Campus Champion

Thinking outside of the box, international studies transfer student Lydia Sujkowski launched a service-learning project that meets both her Honors Program senior thesis requirement and a personal community need. Lydia has firsthand experience with the lack of local therapists to help with eating disorders and made a goal to raise money for specialized training for clinicians at Cortland County Mental Health Department. She developed her strategy — host the trEATING Disorders 5k on Sept. 9. And she found success — Lydia’s 5k raised over $8,000 that will be used to train several local clinicians in treating eating disorders.

Washington Monthly and U.S. News & World Report have once again recognized SUNY Cortland as one of the best universities in the United States.  

Washington Monthly rated Cortland as 45th overall on its national 2023 Master’s University Rankings and at 75th on its 2023 Best Bang for the Buck: Northeast list.  

U.S. News, in its annual evaluation, placed Cortland at 20th in its Top Public Universities in the North list and at 60th overall for Regional Universities in the North, moving it up 25 places from last year in this category. It also ranked Cortland 27th nationally for Best Colleges for Veterans, an improvement of seven places from 2022.  

There are nearly 4,000 degree-granting colleges and universities in the United States, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.  

“It is wonderful to see SUNY Cortland ranked among the nation’s top colleges and universities by these publications,” said President Erik J. Bitterbaum. “The university, and its excellent faculty and staff, remains committed to providing a high-quality, transformational and affordable education for students from across New York state and around the world. I am particularly pleased to see Cortland recognized for service and social mobility, both of which are key parts of the university’s mission.” 

Washington Monthly, an influential nonprofit magazine, developed its system for ranking schools based on their contribution to the overall public good in 2005 and has released its findings every year since. Its Master’s University Ranking includes institutions that award bachelor’s and master’s degrees, but no doctoral degrees. Public, private nonprofit and for-profit schools were all rated. 

This system includes several categories in which Cortland ranked exceptionally well. SUNY Cortland was 7th in the nation under the publication’s “Service” category, which looks not only at an institution’s community service and engagement, but majors, like education, that serve the public.  

Factors that bolstered Cortland’s standing were: 

• 18% of federal work-study funds spent on service 
• Earning and maintaining Carnegie Community Engagement Classification. Cortland was the first SUNY campus to earn the designation.
  
• A top 40 rank in 8-year graduation rate with 74%
• The highest possible level rating for voter engagement
• A total of 37% of graduates with service-orientated majors 

Cortland also ranked in the top 100 in Washington Monthly’s “Social Mobility” category at 91. It placed high in the subcategories of Graduation Rate, at 39, and Earnings Performance, at 92. It is the third-ranked SUNY comprehensive university on Washington Monthly’s overall list. 

The U.S. News’ 39th year of rankings used academic reputation, cost of attending and return on investment as its main considerations, with an increased emphasis compared to past lists on how often schools’ students from all socioeconomic backgrounds earned degrees. 

Peer assessment, financial resources per student, graduation rate performance, class size, faculty salaries and Pell graduation performance were U.S. News’ biggest factors when judging nearly 1,500 schools. For its Best Colleges for Veterans list, top schools were also judged on the use of federal programs that help veterans and active-duty service members pay for their degrees. 

Want a little fun and fright this October? Prefer a bit of poltergeist in your plays? Then SUNY Cortland’s Performing Arts Department has you covered with its first show of the semester, “Blithe Spirit,” at the Dowd Fine Arts Center Theatre. 

Performances are at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 5, Friday, Oct. 6 and Saturday, Oct. 7, with a final matinee at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 8. Tickets are available at SUNY Cortland’s online Ticket Office. Discounted prices are offered to students, faculty, staff and senior citizens. Ages 13 and above will enjoy the show the most. 

Written by the late playwright Noël Coward, “Blithe Spirit” is a comedy that has kept audiences laughing for more than 70 years. First performed in 1941, it’s been revived on Broadway, London’s West End and for a 2014-15 national tour.  

