will be sold from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., or until they are sold out, at the Corey Union Information Desk. Only cash will be accepted.

SUNY Cortland students will be allowed to purchase one ticket and must show their College ID. Students will not be allowed to purchase tickets for their friends, even if they have that friend’s Cortland ID.

Tickets will stay on sale exclusively to SUNY Cortland students on Monday, March 24, and Tuesday, March 25. They will be sold from noon to 7 p.m., or until they are sold out, at the Corey Union Information Desk.

If tickets are remaining, they will be sold to faculty, staff and the general public from Wednesday, March 26, through Friday, March 28. Only cash will be accepted.

Tickets will be sold from noon to 7 p.m., at the Corey Union Information Desk. No student-priced tickets will be available once they go on sale to the general public. Each person will be allowed to purchase up to three tickets at a time, then must go to the back of the line to purchase more.

J. Cole joins a stellar list of recognizable acts to play SUNY Cortland’s Spring Fling, one that includes the Black Eyed Peas, O.A.R. and the Fray. Rappers Wiz Khalifa and Kendrick Lamar, the College’s past two Spring Fling acts, performed to a sold-out Alumni Arena.

Recognized for his smooth instrumentals and an ability to tell stories with his lyrics, Cole is considered one of the hip hop genre’s rising stars. He became the first artist signed to Jay Z’s Roc Nation record label in 2009 and saw his first two studio albums reach No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 list charts — “Cole World: The Sideline Story” in 2011 and “Born Sinner” in 2013.

Cole has collaborated with some of music’s biggest names, including Jay Z, Beyoncé and Kanye West, and in 2012 was nominated for best new artist at the Grammy Awards.

SUNY Cortland’s Red Dragon blazed to victory today in the first round of the SUNY system’s annual Mascot Madness competition, beating SUNY Maritime and SUNY IT with 48 percent of the vote in a three-way match.

Blaze, Cortland’s fire-breathing mascot, will now take on SUNY Plattsburgh’s big red cardinal, Burghy. Plattsburgh beat Farmingdale State College’s Rambo Ram, taking 53 percent of the vote to advance to the next round.

Mascot Madness, patterned after the bracketed NCAA tournament commonly known as March Madness, is decided by online votes cast by college students, alumni and other supporters.

SUNY Cortland fans can vote for Blaze by going to the College’s Mascot Madness webpage at http://www2.cortland.edu/mascot-madness/

Starting at noon Wednesday, March 19, supporters can vote once every eight hours until 4 p.m. on Sunday, March 23, when this round of competition ends.

Time magazine’s “person of the year” also made the cover of Rolling Stone magazine and was written about in The New Yorker — all in the past year. Is this person some political or entertainment world juggernaut? No, it’s Pope Francis.

Bishop Emeritus Matthew H. Clark from the Diocese of Rochester (N.Y.) will lead a discussion about the religious figure who has captivated the world’s attention over the course of the past year on Tuesday, March 18, at SUNY Cortland.

Bishop Clark will address the pope’s outlook on many hot-button issues — such as homosexuality, the role of women and the global sexual abuse crisis in relation to how they stand to impact the future of the Catholic Church — during the talk at 5 p.m. in the Moffett Center, Room 2125.

Presented by the Clark Center for International Education and the O’Heron Newman Catholic Center, the lecture titled “One Year With Pope Francis” is free and open to the public.

Bishop Emeritus Matthew H. Clark

Clark, who was appointed by Pope John Paul II as the eighth bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester in 1979, will bring to the discussion his 33 years of experience and service as the Bishop of the Diocese of Rochester.

 “Nearly a year has gone by since an awe-struck Jorge Mario Bergoglio stepped out onto the veranda at St. Peter’s Basilica and took the name Papa Francesco — ‘Pope Francis,’” said Shawn Allen, director of Catholic Campus Ministry at the O'Heron Newman Center.

Cardinal Bergoglio, the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires, was elected by the College of Cardinals on March 13, 2013 to succeed Benedict XVI as the head of the Roman Catholic Church.

“Since his election, Pope Francis’ expression of awe has been reciprocated by many in the international community,” Allen said. “Francis not only serves as the first non-European to be elected pope, but also the first pope elected from South and Latin America, and the first Jesuit to assume this responsibility.

“His simplistic lifestyle, his outspoken fervor on behalf of the poor and marginalized and his compassion has touched the hearts and minds of many.”

