Campus Champion

Being engaged, productive and a part of the bigger picture are goals that Kenia Ozoria, sophomore communication studies major from Union City, N.J., sets for herself. Actively involved in the College’s Leadership House, and an employee for the campus printing and PC services, she is ready to do more. Inspired by the documentary “400 Years Without a Comb,” Kenia will lead a positive campus discussion on black hair as it has been understood throughout history. One of several Black History Month Sandwich Seminars, “Questioning Black Hair: Culture, Self-Image and Politics,” will be presented on Thursday, Feb. 18, in Brockway Hall Jacobus Lounge. 

When the precursors of modern humans roaming the world’s grassy savannahs 2.6 million years ago had a medical emergency, there were no vans full of emergency medical technicians speeding to the rescue.

The reality television performers in National Geographic Channel’s new series “The Great Human Race” — which premiered Feb. 1 — were much more fortunate.

Survival expert Cat Bigney and archaeologist Bill Schindler certainly had it rough living as primitive people before humans mastered fire and agriculture. But, if they fell 40 feet from a tree, got bit by a snake, starved or ate the wrong thing while filming a segment, the program’s medic/safety director Todd Curtis ’11 was ready, equipped and trained to help them.

Curtis, a backcountry medical specialist who is the husband of SUNY Cortland Associate Professor of Health Jena Nicols Curtis, traveled with the cast and crew from mid-June through late November to Ethiopia, Turkey, Mongolia, Alaska and Oregon to keep them all safe as they filmed the new show re-creating the story of human evolution and migration from Africa to the U.S. 

Curtis was on hand as Bigney and Schindler trekked for month-long stints at a time as Homo erectus did before the advent of making a fire — for example climbing up into thousand year old Baobab trees in order to survive nights on the Serengeti and helping themselves to meat from a recent lion kill before the predators returned to make a meal of the intrepid survivalists.

	Todd Curtis '11 makes a friend while serving as the medic/safety director on location in Mongolia for the National Geographic Channel series "The Great Human Race." Above left, he is shown during a quieter moment at the Oregon location for this anthropological adventure series.

The group filmed at two different geographic locations then went home for two weeks between assignments.

“I set the crew up for all the rope work, all the water work,” said Curtis, a former biology major at SUNY Cortland. He also is a graduate of SUNY Upstate Medical University at Syracuse’s paramedic program with additional training and certification in critical care and remote and wilderness medicine through University of Maryland at Baltimore County.

“If the crew needs to put a camera 50 feet up in a tree, or down a cliff-face, part of what I do is set up the ropes to safely raise or lower them to those locations,” he said. “And if anyone goes into water or gets into trouble, I’m there to pull them out.

“I’m responsible for overall safety.”

Since graduation, Curtis has carved out a career helping out with extreme sports competitions, reality television segments and traveling to instruct groups on backcountry safety through Remote Medicine International.

He regularly presents courses in Advanced Cardiac Life Support and Pediatrics Advanced Life Support to physicians, nurses and emergency personnel rotating through SUNY Upstate Medical University’s Emergency Medicine Department. When he’s in Central New York, he also joins emergency medical teams as a senior paramedic with Rural Metro of Central New York.

Curtis presently is teaching a backcountry medicine class in the Cascades for six weeks through early March. Later this spring, he’ll do the same in Alaska. After that, who knows?

A year prior to “The Great Human Race,” Curtis was on location to ensure safety during filming of the National Geographic Channel series “The Raft,” described as a social experiment in pushing people to the extreme by setting two strangers afloat to survive seven days at sea to the elements, hunger, thirst and even sharks.

When filming wrapped in Puerto Rico his wife Jena, whom Todd met at 16 in Cooperstown, N.Y., eagerly joined Todd on the 48-foot catamaran he had used to follow cast and crew and needed to return to the Caribbean/British Virgin Isles.

Last June, a National Geographic executive called Todd on a Tuesday, disappointed with the medics the program had hired in Africa. By Wednesday of the next week Curtis was on a plane bound for Ethiopia.

A bit nomadic personally, Curtis as a teen had participated in Outward Bound programs to the Cascade Mountains out west. He still loves rock climbing, kayaking, winter mountaineering and other rigorous outdoor activities.

Curtis said that for the National Geographic Channel programs he worked diligently to ensure that everyone avoided coming to any actual harm.

“When we go out and scout day to day, we look things over in case people should get sick, how to deal with that,” Curtis said.

He arrived in each location with eight airport-checked bags filled with medicine, rope, harnesses, dry suits, personal flotation devices and some clothing to help his cast and crew deal with weather extremes.