The show tells a tale of spirits, seances and the novelist caught in the middle. In other words, it’s a hauntingly perfect performance for Halloween season. It’s also a favorite of director Kevin Halpin, professor in the Performing Arts Department, who first saw it while in high school. He noted this is the first time since he started teaching at Cortland in 1999 that a full-fledged farce has been performed at the university. 

“It’s a very, incredibly funny, funny play,” said Halpin. “Its premise is ridiculous at its core in a wonderful way, and the way that Noël Coward writes witty, sharp dialogue where people fire off at each other is very similar to the work of someone contemporary like Aaron Sorkin.” 

A farce, Halpin said, is all about exuberance, with an overflow of physical comedy, speed, surprises and energy from the actors. Just as important is that the characters in the play must show they believe in what they’re doing, however off the wall it seems to an audience.  

Coward and “Blithe Spirit” represents a change of pace that is, Halpin believes, a perfect fit and challenge for the students. It lets them practice a different style of acting than other recent shows at SUNY Cortland like “Cabaret” or “Company” and it offers multiple quality roles for women. 

So far, the students involved are enjoying the chance to explore a sillier side of theater. 

“It’s been a great experience,” Halpin said. “The cast has jumped in with both feet with an incredible amount of energy and creativity. We’ve been laughing a lot in rehearsals, so hopefully audiences will too.” 

After the curtain falls on “Blithe Spirit,” expect to see more on stage at SUNY Cortland this fall and next year. Scheduled shows are: 

"Love, Billy," a new play in workshop and a co-production between SUNY Cortland Performing Arts and Cortland Repertory Theatre, by Mark Reynolds and Crystal Lyon, from Nov. 2-5 at Cortland Repertory Theatre Downtown. 

"The Last Five Years," a musical by Jason Robert Brown, spring semester dates TBD, in the Dowd Fine Arts Center Lab Theatre. 

"Sweet Charity," a play by Neil Simon with music by Cy Coleman and lyrics by Dorothy Fields from April 5-7 and 12-14 in the Dowd Fine Arts Center Theatre. 

Award-winning writer Esmeralda Santiago grew up in a poor, rural part of Puerto Rico, learned English as a teen after moving to New York, graduated from Harvard University and authored several highly acclaimed memoirs and cultural essays about her journey and the interaction of the cultures she negotiated.

Santiago will share her insights with the SUNY Cortland community in a talk titled “Writing for Life” on Monday, Oct. 2, one of 12 campus events celebrating Latiné Heritage Month, which runs from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15.

Latiné Heritage Month, also known as National Hispanic Heritage Month, started in in 1968 as Hispanic Heritage Week and was expanded in 1988 when Hispanic Heritage Month was enacted into federal law.

Why do the four weeks overlap two months? Sept. 15 marks the anniversary of independence for Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, while Mexico and Chile celebrate their independence on Sept. 16 and 18 respectively.

A full list of Latiné Heritage Month events is included below, with support coming from many offices and departments. They include the Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies (CGIS), Clark Center for Global Engagement, Institutional Equity and Inclusion Office, Multicultural Life and Diversity Office, President’s Office and the Political Science Department. The university also offers an interdisciplinary minor in Latino and Latin American Studies.

For more information, contact Gigi Peterson, associate professor of history.  

Latiné Heritage Month 2023 Events

Tuesday, Sept. 19
LGBTQ+ Icons in the Latiné Community  

6 to 7 p.m., Corey Union Voice Office 

Event is sponsored by La Familia Latina and Pride Club.

Wednesday, Sept. 20
“Latiné Heritage Month: Contested, Imperfect and Needed”

Gigi Peterson, associate professor, History Department
12:30 to 1:30 p.m., Old Main Colloquium 

Across the U.S., communities and institutions celebrate Latiné — or Latino or Hispanic — Heritage Month. Peterson examines its history, including arguments about why and how to recognize the varied heritages and histories involved — and what labels are appropriate. She’ll explain how have varied actors and groups found it important — and/or problematic — to have a “special” month. This is a Sandwich Seminar series event supported by the President’s Office.