The pope has given only two official interviews to journalists, one to America Magazine, a weekly Catholic periodical, and to the affirmed atheist La Repubblica, an Italian newspaper.

“Pope Francis’ commentary on the role of women in the Church, on homosexuality and his criticism of the socioeconomic effect of capitalism and, most recently, his plan to restructure the Curia and the United Nation’s response to the global sex abuse crisis affecting the Church has given much for us to think about,” Allen said. “What will happen next for Pope Francis? What may we expect to happen to the Church?”

Bishop Clark was awarded a licentiate in theology, licentiate in Canon Law and Doctorate in Spirituality from the Gregorian University in Rome.

Before his episcopal ordination, he served as the spiritual director of the North American College in Rome, where he mentored a young Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who is presently Archbishop of New York.

Through his tenure as bishop, Clark has been a significant proponent of lay ecclesial ministry and wrote a book on the subject, Forward in Hope: Saying Amen to Lay Ecclesial Ministry (Ave Maria Press, 2009).

Bishop Clark has tried to support and encourage women in ministry and to bring the joy of Gospel to the marginalized. He was awarded Fordham University’s highest and prestigious award, the 2013 President’s Medal.

For more information, contact Alexandru Balas, Clark Center director or 607-753-4823; or Shawn Allen, at 607-753-6737.

Three SUNY Cortland students will take research projects rooted in exercise science and biochemistry to New York state’s capital Tuesday, April 1, and join a State University of New York (SUNY) system-wide celebration of undergraduate research and creativity.

Seniors John Chodkowski, Josh Hammond and Samuel Lebowitz will represent the College at the third-year symposium, titled “Innovative Exploration Forum: Undergraduate Research in New York State’s Public Higher Education System.”

The event takes place at the New York State Legislative Office Building in Albany. It will highlight scholarly work from all 64 SUNY institutions, bringing together bright young researchers with SUNY administrators and state legislators.

Sponsored by the Undergraduate Academic Programs and Policies Committee of the SUNY Faculty Senate, the conference will feature roughly 100 student-produced poster displays covering a range of academic disciplines. Each research project was supervised by a SUNY faculty member.

The two SUNY Cortland projects were selected after a competitive, campus-wide review.

“(The research process) was a lot more than I expected when I started but it’s been just a great experience, both learning how to do the research and understanding how to read other research,” said Lebowitz, a kinesiology: fitness development major from Fayetteville, N.Y.

Lebowitz and Hammond, an exercise science major from Hyde Park, N.Y., developed a project on the topic “Foam rolling and static stretching’s effect on acute range of motion.” Chodkowski, a chemistry major from Westbury, N.Y., will present his research on “The perturbation of benthic microbial communities with microbiocide compound DBNPA.”

SUNY Cortland faculty members James Hokanson, an associate professor of kinesiology, and Jeffrey Werner, an assistant professor of chemistry, mentored the young researchers.

Chodkowski, who started his project with an undergraduate research fellowship following his sophomore year, plans to pursue a Ph.D. in a biochemistry-based program after graduation. He’s presented his work several times, both for doctoral program interviews and at the College’s “Transformations: A Student Research and Creativity Conference.”

The research he presents in Albany will consider the impact of a microbiocide sometimes associated with hydraulic fracturing. Hypothetically speaking, Chodkowski’s research seeks to explain the effects a chemical spill might have on the ecology of a lake.

He’s still waiting on metagenomic sequences, which should help determine species affected by the microbiocide.

“It will be a lot easier with metagenomic data to talk about which species were affected,” Chodkowski said. “We know that something happened; the next step is figuring out exactly what it was.”

Likewise, Hammond and Lebowitz haven’t given up on the research project they will present; Lebowitz said they are exploring opportunities to have their work published.

“Our study is an original study,” said Lebowitz, an aspiring professional in the strength and conditioning field. “What we found is that foam rolling does not increase range of motion greater than static stretching — on average, they’re about the same — but each modality increases range of motion to about the same degree.”

He said he expected the benefits of foam rolling, which utilizes a large foam cylinder in treating muscles, to outweigh those of static stretching, given that the latter often is associated with a decrease in muscular force. Given that personal preference, he isolated himself for a portion of the pair’s test so that he would not sway study participants.

Lebowitz’s own project changed his thinking slightly.

