Campus Champion

Eight SUNY Cortland skaters, a goalie and two alumni coaches just returned from the National Collegiate Roller Hockey Association championships in Kalamazoo, Michigan. First-year Michael Luzopone scored three goals in the Division III national championship game, a 6-4 loss to the Ohio State University. Despite the final result, it was a worthwhile and memorable trip for the team. Michael, a business economics major from Queens who has played hockey and roller hockey all his life, credits the team’s great chemistry for beating some of the biggest schools in the country on the way to the national final. Men’s Club Roller Hockey is the latest sport club team making SUNY Cortland proud on a national stage.

Platinum-certified rapper Sleepy Hallow will headline SUNY Cortland’s Spring Fling concert on Saturday, April 30, with pop artist Tinashe serving as the supporting artist.

The concert is scheduled for 8 p.m. in Park Center, Alumni Arena, and it marks the university’s first major spring show in three years, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Spring Fling carnival also returns this year with food, games and activities on the Moffett Center lawn from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Both events are sponsored by the university’s Student Activities Board.

Ticket sales for the concert take place Monday, April 11, to Friday, April 15, at the Corey Union Information Desk from 1 to 4 p.m. each day. SUNY Cortland students with a Cortland ID can purchase a single ticket for $20 and additional guest tickets for $30 each.

SUNY Cortland faculty and staff members can purchase tickets for $40 each on Friday, April 22, from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Corey Union Information Desk. Tickets will be sold to the general public for $40 each Saturday, April 23, and Sunday, April 24, from 1 to 5 p.m. at the same location.

Tickets also will be sold at the door for $40 each on the night of the concert.

All ticket sales will be cash only.

A Brooklyn-raised rapper, the 22-year-old Sleepy Hallow broke through in 2019 with the single “Flows,” featuring frequent collaborator Sheff G.

He has two platinum-certified singles: “Deep End Freestyle” featuring Fousheé, which reached No. 80 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in 2020, and “2055,” a 2021 single that peaked at No. 51 on the charts and reached double-platinum status in March.

“Still Sleep?” marked Sleepy Hallow’s first studio album in 2021, climbing to No. 16 on the Billboard 200 charts and No. 9 in the rap category.

Tinashe’s music has been described as rhythmic pop — a blend of R&B, pop and hip hop — and she has released tracks with artists including Chance the Rapper and Britney Spears. Her entertainment career has spanned television, film and dance.

Tinashe’s debut single, “2 On” featuring Schoolboy Q, reached No. 24 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in 2014 and her first studio album “Aquarius” helped earn best new artist nominations from the BET, Soul Train and YouTube Music Awards.

A second studio album, “Nightride,” reached No. 8 in Billboard’s R&B/hip hop category, and a third studio album, “Joyride,” peaked at No. 58 on the Billboard 200 chart. She has released two additional albums to critical acclaim: “Songs for You” in 2019 and “333” in 2021.

Tinashe also collaborated with Chance the Rapper and Snakehips on the track “All My Friends,” which earned the Ivor Novello Award for best contemporary song in 2016. That same year, she appeared on Britney Spears’ song “Slumber Party,” which topped Billboard’s dance club chart.

Early in her career, she was a member of a five-member pop group, the Stunners.

SUNY Cortland students can receive a free t-shirt, meal and community service hours for volunteering at the Spring Fling carnival or concert. Carnival volunteers must commit at least two and a half hours and concert volunteers must work from 4 p.m. through the end of the clean-up.

Interested volunteers should email the Student Activities Board at sab@cortland.edu.

Members of SUNY Cortland Danceworks approached their first-ever national championship trip with an underdog’s mindset.

But in the end, the student-led, hip hop dance team came out on top at the sport’s biggest event.

Danceworks earned the National Dance Alliance (NDA) National Championship in Division III Hip Hop, competing at the premiere showcase of collegiate cheerleading and dance talent April 8 and 9 on the historic Bandshell stage in Daytona Beach, Fla.

Their trophy was one of 45 awarded across different divisions and performance categories in cheerleading and dance. The university’s cheerleading team also finished with a top-five finish in the event’s Advanced All-Female Division III category.

In total, the four-day championship drew 20,000 spectators and 355 collegiate teams. That group included Navarro College, the Texas community college featured in the popular Netflix series “Cheer,” which earned the cheerleading title in its junior college division.

“It was the trip of a lifetime,” said Brianna Del Duca, one of two senior co-captains of the 29-person team, along with Jenna Mangogna. “Just the atmosphere there, it was like we were at Disneyland for cheerleaders and dancers.”