“This was probably one of the best teams you could put together of people who do ‘adventure filming’ globally, in very rugged environments, where very simple things like keeping your equipment dry or filming people at very high altitude can be critical, ” he said. “The team has become very good at dealing with those challenges. But they need someone to care for them if things go wrong, which does happen for various reasons.

“There were a lot of medical problems,” he said. “You’re eating foods that are not particularly good or are not what we are used to. What’s ordinary food to a local Ethiopian is not to an American.”

The crew of each show segment also included an ever-changing assembly of local residents in each country who handled things like transportation, gear, camera assistance and “fixers” tasked with making problems go away.

“Car accidents are probably one of the riskier things we could experience,” Curtis said. “We’re driven by locals, and if we get in an accident, that’s a six-hour drive back to capital to then fly the patient out. In Mongolia, there are very few good roads. Outside the capital and the one other major city, a highway is literally two indentations in the ground.”

Other hazards arose as the two survivalists carried out the show’s premise that Homo sapiens started in central Africa with an evolving set of tools over a journey lasting thousands of years.

“Depending on where we were, the cast lived as humans did at that point of time in our development,” Curtis said. “They built shelter and only used the tools available to humans at that time. They dressed in clothes made of animal skins they personally made and sewed. They often were killing and eating things on the fly. And if not catching and killing things they were not eating, which also was a challenge. In Alaska, there was torrential rain and snow up on the mountains, and glaciers. In Mongolia, which is basically in Siberia, at night it would get down 20 below zero.”

During filming Curtis used his satellite phone to consult about dispensing emergency medicine with Jeremy Joslin, a physician who directs the adult emergency room at SUNY Upstate as well as its wilderness and expeditionary medicine fellowship.

Several years ago the doctor asked Curtis — who earned SUNY Cortland’s Outstanding Student Leader Award in 2009 — to volunteer on a medical team for a multi-day jungle marathon in the Amazon rainforests. Curtis’ growing involvement in backcountry medicine as well as his connection with Remote Medicine International led to the opportunities with National Geographic Channel.

Emergency medicine represented a 180-degree career shift for the non-traditional student, who was a senior project manager for Hewlett Packard when he and Jena returned to upstate New York after living in the Washington, D.C. area and New York City for many years.

He’d obtained his EMT certification in 1987 — his high school graduation year — started and abandoned a degree in international education at American University, and spent six years as a patient care technician at Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown. On Sept. 11, 2001, he was working as a network engineer in a data center for American Airlines in Manhattan and Newark Airport. He offered his information technology skills to the American Red Cross to help them track survivors of the World Trade Centers disaster to various emergency shelters so their families knew they were safe.

“I had 11 years at Hewlett Packard and I was approaching 40 when decided I wanted to do something different,” Curtis said. “I loved being in the out-of-doors. I loved doing medicine. I loved teaching. I wanted to figure out how to make some sort of career out of those possibilities.”

Originally his biology degree was a step along his way to becoming a doctor. But a funny thing happened on his way to medical school.

“Since I graduated from Cortland, the opportunities have come along somewhat continuously. The chance to go on to another four years of medical school and three years of residency just wasn’t there because I’m living the dream life.

“We’re off in remote places working hand in hand with locals, typically for weeks on end,” Curtis said. “Working with people who have lived their whole lives in Ethiopia or Mongolia gives you the chance to see the world from a different perspective.”

His worldview also is shaped by his SUNY Cortland experience.                  

“That critical thinking and looking at the details and perspectives influenced me in everything including interacting with people from different parts of the world,” he said. “It affects how I do my safety work and how I think about risk.”

His experience looking at bees up on the Ethiopian tundra at 14,000 feet recalled for him the course he took on pollinators with Professor of Biological Sciences Steven Broyles.

“My knowledge in how they interact and work was shaped by that class I took probably eight years ago,” Curtis said. “It’s given me — from an ecological and biological perspective — a different take on the world.”

SUNY Cortland’s Africana Studies Department has put together a full calendar of Black History Month events spanning throughout February. They include weekly guest lectures, a student open mic showcase and a Pan African dance performance to culminate the month-long celebration for the College and the community.

“Black history is America’s history and this month enables all of us to evaluate our progress, historical contradictions, achievement, and challenges in order to reach future possibilities,” said SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Seth Asumah, chair of SUNY Cortland’s Africana Studies Department and organizer of the month’s activities.