“If I had a time crunch, I would say foam roll before and loosen up the muscles,” he said. “And then afterwards, if you’re concerned about flexibility, I would static stretch.”

Neither Chodkowski’s microbiocide research nor the range of motion project undertaken by Hammond and Lebowitz were graduation requirements. However, all three undergraduates will benefit from the experiences long after their presentations in Albany.

“I think being able to show any kind of graduate school that you’ve done this research and you know how to interpret it and continue on, that’s a pretty valuable skill,” Lebowitz said.

Travel support for SUNY Cortland’s participants was provided by the College’s Undergraduate Research Council (URC). For more information, contact Christopher McRoberts, professor of geology and director of the URC, at 607-753-2925.

Professor Sean Massey

Sean G. Massey, an associate professor of women, gender and sexuality studies at Binghamton University, will deliver the keynote speech on Saturday, April 12, during SUNY Cortland’s fifth annual Student Conference on Diversity, Equity and Social Justice.

Massey, whose research has focused on sexuality and gender, anti-homosexual prejudice, same-sex parenting, queer theory and the relationship between social science and social change, will begin at 1:30 p.m.

Organized by students, the conference runs from 8 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. in Corey Union, with a special screening of the 1993 film, “Schindler’s List,” at 4:30 p.m.

The event continues Women's History Month at SUNY Cortland, which features a series of lectures, concerts and performances and programs during March and April. For a listing of additional events, visit the Women's Initiatives website.

This year’s theme is “Speak Up, Speak Out,” which undergraduate and graduate students will explore across disciplines in many presentations of their scholarship and research. 

“Silence is the single greatest mechanism that allows hate and intolerance to infect a community,” said Noelle Chaddock Paley, the College’s director of multicultural life and diversity. “Speaking up and speaking out are brave, strong actions that can change a life, a culture and maybe even the world.”

The conference serves as an opportunity for participants to develop and nurture skills that will help move them through the next stages of their academic and professional lives, while sharing their current research and experiences with their peers, mentors and supporters, Chaddock Paley said.

Massey studied social personality psychology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), where he earned a master of philosophy degree and a doctorate from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Last year, the New York State Department of Health awarded him a LGBT Health and Human Services Grant for $615,000.

The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at CUNY presented him with a 2004 Paul Monette-Roger Horwitz Dissertation Prize, Honorable Mention. The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association recognized him for his news/feature story in 2001.

Another conference highlight will be Melanie Littlejohn, the director of community and customer management for the Central New York Division of National Grid. She opens the conference with welcoming remarks at 9 a.m.

A regional executive with the company since 2011, Littlejohn is responsible for establishing and maintaining strong local relationships that drive superior customer satisfaction and enhanced company reputation. She has received numerous awards, including the 2012 House of Providence Humanitarian Award and the 2011 Network Journal’s 25 Influential Black Women in Business award. She has served as a judge for New York’s Creative Core Competition for Emerging Businesses and as a facilitator for the Community Wide Dialogue to End Racism.

Melanie Littlejohn

The conference will conclude with “Schindler’s List,” co-produced by Steven Spielberg and scripted by Steven Zaillian. Based on the novel, Schindler’s Ark, by Australian author Thomas Keneally, the film tells the story of Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of more than a thousand mostly Polish-Jewish refugees during the Holocaust.

The deadline to register for the conference, which includes breakfast and lunch, is Monday, March 24. The conference fee is $30 for undergraduate students, $35 for graduate students and faculty/staff and $25 for SUNY Cortland alumni.

To find out more about the conference, group fee discounts or to obtain the registration form, visit the conference website or call the Multicultural Life and Diversity Office at multicultural.life@cortland.edu or at 607-753-2336.

A prominent whistleblower who brought national attention to student loan fraud will speak at SUNY Cortland Tuesday, March 25, as part of a national college tour focused on government accountability.

Jon Oberg, a former Department of Education researcher who in 2003 discovered the illegal payment of federal tax dollars to student loan lenders, speaks at 4:30 p.m. in the Park Center Hall of Fame Room. He will be joined by Louis Clark, an expert on whistleblowing and the president of the Government Accountability Project (GAP).

Their moderated presentation is free and open to the public. It also is part of the GAP’s American Whistleblower Tour, which aims to educate the public about the importance of holding governments accountable in promoting social change.

