OSWEGO’s website, launched in spring 2011, was among seven Awards of Excellence winners in the “Magazines and Journals: Electronic and Web” category. APEX had honored the print edition the previous six years.

The college’s latest annual report, “A Tradition of Learning in the World,” was among seven honored. The Office of Public Affairs produced the winning “Grease” video, one of seven winners in the YouTube category.

Psychology major Kristyn Bermingham ’12 works with furry friends such as Hana, an Akita mix, at the city’s Oswego Animal Shelter as part of the service learning requirement. Oswego continues to add courses with service learning components as part of its commitment to community engagement.

The Corporation for National and Community Service bestowed the “with Distinction” designation on 110 colleges around the country for 2010-11. The overall honor roll includes 513 colleges this year. Oswego was one of three SUNY schools on the distinction list, along with Cortland and Geneseo.

Alyssa Amyotte, coordinator of the college’s Center for Service Learning and Community Service, said the breadth and depth of involvement in initiatives — from President Deborah F. Stanley and other administrators to professors to student organizations — was key to repeating on the prestigious list.

“We see so much support, in the number of administrators, faculty members and students, even when the support is as simple as a professor encouraging students to get involved,” Amyotte said. “The interest among students here is amazing, much of it from positive word of mouth.”

When Laura Hess Brown ’84 began offering students a service learning option in an introductory gerontology course in 1998, only a couple of other Oswego courses challenged students to get out in the community to apply what they were learning in class.

Between service learning courses, volunteering and other community involvement, more than 4,000 SUNY Oswego students contributed more than 430,000 hours of service last year, according to the honor roll application.

As the college’s chief academic officer, Clemo is responsible for leadership in all academic programs across the college. She has been interim provost and vice president for academic affairs for two years.

“Dr. Clemo has energized our college’s academic planning and programs, inspiring and supporting our faculty and staff as they provide new and distinctive learning experiences for our students,” said President Stanley. “She clearly has a passion for public higher education and a real talent for harnessing our campus community’s intellectual energies and applying them to fruitful initiatives.”

In the past two years, Clemo has expanded active learning opportunities for students by establishing a new multi-discipline cooperative education program and increasing support for undergraduate research both on campus and at partner universities around the world. She led the college’s successful reaccreditation self-study process and instituted an initiative for assessing student learning. She increased support for faculty to pursue sponsored research and sponsored or co-authored millions of dollars in grant applications to external funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation.

Clemo started at SUNY Oswego in 1988 as an assistant professor of political science, after receiving her doctorate from SUNY’s Binghamton University. In 2006, she joined the college’s leadership team, serving successively as faculty fellow, assistant to the president for special programs and campus communications, and chief of staff and deputy to the president before being named interim provost.

In her earlier administrative positions at Oswego, she was instrumental in crafting the college’s current strategic plan, led development of the Global Laboratory network, helped initiate the Possibility Scholarship program, and spearheaded the campus-wide environmental sustainability program, which recently received a silver level rating in the Sustainability Tracking and Ranking system.

“I am honored and excited to have been appointed to this position,” the new provost said.  “Oswego has an impressive legacy centered on academic excellence and a deep and rich dedication to faculty-student engagement — in all its diverse forms and multiple contexts. I am committed to working closely with faculty, staff and students to continue these wonderful traditions while pushing the boundaries of learning and strategic visioning in order to take something that’s great and make it even greater.”

Beyond Oswego, Clemo has been an American Council on Education Fellow and was appointed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to the New York State Sea Grant Institute board of governors.

As president of the national Faculty Athletics Representatives Association from 2005 to 2007, she played a leadership role in developing the NCAA’s strategic plan that set into motion academic reform and redefinition of the role of intercollegiate athletics in higher education. She received the NCAA David Knight Leadership Award in 2008.

Locally, she serves on the board of On Point for College.

A graduate of Le Moyne College, Clemo resides in Syracuse with her husband, Dr. Steven Nicolais, a pediatrician. They have four children.

The new cooperative education program draws the attention of accounting major Matthew Gibbs ’13, second from left, and Maxmillian Chen ’14, a business administration major. Cleane Medeiros, left, of the biological sciences faculty and Sheila Cooley ’03, M ’11, a financial aid adviser, explain the pilot program they help coordinate with eight academic departments.

As part of a major initiative across the SUNY system to improve the flow of the education pipeline “from cradle to career,” as Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher has said, the co-op program positions Oswego as a significant contributor of field-trained graduates to employers throughout the region and beyond.

“Cooperative education is taking on new importance nationally as more and more students seek experiential learning opportunities like internships, service learning, undergraduate research and study abroad to complement their academic coursework,” Interim Provost Lorrie Clemo said.

“Students here have already expressed great interest and enthusiasm about co-ops and the opportunity it provides for them to practice their field of study, network with professionals and connect learning to the classroom during a semester of paid employment,” Clemo added.

By utilizing summers to earn general-education and other credits, students will have the opportunity to graduate in four years. Participating students can maintain full-time status, which helps with financial aid and health insurance, while gaining work experience.

