Campus Champion

Director of Libraries Jennifer Kronenbitter’s goals align with the theme for National Library Week (April 3 to 9) — “Connect with Your Library.” A dedicated library staff continually engages with faculty, staff and students and promotes individual and collaborative research, learning and teaching. For 16 years, four of those as director, Jennifer has shared her forward-thinking visions to connect our campus community with information, resources, technology and assistance. Her service extends to SUNY Libraries where she serves on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force, identifying spaces and support that benefit our collective communities. Connect with the library today and in the weeks ahead and discover a world of information and knowledge.

SUNY Cortland offers one of New York state’s best criminology programs, based on rankings from a college discovery website that emphasizes post-graduation employment and earnings.

Cortland placed No. 2 on the list of “2022 Best Criminology Schools in New York” compiled by College Factual, behind only John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

“This suggests we’re doing a good job of placing our students, which is important,” said Anna Curtis, an associate professor in the Sociology/Anthropology Department who specializes in criminology topics.

“We think about what students are trying to get out of our program and we encourage them to extend past the edges of their comfort zones,” she said.

“Our students are interested in criminology careers and we’re interested in helping them get there.”

The ranking methodology from College Factual emphasizes post-graduation outcomes and program accreditation in addition to indicators such as graduation rate, student-to-faculty ratio and faculty pay. Data sources include the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS).

In addition to law enforcement or the legal profession, possible career fields for criminology majors include substance abuse treatment, social work, social justice advocacy, data analysis or work with non-profit organizations. At SUNY Cortland, 235 students pursued a B.A. in criminology in Fall 2021, making it one of the university’s 10 highest-enrolled undergraduate majors.

Curtis explained that criminology is an interdisciplinary field that considers why people commit crime and how crime-related decisions are shaped by a larger social context.

“When I tell people what they’re going to learn in criminology, I normally talk about the cultural and historical context for our current criminal justice and legal systems,” Curtis said. “We want people to understand what’s going on now based on what happened previously.”

She praised the collaborative nature of SUNY Cortland’s Sociology/Anthropology Department, which includes four majors — anthropology, archaeology, criminology and sociology — in addition to various concentrations. Criminology majors often will pursue an additional major or minor in areas such as political science, economics, communication studies or computer applications.

Outside of the classroom, areas of opportunity include undergraduate research with faculty members as well as internships with local organizations, from police departments to the Cortland County District Attorney’s Office.

“Because we’re focused on core skills like reading analysis, critical thinking and writing, our students go a lot of places,” Curtis said. “We strongly encourage them to think about criminology in a wholistic, interdisciplinary way.”

Tomorrow is Challenge Day!

SUNY Cortland’s annual, daylong fundraising event starts at midnight Wednesday, April 6. Students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends have 24 hours to give to the campus cause of their choice at RedDragonNetwork.org/challenge. Those causes include academic departments, athletic teams and specific initiatives such as the Friends of Parks Alumni House and The Cortland Fund.

And this year, donors can help unlock more than $70,000 in matching gifts.

“The Cortland Challenge channels the remarkable energy of the university community’s competitive spirit to make a real difference in the lives of our students and the work of our campus,” President Erik J. Bitterbaum said. “Our goal is more about participation than the size of individual gifts.”

To make a gift, learn more or track tomorrow’s progress, visit RedDragonNetwork.org/challenge. Use the hashtag #CortlandChallenge to follow along with other Red Dragons on challenge day through Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

When you make a gift to The Cortland Fund, your contribution is going directly to the university’s greatest areas of need and has an impact on the entire campus community.

The Cortland Fund supports campus life in a variety of ways, including:

• Scholarships
  • Honors Convocation awards
  • Professional development for faculty and staff
  • Technology and software
  • Major events
  • Alumni Engagement program support
  • The Lynne Parks ’68 SUNY Cortland Alumni House

Several generous alumni have pledged matching gifts to support the Cortland Challenge,  including Sheri Baron ’77, Linda Gadkowski ’66, Anthony ’86 and Susan Moon and Victor M. Rumore II ’84. A total of $41,000 in matching gifts will be unlocked throughout Challenge Day as certain donor thresholds are met:  

• $10,000 unlocked at 517 donors in honor of the 517 campus and alumni programs that SUNY Cortland hosted during the 2021-22 academic year. The Cortland Fund provides support to a variety of events and programs each year.
• $10,000 unlocked at 900 donors in honor of the approximately 900 donor-sponsored and Cortland Fund scholarships awarded throughout the Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 semesters. These scholarships are awarded based on merit, leadership, campus involvement, diversity and more.
• $10,000 unlocked at 1,358 donors in honor of the 1,358 SUNY Cortland faculty and staff members. Each year The Cortland Fund provides support for faculty and staff development.
• $11,000 unlocked at 1,812 donors in honor of the 1,812 SUNY undergraduate students who have the potential to graduate in May 2022.

