SUNY Oswego has partnered with the National Action Council on Minorities in Engineering to award scholarships starting this fall to

The Richard S. Shineman Center for Science, Engineering and Innovation, now under construction, will be the academic home for new students supported by scholarships awarded under a partnership between SUNY Oswego and the National Action Council on Minorities in Engineering.

increase enrollment in engineering fields for students from underrepresented groups.

As part of multiple efforts to boost interest among talented minority students in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs, Oswego will team with NACME to provide up to 10 awards this fall at the level of Presidential Scholarships—$4,700 a year for up to four years—to students interested in engineering from high schools and academies that take part in NACME’s pilot STEM Integration Model.

President Deborah F. Stanley and NACME President Irving Pressley MacPhail signed an agrement last summer to formalize the college’s participation in NACME’s STEM Integration Model.

Oswego is the only four-year SUNY institution taking part in a series of national pilots that, in the New York/New Jersey region, includes Cornell University, Rochester Institute of Technology, Syracuse University and at least five others.

“We are very hopeful that we are going to attract a pool of highly talented, creative and diverse applicants to the STEM fields as a result of our new affiliation with NACME,” Dan Griffin ’92, M ’00, interim director of admissions at SUNY Oswego, said.

While NACME is known as the nation’s largest private source of scholarships for underrepresented minority men and women in engineering, the new NACME pilot program invites select high schools, colleges and universities, along with corporations, to form a network committed to increasing the number of minority engineers in each region of the country.

Career opportunities

NACME’s STEM Integration Model aims to build a continuum of minority interest in engineering fields starting in middle school and progressing through high school, college and graduate school to jobs in such partner companies as AT&T, Bristol-Myers Squibb, IBM and Merck.

SUNY Oswego is building a comprehensive infrastructure of opportunities for undergraduates in STEM fields, including scholarships, grants and offerings in software engineering and, starting this fall, in electrical and computer engineering inside the $118 million Richard S. Shineman Center for Science, Engineering and Innovation.

NACME is interested in placing students in engineering careers and in particular providing them with an international experience, which is often difficult to achieve in engineering curricula.

MacPhail was very interested in SUNY Oswego’s Global Laboratory as a program to give more NACME engineering students across the country international experiences, principally in the petrochemical industry. Oswego has a strong connection in Brazil, at a lab that works on petro-geological modeling. Benjamin Valentino ’13, a student in a summer Global Lab­or­atory program, worked in the lab.

Since then, admissions counselor Christie Torruella Smith ’08 has visited most of the seven high schools and academies in this region’s NACME pilot program: Albany High School, Bronx Engineering and Technology Academy, City Polytechnic High School, Construction Trades Engineering and Architecture High School, John E. Dwyer Technology Academy, Manhattan Bridges High School and Rochester STEM High School. The partnership includes at least four community colleges in the region as well.

“With the new science facility, the Possibility Scholarships, the new major in electrical and computer engineering and another in software engineering— it’s the perfect time to reach out to those schools,” Smith said. SUNY Oswego’s Possibility Scholarship program puts STEM programs within reach of socioeconomically challenged students.

SUNY Oswego offers several other opportunities for high school students to engage with the college and its science faculty, from the Summer Science Immersion Program to the GENIUS Olympiad global environmental competition.

— Jeff Rea ’71

Billed as a way to increase the international awareness of students who may not be able to study abroad, the COIL-inspired courses will have students in their home countries use technological tools to collaborate on projects — and in one case, an entire course.

Representatives of the SUNY Center for Collaborative Online International Learning visited
SUNY Oswego May 17 to welcome the college as a “node” on COIL’s growing network of SUNY institutions. From left are Damian Schofield, director of Oswego’s human-computer interaction program, and Lisa Langlois, associate professor of art history, who each plan to collaborate with a class overseas; along with Jon Rubin and John Fowler, director and assistant director of COIL, respectively.