“These two men each offer us examples of how one person can, in fact, make a difference,” said Richard Kendrick, the director of SUNY Cortland’s Institute for Civic Engagement (ICE) and a professor of sociology/anthropology. “Their stories are very inspirational in describing the courage it takes to speak out in the face of adversity.

“Both are outstanding examples of civic engagement through advocacy, and I am very excited to have them on our campus.”

In 2003, after Oberg discovered student lending companies were improperly collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in federal subsidies, Department of Education officials instructed him not to investigate further. He researched on his own time and reported the payments to Congress, which ended them in 2004 and saved billions of dollars in the process.

Oberg sued the payment recipients under the False Claims Act in 2007 and three years later the Department of Justice settled with four of the companies for more than $57 million.

Clark serves as both president and corporate and financial accountability director of the GAP, the nation’s leading advocate and protector for whistleblowers. Those whistleblowers include former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Clark acts as the major spokesperson for the group, often meeting with legal representatives and international delegations to interpret the laws that protect employees who speak up about problems, and he also oversees numerous cases involving financial fraud.

“We are excited to show SUNY Cortland students — the future leaders of tomorrow — how one person can make a real difference through standing up for the truth,” Clark said.

Founded in 1977 and based in Washington, D.C., the GAP is a non-partisan public interest group. Through litigating whistleblower cases, publicizing concerns and developing legal reform, the GAP seeks to protect public interests by promoting government and corporate accountability. The organization also conducts an accredited legal clinic for law students.

Sponsors for the SUNY Cortland talk include the ICE, the Campus Artist and Lecture Series, the sociology/anthropology department and the GAP.

For more information, contact Kendrick at 607-753-2481.

Even before the inseparable South Korean Ahn Trio sisters graduated from the Julliard School, sister Angella recalled getting approached by numerous booking agencies and record labels to launch their music careers.

“The more my sisters and I performed, the more we appreciated everything about performing together,” Angella Ahn said.

The Ahn Trio, from Seoul, will bring its redefined art of classical music on cello, piano and violin to SUNY Cortland’s Corey Union Function Room on Sunday, March 30.

Presented by the Campus Artist and Lecture Series, the group will perform at 3 p.m. Tickets are $5 for general admission, $3 for SUNY Cortland students,and free for children age 10 and younger. Tickets can be purchased in Corey Union, Room 406, or beginning one hour prior to the performance at the venue. All performances are general admission seating.

The event continues the Women's History Month series of events during March and April. For information on other events, visit the Women's Initiatives website.

Cellist Maria, pianist Lucia and violinist Angella have transformed the art of chamber music and have made their trio into a household name through the six recorded albums, along with 10-plus years of touring experience. They will return to the campus after their last appearance in 2004.

Their latest album, titled “Lullaby for My Favorite Insomniac,” stayed on the Billboard charts in the Classical album category for 26 weeks, reaching as high as No. 8.

The Ahn Trio have performed in world-renowned venues, such as Vienna’s Musikverein, New York’s Lincoln Center, Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, Beijing’s Concert Hall, Istanbul’s Aya Irini in Topkapi Palace and the World Music Festival in the Czech Republic.

The group also has worked very closely with visionary composers, such as Michael Nyman, Maurice Jarre, Pat Metheny, Paul Schoenfield, Mark O’Connor, Nikolai Kapustin and Paul Chihara. Their style pays homage to Kenji Bunch, an American violinist and composer, for a large part of their genre-crossover music style.

The Ahn Trio has fused its work with that of dancers, pop singers, chefs, writers, DJs, painters, installation artists, photographers, lighting designers, ecologists and even kite makers.

“Living in New York City, we are inspired by so many different kinds of people,” Angella said.

The sisters moved there from Seoul in 1981, when they attended The Julliard School to start their training.

Members of the Ahn Trio, from the left, Angella, Lucia and Maria, pose with the instruments that have earned them recording studio and performance hall fame.

“We weren’t very serious about our instruments until we saw students at Julliard taking music so seriously, so that was the first true inspiration for my sisters and me to say, ‘Wow, let’s work hard,’” Angella said.

Angella is two years apart in age from twin sisters Maria and Lucia, so they were together the majority of years they attended Juilliard.

“A big part of the formation of our group had to do with being at the same college and being so close in ages,” Angella said.

In 2011, the group performed in front of more than 200 politicians and other prominent figures at the White House for a South Korean state dinner. Attendees included President Barack Obama and the First Lady Michelle Obama; the then-South Korean President Lee Myung-bak; and the secretary-general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon.

