Bulletin News

06/27/2011 

SUNY Cortland has named Christie Zwahlen of Binghamton, N.Y., as program coordinator for its Institute for Civic Engagement.                 

Zwahlen will provide programmatic coordination and administrative support for the Institute’s programs, including those offered at the College’s outreach center, Main Street SUNY Cortland, located at 9 Main St.

She also will collaborate with a downtown revitalization organization, the Cortland Downtown Partnership, as well as other community organizations.

Zwahlen will report to Richard Kendrick, director of the College’s Institute for Civic Engagement.

“Her background in service-learning and her commitment to service as exemplified in her two terms as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer will be an asset to our program,” said Kendrick, who also is a SUNY Cortland professor of sociology/anthropology.

In 2007, Zwahlen taught English for the third through sixth grades at an elementary school in Seoul, South Korea.

From 2009-2010, she served as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer at Thiel College in Greenville, Pa., where she coordinated service-learning and community-based research.

VISTA, founded as Volunteers in Service to America in 1965 and incorporated into the AmeriCorps network of programs in 1993, has been on the front lines in the fight against poverty in America for more than 40 years.

Most recently, Zwahlen served as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer at Binghamton University’s Center for Civic Engagement and Broome Community College, where she created the Bridging the Digital Divide Project (BDDP), a program that provides refurbished computers and computer literacy training to people with limited access to information technology.

She received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Stony Brook University in 2007 and a Master of Arts in English from Binghamton University in 2009. Zwahlen has a Certificate in Asian and Asian American Studies from Binghamton University.

Zwahlen can be reached at (607) 753-4270 or at christie.zwahlen@cortland.edu.

For more information on SUNY Cortland’s Institute for Civic Engagement, contact Kendrick at (607) 753-2481 or richard.kendrick@cortland.edu.