03/30/2010
The 14th annual Scholars’ Day, a series of presentations highlighting faculty, staff and student scholarship and research at SUNY Cortland, will take place in Old Main on Friday, April 16.
This year, the all-day event encompasses 95 different presentations and poster sessions offered by hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students and more than 50 faculty and staff members. The subject matter covers a wide array of academic disciplines at SUNY Cortland.
Scholars’ Day presentations take place in Old Main starting at 8:30 a.m. and continue throughout the day. The event is free and open to the public. SUNY Cortland President Erik J. Bitterbaum has suspended daytime classes to allow the SUNY Cortland community to fully benefit from the lectures and demonstrations. Area high school juniors and seniors and their instructors were again formally invited to attend this year’s event. Complimentary refreshments will be served both in the morning and afternoon in Seminar Room 110.
“In our campus-wide strategic planning process, transformational education has emerged as a major priority,” said Bruce Mattingly, dean of arts and sciences and Scholars’ Day Committee chair. “Attendees at Scholars’ Day will find numerous examples of students who have had transformational experiences through their work with faculty on research and creative activity that occurs in a variety of settings: the laboratory, the studio, in the field or out in the community.”
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Among the many topics this year are: ticket waivers and how New York protects sport organizations; the Cortland-area Communities-that-Care archival project; Constitutional principles and the Bush administration’s terrorist surveillance program; the literary video game in Spanish called “La Biblioteca de Babel”; anecdotes and research about grade inflation; elderly individuals’ interest in computer and video games; male college students’ career choices and their perspectives on teaching and childhood education; a comparative analysis of barefoot and shod running; an Adirondack mystery regarding the hermit Foxey Brown; floral variation in Stinking Benjamin (Trillium erectum); Jorge Ramos and the immigration debate; the Gaza Freedom March and the Israel-Palestine conflict; and due-process rights in post-Sept. 11, 2001.
SUNY Cortland alumna Brenda L. Henry, research and evaluation program officer with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, will deliver the keynote address on “Leveraging Research for Action” at 11:30 a.m. in Old Main Brown Auditorium.
Since 2008, she has worked to achieve the foundation’s goal of ensuring quality in the nation’s public health system and advocating for policies that protect, promote and preserve the population’s health.
“Too often, research findings that have implications for programs, policies and practices never make it into the hands of those who have the power to make changes,” observed Henry, who graduated from SUNY Cortland in 1995. “When research does make it out to key decision-makers, it is often laden with jargon that only those within that research field can understand, which makes the research virtually impossible for outsiders to comprehend.”
A closing session at 4:30 p.m. in Brown Auditorium will feature students and faculty from the SUNY Cortland Rock, Jazz and Blues Ensemble as well as from Africana studies and communication studies’ Hip Hop/Culture class. The performance is dedicated to the memory of Africana Studies Department lecturer
Steven Barnes, mentor to many young musicians as leader of the Rock, Jazz and Blues Ensemble, who passed away on March 10.
A special, post-Scholars’ Day lecture, featuring John de Graaf, executive director of Take Back Your Time, begins at 7 p.m. in Brown Auditorium. He will discuss “From Overconsumption to Time Affluence: Trading ‘Stuff’ for Time, Health, Families and the Environment.”
The Scholars’ Day Committee also includes: Cynthia Benton, professor of childhood/early childhood education; David Berger, professor of psychology; Phil Buckenmeyer, associate professor and chair of kinesiology; Patricia Conklin, assistant professor of biological sciences; Daniel Harms, coordinator of instruction at Memorial Library; David Miller, distinguished teaching professor of geography; Lisa Mostert, media operations associate; Gigi Peterson, assistant professor of history; and Kevin Pristash, associate director of College Union and conferences.
Scholars’ Day is supported by the President’s Office, the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs’ Office, The Cortland Fund, the Cortland College Foundation and the Auxiliary Services Corporation. The Student Alumni Association provides volunteers for Scholars’ Day.
For more information, including the complete schedule of events, visit the Scholars’ Day Web page at www.cortland.edu/scholarsday or contact Mattingly at (607) 753-4312.
Public Health Advocate to Discuss State of Field
Born in Puerto Rico and raised in New York City, Henry was awarded a bachelor of science, cum laude, from SUNY Cortland. She received both her Ph.D. in health behavior and health education and her M.P.H. from the University of Michigan. A member of the American Public Health Association, she has received numerous academic awards and honors.
At the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), her work spans several key research areas, including helping to develop the RWJF-funded Public Health Services and Systems Research (PHSSR) portfolio of work, which seeks to answer some of the most important and challenging questions about how best to structure, fund and support the nation’s public health system. Henry also helps to further the Foundation’s effort to support researchers from historically disadvantaged and underrepresented communities and to expand the diversity within the evaluation field overall.
“What we do at the Foundation, whether it is addressing diversity, disparities or population health, puts the nation on the road to better health, and that’s extremely rewarding,” said Henry, who resides in Lawrenceville, N.J.
Previously, Henry was program director for the Center for Applied Research and Technical Assistance, Inc., a Baltimore, Md.-based national nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring the healthy development of all young people, specifically youth of color. She conducted data analysis as a research associate for High/Scope Educational Research Foundation in Michigan and was a graduate research assistant for the University of Michigan, School of Public Heath, Center for Research on Ethnicity Culture and Health. Her extensive research background includes a range of positions at the University of Michigan, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University.