After submitting an audition video in November, Danceworks was among five teams selected from across the country in their competition category. Those five teams competed in a preliminary round April 8, with the top three scores advancing to the finals.

Danceworks finished third in the preliminary round Friday night, securing the last spot in Saturday morning’s finals with their performance to a remix version of Cardi B’s “I Like It.”

Del Duca said the team was thrilled just to receive an initial invitation to Daytona Beach. Earning a spot in the finals produced even more elation. And when the Danceworks captains were provided the judges’ feedback after the preliminary round, their focus shifted to an even bigger prize.

“After we read through all of the critiques, Jenna and I looked at each other and thought, ‘Let’s try to win this thing,’” Del Duca said. “We said, ‘Let’s take what they said and fix it.’ At least we could say we did everything that we could.”

The Danceworks team held an impromptu, late-night practice in the team’s hotel parking lot. One judge recommended that the dancers adjust their spacing after the preliminary round performance, so team members marked the parking lot with tape in an effort to replicate the set-up of the Bandshell, the iconic stage where the finals take place. 

They held a three-hour practice — from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. — to perfect their dance routine the night before Saturday morning’s finals.

Del Duca said that type of effort is common for the team, which holds two-hour practices during the semester up to six times each week in Park Center’s dance studio. Del Duca and Mangogna, who both grew up in Staten Island, N.Y., are best friends and housemates, and they’ll often stay up late at night creating new hip hop dance routines.

Saturday morning’s performance marked their crowning achievement. Teams were limited to 20 members on stage, so the rest of the squad cheered from the front row. Dressed in bold orange pants and black shirts, the group seemed to move perfectly in sync during its two-minute arrangement.

Danceworks teammates cried tears of joy and embraced each other immediately, but they had to wait through 15 more hip hop performances before learning the results. Their score jumped from an 87 in the preliminary round to a 92 in the finals — and the judges noted their improvement from the initial routine.

Del Duca and Mangogna earned an additional award for innovative choreography. Several dancers and spectators also praised Danceworks for their accomplishments as a student-led team.

“Everyone was fascinated when we were there,” Del Duca said. “They kept asking, ‘You don’t have a coach or an advisor?’”

Danceworks, which was established in 1999, is student-run like all of SUNY Cortland’s 34 sport clubs, six of which are performance based.

The time commitment required for a student-run club was worth it for Del Duca, a childhood/early childhood education major, and Mangogna, a physical education major. Both have been dancing since they were 5 years old and both seniors hope to continue teaching the sport in the future.

Del Duca said the trip to nationals was the perfect capstone for their Cortland experience, which included highs like performing at MetLife Stadium for the 2019 Cortaca Jug game and challenges like practicing with physical distancing requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last spring, with most dance competitions canceled, the team’s highlight was recording a routine on the SUNY Cortland Stadium Complex turf without spectators. This spring, Danceworks teammates celebrated in the waters of Daytona Beach with their trophy — a tradition for national champions in cheer and dance.

“We wanted to do something big this year because we’ve worked so hard,” Del Duca said. “It’s every dancer’s dream to go to nationals, so we were grateful just to have the opportunity.

“The feeling of bringing that trophy home to Cortland, that was incredible too.”

Lin Lin, a SUNY Cortland associate professor of childhood/early education, spent the first part of her career teaching in her native China, using traditional rote memorization methods, before experiencing American-style history classes as a visiting scholar in Portland, Oregon.

The experience at Reed College in the late 1990s changed the course of her professional life.

“In the past, how I taught history in China was ‘dead people and remote places marked on a map,’” said Lin, who had come to America with a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in American studies from Beijing Foreign Studies University.

“In America, I learned that history is really an interpretive process in which narratives should be written from multiple perspectives using primary and secondary sources,” she said. 

After her American classroom awakening, Lin earned a Ph.D. in social science education from University of Georgia. She has spent the next 16 years developing and modeling her own unique teaching skills for future elementary school teachers at SUNY Cortland. 

Earlier this month, Lin’s novel teaching methods helped earn her the honor of being named the 16th recipient of the university’s Rozanne M. Brooks Dedicated Teacher Award. 

The Brooks Award honors a faculty member who devotes a significant amount of time both to teaching and to working with students outside of class. The award includes a $7,500 honorarium to enhance the recipient’s teaching initiatives. 

Lin will be recognized formally next fall when the university hosts an Excellence in Teaching, Research and Service Reception for faculty and staff. 

“The Brooks Award Committee was nothing less than astounded at Lin Lin’s energy and creativity in her classes,” said SUNY Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Sharon R. Steadman, a past Brooks Award recipient and committee chair. “She accomplishes so much in each class without ever seeming to be in a hurry. One is rather mesmerized by what she teaches and is reluctant to leave once class is over.”  