Events highlighting history, the arts and student research and creativity kicked off Feb. 3, with the first of eight lunchtime presentations. Five other lectures and performances also are scheduled, building up to a concert featuring the Wassa Pan Afrika Dance Ensemble and the College’s Gospel Choir on Sunday, Feb. 28, at 3 p.m. in Old Main Brown Auditorium.

All Black History Month events are free to attend and open to the public.

Evening and weekend events include:

• Wednesday, Feb. 10: Ute Ritz-Deutch, of the College’s History Department, presents “Solitary and Racism in the United States,” at 7 p.m. in Sperry Center, Room 304.
• Monday, Feb. 15: Three students will offer short presentations beginning at 7 p.m. in Sperry Center, Room 304. Alexis Vilceus, a childhood/early childhood education major from Bellerose, N.Y.; Claire Leggett, an adolescence education: social studies and history dual major from East Aurora, N.Y.; and Deidre Kirkem, a speech and hearing science major from Long Beach, N.Y., all will speak to different topics.
• Wednesday, Feb. 17: “The Regularization of Violence” takes place at 7 p.m. in Sperry Center, Room 304. It will feature input from four SUNY Cortland faculty members from the College’s Philosophy Department: Robert Earle, Andrew Fitz-Gibbon, Nikolay Karkov and Mechthild Nagel.
• Tuesday, Feb. 23: An Open Mic Showcase takes place at 7 p.m. in Sperry Center, Room 205.
• Sunday, Feb. 28: The Wassa Pan Afrika Dance Ensemble and the SUNY Cortland Gospel Choir perform at 3 p.m. in Old Main Brown Auditorium. 

All weekday Sandwich Seminar talks take place in Brockway Hall, Jacobus Lounge and they include:

• Wednesday, Feb. 10: Emmanuelle Andres, from the University of La Rochelle in France, discusses “Toni Morrison’s Writings and the Power of Imagination” at 12:30 p.m.
• Thursday, Feb. 11: Xavier Campbell, a political science major from Jamaica, N.Y., presents “The Boys are Coming Home and There Will Be a Change” at noon.
• Wednesday, Feb. 17: Timothy Delaune, an assistant professor of political science, speaks to the Fisher vs. the University of Texas U.S. Supreme Court case at 12:30 p.m.
• Thursday, Feb. 18: Kenia Ozoria, a communication studies major from Union City, N.J., offers “Questioning Black Hair: Culture, Self-Image and Politics” at noon.
• Wednesday, Feb. 24: Edward Moore and Lois Pfister, of the College’s Performing Arts Department, present “Black Music Matters” at 12:30 p.m.
• Thursday, Feb. 25: Keri Blakinger, a journalist for the New York Daily News who focuses on criminal justice and addiction, offers a talk titled “The End of the Drug War and Me” at noon. Blakinger made national news when she was arrested during her senior year at Cornell University for drug possession. She previously spent two years in jail.

Black History Month sponsors include the College President’s Office; the Provost’s Office; the School of Arts and Sciences; the Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies; the Africana Studies, Philosophy and Political Science departments; Campus Artists and Lecture Series; Black Student Union; and the Pan African Student Association.

For more information, contact Asumah at 607-753-2064.

Creative fiction specialist David Franke will discuss how the old folklore of the Tully Valley area of upstate New York has deeply influenced how people living there today view their surroundings, on Thursday, Feb. 18, at SUNY Cortland.

Franke, who teaches creative, technical and nonfiction writing in the Professional Writing Program in SUNY Cortland’s English Department, will speak at 4:30 p.m. in Old Main Colloquium.

	David Franke

His presentation, titled “Place as Voice,” fits into SUNY Cortland’s yearlong program of lectures, panel discussions, exhibitions and concerts themed on “Where Are We?”

The series explores the role that local communities play in the greater society’s achievement of economic health, environmental resilience and overcoming inequalities of all types. Presented by the College’s Cultural and Intellectual Climate Committee (CICC), all the events are free and open to the public.

A total of five “Where Are We?” events are scheduled through the end of March.

A long-time member of the College’s Faculty Writing Group on campus, Franke’s focus is rhetoric and the ways that writing shapes the way people behave and think. He writes in many genres, from poetry to technical documents.  

“After moving to the Tully Valley north of Cortland, I discovered that this ancient locale is inscribed with many competing stories of what place and nature might mean,” said Franke, who also leads the Seven Valleys Writing Project, a cross-curricular leadership program for teachers that helps them use writing to learn with their K-12 students.

“Making sense of these stories requires a language that can accommodate everything from geology to politics to dreams,” he said. “In this paper, I try to reveal a place that speaks in multiple, incommensurate voices.”