“It was a very intimate setting and my sisters and I were among people who we respected so much,” Angella said. “It was definitely the highlight of our careers.”

The Ahn Trio found fame very early on, when in 1987 the group appeared in Time magazine’s cover story, “Asian American Whiz Kids.” Since then, they have been featured in acclaimed fashion pages such as, Vogue and GQ, photographed by notable photographers Arthur Elgort, Ellen von Unwerth, and Walter Chin, and featured in ad campaigns for Anne Klein, Gap and Bodyshop. In 2003, they were named three of People Magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People.”

The sisters are thankful for their die-hard fans.

“We are so excited to perform at SUNY Cortland again,” Angella said. “There is nothing like being on stage and sharing our music with the audience. The connection you feel, I don’t even know how to describe it. It is so magical.”

For more about the Ahn Trio, visit their website at www.ahntrio.com or like them on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ahntrio.

For ticket information or questions regarding CALS events, please contact the Campus Activities and Corey Union Office at 607-753-5574.

Another broomball season is nearly in the books.

For dozens of SUNY Cortland students, their most important Thursday night plans consist of sliding across the Alumni Arena ice rink in sneakers — potentially wiping out — in search of intramural sports glory.

Broomball has been a part of the intramural sports rotation at SUNY Cortland since the mid-1980s and its season, which started early in the spring semester, wraps up this week.

The sport is similar in many ways to ice hockey, just slightly less dangerous. Sporting team t-shirts, helmets and sneakers, participants slip and slide around the ice using brooms similar to hockey sticks, with the objective to land a small ball in the back of the net.

And it’s the reason for plenty of late-night fun at SUNY Cortland, with games that start at 9 p.m. and go past midnight.

Still, despite a schedule built for night owls, broomball is one of the more popular intramural sports on campus, according to Matthew Nuesell, the assistant director of recreational sports, intramural sports and sports clubs. More than 60 teams participated this year, and as many as 100 squads have laced up their sneakers in the past.

During a typical year, as many as 1,100 students are involved with co-ed teams made up of 12 athletes — six males and six females. Like most intramural sports, broomball is offered at two different levels: recreational, for less competitive participants looking to have fun, and all-school, for more competitive squads.

The league consists of a round-robin schedule, with teams sorted into divisions and competing against divisional opponents. At the end of round-robin play, all teams whose members have maintained a high sportsmanship rating qualify for the playoffs, which involve a single-elimination tournament to determine a champion at each level.

The ultimate prize? Pride. And t-shirts for the whole team.

Alumni Arena is filled with students most late Thursday nights during the winter. There’s a sense of camaraderie among students. If they aren’t there to play, they’re waiting to play and cheering on their classmates.

Sean Faulkner, a senior from Penfield, N.Y., has enjoyed the broomball experience for four years. His current team is named the Money Mayweathers, named after Floyd Mayweather, the famous boxer.

“The amount of fun I have on the ice is what draws me to broomball,” said Faulkner, explaining he enjoys the many wipe outs of his teammates and the rare penalty shot. “You never know who is going to fall down (or) when.”

And the late night schedule is ideal.

“I prefer it that way, because my days are usually so busy,” he said.

For students who can’t commit most Thursday nights of the spring semester to the intramural sport, a Friday Night Broomball Tournament takes place annually in the fall. Twelve teams can participate in the one-night tournament, which is typically offered in mid- to late October.

“Our team doesn’t necessarily put up desirable numbers, but we are grinders and we leave our heart and soul on the ice every game,” Faulkner said. “There will always be a part of me out on that ice.”

Besides hundreds of passionate participants, the most crucial part of the league is the intramural sports staff, according to Nuesell. The entire staff is made up of roughly 40 undergraduate and graduate students who serve as officials, scorekeepers and supervisors. The trained students make it possible for the College to host a jam-packed schedule for one of its most popular intramural sports.

“Without the staff, we wouldn’t be able to give Cortland students half the opportunities that they currently have,” Nuesell said. “It’s a tough job and they don’t often get the credit they deserve for doing the job that they do.”

For more information on intramural sports, contact Nuesell.

Sean Sweeney, a Massachusetts speech-language pathologist and technology consultant, will share his ideas for the clinical use of popular social media technology in a full-day workshop on Saturday, March 22, at SUNY Cortland.

