Faculty and Staff Activities

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Carol Van Der Karr, Susan Wilson, Andrea Dávalos, Michael Hough and Tim Baroni

Carol Van Der Karr, Academic Affairs, Susan Wilson, Parks, Recreation and Leisure Studies Department, and Andrea Dávalos, Michael Hough and Tim Baroni, all from the Biological Sciences Department, volunteered at the 24-hour community BioBlitz Sept. 8 and 9 held at the Cayuga Nature Center in Ithaca, NY. The event was sponsored by Cornell University’s School of Integrative Plant Sciences (SIPS) and the Cayuga Nature Center and the censing work was done at the both the center and The Smith Wood Preserve in Trumansburg, a patch of old growth forest near Taughannock State Park that has recently yielded newly discovered species for the Cayuga Lake Basin. A BioBlitz is the cataloging of all life forms, from mammals to bacteria, that can be found in a defined area over a 24-hour time span. It is meant to serve as a baseline snap shot of biodiversity for the area. The first ever BioBlitz was held in 1996 at Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens in Washington, D.C. Such events are now common across the US and can cover small or large areas, such as national parks, and the time frames can be extended to a year or more. Van Der Karr and Wilson helped with the census for mollusks (snails and slugs) and annelids (worms). Dávalos assisted with identification of non-native annelids, Hough helped with identification of plants and Baroni with collecting and identification of fleshy fungi (mushroom and relatives). The BioBlitz started at 5 p.m. Friday at the Cayuga Nature Center and included talks and demonstrations that evening until 9 p.m. on snails, slugs, bats, spiders, moths and other nighttime insects. Saturday’s events began at 10 a.m. and included talks, walks and demonstrations on plants, fungi, microbiology, bees, large wild animal back yard feeding and birds. In addition, some of the selected organisms collected by the survey teams and brought to the nature center for identification were placed on display, along with field guides and literature on identification of organisms in nature. The event drew nature enthusiasts from as far away as Rochester, N.Y., and resulted in an overflow parking capacity at the center on Saturday.    

Theresa Curtis

Theresa Curtis, Biological Sciences Department, had her article, co-authored with three undergraduate students, published in Biosensors. The students include two current biomedical sciences majors, Annabella Nilon ’24 and Jacob Scibek ’24, and Matthew Besner ’22, who will attend medical school in the fall at University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine. The research article, “Odorant Binding Causes Cytoskeletal Rearrangement, Leading to Detectable Changes in Endothelial and Epithelial Barrier Function and Micromotion” details a new label-free method to detect odorant molecules which was funded by the Department of Defense. 

Tiantian Zheng

Tiantian Zheng, Sociology/Anthropology Department, had her new ethnography, Tongzhi Living: Men Attracted to Men in Postsocialist China, published by University of Minnesota Press in September.

Eric Edlund

Eric Edlund, Physics Department, learned that his most recent article, “Interception and rendezvous: An intuition-building approach to orbital dynamics,” was published in May in the American Journal of Physics.

Sharon L. Todd

Sharon L. Todd, Recreation, Parks and Leisure Studies Department, was inducted into the South Central Chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame on Nov. 16. Part of Todd’s athletic career involved serving as assistant coach of SUNY Cortland’s field hockey team for 12 years, while also serving as a faculty member.

Anne Adams

Anne Adams, Africana Studies Department, chaired a panel and presented a paper at the annual conference of the Caribbean Studies Association in June in Havana, Cuba. Her paper, comparing folkloric and performance characteristics in African American and Caribbean literature, was titled “Pan-African Literature as Performance: Signifiyin’ Tricksters from Zora Neale Hurston and Marlon James.”

Robert Spitzer

Robert Spitzer, Political Science Department, has been appointed to the editorial board for the new “Contemporary Social Issues” project to be published on the Web by ABC-CLIO Publishers. The series consists of Yes, No and Other essays addressing contemporary controversial issues including capital punishment, legalization of marijuana, prostitution, health care, immigration, climate change and privacy, among others.

Kevin D. Dames

Kevin D. Dames, Kinesiology Department, collaborated with members of Colorado State University’s Sensorimotor Neuroimaging Laboratory on research presented at the Rocky Mountain Regional American Society of Biomechanics held in March in Chapel Hill, N.C., and at the Neural Control of Movement conferences, held in May in Santa Fe, N.M.

Tiantian Zheng

Tiantian Zheng, Sociology/Anthropology Department, organized three conference panels. “How Should We Understand and Address Gender Based Violence Around the World,” was for the May 11 SUNY Graduate Research Conference. “Asian Queer Studies: A Critique of Euro-America Centric Queer Studies,” was for the annual conference of the Association of Asian Studies, held March 17 in Boston. “Dynamic Culture Issues in Global China” was organized for the New York Association of Asian Studies held Oct. 8, 2022, at Syracuse University.

 

Timothy J. Baroni

Timothy J. Baroni, Biological Sciences Department, has co-written a paper with P. Brandon Matheny, from the University of Tennessee. The peer-reviewed paper titled “A Re-evaluation of Gasteroid and Cyphelloid Species of Entolomataceae from Eastern North America” has been published in volume 16 of the Harvard Papers in Botany 2011.