Film to Address Climate Action Impact

“This Changes Everything,” a film that addresses whether confronting the climate crisis is the best chance humans will ever get to build a better world, will be screened at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 25, in Sperry Center, Room 104.

The movie is directed by Avi Lewis and inspired by Naomi Klein’s international non-fiction bestseller by the same name. The film presents seven powerful portraits of communities on the front lines, from Montana’s Powder River Basin to the Alberta Tar Sands, from the coast of South India to Beijing and beyond.

Tragic Story Leaves Lasting Local Legacy

Geographer and local author Joseph Brownell will revisit a famous murder that is deeply imprinted in the memory of upstate New York residents: the more than century old killing of Cortland’s Grace Brown by Chester Gillette at Big Moose Lake.

Brownell, a SUNY Cortland professor emeritus of geography, will address “A Farm Girl — Billie: The Gillette Murder Case 110 Years After,” at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 22, on the second floor of Memorial Library.

Brownell will discuss one of the most famous criminal acts in New York state’s history. Shared by a media frenzy fueled by the sensational newspaper reporting of 1906, this “crime of the century” seeped into the American culture. The story of Chester and Grace also was the inspiration for Theodore Dreiser’s novel An American Tragedy and the Hollywood movie “A Place in the Sun.”

Brownell is the author of Adirondack Tragedy: The Gillette Murder Case of 1906 and Cortland to the Adirondacks: A Fateful Journey in 1906.

Panel to Discuss Local Opt-Out Movement

A panel of parents from Cortland, Ithaca and Dryden will describe their motivation for refusing to let schools administer to their children the standardized tests put in place by New York state.

Their presentation, “The Local Opt-Out Movement: Parents’ Responses to Standardized Testing Requirements,” begins at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 24, in Brockway Hall Jacobus Lounge.

These parents — who personify the movement to take control of the testing requirements for students by having their children “opt out” of the tests — will share how this local activism has spread beyond each family’s decision. 

A question-and-answer and discussion period will follow.

The event is co-sponsored by Cortland’s Urban Recruitment of Educators (C.U.R.E.) Program.

Multi-media Show Spotlights Local Changes

Howard Lindh, a lecturer and scenic designer emeritus with the College’s Performing Arts Department, will give a multi-media presentation titled “Our Town: Cortland Then and Now” on Tuesday, March 29.

His program begins at 7 p.m. in Sperry Center, Room 104.

By holding an annual series on a different intellectual theme, the CICC committee aims to generate common topics of discussion and to establish traditions of intellectual discourse on campus. The series encourages faculty and staff to infuse the theme into their course curricula, engage in classroom discussions and debates around the theme, and propose campus events or speakers on topics connected to the theme.

The series also is sponsored by the Campus Artist and Lecture Series, the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs’ Office, the President’s Office and the Cortland College Foundation.

For more information, contact CICC co-chair Scott Moranda, associate professor of history, at 607-753-2052.

How can teachers take students beyond the conventional “read, discuss, submit” paper-writing process? How can they do more than merely assigning writing? What are some new, effective ways to use writing in their classroom?

These are just some of the questions that SUNY Cortland Writing Matters III will attempt to answer. This year’s conference, which takes place Saturday, March 19, will follow the theme “What Comes After the Writing Process?”

Teachers from all grade levels and content areas are encouraged to attend the event, which runs 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in Corey Union on the College’s campus. Anyone who leads a conference session will earn free registration, which regularly costs $25 and includes lunch, coffee, technology and parking.

Online registration is open through the MyLearningPlan website.

“This is an excellent leadership opportunity for teachers who present interactive, writing-based lessons that their peers can adapt to their own classrooms,” said David Franke, a SUNY Cortland professor of English and the director of the Seven Valleys Writing Project. “The purpose is to celebrate writers and the many teachers of writing in our region.” 

Writing Matters sessions are built to be practical and participant-driven so that attendees can leave the conference with effective and engaging ways to use writing in their classrooms. All sessions encourage audience participation and reflective writing. Examples may include:

• New genres for classroom writing and storytelling;
• Ways to establish school-wide or go beyond school-wide writing projects;
• Subtle ways to “sneak in” writing that help students focus and reflect;
• Using digital writing media;
• Making writing collaborative;
• Establishing links between content areas (such as art and writing, literature and history, and so on); and
• Creative ways to have students write.

Presenters can lead solo or in a team of two. Roundtable discussions with four to six teachers also are encouraged, but a chair must be identified. Classroom teachers and writers make up the primary audience for all conference sessions.