“Many great apps were developed specifically for speech and language interventions, but countless treasures in the ‘app store’ were designed for others purposes and can be applied creatively in our therapies,” Sweeney said.

Sweeney, who works in the private practice at the Ely Center in Newton, Mass., will discuss “Outside the Box: iPad for SLPs — Apps Through a Language Lens,” from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 a.m. in Sperry Center, Room 104.

Presented by the SUNY Cortland Chapter of the National Student Speech, Language and Hearing Association (NSSLHA), the workshop is co-sponsored by the Ithaca College NSSLHA Chapter and the Central New York Area Speech, Language, Hearing Association.

Sean Sweeney

The conference fee, which includes breakfast and lunch, is $75 for professionals, $40 for SUNY Cortland and Ithaca College faculty, and $10 for students. For more information or to register, contact Michael Pitcher, a SUNY Cortland lecturer in communications disorders and sciences, at 607-756-5423 or michael.pitcher@cortland.edu.

Although this introductory level workshop will be primarily geared towards clinicians working with school-aged children, much of the information discussed can be helpful to clinical work with older student populations.

Sweeney will discuss a selection of apps for speech and language therapy, and models of apps for therapeutic activities.

He will present the frameworks for evaluating apps as well as examples of apps that can be used to target clinical objectives in categories such as gaming, visual exploration, organization, interactive reading and creation apps.

He will explain strategies for finding apps and discuss a reading list of online resources for further learning and information.

Sweeney developed an interest in the use of creative technology while working with students with language and social communication issues. That resulted in a blog he launched four years ago, speechtechie.com.

Sweeney, who has served as a speech language pathologist for more than a decade in a public school setting as well as an instructional technology specialist, has taken his novel approach to consultations and training that he has conducted locally and around the country.

Sweeney also addresses this use of technology in his regular column for the ASHA Leader, the magazine for members of the American Speech-Language Hearing Association.

“We encourage our students to become actively engaged in their profession and their professional organizations,” said Pitcher, who also is coordinator of audiological services at the College’s Center for Speech, Language and Hearing Disorders. “Students need to be exposed to the profession of communication disorders and sciences outside of their Cortland classroom.”

The elaborate printmaking process known as photogravure relies on good photography, but make no mistake: it involves much, much more than using a camera to capture an image.

The complicated and labor-intensive practice, which creates a print with photographic and etching techniques, also serves as the inspiration for the upcoming art exhibition “Refocus: Contemporary Photogravure” at SUNY Cortland’s Dowd Gallery.

The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, runs from Tuesday, March 18, to Thursday, April 24.  Contemporary artists Lynne Allen, Barbara Madsen, Lothar Osterburg and Judy Pfaff will contribute photogravures to the show, which was curated by SUNY Cortland Professor of Art and Art History Charles Heasley.

The Dowd Gallery remains housed temporarily on the third floor of Main Street SUNY Cortland, 9 Main St. Normal gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday. The gallery is closed Sunday and Monday.

Above image: Lothar Osterburg, Zeppelins Docking at Grand Central, 2013, photogravure with gampi chine colle, 30 x 30 in. Top left image: Barbara Madsen, RYB 3, 2000, photogravure and color aquatint mounted on canvas, 34 x 46 in.

Several special events tied to the exhibition also take place at the Dowd Gallery, unless otherwise noted:

• An opening reception is planned for 4:30 p.m. Thursday, March 20.

• Heasley will give a curator’s talk at 5 p.m. Wednesday, March 26.

• Osterburg will present an artist’s talk and demonstration at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, April 10, in the College’s digital photo lab, located in Dowd Fine Arts Center, Room 008 on the SUNY Cortland campus.

• Allen will offer an artist’s talk at 5 p.m. Tuesday, April 22.

The process behind photogravure involves transferring a photographic image onto a metal plate, chemically etching the image into the plate then printing from the plate onto paper. The detailed practice results in prints of a very high quality.

Invented in the 19th century, photogravure helped legitimize photography as a true art form in its early stages, rather than solely as a scientific means of reproducing images.

The velvety blacks and extraordinary range of grays produced by the process are evident in the works featured in the latest Dowd Gallery exhibition. According to Heasley, the diversity of the pieces offer “a very short visual history of photography and a beacon-lit path into a future of refocusing the lens in a digital world.”

For more information, images of exhibition works or to schedule a group tour, contact Gallery Director Erika Fowler-Decatur at 607-753-4216.