The selection committee also included Associate Professor Helena Baert, Physical Education Department; SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Steven Broyles, Biological Sciences Department; and Associate Professor Kim Wieczorek, Childhood/Early Childhood Education Department. 

“I’m so humbled and honored to get this award when there are so many other people who deserve it,” Lin said. She had started her career in her native country as an English language interpreter and then had taught students English for 17 years using the  memorization method Chinese students all learned at school.  

Lin has taken the exact opposite approach in the classroom since joining the SUNY Cortland School of Education faculty in 2005. For example, to show pre-service teachers how to make social studies come alive, Lin will take her students outside to play actual tug-of-war with a rope to learn how the continental army overcame the British in the American Revolutionary War.

“The factors that helped the American continental army win against the British, that stays with them,” Lin added about her all-in style of teaching. “You have to be really passionate so you won’t burn out.”

Lin teaches undergraduate courses in social and academic curriculum, elementary social studies method courses, and social and academic curriculum; and graduate courses in teaching elementary social studies methods, teaching conflicts and controversy in social education, and democracy and social education. She is a faculty co-advisor for the university’s Asian American Pacific Islander Student Union.

She  will use the Brooks Award stipend to diversify her office library of children’s and adult educational books, established with some of her own money. New children’s titles will expand on less usual family units in terms of gender composition or family situation, for example, families with an incarcerated member. She’d also like to add more texts on southeast Asian countries and South Asian American communities. Lin wants to continue subscriptions to online remote learning applications she uses to engage with young students in synchronous online teaching and that her students use when their classes meet online.

“Students learn best when they are actively engaged in learning when teaching is grounded in their lives, when they are learning about things that hold meaning to them, and when they have choices with their learning,” Lin said. 

“Students have unique identities and should be taught according to the ways they learn best,” she added. “And students learn more when they are encouraged to reflect on their learning experiences.”

Kimberly Rombach, SUNY Cortland associate professor of childhood/early childhood education, noted that students see Lin as both challenging and supportive.

“In class, she presents material that portrays multiple perspectives about the world in which we live in ways that encourage deep, meaningful discourse,” Rombach wrote in a recommendation letter. “She develops lessons that engage her students to reflect on their own misconceptions about differences while guiding them toward understanding the cultural universals we all share.” 

Andrea Lachance, dean of education, noted that Lin's teaching presentations are engaging, entertaining and enlightening. 

“Her enthusiasm for learning is contagious, and students are drawn into her teaching by her warm, open nature and natural curiosity,” Lachance said. 

Lachance said that Lin wants students to develop the critical thinking and evaluative skills to examine their own assumptions and biases in teaching children about social and cultural issues.  

Lin’s scholarly reputation crosses international boundaries. 

“She has been an invited presenter on a variety of different topics pertaining to education at elementary, middle, high school and university settings in China,” Rombach said. “She has promoted collaborative efforts to discuss possible future plans to develop inter-campus relationships and activities between SUNY Cortland and international schools in China.” 

Lin enthusiastically shares traditions from her own family and culture with her students, both in her home with her famous dumplings and at various campus events. Although she doesn’t teach STEM, Lin has helped colleagues in science disciplines run the annual field trips to Raquette Lake; and assisted with a 2016 winter session cultural study/service trip to Costa Rica.  

Lin brought an extra suitcase full of “teaching aides” — magazines, playing cards, crayons, puzzles and the like — so that she could help support the work of our students who were charged with teaching English to young Costa Rican children on that trip, Lachance said. Each night, she assembled games and activities to support the next day’s English “lessons.” 

Underpinning Lin’s classroom performance is her extensive scholarship in the field of social studies education, her colleagues noted. Lin is well published individually and collaboratively and increases the knowledge-base for teaching social studies, not only for her students but current teachers and other social studies teacher educators. 

The Brooks Award was endowed through the generosity of the late Rozanne Marie Brooks, a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor and SUNY Cortland professor emerita of sociology and anthropology, and her former students, friends and colleagues. A SUNY Cortland faculty member for 36 years, Brooks died in 1997. The first award was presented in spring 1998, with 15 honorees since then.

Steven Broyles, a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Biological Sciences, will deliver the keynote address at SUNY Cortland’s annual Honors Convocation on Saturday, April 23.

The university will recognize more than 387 students for their academic accomplishments at the event, which begins at 5 p.m. in the Park Center Alumni Arena. A reception for the honorees and guests will follow in the Park Center Corey Gymnasium.