Teachers interested in attending Writing Matters III can register online through the MyLearningPlan website. Session proposal submissions are due Monday, Feb. 15, and also can be submitted online. For more information, contact Franke at 607-753-5945 or email the Seven Valleys Writing Project.

SUNY Cortland will be the center of the residence life universe on Saturday, Feb. 20, when the College hosts its longstanding and highly regarded Residence Life Conference.

The all-day event, now in its 39th year, will be themed around “Space Jam,” the popular 1996 animated film featuring Looney Tunes characters and basketball legend Michael Jordan. Approximately 350 people — representing both student resident assistants (RAs) and professional staff members — from 20 colleges and universities are expected to attend.

“With this year’s theme, we’re focusing on leadership, diversity, perseverance and team-building,” said Lima Stafford, the College’s residence hall director for Bishop Hall. “Those are some of the lessons that come out of the movie, so the sessions throughout the day will be focused on those topics.”

Stafford and Meghan Henley, the residence hall director for Fitzgerald Hall, serve as the co-chairs of this year’s event. They credited a 16-member committee of student RAs with developing the conference’s theme and coordinating the day’s program.

“It’s a big event and a complete team effort,” Stafford said.

Four sessions throughout the day offer 60 different presentations for both RAs and professional staff members. Presentation topics include sexual assault prevention training, ideas for community building and promoting LGBTQIAP friendly environments. Each SUNY Cortland residence hall also supplies a prize basket for a silent auction benefitting the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

“The hope is that everybody can learn lessons that can be applied outside of residence life, later on in their own lives,” Stafford said.

It’s become a tradition for SUNY Cortland to celebrate sustainability with a full schedule of “Green Days” events in April.

Organizers, however, know that sustainability is a year-round endeavor. That’s why they are expanding the concept to encompass the entire academic calendar.

Moving forward, every day at SUNY Cortland could be a Green Day.

All it takes is for faculty members, students, staff and alumni to identify – or “brand” – activities that promote environmental, social or economic sustainability as a Green Days event.  

Identifying a lecture, presentation, activity, film screening or similar event as part of a larger, campus-wide sustainability effort helps increase interest and attendance. The Green Days Committee would assist in marketing the events and authorize use of the College’s “Green Days” word mark. If needed, committee members can help plan and develop an event and assist with finding sponsorships or other resources.

The Green Days identity also helps fit single events into a broader, global context. It strengthens SUNY Cortland’s growing reputation as an environmentally conscious institution focused on sustainability of all types.

Eventually, the committee plans to develop a passport program in which students get a stamp for every Green Days event they attend and become eligible to win prizes.

Organizers interested in hosting a Green Days event should fill out the Committee’s online form.

Although the goal is to celebrate sustainability all year long, the traditional, month-long Green Days observation still will be held in April this year. The deadline for inclusion in promotional material related to the celebration is Tuesday, March 15.

SUNY Cortland’s Performing Arts Department offers up a dark comedy as its first production of the spring semester. 

“The Cripple of Inishmaan,” a 1996 work from British/Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, comes to the Dowd Fine Arts Center Lab Theatre from Thursday, Feb. 18, to Sunday, Feb. 21. The Thursday, Friday and Saturday performances all start at 8 p.m., while the Sunday matinee begins at 2 p.m.

The show, which contains adult language and situations, is recommended for ages 13 and older.

Tickets cost $11 for adults and $7 for students, with only a handful remaining for the Saturday night show. They can be purchased online through the box office website: cortland.edu/boxoffice

Limited seating is available due to the Lab Theatre’s size.

Set in the 1930s, the comedy takes place in the small Aran Islands community of Inishmaan off the west coast of Ireland. Billy Claven, a young boy, hears that a documentary film crew is coming to a nearby island and sees it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to escape his current circumstances.

The College’s production features student actors. Deena Conley, associate professor and chair of the Performing Arts Department, serves as director and dialect coach.

For more information, contact Michael Sills, the box office manager, at 607-753-2831.

Those immersed in social media who find it can become less than friendly might learn from 19th century techniques that used memorization to keep conversations more upbeat.

Kevin Sheets, a SUNY Cortland associate professor of history, will explore early American methods of enhancing memory for the sake of a more refined social discourse on Wednesday, Feb. 17, at the College.

	Kevin Sheets

Sheets, who has a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Virginia, will present “The Art of Memory and Culture of Thought in 19th Century America” at 4:30 p.m. in Moffett Center, Room 2125.

A reception will precede his talk at 4 p.m. in the Rozanne M. Brooks Museum, Moffett Center, Room 2126.