Transgender artist and educator Rebecca Kling will present the topic of gender and identity using storytelling, personal narrative, humor and movement when she visits SUNY Cortland on Thursday, March 20.

She will present a daytime workshop and an evening performance as part of the College’s Louis Larson Lecture and Performance Series. Both events are free and open to the public.

The Trans 101: Diversity and Respect Workshop will be held from 11:40 a.m. to 12:55 p.m. in Sperry Center, Room 205. Kling will offer a working primer on transgender issues and experiences, including language and definitions, appropriate interactions and how to successfully integrate a transgender population into one’s community.

Kling will give an hour-long performance called “Uncovering the Mirrors” at 7 p.m. at the Interfaith Center. She will portray the journey from her first explorations of gender at six years old, naked and uncomfortable in her body, to the Bar Mitzvah that gendered her as a “man.” Topics move from the hormones coursing through her blood to a future as fragile as glass.

“‘Uncovering the Mirrors’ confronts the gender policing we all experience in our day-to-days lives, and asks how to live with regrets, push beyond mistakes, and look in the mirror each morning without flinching,” Kling said.

The Chicago-based presenter regularly speaks at colleges, universities and theatre festivals nationally. Kling’s website, rebeccakling.com, includes video clips from recent appearances and links to her blog and book, No Gender Left Behind, which is on sale at Amazon.com.

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Faculty and Staff Committee created the Louis Larson Lecture and Performance Series to educate and support the campus and local community. The series includes guest speakers, panel talks and performances from professionals in the LGBTQ community to help foster and promote diversity and mutual respect.

Event sponsors include:

Athletics Department

Auxiliary Services Corporation (ASC)

Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies (CGIS)

Advisement and Transition

Alumni Affairs Office

Career Services

Cortland LGBT Resource Center

Division of Student Affairs

Educational Opportunity Program (EOP)

Health Promotion

Interfaith Center

LGBTQ Faculty Staff Committee

Literacy Department

Memorial Library

Multicultural Life and Diversity Office

President’s Office

Psychology Department

Recreation, Parks and Leisure Studies Department

School of Arts and Sciences – Dean’s Office

School of Education – Dean’s Office

School of Professional Studies - Dean’s Office

University Police Department

For more information, contact committee co-chairs Vicki Wilkins at 607-753-4972 or Kathryn Coffey at 607-753-2974.

SUNY Cortland faculty and staff this Friday will share their thoughts and ideas about unacceptable behavior during the 2013 Cortaca weekend at a public meeting with the commission formed to address the problem.

Members of the Community and College Commission will hear their input at 2 p.m. Friday, March 21, in the Corey Union Exhibition Lounge. This is the commission’s last scheduled public meeting before it puts together a list of recommended actions for Cortland Mayor Brian Tobin and SUNY Cortland President Erik J. Bitterbaum.

“Our faculty and staff have very valuable insight and perspective on this topic,” said Kimberly Pietro, one of the commission’s co-chairs. “We look forward to hearing their thoughts about what can be done to prevent destructive and potentially dangerous behavior surrounding this event.”

Pietro, SUNY Cortland’s vice president for institutional advancement, and Bruce Tytler M ’88 CAS ’05 — school principal at Whitney Point (N.Y.) High School, former Cortland mayor and member of the College Council — were selected to lead the 20-member commission, which was appointed by Tobin and Bitterbaum last fall.

The commission and its subcommittees have met more than a dozen times this year and have collected the observations and recommendations of community members, local businesses, landlords and students. It is expected to issue a final report later this spring.

The Antlers facility at the Outdoor Education Center at Raquette Lake will be available for use by faculty, staff and their guests including spouses, children and significant others, from Monday, June 23 through Saturday, June 28.

Reservation information is available at the Center for Environmental and Outdoor Education Office, Miller Building, Room 230. Registration forms can be found on their website. A $50 deposit is required with registration.

Room and board for six days and five nights is $229 per person for adults and $178 per person for children age 12 and under. There is no charge for children under one year of age.

Visitors arrive between 2 and 4 p.m. on Monday, June 23. An orientation will be held at 5 p.m. with dinner following at 6 p.m. Visitors will depart Saturday, June 28, following breakfast.

Participants will be acknowledged on a first-come, first-served basis following receipt of reservation and deposit. For more information, call the center at 607-753-5488.