There are also some dollar-for-dollar matching opportunities:

• $15,000 in dollar-for-dollar matching gifts is available from Lynne Parks Hoffman ’68 for donations to support the Friends of Parks Alumni House fund.
• The Division of Institutional Advancement has collectively contributed $2,500 to serve as a dollar-for-dollar match for The Cortland Fund.
• Cheryl Barredo M ’81 is giving $1,000 toward a power hour challenge. Look for details on social media during Challenge Day!

A general athletics challenge will be backed by a generous, $11,000 matching gift offered by Mike Cappeto ’71, M ’73; Sandy Morley ’77; Barbara LoPiccolo ’69; Joan Sitterly and Gary Miller; Paul Fernandes ’67 and Kathy Lopez Fernandes ’67; Don ’75, M ’80 and Loraine Ridall ’77, M ’78, and Jim ’63 and Lois Codispoti ’64.

• If 759 donors give to any of the athletics program funds, including general athletics and C-Club Endowment, $1,000 will be awarded to The Cortland Fund. A total of 759 student athletes participated during the 2021-22 fall, winter and spring seasons.
• This year, the 20 teams will be broken into four categories: small, medium, large and extra-large based on the number of alumni and previous donor participation. A variety of awards will be made to unlock donor matches.

Serious sports-related injuries can happen in a variety of settings that pose unique challenges for first responders, and SUNY Cortland students likely to find themselves in that initial, emergency role need to be prepared.

That motivation brought together five graduate students in the university’s M.S. in athletic training program and seven members of SUNY Cortland Emergency Medical Services (SCEMS) for a collaborative training exercise in Park Center on March 27.

The students practiced a rescue scenario that involved safely removing someone with a suspected cervical injury from the foam pit in the building’s gymnastics room. Under the guidance of the university’s certified athletic training staff, both groups — the athletic training graduate students and SCEMS members — discussed the intricacies of their roles and gained nearly three hours of rescue practice.

“The goal was to collaborate, exchange ideas and ultimately improve continuity of care for our patients,” said Pat Donnelly, an athletic trainer who teaches graduate students and works with student-athletes in the university’s Division III Athletics Department. “We wanted each group to gain a sense of — and appreciation for — the other’s roles and skills.”

Graduate students in athletic training develop hands-on skills across a variety of settings throughout their two-year master’s program. Students from any academic major can join EMS, a close-knit volunteer group that has operated on campus for more than 45 years and is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week when classes are in session.

Donnelly explained that the foam pit in Park Center’s gymnastics area offers a unique learning environment for both groups. Many college campuses do not house a foam pit, which presents special challenges for safely removing injured people.

Student rescue teams practiced how to safely enter the foam pit, assess victims, apply a cervical collar, place them on a spine board and eventually how to remove them from the foam pit for further medical care. Donnelly said gymnastics injuries likely would be most common in a foam pit, but the simulation also provided transferrable skills for trampoline accidents, emergencies in gyms and training centers or other activities involving falls from heights.

The intention is to offer more collaborative learning experiences and build a partnership that brings future athletic trainers and EMS members together. Possibilities could include the proper way to safely remove football equipment after a potential neck injury, how to respond to ice hockey injuries and airway and bleeding management.

“We want this to be a two-way street,” Donnelly said. “SCEMS does so much for our campus, and their members have a tremendous amount of experience that they can offer. From an athletic training perspective, there are skills we’re trained in and things we may see more frequently. We are each better for our patients when we share that experience and knowledge.”

Homegrown extremist, anti-government militias like the Oath Keepers have been active in the United States for decades.

Increasingly, however, their rhetoric has resulted in violence aimed at the federal government structures that help shape the American way of life.