Wednesday, Sept. 20
“Latiné History is U.S. History: Ideas for Teaching”

Gigi Peterson, associate professor, History Department; Sabrina Jakobsen, graduate student, History Department
4:30 to 6 p.m., virtual event on Webex (registration required)

From long-ago ancestors to current residents, populations with Hispanic and Latin American roots have played central roles in U.S. history — yet they have been marginalized in most curricula. This session offers ideas and resources for integrating many, and diverse, Latiné actors into the narratives and teaching of U.S. history.

Advance registration is required online.

Thursday, Sept. 21
“Wild Lands and Savages: How Wilderness Bias has Enabled Oppression in America from Columbus to the Present” 

Pete Nelson, graduate student, History Department
Noon to 1 p.m., Old Main Colloquium 

Throughout history, ideas of wilderness have been a critical force in the dynamics of frontiers and borderlands. Contemporary notions of wilderness may aid in the protection of the natural world, but a historical understanding of wilderness must acknowledge it as a descriptive engine of oppression, establishing frontier interactions that positioned “deserted” lands as unclaimed and the “wild” or “savage” indigenous peoples who occupied them as lesser. Nowhere is the historiographic consideration of this wilderness bias more important than in Latiné history. This is a Sandwich Seminar series event supported by the President’s Office.

Thursday, Sept. 21
Class lecture for FSA 103: Gender, Race and Class Issues in Education

Pete Nelson, graduate student, History Department
3 to 3:45 p.m., Van Hoesen Hall, Room B-140

Nelson will offer a guest lecture in this undergraduate course. Guests are welcome.

Monday, Sept. 25
Book panel talk

Sebastian Purcell, associate professor, Philosophy Department; Andrew Fitz-Gibbon, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor, Philosophy Department; Sofía Ortiz-Hinojosa, assistant professor, Philosophy Department, Vassar College
5 p.m., Old Main Colloquium

Panelists will discuss “The Discourses of the Elders,” Purcell’s recent book which compiles and translates Nahuatl philosophy. Nahuatl is the group of languages spoken by indigenous Aztec peoples in Central America. This event is co-sponsored by the Clark Center for Global Engagement.

Tuesday, Sept. 26
Noche de Karaoke 

6 to 7 p.m., Corey Union Voice Office

Event is sponsored by Spanish Club and La Familia Latina.

Wednesday, Sept. 27
Chips and salsa

7:30 to 8:30 p.m., Corey Union Exhibition Lounge 

Event is sponsored by Ritmo Latino, Mu Sigma Upsilon sorority and Spanish Club.

Monday, Oct. 2
“Writing for Life” talk by award-winning author Esmeralda Santiago

5:30 to 7 p.m., Old Main Brown Auditorium

Santiago is an award-winning author whose memoirs and novels include “When I was Puerto Rican,” “The Turkish Lover,” “America’s Dream,” “Conquistadora,” “Las Madres” and “Almost a Woman,” which she adapted into a Peabody Award-winning movie for PBS’s Masterpiece Theatre.

Santiago’s career also includes leadership in the fields of literary studies, education and culture. She has been recognized alongside Hillary Clinton, Katie Couric and Vera Wang with the National Women of Distinction Award from the Girl Scouts and a school in Chicago also is named in her honor.

This event is organized by the Institutional Equity and Inclusion Office and is free and open to the public. For more information contact Lorraine Lopez-Janove.

Wednesday, Oct. 4
Third Annual Mi Gente Happy Hour

3 to 5 p.m., location to be announced.

Food, snacks and drinks will be provided. This event is sponsored by Ritmo Latino, La Familia Latina and Spanish Club.