The ceremony marks the first in-person Honors Convocation since 2019, before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Honors Convocation is a special celebration of SUNY Cortland’s most successful students,” President Erik J. Bitterbaum said. “It will be wonderful to again hold this event in person and recognize our students with their families, friends and faculty members present.” 

Students will be acknowledged for a variety of achievements, including ranking among the top five percent in their respective classes and receiving university-wide and departmental awards and scholarships. The Donald Parish Brooks Scholarship Award will be presented to the residence hall having the highest cumulative grade point average.

Broyles, the keynote speaker, has frequently been recognized for his extraordinary skill as a consummate instructor, caring mentor and recognized expert in his field since joining the university 30 years ago. Colleagues have noted his effective teaching is deeply rooted in his intellectual expertise and unwavering commitment to student success.

Broyles  was promoted to professor in 2004 and in 2020, the State University of New York named him a Distinguished Teaching Professor, which is a promotion above the rank of professor.

He was honored in 2002 with a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and, in 2012, by SUNY Cortland with the Rozanne Brooks Dedicated Teaching Award.

During his speech, Broyles plans to draw parallels between the development and education of a migratory songbird with development and education of SUNY Cortland students taking a similar leap into the unknown.

“I will draw on a couple of past experiences that I use to influence my life and career today, and I will encourage our honors students to find their meaningful stories to share with others,” he said.

A recognized expert in the milkweed and trillium plant species, Broyles was described by a Cornell University colleague as “one of the deans of milkweed reproductive biology. Since 2016, Broyles has served as a co-principal investigator with Cornell University faculty on a $1 million National Science Foundation study to examine the development of genetic and genomic resources for milkweed.

His extensive community service work with his students includes a series of tree surveys of SUNY Cortland, the city of Cortland and the town of Homer. Municipal stakeholders use the survey results to help them secure community improvement funding.

He earned his bachelor of science in biology from University of North Carolina at Charlotte and his master of science and doctorate in botany from University of Georgia.

An academic procession of SUNY Cortland faculty will open the Honors Convocation. Christopher McRoberts, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of geology, will hold the mace. Carrying the ceremonial gonfalons will be Tracy Rammacher, director of marketing; Patricia Conklin, professor of biological sciences; Chris Widdall, professor and assistant dean for assessment and accreditation, School of Education; and Michael Pitcher, lecturer IV, communication disorders and sciences.

The Honors Convocation Committee is co-chaired by Philip Buckenmeyer, associate professor of kinesiology, and Laura Davies, chief of staff, President’s Office. Committee members include Tina Aversano ’96, manager of compliance and stewardship, Division of Institutional Advancement; Jennifer Buell, assistant director of building services and fleet services, Transportation; Vincent DeTuri, associate dean, arts and sciences; Tracey DelVecchio, event relations assistant, President’s Office; Monica Edwards, content manager, marketing; Samantha Howell, special events coordinator, President’s Office; Tara Mahoney, associate professor, sport management; Jenn McNamara, interim director, Honors Program; Charlotte Pass, associate professor, literacy; Matthew Pitcher, scholarship coordinator, financial aid; Kimberley Slater ’96, M.S.Ed. ’02, associate director, financial aid; Bradford Snyder, associate director, campus technology services, media services; Chris Valenti, assistant director, systems administration and web services; Susan Vleck, special events assistant, president’s office; and Ryan Vooris ’08, associate professor, sport management.

For more information, contact Special Events Coordinator Samantha Howell at 607-753-5453.

During the week of Earth Day, refilling a water bottle or picking up litter around campus could do more than help save the planet. It could win you a prize.

“Red Dragons Living Green,” an initiative of SUNY Cortland’s student Green Reps, will reward sustainability minded students for environment-friendly habits from April 20 through April 29, Arbor Day. Friday, April 22, is Earth Day.

During that week, students who use campus water bottle filling stations, ride a bicycle to class, carry a tote bag or participate in any activity demonstrating a desire to live sustainably, could win a prize.

All they need to do is be spotted.

Each day that week, a pair of SUNY Cortland staff members will arm themselves with prizes and wander different parts of campus from either 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. or from 1 to 3:30 p.m., looking for students being green.

In addition, similarly prize-laden Green Reps will look for sustainable students in the common areas of their assigned residence halls for an hour every couple of days. Green Reps are students hired to encourage green practices in SUNY Cortland’s residence halls.

It’s not just the winners of the weeklong Earth Day competition who are green. The prizes are too.

The Living Green patrols will hand out rewards designed to encourage sustainability, such as reusable zip lock bags, bamboo toothbrushes, metal straws or reusable shopping bags.