“I expect that our faculty will see enhanced academic performance from students returning from co-ops with increased understanding of their fields. An additional benefit is that it will help students earn funds to finance their education,” Clemo said.

“This initiative allows us to prepare our students better for entry into the work force and helps them have a greater opportunity for job placement after graduation, especially during these difficult times,” said Sheila Cooley ’03, M ’11, a financial aid adviser who coordinates the program.

Participating students will take theory into the workplace, helping companies such as Welch Allyn, IBM and Novelis on real projects as employees, while earning up to $16,000 for a half year of work. Working within a corporate culture can allow students to try a career before graduation, while developing a network of contacts and opening the door to full-time employment.

Marshall Magee, senior director of research and development at medical equipment manufacturer Welch Allyn in Skaneateles Falls, applauded Oswego’s approach and said his company has benefited for years from student employees, including Oswego graduate students in Festa Fellowships.

“We hire a lot of students,” Magee said. “I can stand up at my desk and count probably 20 people around me who were co-ops at one time or another.”

David Stone M ’12 was employed as a Festa Fellow at Welch Allyn this summer, designing line illustrations as a member of a team developing medical instruments. “I had such a good experience,” Stone said. “I want to help out any way I can promoting the co-op program to students and talking with them about the ins and outs of a co-op position.”

Stone said it was eye-opening for him to watch products go through development cycles in a work environment, as opposed to theoretically in a classroom. “I gained an excellent perspective on how the business world works,” he said.

Oswego’s rapidly developing pilot program hopes to have undergraduates gaining field experience with area companies by spring 2013 or spring 2014, Cooley said. Departments that have signed on so far include accounting, finance and law; chemistry; communication studies; computer science; marketing and management; mathematics; software engineering; and theatre.

For more information, visit oswego.edu/co-op or email co-op@oswego.edu.

President Deborah F. Stanley and Oswego administrators hosted a delegation from the Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, led by ZSTU’s chairman, Fei Junqing.

Oswego President Deborah F. Stanley hosted a delegation from the Chinese university led by ZSTU’s chairman, Fei Junqing.

The agreement outlines degree programs in which students study for two years at ZSTU and then transfer to Oswego for the final two years of study, receiving degrees from both institutions, said Richard Skolnik, dean of the School of Business.

Skolnik said that he anticipates the first cadre of students to arrive at Oswego next fall, numbering 30 to 45 in all across the three majors.

At the formal signing ceremony, President Stanley said, “This agreement is full of promise for our two institutions, for the students who will earn these distinctive and empowering academic degrees, and for the communities here and in China where they will learn and practice their professions.”

Oswego and ZSTU first established their partnership four years ago. More than 60 students from Zhejiang have studied at Oswego since 2007.

Oswego President Deborah F. Stanley and Fei Junqing, chairman of Zhejiang Sci-Tech University in Hangzhou, China, sign an exchange agreement between the schools.

Oswego previously signed a similar agreement with Nanjing University of Science and Technology.

At the recent national Beta Alpha Psi conference in Denver, SUNY Oswego students, from left, Michael Kohn ’12, Gary Gregory ’12, Bryant Tyler ’12 and Lindsay Martell ’11 accepted a $5,000 ethics award on behalf of the college’s chapter of Beta Alpha Psi in the School of Business.

The focus of the competition was the practice of ethical behavior in the accounting, finance and information technology professions.

SUNY Oswego students Michael Kohn ’12, Gary Gregory ’12, Bryant Tyler ’12 and Lindsay Martell ’11 attended the national Beta Alpha Psi conference in August in Denver and accepted the award, which recognized the work of an ethics committee established last semester.

The competition was offered to all 300 international chapters of Beta Alpha Psi, an international honorary organization for financial information professionals. Participants were challenged to create a project that spread the ideals of ethical behavior to the campus and community.

Oswego is No. 17 on the U.S. News accounting of the best 50 public campuses in the Northern region this year.

U.S. News also selected Oswego for its “A-Plus Schools for B Students” list, as it did a year ago. The A-plus list in New York encompasses such schools as Rochester Institute of Technology, Fordham University, SUNY’s centers at Buffalo and Stony Brook, and Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

Oswego also is one of 220 institutions Princeton Review recommends in the 2012 edition of its guide, The Best Northeastern Colleges. The college has been listed in all eight editions.

Oswego’s professors, students told Princeton Review, seem focused on creating a “personal and comfortable learning environment” for undergraduates. Students said they appreciate that they “have a lot of opportunities to work with professors on research and other projects outside of the classroom to help build real-world experience.” They highlighted Oswego’s “successful honors program” and “good study-abroad options.”

As they prepared to return this summer, they had a chance to share their stories with representatives of the international partnership that is supporting a Brazilian research experience for them and 13 other SUNY students this year and another 15 next year.

Officials from Sovereign Bank/Banco Santander, the State University of New York system and Brazil’s State of Alagoas visited SUNY Oswego in May to preview the work that 15 SUNY students will do this summer at Oswego’s global laboratories in Brazil under the first phase of a $160,000 Santander-funded project.