Tuesday, Oct. 10
Conversations about law and Latiné heritage

Juan Carlos (J.C.) Polanco, J.D., CEO of Council on Legal Education Opportunity; graduate student, History Department

This event will discuss study and careers in the field of law as well as Dominican and Latiné heritage. This event is sponsored by the Political Science Department.

Wednesday, Oct. 11
A read-aloud of “Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré”

Dianne Wellington, assistant professor, Literacy Department
11:50 a.m. to 12:55 p.m., Old Main, Room 122

This read-aloud will highlight culturally authentic stories for children, led by faculty and students from LIT 372: Teaching Elementary School Reading and Language Arts II. SUNY Cortland students will use comprehension strategies they are learning to guide a discussion based on the text. This event is sponsored by the Literacy Department.

SUNY Cortland will continue to immerse kindergarten through 12th-grade humanities educators in the Adirondack Mountain settings that helped shape America, thanks to a fifth federal grant to support the university’s “Forever Wild” weeklong summer workshops.

The latest installment of National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) funding, this time for $190,000, brings the total NEH funding for SUNY Cortland's Adirondack Gilded Age education initiatives to nearly $1.4 million.

The new round of funding will support the recruitment of 60 teachers or librarians from across the country for an unparalleled in-person collaboration on the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (c. 1870s to 1920) from the unique perspective of the wilderness.

Two groups of 30 educators will attend the “Forever Wild: Americans and Their Land in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era” program next year from July 7 to 13 or from July 14 to 20.

“Most participants in NEH grants like this use primary sources, but in our grant, they use primary sources while also inhabiting one,” said SUNY Cortland History Professor Kevin Sheets, who co-leads the NEH “Forever Wild” grant program with his colleague, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Randi Storch.

The visiting secondary educators will stay at the university’s rustic Huntington Memorial Camp at William H. Parks Family Center for Environmental and Outdoor Education, a National Historic Landmark on Raquette Lake built by William West Durant in the 1870s.

“We also give them access to our amazing partner institutions: Great Camp Sagamore, Camp Uncas and the Adirondack Experience Museum,” said Sheets, History Department chair and a 19th century American cultural historian.

Participants will merge their observations and findings into lessons they will bring back to their schools and classrooms.

The program gives the educators the opportunity to develop new understandings of U.S. history and innovative teaching approaches using “place-based” theories and practices, according to Sheets and Storch.

“I think our ‘place-based’ approach is what sets this grant apart,” said Sheets. “We use Camp Huntington as a living classroom, so it is both the place where we host our workshops, but it is also for us a primary artifact that we use and interpret with the participating teachers. That encourages educators to consider the role spaces play in shaping experience and to put different spaces — in our case wilderness and the city — into historical conversation with one another.”

The workshops continue the scholarship the pair started last year as principal co-investigators of another NEH Humanities Initiative grant titled “Re-Placing the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.” Working with 20 history experts at SUNY comprehensive colleges, this research aims to re-“place” the eras, expand the scholarship of the period in the late 19th and early 20th centuries beyond the major cities and timeframe and present it in a wider context. Sheets and Storch are currently drafting a forthcoming book’s introduction and revising the SUNY authors’ submissions. The two-year study through 2024 is supported by a separate $143,000 NEH grant.

“One experience and proposal builds on the learning from the previous one,” Storch, a leading labor historian, said of the intermittent NEH grant-supported workshops dating back to 2012-13.

“That is also true for this round of ‘Forever Wild’ and the way it draws upon what we learned, and continue to learn, through our work on ‘Re-placing the Gilded Age.’ Both grants are challenging traditional approaches to this historical era and using place-based pedagogy to rethink the way we think about and teach history.”

Gonda Gebhardt M ’13, SUNY Cortland associate director of international programs emerita, is managing the project grant monies. Former SUNY Cortland history major Kaycie Haller ’19, now a Ph.D. candidate at SUNY Albany, will be assisting attendees during the workshop.