This presentation is free and open to the public. The lecture continues this year’s 2015-16 Rozanne M. Brooks Lectures theme “The Culture of Thought.” The series allows audience members to explore what has shaped, and is changing, the way humans think about the world around them.

Sheets will look at early mnemonic systems in the late 1830s through early 1840s and the roles that they played in the 19th century, specifically in the education system. He will illustrate these early memory systems and encourage the audience to engage in brief exercises.

“These memory systems were popular because they were compatible with a cultural imperative geared towards facilitating refined conversation,” Sheets said. “Memorization was seen as a useful tool in helping people to navigate a polite social world.”

Sheets also will touch on the shift from students pursuing a college education in the early 19th century for the purpose of consuming knowledge to today’s young scholars using their classroom time learning how to produce knowledge.

According to Sheets, at the turn of the 20th century, memorization of common knowledge became a less important role in the college system and in society.

The lecture will give the audience a sense of what 19th century memorizations were like and why the systems were popular. Sheets hopes the audience will take away an appreciation for the culture of this time period and a better understanding of transformations in the American university system.

	Conversation was the center of social life in 19th century American society. Shown are a typical tea service and above left, two women talking with one another.

Sheets serves as graduate coordinator for the College’s History Department. He has coordinated several projects funded by a U.S. Department of Education Teaching American History (TAH) grant. He and colleague Randi Storch, professor and History Department chair, have obtained several rounds of National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) funding to co-present “Forever Wild: The Adirondacks in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era,” a summer program which brings educators from all over the country to experience first-hand a unique piece of history at the College’s William H. Parks Family Center for Environmental and Outdoor Education at Raquette Lake.

The 2015-16 Brooks Lecture Series is sponsored by a grant from Auxiliary Services Corporation and the Cortland College Foundation.

For more information, contact Sharon R. Steadman, a professor of sociology/anthropology, Brooks lecture series organizer and Brooks Museum director, at 607-753-2308.

Prepared by public relations writing intern Bethany Lunden

Many buildings across SUNY Cortland’s campus will be closed for short periods during the spring while the College continues the second phase of an electrical infrastructure upgrade.

In total, 11 buildings on the upper portion of campus will be affected by the power shutdowns spanning from mid March to mid June. The work is part of a major $26 million project that will completely upgrade the College’s electrical distribution lines.

Power shutdowns have been scheduled for weekends and semester breaks whenever possible to minimize their impact on employees. Many buildings are linked electrically, which means that temporary four-hour shutdowns will occur before multi-day closures in some instances.

The first closures will occur Monday, March 14, during the College’s spring break. A complete calendar is available online and includes the following buildings:

• Memorial Library: closed Monday, March 14, at 7 a.m. through Wednesday, March 16
• Dowd Fine Arts Center: closed Monday, March 14, from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m.; closed Thursday, March 17, all day beginning at 7 a.m.
• Bowers Hall II: closed Friday, April 15, at 5 p.m. through Sunday, April 17
• Bowers I: closed Friday, April 15, from 5 to 9 p.m.; closed Friday, April 22, at 5 p.m. through Sunday, April 24
• Old Main: closed Friday, April 15, from 5 to 9 p.m.; closed Friday, April 22, from 5 to 9 p.m.; closed Friday, June 10, at 5 p.m. through Sunday, June 12
• Moffett Center: closed Sunday, May 15, at 5 p.m. through Tuesday, May 17
• Brockway Hall: closed Sunday, May 15, from 5 to 9 p.m.; closed Wednesday, May 18, at 5 p.m. through Friday, May 20
• Miller Building: closed Sunday, May 15, from 5 to 9 p.m.; closed Wednesday, May 18, from 5 to 9 p.m.; closed Friday, June 3, at 5 p.m. through Sunday, June 5
• Sperry Center: closed Monday, May 16, at 7 a.m. through Wednesday, May 18
• Cheney Hall: closed Wednesday, May 18, at 5 p.m. through Friday, May 20
• DeGroat Hall: closed Wednesday, May 18, at 5 p.m. through Friday, May 20
• Heating Plant: closed Tuesday, June 14, at 7 a.m. through Friday, June 1

The College’s Human Resources Office will contact employees who work in these buildings with alternate work locations and leave options for shutdowns that occur during regular business hours.

Additional shutdowns will occur during the third phase of the electrical infrastructure upgrade, but those have not yet been scheduled. For more information, contact the Facilities Planning, Design and Construction Office at 607-753-2214.