“The insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, caught many Americans off guard,” said Sam Jackson, an assistant professor in the University at Albany’s College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity.

“Certainly, the sight of a large angry crowd breaking down doors of government buildings is not one we are accustomed to seeing,” said Jackson, a frequent media panelist, public lecturer and conference presenter on political extremism topics. “But perhaps we should not have been so surprised.”

Jackson will discuss that trend on Wednesday, April 6, at SUNY Cortland in a presentation titled “From Extreme Beliefs to Extreme Actions: The Oath Keepers.”

His seminar, which will take place at 4:30 p.m. in Moffett Center, Room 115, concludes the 2021-22 Rozanne M. Brooks Lecture Series at SUNY Cortland, which this academic year focuses on the theme of “The Culture of Extremes.”

The series addresses how in the last couple years, America and the rest of the world have been wracked by extremes that include political brinksmanship, apocalyptic weather events, deadly pandemic, economic collapse and social upheaval.

The Brooks Museum lectures and receptions are free. Due to continued health and safety concerns surrounding the pandemic, members of the public are not invited. Seating will be limited and cannot be exceeded. In light of recent New York State Health Department guidelines, SUNY Cortland strongly recommends that attendees wear face coverings.

A reception to welcome Jackson will precede the lecture at 4 p.m. in the Brooks Museum located across from the lecture room.

Jackson, who developed tools and processes to better research this topic using online data, examines political conflict, broadly understood, following two primary lines. The first focuses on antigovernment extremism in the U.S., especially when activists anticipate or prepare for violence. The second focuses on studying online politics and culture that makes conflict more likely.

According to him, over the past few years, a notable number of Americans have engaged with conspiracy theories, become more open in advocating for white supremacy, or have more plainly depicted those with whom they disagree as existential threats to their way of life.

Some of these Americans have also become more explicit in preparing for violent conflict to prevent what they see as a threat from criminals, terrorists and the federal government.

“A group called Oath Keepers exemplifies this trend: perceiving threats from government, preparing for conflict with government and leaving the door open for individual Americans to take action into their own hands,” Jackson said.

“By examining this group, we can begin to understand how Americans who believe themselves to be patriots might storm the Capitol and attempt to disrupt American democracy.”

He is the author of a 2020 book, Oath Keepers: Patriotism and the Edge of Violence in a Right-Wing Antigovernment Group, Columbia University Press. He’s the author or co-author of peer-reviewed journal articles, including “From National Identity to State Legitimacy: Mobilizing Digitally Networked Publics in Eastern Ukraine.”

Jackson joined the University at Albany in 2018. He previously served as a research fellow with the VOX-Pol Network of Excellence, Dublin City University.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in religious studies from University of Tennessee. Jackson has two master’s degrees, one in political science from Syracuse University and the other in religion and political life from University of Manchester, England. Jackson was honored by Syracuse University in 2016 as an Outstanding Teaching Assistant while working on his Ph.D. dissertation about extremist groups.

The 2021-22 Brooks Lecture Series is sponsored by a grant from the Cortland College Foundation, the Sociology/Anthropology Department and the President’s Office. For more information, contact Brooks Museum director and SUNY Distinguished Professor Sharon Steadman at 607-753-2308.

Opioid addiction is taking a devastating toll across the nation and in our region. Traditional efforts stressing rehabilitation and lifetime abstinence frequently fail, leaving caregivers looking for ways to reduce the pain and death of addicted opioid users.

Judith Griffin, M.D., an Ithaca, N.Y.-area physician who works directly with patients and medical professionals who are grappling with the epidemic, will share her experiences on the harm reduction front of the opioid battle on Thursday, April 14, at SUNY Cortland,

Griffin, who works as a primary care physician and prescriber of buprenorphine — a less addictive and harmful drug used to dampen opioid cravings — at The REACH Project, Inc., in Ithaca, will begin the hybrid in-person and virtual talk at 5 p.m.  

The live and virtual events are free and open to the public. The in-person  talk will take place in Old Main Brown Auditorium. It can also be live-streamed at the 2022 Poskanzer website.

Griffin’s presentation, “Addressing the Opioid Overdose Crisis Through A Harm Reduction, Health Equity Approach: Experiences From REACH Medical,” represents the 14th Charles N. Poskanzer Lecture, sponsored by SUNY Cortland’s Health Department.