According to Storch and Sheets, the workshops will pose questions that connect with larger humanities themes including humans and the environment; movement of peoples and ideas; history, memory and politics; and cultural identities, cultural diversity and intercultural relations. The realms of architecture, geography, literature and history provide several entry points for educators from different backgrounds and teaching fields.

Four visiting scholars will participate in the workshops:

• Rebecca Edwards, the Eloise Ellery Professor of History at Vassar College and author of Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from the Civil War to the Progressive Era and New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age, 1865- 1905.
• Philip Terrie, professor emeritus from Bowling Green State University and a scholar on the cultural history of the Adirondacks. He authored Forever Wild: A Cultural History of Wilderness in the Adirondacks and Contested Terrain: A New History of Nature and People in the Adirondacks.
• Scott Manning Stevens, an associate professor of Native American studies and English and director of Native American Studies at Syracuse University. A citizen of the Akwesasne Mohawk nation, he serves on the Adirondack Experience Board of Trustees and co-authored Why You Can’t Teach United States History Without American Indians.
• Jennifer Donnelly, New York Times best-selling author of 15 books including the award-winning A Northern Light. This workshop newcomer’s writing is well-regarded among young literature specialists.

  
  

Previously, Storch and Sheets also captured two NEH grants totaling $378,000 for 2017-18 and 2020-22 to conduct a series of “Common Ground” summer institutes that tied groups of kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers in one week’s worth of immersion in New York City with a second in the Adirondacks.

With the latest round of federal support, Storch and Sheets estimate that they have brought approximately 400 educators to Camp Huntington for this unique program and each of those teachers have regularly shared their experience with an estimated 120 students a year.

“It is fair to say that we have reached 230,000 K-12 students,” Sheets said. “One of our participants, also a Cortland alum, Caitlin Goodwin ’11, M’16, won the Gilder Lehrman New York Teacher of the Year Award.”

This Saturday, Sept. 30 the Cortland Student Activities Board is organizing a trip to the Cortaca Jug Corn Maze for the Moore Family Farm’s College Weekend.  

SUNY Cortland students are invited to have Cortaca-themed fun and help beat Ithaca College in the student attendance battle before the Red Dragon football team beats them on the field on Nov. 11. We'll have a photographer there, so be sure to show your support by wearing red!

Tickets are $8 per student, cash only. Sales run through this Friday, Sept. 29 at the SGA Office on the Corey Union lobby level from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. For more information email sab@cortland.edu. 

Students, faculty, staff and alumni can always go on their own. The maze, and related fall activities are available to the public from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays, Sundays and Indigenous Peoples Day through Oct. 29. Tickets are $16.95 if bought online and are $19.95 at the gate. Children 2 and under are free. 

This weekend, during the farm’s College Weekend, visitors showing off their university’s colors will get a discount on gate admission.

“The reason we wanted to have the Cortaca Jug maze theme was to connect with our local community and the rivalry between these local colleges since 1968,” said Carrie Moore, one of the owners of the farm. “We are excited for the season and are hosting an attendance battle between the two schools that will start long before the game.”  

Other attractions include a pumpkin patch, “Jump-O’lantern” jump pad, apple cannon, wagon rides and games like family foosball and trike speedway.  

The farm is open to the public from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays, Sundays and Indigenous Peoples Day from this Saturday, Sept. 16, to Oct. 29. Tickets are $16.95 if bought online and are $19.95 at the gate. Children 2 and under are free.  

Moore said that a scoreboard will track the number of Red Dragon and Bomber supporters throughout the season and that using code Cortland'23 will give guests a $2 discount when ordering a ticket online. That code will automatically add that ticket to the SUNY Cortland attendance tally.  

The maze itself is a 5-acre tribute to the two universities ahead of the 64th Cortaca Jug, which kicks off at noon on Nov. 11 at Ithaca College's Butterfield Stadium. But don’t worry, whether blue or red is your favorite color you’ll find some of the Moore family there for support as you find your way.  