"We thought this would be a great way to highlight so many ways that SUNY Cortland students, staff and faculty live green,” said Campus Sustainability Coordinator Beth Klein.

Keep your eyes out for the patrols and make sure they’re watching if you participate in a local clean-up, donate food to a pantry, turn off unneeded electric lights or any of dozens of other things.

Better yet, do those things even if nobody is watching. It’s your planet too.      

Award-winning poet Donna Masini will give a public reading and discussion of her work during a book signing event on Wednesday, April 20, at SUNY Cortland.

Masini, a professor of English/creative writing at Hunter College, City University of New York, will also offer SUNY Cortland students, faculty and staff an exclusive, one-time poetry master class earlier that day.

The public event, which is free and open to all, starts at 5 p.m. in the Sperry Center, Mary L. Hobson ’61 Lecture Hall. Masini’s books will be available for sale, courtesy of the university’s Campus Store, at the signing.

The master class, which is limited to the campus community, will take place from 3 to 4 p.m. in Old Main Colloquium. Registration for the master class is required.

Masini’s public presentation continues the English Department’s Distinguished Voices in Literature series.

“Masini is a notable addition to this year’s reading series because she is not just an outstanding writer, she is an outstanding teacher,” said English Department instructor Heather Bartlett, director of the Distinguished Voices in Literature series. “Our students and community have much to gain from her visit.” 

Michael Turner, coordinator for the university’s Writing Center and organizer of the master class, echoed the opportunity that Masini’s visit offers.

“This is a generative workshop in which (students) will work directly with Donna Masini,” he said. “She will talk about poetry, share writing prompts and discuss craft.”

Masini is the author of three books of poetry, 4:30 Movie (W.W. Norton and Co., 2018), Turning to Fiction (Norton, 2004) and That Kind of Danger (Beacon Press, 1994). She also has written a novel, About Yvonne (Norton, 1998).

Her verses have appeared in journals and anthologies including Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Paris Review, Brooklyn Poets and Best American Poetry 2015.

The lifelong New York City resident has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, and the Barnard Women Poets prize as well as fellowship residencies at Civitella Ranieri, Bogliasco and Yaddo.

“Donna Masini’s work resonates because it is intimate and public at the same time,” Bartlett noted. “With her poems, she gives us brief moments of escape and recognition — a movie theatre, a waiting room, a memory — that change us and stay with us.”

In addition to the English Department, the Distinguished Voices in Literature event is sponsored by the President’s Office, the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs’ Office, the Campus Artist and Lectures Series, the Cultural and Intellectual Climate Committee, Cortland Auxiliary and the Writing Center.

For more information about the series, contact Bartlett. For more information about the workshop, contact Turner.

Above left image by Nowaja from Pixabay 

SUNY Cortland gymnasts separated by more than half a century came together late last month, thanks to a chance encounter in a Cortland restaurant.

SUNY Cortland’s three competitors in the National Collegiate Gymnastics Association East Region Championship, held at Ithaca College March 26,  decided to have dinner at Mangia, an Italian restaurant on Tompkins Street, after the competition.

“We got a little table in a back room,” said head coach Sulekha Modi Zaug ’00, M ’02.

“I thought I heard someone mention a gymnastic word, and then these two women at another table came over and introduced themselves,” she said.

The women were retired physical education teachers and former Red Dragon gymnasts Debra DeForest Wein ’72 and Donna Suriano Frederick ’72.  The former teammates, both of whom live in the Albany, N.Y. area, had made the nearly three-hour trip to Ithaca to watch the competition.

“They were really honored,” Modi Zaug said of the gymnasts: junior Abby Bang of Montgomery, Massachusetts; senior Kamryn Rodriguez of Middletown, N.Y., and first-year student Rianna Adams of South Setauket, N.Y.  “They were surprised that the women knew their names and followed them.”

Both Wein and Frederick were members of one of Cortland’s earliest intercollegiate women’s gymnastics teams and were excited to have witnessed Adams become the university’s newest All American by placing sixth on the uneven parallel bars out of 45 competitors at the championship

“Rianna’s bar routine was just what she needed to continue on with a very bright future,” Modi Zaug said. “Abby and Kam competed so well and just missed the All-American mark. It was a great day of gymnastics and I’m glad our alumni were there.”

The accidental introduction turned into a table conversation about what collegiate gymnastics was like in 1971, when Wein and Frederick competed, and how far the sport has come over the course of 50 years.

Modi Zaug herself was a three-time national champion on the uneven bars, becoming the first gymnast in the National Collegiate Gymnastics Association (NCGA) to win three individual titles in the same event. The All-American was inducted into the NCGA Hall of Fame in 2018, and took the helm of her alma mater’s gymnastics team in 2019.