Griffin currently serves as the director of research at REACH. She also directs the Rural Health Equity Training Collaborative (RHETC) affiliated with Cayuga Medical Center. 

A core faculty member for the Cayuga Medical Center Internal Medicine Residency, Griffin holds an appointment as  clinical instructor in medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. 

Recently she was named to the New York State Department of Health AIDS Institute Substance Use Guidelines Committee and also serves on the Criminal Justice-Alternatives to Incarceration Advisory Board for Tompkins County.

Griffin completed her medical degree at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and is board-certified in internal medicine and addiction medicine. Her residency training took place at the Primary Care and Social Internal Medicine Residency Program at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, N.Y.

The event is supported by the Charles N. Poskanzer Fund, an endowment named in honor of the late SUNY Distinguished Service Professor emeritus who taught in the university’s Health Department for 40 years.

The Poskanzer fund was established through the Cortland College Foundation as an endowment to support an annual, public lecture offered by the university’s Health Department in honor of its retired colleague. Poskanzer died in 2010. The annual lecture allows the Health Department to bring national leaders in public and community health to campus to meet with students and faculty and to deliver a public lecture on a current public health issue.

For more information, contact organizer Kaamel Nuhu, M.D., SUNY Cortland assistant professor of health, at 607-753-2989.

SUNY Cortland’s Performing Arts Department will present Stephen Sondheim’s musical comedy “Company” this weekend, offering a contemporary take on the relationships explored in the groundbreaking 1970 Broadway production.

The high-energy, laugh-filled show opened last weekend. It will run Thursday, April 7, to Saturday, April 9 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, April 10, at 2 p.m. in the Dowd Fine Arts Center Theatre. Tickets can be purchased online.  

“SUNY Cortland’s ‘Company’ is an exploration of relationships and marriage through a contemporary lens,” said Performing Arts Professor Kevin Halpin, director and choreographer of the production. “Full of humor, insight, song and dance, this talented cast takes you on a roller-coaster of emotions through the world of love and relationships. This is a show you will love from top to bottom.”

“Company” was the first Broadway musical to not have a linear plot. Instead, a series of songs and vignettes focus on relationships, specifically marriage, as seen through the eyes of a single 35-year-old. The original Broadway production was nominated for a record-breaking 14 Tony Awards and won four, including Best Musical. The production focused on “Bobby,” a man navigating the world of relationships in 1970s New York City. 

The Cortland production is set in a contemporary time frame and, like the current Broadway revival, has a female “Bobbie” lead. It broadens the idea of marriage and relationships with a more inclusive 2022 lens. However, the score still includes classic Sondheim songs, including The Little Things You Do Together, The Ladies Who Lunch, Getting Married Today and Being Alive. 

The Cortland cast features students from the musical theatre program, including first-year through fourth-year students:  

• Bobbie                  Annie Ross
• Sarah                   Mallory Green  
• Harry                   Ruben Fernandez
• Joanne                 Nellie Coutrupe
• Larry                    Andrew Barrett
• Susan                   Lauren Cochran
• Patricia                 Sarah Von Egypt
• Johnny                 Nick Webster
• David                   Louis Bianco
• Amy                     Ella Perez 
• Paul                     Kyle Rivera
• Marta                   Shea McMahon
• Theo                    Harry Sperduto
• April                     Aileen Reddy 

In addition, three students were swings (understudies for multiple ensemble parts):

• Kara Vito
• Olivia Goodman
• Jessie Karlin

Jacob Carll is the production’s musical director/conductor, Scott Holdredge is scenic designer, Joel Pape is lighting/sound designer, Simone Scalici is technical director, Nicholas Alteri is stage manager and Mark Reynolds is costume designer.  

The musical contains portrayals of physical romantic intimacy, so parents may want to consider that before bringing younger family members.

For more information, call the box office at 607-753-2813 or email Box Office Manager Carlita Withers.

The Red Dragon Recognition program is open to SUNY Cortland faculty and staff through Tuesday, April 12.

Faculty and staff may use the online form at Cortland.edu/recognition to send messages of gratitude for their colleagues.

Messages may be made anonymously or can include the sender’s name. Honorees will receive their recognition, a certificate from the President’s Office and will be celebrated on campus. Additional details will be shared with faculty and staff by email at a later date.

Learn more and submit your messages at Cortland.edu/recognition.