The farms' Cortland connections include Carrie’s brothers Tim Wright ’01, who played baseball at Cortland and Jamie Wright M ’12. It also includes Eric Hartz ’89, M ’93, C.A.S. ’04, who works both on the farm and as the superintendent of the Newfield (N.Y.) School District, and was a captain of the football team and was an assistant coach of the undefeated 1988 Red Dragon squad.  

Ithaca alumni include Carrie’s husband, Jason Moore; Jason’s mother, Kay Moore, who helped start the farm; Carrie’s parents, Geoff and Cindy Wright; and Hartz’s nephew, Matt Hartz, who played football as a Bomber.  

“My dad played baseball at Ithaca and still helps with the team, so the rivalry between the two schools has been in my family for years,” Carrie said. 

Contrary to common belief, some medieval women wielded significant power. Nuns in France’s Normandy region, for example, carried enormous influence and legal control over the people — including men — living on their vast land holdings granted by royal decree.

That any women circa A.D. 1066 controlled the lives of multitudes is a forgotten fact that Laura Gathagan, an associate professor in SUNY Cortland’s Department of History, is bringing to light after discovering a scrap of ancient abbey recordkeeping that chronicled the religious women’s actions as judges, jailers and agricultural businesswomen.

On Wednesday, Oct. 4, Gathagan will discuss her research on the Abbey of Holy Trinity, Caen, in a talk titled “Abbess, Judge, Jailor: Authority and Imprisonment in Medieval Normandy.”

The lecture opens the 2023-24 Rozanne M. Brooks Lecture Series, which explores humanity’s age-old struggle for power through different lenses.

The talk will begin at 4:30 p.m. in Moffett Center, Room 115. Seating will be limited, so attendees are advised to arrive early to secure a seat. A reception to welcome Gathagan precedes the talk at 4 p.m. in the adjacent Brooks Museum.

Gathagan uncovered this revelation about the abbey, which was founded in June 1066 by Mathilda of Flanders, duchess of Normandy and queen of England, inside the John Rylands Research Institute and Library in Manchester, England. Her research-related travel was partly supported by a grant from the Karen Goodell '82 Faculty Development Fund.

Gathagan has found among rare 700-year-old documents that the abbesses of Holy Trinity held an important judicial role and the power to imprison offenders of the law. The journey of these manuscripts, and the abbesses who protected them against the vicissitudes of war and political upheaval, form the basis for this presentation.

“My research is related to a broader question about women and power in the Middle Ages,” she said.

“For women especially, we’re in a fight for our autonomy,” Gathagan said. “There is this false idea that, traditionally women didn’t have as many rights as they do now. But that is an absolute lie.”

The Brooks series features five planned lectures on the theme of “The Culture of Power.” The interdisciplinary talks will touch on topics ranging from extremist groups in today’s world to gendered power wielded centuries ago. Speakers will discuss how the drive for supremacy shapes religious movements, impacts the dynamics of filmmaking and pushes people to excel in physical feats.

The discussions all take place on Wednesdays at the same time and location, with a reception beforehand in the Brooks Museum. All events are free and open to the public.

The remaining presentations will include:

The Power of Extremism in Afghanistan — Sameer and K. Harris, refugees from Afghanistan before and after the departure of the U.S. forces in 2021. Nov. 1.

Empowerment Through Sport and Fitness — Amanda Tepfer, an assistant professor in SUNY Cortland’s Physical Education Department. Feb. 21, 2024.

Tibetan Buddhism, China and the Politics of Tension — Allen Carlson, an associate professor in Cornell University’s Government Department and director of Cornell’s China and Asia Pacific Studies program and advisor of its East Asia Program. March 20, 2024.

Framing Truth: Exploring Power Dynamics in Documentary Filmmaking — Samuel Avery, an associate professor in SUNY Cortland’s Communication and Media Studies Department and coordinator of Cortland’s annual Blackbird Film Festival. April 10, 2024.