“I believe they follow the sport whenever they can,” Modi Zaug said of Wein and Frederick. “The sport never really leaves you. It is so difficult and mentally and physically challenging. It is so much a part of your life, and you start so young. Once you’re in that sport, you never really let go.”

SUNY Cortland’s Clark Center for Global Engagement will welcome three visiting lecturers to campus and a dramatic presentation to mark Holocaust Remembrance Week from April 26 to 30.

All of the events, unless otherwise noted, are free and open to the public online.

“The events are all a part of a general goal of raising global awareness and alerting audiences to different ways to think about social justice,” said Professor of History Scott Moranda, the Clark Center’s acting director and a scholar of European history.

• David Graizbord, a historian of modern Judaism, will lecture on “Jewish Identity in the U.S. and Beyond: What Do Antisemitism, the Holocaust, and Zionism Have to Do with It? And Why Should You Care?” at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 26. Graizbord, an associate professor at the University of Arizona’s Center for Judaic Studies,  is the author of published research on Jewish ethnic identity and Zionism among American Jews. His book, The New Zionists: Young American Jews, Jewish National Identity, and Israel, was issued by Rowman & Littlefield in 2020. For more information and a Webex link, contact Nance Wilson.
• Ann Kirschner, a faculty member with the City University of New York, will read from and discuss her memoir Sala’s Gift: My Mother’s Holocaust Story at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 27. The event will take place in Sperry Center, Room 106. Sala’s Gift is based on about 350 letters her mother, Sala, had secreted away during her five years in Nazi labor camps. The letters provide a rare insight into the lives of imprisoned Jews during a horrific time. For more information, and a link, contact Howard Lindh.

  
  

• Holly Case, a professor of history at Brown University, will give a virtual lecture on “What Hungarian Politics Reveal About Our Times” at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 28. Case, a historian of modern Europe, will speak on nationalism and illiberalism in today’s Hungary and place recent developments in their historical context. Her recent columns on Hungarian politics were published in journals and newspapers such as The Guardian and Jewish Quarterly. Her first book, Between States: The Transylvanian Question and the European Idea during World War Two, was published in May 2009. In 2018, she released The Age of Questions: Or, A First Attempt at an Aggregate History of the Eastern, Social, Woman, American, Jewish, Polish, Bullion, Tuberculosis, and Many Other Questions over the Nineteenth Century, and Beyond  (Princeton University Press). For more information, contact Moranda. The above title serves as the link.
• The university’s Cultural and Intellectual Climate Committee will present their production of “Letter to Sala,” a play drawn from Ann Kirschner’s memoir, 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 30, in Old Main, Brown Auditorium. For more information and a link, contact Lindh.

The week also is sponsored by the university’s International Studies Program, the Project on Eastern and Central Europe, the Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies, Jewish Studies and Hillel at SUNY Cortland, with additional support from a Campus Artist and Lecture Series Grant.

Above left image courtesy of Pixabay.

Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah, an associate professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Buffalo and its Community for Global Health Equity, will offer a seminar on the “Water-Land-Health Nexus in Sub-Saharan Africa” at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 27.

Presented by SUNY Cortland’s Clark Center for Global Engagement, the talk continues the center's focus on Earth Day and addresses its year-long focus on water security, environmental justice and climate change.

The online event is free and open to the public. Select the talk title above to access the meeting link.

Trained in urban and regional planning and institutional economics, Boamah seeks to understand and reform the planning processes and institutional structures that impede and ‘weaponize’ planning interventions against historically marginalized communities. His work focuses on identifying the institutional drivers of land, water, food and housing inequities in sub-Saharan Africa and the U.S. and pursuing reform based on designing flexible and learning-based planning institutions.

Boamah’s research has been published in some of the world’s leading planning and cross-disciplinary journals, including Planning Theory, Applied Geography and Big Data and Society. He currently advises and works with the World Health Organization’s Urban Health Unit on the development of an implementation toolkit for communities and governments as part of the recently launched WHO Housing and Health Guidelines.

“The talks are all a part of a general goal of raising global awareness and alerting audiences to different ways to think about social justice,” said Professor of History Scott Moranda, the Clark Center’s acting director.

The series has explored how inequalities of gender, class and race shape access to clean drinking water and the protection of communities from climate-induced flooding and sea-level rise.

The talks also have been sponsored by the university’s International Studies Program with support from a Campus Artist and Lecture Series Grant.

For more information, contact Bekeh Ukelina or Moranda.

The H20 image above left is in the public domain by Pixabay.