Officials from Sovereign Bank/Banco Santander, the State University of
New York system and Brazil’s State of Alagoas visited SUNY Oswego in May and heard Bellinger’s and Buckner’s presentations. Banco Santander awarded $160,000 to SUNY to support student participation in ongoing research at Brazilian sites in Oswego’s new network of global laboratories.

“We strongly believe that future leaders will be global leaders,” said Eduardo Garrido, director of the Santander Universities program at Sovereign Bank, a U.S. subsidiary of Spain-based Banco Santander. “This has to be fostered.”

Emerging scientists

Buckner gave an illustrated presentation of her work in Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands with Cleane Medeiros of Oswego’s biological sciences faculty. She participated in a survey of reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates, gathering data that will help protect the habitat.

“I’ve had dreams of being a scientist forever,” the senior zoology major said. This summer she returned in search of ideas for her doctoral research. A McNair Scholar at Oswego as well as a participant in the college’s Honors Program, Buckner has been accepted to pursue a doctorate at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Bellinger reported on his work last summer studying the period luminosity relationship of Cepheid stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, working with Shashi Kanbur, Oswego’s faculty fellow and a member of the physics faculty. “You can’t see the Magellanic Cloud from the northern hemisphere yet it holds all the data that I’m researching,” Bellinger said.

This summer the junior double major in computer science and applied mathematics worked on computational quantum physics at the Federal University of Alagoas in Maceio.

‘Tight-knit collaboration’

SUNY Oswego President Deborah F. Stanley last year traveled to the Brazilian state of Alagoas, the fast-developing northeastern region of Brazil, to sign three agreements that established some of the first global laboratories in Oswego’s planned world-spanning network, including agreements with the federal university and the state of Alagoas.

In turn, Eduardo Setton, secretary for science, technology and innovation for the state of Alagoas, came to Oswego and heard Buckner’s and Bellinger’s presentations. Setton spoke of the tech park in Maceio and the opportunities for international collaboration there through such agreements as SUNY Oswego has established.

Kanbur described Oswego’s network of global laboratories, which he is helping to develop, as “absolutely unique,” and Bellinger added that his experience supports that claim: “My friends at private universities have expressed envy that we have such fantastic opportunities at our public university.”

Josh McKeown, Oswego’s director of international education and programs, agreed. “We have built something special,” he said. “Our students can so seamlessly enter into a research program in another country because of the close relationship of our international faculty with researchers abroad.”

Oswego’s agreements in Alagoas are among nine the college has with universities and states in Brazil. “That’s really a tight-knit collaboration. I’m proud of Oswego for forging these alliances with such an important country,” said Sally Crimmins Villela, SUNY’s assistant vice chancellor for global affairs.

President Stanley noted that Oswego is deepening the relationship as it sends more students to the country to participate in hands-on research while gaining understanding of another culture, and she said she hopes to bring students from Brazil to Oswego. “Banco Santander’s support is helping our global laboratories come into full blossom,” she said.

SUNY Oswego showed its green and gold colors once again as the new Village townhouse complex was recognized for its energy efficient design in January.

The U.S. Green Building Council has certified the 68 units of the new residential community on campus as meeting the “LEED Gold” rating under its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Homes program.

The Village

The college opened the 12 townhouses known as the Village to 348 juniors, seniors and graduate students last fall.

“We knew we had achieved our goal of meeting the gold standard in spirit, and we are thrilled to receive the official certification,” said SUNY Oswego President Deborah F. Stanley. “This project was a model for our students of how big, complex organizations like SUNY Oswego and the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York can get the details right and produce a high-quality result that is environmentally responsible.”

The Village’s exterior siding is a concrete fiberboard made to withstand winters on the shore of Lake Ontario and to last longer than many other standard building materials. Under the siding are 6-inch structurally insulated panels (SIPs) that wrap the buildings in a tightly sealed, insulated envelope to make the buildings extremely energy efficient. The LEED analysis recognized the SIPs as design innovation.

Some of the Village’s other sustainable features are a frost-protected shallow foundation, which is heavily insulated; a passive valance heating and cooling system; environmentally preferred products, like Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood; landscaping with drought-tolerant plants; and a high-efficiency heat recovery ventilation system within each unit.

The Village is part of the college’s $800 million campus renewal program, which — in addition to the primary goal of improving the learning and social environment for students — aims to meet rigorous standards of environmentally responsible construction. Oswego’s green approach to all new construction on campus is consistent with the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment, which pledges to reduce the college’s carbon footprint. Stanley signed it in 2007.

SUNY Oswego built the Village in concert with the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York. Ashley McGraw Architects with Burt Hill were the design consultants, with Ram-Tech Engineers, Pathfinder Engineers, Klepper Hahn & Hyatt, Fisher Associates, and Trowbridge & Wolf LLP as sub-consultants. The prime contractor for the buildings was Hueber-Breuer Construction Co.

— Julie Harrison Blissert

“Not everybody gets to say that they worked with a Nobel Prize winner,” said Michael Plante M ’75. He is one of more than a dozen chemistry students of Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus Augustine Silveira from the 1970s to 1990s who can say just that.