Cheryl Kerrigan will share the moving story of her struggle and recovery from a 25-plus year battle with anorexia on Wednesday, Feb. 24, at SUNY Cortland.

Her talk, “Bringing Recovery to Life,” based on her part-personal memoir, part self-help manual, Telling Ed NO! and Other Practical Tools to Conquer Your Eating Disorder and Find Freedom, will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the Corey Union Function Room.

A candlelight vigil sponsored by Delta Phi Epsilon sorority will precede the event. Afterward, books will be available for purchase and signing.

Kerrigan’s presentation is the keynote address for the College’s Body Appreciation Week, which will run from Monday, Feb. 22, to Friday, Feb. 26. Sponsored by the Health Promotion Office, Counseling and Student Development, and the SUNY Cortland Auxiliary Services Corporation, this year’s Body Appreciation Week will feature a series of events pertaining to the circus theme, “It’s a Balancing Act!”

All programs of Body Appreciation Week 2016 are free and open to the public.

The talk also continues the spring Wellness Wednesday Series at SUNY Cortland, a semester-long schedule of speakers, exhibits and workshops designed to help students achieve wellbeing.

Kerrigan will share tools that she personally used to overcome her eating disorder. She will speak from her own experience and will perform a short song that she used as a coping mechanism.

“I hope that if there is anyone in the audience struggling with an eating disorder, they will gain some insight,” Kerrigan said.

In Telling Ed NO!, Kerrigan shares with her readers more than 100 practical tools that she used to overcome anorexia.

“There is not just one place to get all the tools to a full recovery,” she said. “Maybe some of them, one of them or all of these tools will help others in suffering get to a practical recovery.”

Growing up in Massachusetts, Kerrigan remembers struggling with the beginning stages of an eating disorder at age 5. As an early teen, she began a battle with anorexia that would last until her early 30s. In 2006, her family intervened and Kerrigan sought treatment.

In the midst of dealing with her eating disorder, Kerrigan received a Bachelor of Arts in Business from Regis College. She began a full-time career in finance. Recently, she has pursued a Masters in Social Work and will graduate in May from Boston University.

Check the College’s calendar for more information about Body Appreciation Week events, dates and times.

For more information about Body Appreciation Week or Wellness Wednesdays, contact Lauren Herman, the College’s health educator in the Health Promotion Office, Van Hoesen Hall, Room B-1, or at 607-753-2066.

Prepared by public relations intern Bethany Lunden

When it’s circus week in her preschool classroom, Heather Tuttle ’06 M ’10 comes prepared for everything, which can mean planning math lessons that double as carnival games or even dressing up in a clown costume herself. 

“I’m a kid with the kids,” said Tuttle, who has taught for four years in SUNY Cortland’s Child Care Center. “One day, if we’re doing a lesson on snowflakes and all of a sudden they want to talk about dinosaurs, we’ll talk about dinosaurs instead. I have to be flexible.” 

Tuttle’s flexibility and creativity are just two of the reasons she recently was awarded the Terri Lynne Lokoff/Children’s Tylenol National Child Care Teacher Award — one of only 50 teachers from across the nation to earn the honor.

More impressively, Tuttle learned she placed within the top 10. That means she’s in the running for the top overall prize, the Helene Marks Award, which will be announced at a national awards ceremony on Saturday, April 16, in Philadelphia.

“I’m so excited,” said Tuttle, of Greene, N.Y. “This is an honor that recognizes how we teach, how we do our lessons and how we interpret what children want.”

Heather Tuttle poses with children in her pre-school classroom.

The award brings a $500 grant for a Child Care Center enhancement project that Tuttle proposed, plus $500 for personal use. In her award application, Tuttle outlined a plan to increase the use of the playground’s outdoor stage area, where children can put on impromptu “plays” with seemingly ordinary handheld supplies. The proposal will look to add curtains for decoration, a supply storage area and a “discovery” table to encourage imagination.

All of Tuttle’s classroom lessons attempt to pique the curiosity of her students, who range in age from 3 to 5 years old.

“I’m a guide for the kids,” she said. “They’re leading their educations and I’m trying to guide them where they need to be.”

After earning a bachelor’s degree from the College in childhood/early childhood education, Tuttle worked for five years in her native Cincinnatus, N.Y., as a teaching assistant. She pursued a master’s in literacy and credited her “out-in-the-field experience” with refining her skills as a teacher.

“I really got comfortable in the classroom,” she said. “Every day is different, and that’s why I love my job.”

Patrick Viscome has memories of hiking in the Adirondacks with his father as a young boy, particularly of a sign that stood out on their climbs up Mount Marcy. 