SUNY Cortland senior Anthony Pellegrino wasn’t deterred by heavy snowfall when he visited campus looking a transfer destination in 2019.

Pellegrino, from Levittown, N.Y., initially chose to attend a large university in North Carolina because he sought warm weather and the atmosphere of a campus with 30,000-plus students. Despite the snow in Cortland, Pellegrino was swayed by the positive, welcoming attitude he felt from his student tour guide.

“I knew that I was in the right place, and I knew that this would be the place that I would become the most successful,” said Pellegrino, a dual adolescence education: social studies and economics major.

The type of support that Pellegrino felt has helped SUNY Cortland earn recognition for transfer student services yet again. The university was recognized for the fifth consecutive year on the Transfer Honor Roll published by Phi Theta Kappa (PTK), an international honor society that welcomes high-achieving students from two-year colleges.

The 2022 list highlighted 171 colleges and universities nationwide, including four from the SUNY system. Cortland is New York’s only public institution to be honored every year since 2018.

The past academic year brought a welcomed return to transfer student activities held in person — everything from Orientation to annual award ceremonies. The university received 2,124 transfer applications in 2021, with 780 students enrolling. 

“Having students connect with each other is huge, and I think we really saw that this past year,” said Greg Diller ’07, SUNY Cortland’s coordinator of transition programs as well as the organizer of its honor roll application. “Having that ability to get back together in person, gain that connection and meet other transfer students was great.”

This year, institutions were invited to include student input with their honor roll applications. SUNY Cortland included feedback from two active transfer students: Pellegrino and Claire Perini, a senior human services major from Stony Point, N.Y. Both students pointed to the impact of dedicated faculty and staff members, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The resources on campus make it almost impossible to not succeed,” Perini said. 

Among the activities that returned in person were Transfer Network Team events, which look to connect new students with classmates who previously transferred to SUNY Cortland. Both Pellegrino and Perini are members of that group. They organize peer chats, trivia, mental health-focused activities and several other outlets in addition to holding regular meetings in Memorial Library.

“Students had that opportunity to make those connections right off the bat, which hopefully made things a little bit easier,” Diller said.

Twenty-four undergraduates earned an annual merit scholarship worth $1,000 from Phi Theta Kappa in 2021 and 46 students joined SUNY Cortland’s chapter of the Tau Sigma National Honor Society, with 170 being eligible to join. To be eligible for Tau Sigma, transfer students must earn a 3.5 grade point average while completing at least 12 credit hours.

In order to be named to the PTK Honor Roll, campus representatives completed a profile using an online tool called PTK Connect. Institutions then were assigned a transfer friendliness rating based on qualities such as transfer student support services, financial aid, admissions outreach and campus opportunities. The top 25% of highest-rated campuses were recognized.

SUNY Cortland scored especially high for the university’s 85% transfer completion rate and its 99% average acceptance of transfer credits.

Among the additional areas that SUNY Cortland’s application continues to highlight: 

• Advisement and Transition: Housed on the first floor of Memorial Library, this 12-person team helps meet the academic advising needs of all students, especially transfers. Several staff members specialize in transfer credit evaluation. Zachary Wilson, transfer mobility advisor, also works closely with nearby partners in SUNY Broome and Tompkins Cortland Community College.

• Transfer Planning Sheets and Transfer Equivalency Charts: These online tools help students map a clear path to SUNY Cortland. Planning sheets outline recommended coursework prior to transferring and equivalency charts show how coursework from various institutions will count at Cortland. Three staff members in Advisement and Transition — Diller, Wilson and Carol Costell Corbin, associate director for transfer credit and degree completion — also are active e-board members with the New York State Transfer and Articulation Association.

• Orientation: An in-person Orientation session welcomed new students starting at SUNY Cortland for the Spring 2022 semester. Summer programs also will be offered in person for new transfer students starting in Fall 2022.

• COR 201: Modeled after COR 101 for first-year students, three in-person sections of this course were offered in 2021-22. This one-credit opportunity introduces new transfer students to academic life and the many ways to create a successful Cortland experience.

• National Transfer Student Week: Held in October, this weeklong effort looked to celebrate and support transfer students. Programs included transfer trivia, a fall festival, door decorating contest, donut giveaway and an educational awareness campaign.

• Reverse transfer degrees: Transfer students who come from community colleges without completing their associate’s degree can still earn it while working toward their bachelor’s degree at SUNY Cortland. This opportunity is particularly useful for students pursuing part-time work during college that requires an associate’s degree.

Diller mentioned even more programs and services on the horizon for new transfer students. These include adding transfer-in-progress grades on transcripts, which will help in course planning and the Orientation experience.