The Brooks Series honors the late Distinguished Teaching Professor of sociology and anthropology emerita at SUNY Cortland, Rozanne M. Brooks, whose donated special collection of ethnographic objects to the Sociology/Anthropology Department established the Brooks Museum in 2001.

The 2023-24 Brooks Lecture Series is co-sponsored by the Cortland College Foundation and Cortland Auxiliary. For more information, contact Brooks lecture series organizer and Brooks Museum director Sharon Steadman, SUNY distinguished professor and chair of SUNY Cortland’s Sociology/Anthropology Department, at 607-753-2308. 

SUNY’s Board of Trustees requires each campus submit an annual report to the board and the SUNY chancellor on the affairs of the college.

SUNY Cortland’s 2023 annual report is now available online.

The document includes news and information on a variety of subjects relevant to the campus community, with topics including accreditation, alumni news, fundraising successes and more.

SUNY Cortland students and employees are encouraged to take a short survey to help guide future communication efforts on campus.

The survey is available online and should take approximately five minutes to complete. Respondents can also visit cortland.edu/comsurvey to complete the survey.

Questions ask campus community members about personal communication preferences, potential challenges and common platforms they check for campus news and events.

The deadline for completing the survey is Friday, Oct. 6, at 5 p.m.

The SUNY Cortland community steps up each October to meet the challenge of raising money to combat world hunger. As the global need continues to increase, students and staff are again invited to participate in the 29th annual Cortland CROP Hunger Walk on Sunday, Oct. 22.

This community event raises significant money for global and domestic disaster relief, agricultural development, refugee resettlement and emergency food aid. The walk begins anytime between 12:30 and 1:30 p.m. at Grace and Holy Spirit Church, 13 Court St.

SUNY Cortland is recognized as one of the top colleges in terms of the number of campus groups involved. Since 2010, the SUNY Cortland community has raised more than $70,000 of the over $140,000 raised in this community. Nationwide more than 1,300 walks took place last year and in 2021-22 and raised almost 24 million dollars.

As worldwide conflicts, COVID-19, climate shocks and global inflation have put more than 345 million people around the world at risk of starvation, organizers of the 29th annual Cortland area CROP Hunger Walk hope to get even more students participating.

With less than a month to get involved, SUNY Cortland History Department lecturer and local CROP walk coordinator Jim Miller is encouraging the community to register online in advance through the local walk's website. In-person sign-up will take place immediately before the walk on Oct. 22 from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. at the church.

The website also allows people who have pledged donations to pay online, a convenience that Miller said helped past year’s record-breaking events. Last year a total of 262 walkers registered and 256 identified themselves as SUNY Cortland students or staff. Of the nearly $12,000 that was raised, about $7,000 or 58%, is attributed to SUNY Cortland. This is the 18th year that SUNY Cortland will be a major factor in the success of the walk, said Miller, who has organized Cortland’s initiative since 2005.

The walk will include one- or three-mile routes starting in downtown Cortland at Holy Spirit Church on Court Street next to the city fire station. All members of the Cortland community — students, SUNY Cortland employees, residents of Cortland and surrounding areas — are encouraged to take part.

The event usually attracts a good turnout from student groups. Miller noted that several sororities, varsity and club sport teams and various other student groups including the COR 101: The Cortland Experience classes he teaches join the competition for one of five Golden Sneaker plaques to be given out for fundraising bragging rights.

As always, 25 percent of the funds raised will return to the local community to support food pantries and feeding programs including the SUNY Cortland Cupboard campus food pantry, Miller said.

The rest of the donations are distributed by Church World Service, a nondenominational coalition of religious organizations that has been holding CROP Hunger Walks all over the world since 1969. The walks raise approximately $20 million each year.

On the campus, there are several Golden Sneaker plaques awarded each year to the SUNY Cortland organizations that raise the most funds. The cost of the plaques is underwritten by the James M. Clark Center for Global Engagement.

For more information, to donate or form a team, visit the Cortland CROP Hunger Walk website.

The university community may contact Miller for more information.