Leave the woods better than you found them, the sign urged.

“I tried to make that my personal philosophy,” said Viscome, SUNY Cortland’s Student Government Association (SGA) president. “When I came to Cortland, I wanted to leave it better than when I came in freshman year.”

His position as SGA president means that he devotes the bulk of his week to fellow students — attending events across campus, keeping regular office hours in Corey Union and simply making himself available when classmates need him. In exchange for countless hours of his time and everyday availability, he receives a $5,000 president’s stipend.

But Viscome, a business economics major, doesn’t spend any of it on himself.

“I take out 10 percent for taxes and choose to give the rest away,” he said matter-of-factly, as if he never thought twice about it.

This past winter, he purchased $500 worth of coats, hats and blankets during a single trip to Walmart, then made a special delivery to the local Cortland YWCA. He supports the agency’s Bridges for Kids program. He also gives a portion of it back to the College, supporting the Performing Arts Department and The Cortland Fund in the spirit of philanthropy. 

“The money was extra, so I thought it would be superfluous to spend it on myself,” he said.

Viscome works part-time as an assistant supervisor for dining services in Neubig Hall and lives in the Judson H. Taylor Leadership House on campus. Not surprisingly, he’s earned several scholarships for his leadership and community service. Yet, during a time when some corporate CEOs and top professional athletes are seeking higher salaries, the Hartsdale, N.Y., native believes he has enough to get by.

That’s why Viscome thinks first of other people. He encourages his classmates to give back too, although not with their dollars if they can’t afford to part with them.

“I think it’s hard for most students to give their money, so I encourage them to give back their time and energy,” he said.

The Student Philanthropy Council’s month-long celebration of National Student Engagement and Philanthropy Month will attempt to do the same. Every Wednesday in February, from noon to 2 p.m. in the Curry ’52 Main Lobby of Brockway Hall, a different event will be held as a way of thanking the College’s many supporters and educating students on the impact of giving. A full list of events appears below.

During his sophomore year, Viscome served as a teaching assistant for a course titled “Health of the Underserved.” It meant overseeing community service projects for 80 students that required 10 hours of volunteer work from each one.

“I got to see the need,” said Viscome, who started as a community health major at the College but changed his course after a hospital administrator spoke to one of his classes. “But eventually, I realized I liked the business aspect more than the health side of it.”

Even with his extracurricular commitments — he joined four clubs his sophomore year before diving into student government — Viscome would be able to graduate on time this spring as an honors program participant. But he wants more training in mathematics and computer applications. He plans to spend next year taking extra courses in those disciplines, with the ultimate goal of earning a master’s degree in finance from one of the nation’s top programs.

Viscome’s reason for pursuing a career in equity research and financial modeling isn’t the paycheck, but rather his mind’s curiosity for those topics, he said.

Of course, if Viscome does wind up working on Wall Street or with a hedge fund in Stamford, Conn., with a financial capacity to give back, he said he’ll always do it with the goal of supporting more students like himself, the ones who come to SUNY Cortland with the intention of leaving a lasting legacy on campus.

“When I give back, I like to think of the human element — the people who will benefit,” he said.

National Student Engagement and Philanthropy Month events

• Wednesday, Feb. 3: The date marks 100 days until the Class of 2016 graduates, and members will be able to contribute to their Senior Class Gift. All contributors receive a commemorative pin to wear at Commencement. Free coffee and hot chocolate also will be served.
• Wednesday, Feb. 10: Students will be encouraged to write thank-you cards to SUNY Cortland’s loyal supporters. Every person who contributes a hand-written note will be receive an entry for a special raffle prize.
• Wednesday, Feb. 17: Special activities and games with prizes will educate students on the impact of student scholarships.
• Wednesday, Feb. 24: Students will be encouraged to write thank-you notes for the College’s faculty and staff member donors.

All events take place noon to 2 p.m. in the Curry ’52 Main Lobby of Brockway Hall.

Kevin Pristash ’85, M.A. ’91 recently was named director of Corey Union and campus activities.

Pristash, the director since 2013, was hired to help manage Corey Union in 1986 after graduating from Cortland with a bachelor’s degree in history. He earned his master’s in the same field in 1991, when he was made assistant director.

He has served on various college committees and chaired the college task force charged with creating and implementing new programming around Cortaca Jug, the College’s annual rivalry football game against Ithaca College.

Pristash replaces Michael Whitlock, who managed Corey Union and campus activities for more than three decades and retired Feb. 9. Whitlock was designated executive director of Corey Union and campus activities emeritus.