Prospective transfer students can contact the Admissions Office for more information about the application process or Advisement and Transition for more information about resources for support.

Visit the Phi Theta Kappa website for more information on SUNY Cortland’s recent recognition, including a full list of all 2022 PTK Honor Roll members.

SUNY Cortland’s annual event celebrating student research will be held on Friday, April 29.

Transformations: A Student Research and Creativity Conference will begin at 10:20 a.m. in Bowers Hall with several contributed talks.

The conference includes:

• Contributed talks I, 10:20 to 11:20 a.m.
• Poster session A, 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
• Contributed talks II, 12:40 to 1:40 p.m.
• Poster session B, 1:50 to 2:50 p.m.
• Contributed talks III, 3 to 4:15 p.m.

All events will take place in Bowers Hall.

A full list of presentations will be available soon through the presentation booklet posted to the Transformations website. 

Presentations, posters and research materials from this year’s Transformations conference will be hosted in the Digital Commons @ Cortland repository. Student submissions from 2020 and 2021 are currently housed in the digital archives, as well as a collection of programs from previous Transformations conferences and Scholars’ Days.

The cover for this year’s program was designed by senior graphic design and digital media major Leah Eisele.

Transformations is supported by the President’s Office, the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Office and Cortland Auxiliary Services.

Faculty, staff, students, alumni, parents and friends of SUNY Cortland came together for the 24-hour Cortland Challenge on April 6 in another record-breaking display of dedication to our students.

A total of 3,361 donors contributed $472,595 to the university in support of current and future Red Dragons.

Both figures far surpass the Challenge records set last year when 2,370 donors gave more than $313,000 during the one-day fundraising event.

“The record-breaking success of this year’s Cortland Challenge is beyond anything that we even imagined was possible,” said Natasha McFadden, director of The Cortland Fund and organizer of the annual challenge. “To every person who participated in the Challenge and made a gift, thank you! Your generosity speaks volumes about what it means to be a Red Dragon.”

The Cortland Fund supports students and campus life in a variety of ways, including scholarships, athletics, technology, major events, professional staff and faculty development and Alumni Engagement support. This year, donors were encouraged to target their gifts to specific university programs.

For example, nearly $175,000 of the Challenge total was raised for the SUNY Cortland Athletics program by supporters of specific teams who competed to see who could raise the most or tally the most donors. To learn more about the winners of the Athletics Challenge and the successes of your teams, visit RedDragonNetwork.org/athletics challenge.

In support of the Lynne Parks ’68 SUNY Cortland Alumni House, Michael J. Cappeto ’71 M ’73 made provisions to become the ninth Alumni House Trustee. When combined with all other contributions to the Parks Alumni House, this gift exceeded the goal for the match from Lynne Parks Hoffman ’68, unlocking another $25,000.

Parks’ match was part of more than $70,000 in matching gifts put up by donors that participants in the challenge were able to unlock with their gifts.

Among the generous alumni who pledged matching gifts to support the Cortland Challenge were Sheri Baron ’77, Linda Gadkowski ’66, Anthony ’86 and Susan Moon, Victor M. Rumore II ’84 and Cheryl Barredo M ’81.

Some supporters provided matching gifts aimed at specific areas. Ernie Logan ’73, Rob Bookman ’76, Barry Thornton ’93, Frank Rossi and Dave Kronman ’80all gave matching gifts to drive student and academic department giving.

Several others pledged matching gifts to a general athletics challenge. They were 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.

Dear students, 

President 

SUNY Cortland’s Communications Office is looking for student interns to write university press releases and feature articles aimed at the campus community and the general public.

This competitive internship is a great portfolio builder. At the end of the semester, you'll have 12 to 18 published, professional-caliber articles that help engage fellow students in campus life and promote SUNY Cortland.

Demonstrated prior college writing experience is necessary. Interns must be enthusiastic critical thinkers with good interviewing and research skills, and a clean writing style. We encourage students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds to apply.

Interns commit to scheduling nine hours weekly (three credit) during open hours, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at the Communications Office in Brockway Hall.

If interested, please send three of your best writing samples, your resume and a cover letter to administrative assistant Christina DiGiusto at Brockway Hall, Room 318-A, or christina.digiusto@cortland.edu. You can reach her at 607-753-2232 with questions or to check on your submission. You will be contacted to update your internship candidate status. Writing samples may consist of published news or feature articles, sample press releases written for a public relations class, or course compositions in any discipline.

This is a competitive internship opportunity. We’ll contact you very soon to let you know about next steps, including whether we wish to proceed with a necessary interview.