Damian Schofield, director of the human-computer interaction graduate program, sees this as a “phenomenal” opportunity for his students and the students of Patrick Murphy, graduate studies director in the English and creative writing department, to study for a semester with Australian media and communications scholar Lisa Dethridge and her class. “Transhumanism” will explore an academic realm where science fiction collides with real science in such areas as superintelligent robots, avatars in virtual life and more.

Lisa Langlois envisions her online Japanese art history class and its international project partner helping to break down barriers to international study for those with physical challenges or child-care responsibilities, as well as those with financial limitations.

Susan Coultrap-McQuin, director of Oswego’s Institute for Global Engagement, plans to internationalize parts of an upper-division course titled “Women, the Workplace
and the Law.” She sees COIL as another important tool among SUNY Oswego’s many
options for international study, travel and engagement.

“From my perspective, the great benefit of … this is the opportunity for our students
to engage with students from other countries,” Coultrap-McQuin said.

The grant will enable SUNY Oswego’s School of Education to partner with the Syracuse City School District to deliver a pilot program to include a semester-long, full-time teaching residency for undergraduates in teaching English to speakers of other languages, or TESOL.

Pat Russo ’72 co-directs the grant with fellow Oswego education professors Jean Ann and Bruce Long Peng, who have guided development of TESOL at the college for 14 years. Russo said the program’s “clinically rich” teacher preparation model may be modified over time, but ultimately would serve as a template for training science, mathematics, social studies and other student educators.

“We are excited about this award,” Russo said. “At SUNY Oswego, we have been regularly improving our teacher preparation programs for 150 years. This grant will provide the resources for us to make a significant transition into the next generation of teacher preparation.”

The main goal of the intensive on-site teacher preparation provided by the TESOL pilot is to improve the academic achievement of K-12 English language learners. But Russo pointed out the experience is also designed to benefit the SUNY Oswego students selected for the program, their teacher-mentors in Syracuse schools and SUNY Oswego faculty who will go into the classroom to work with teachers and pre-teachers.

The five-year program leading to a bachelor’s degree in broadcasting and mass communications and a master’s degree in business administration launched this fall.

Fritz Messere ’71, M ’76, dean of the School of Communication, Media and the Arts, said he sees many graduates of the college’s broadcasting program develop successful careers in the field outside the studio. The new degree option aims to give such students a quick start on that career path.

“Particularly the students we see graduate from the broadcast program who are not in a creative area, they tend to be focused in some area related to business: sales of broadcast time, programming, management of broadcast stations, advertising and marketing,” Messere said.

Richard Skolnik, dean of the School of Business, noted that the strength of the two programs at Oswego makes the combination especially attractive for students seeking thorough grounding for solid careers. The School of Business appears every year in Princeton Review’s guide to “Best Business Schools.” The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences lists Oswego’s broadcasting program among the nation’s outstanding television, film and digital media programs.

“When I was in high school, I was given an amazing opportunity to work with a faculty member at Penn State, where I’m from,” said Boyer, who wanted to explore her interest in paleontology. “I did a research project. I went out into the field, collected fossils, did the lab work, presented at a regional conference — and from that moment on I was hooked.”

Diana Boyer, center, director of the year-old Office of Research and Individualized Student Experiences, talks in a Snygg Hall laboratory with biochemistry majors Ryan Cotroneo ’13, left, and Adam Szymaniak ’13, who worked as Summer Scholars with Fehmi Damkaci of chemistry, now associate dean of graduate studies.

Under Boyer, the year-old RISE has worked to increase opportunities for and interest among students in scholarly and creative activities across campus and across disciplines.

“I understand how important and how powerful these experiences can be for students,” she said. “Maybe it’s a bit of a pay-it-forward kind of thing, but I do feel very strongly about these opportunities, and we have a huge number of faculty on campus who are willing and excited and love to work with students. So to help make that happen is what I hope to do.”

RISE helps students start a mentored research or artistic project, assists with funding and research travel through its parent Scholarly and Creative Activities Committee, or SCAC, advisory board and searches for outside sources of funding.

Boyer, who has students working with her under an American Chemical Society grant, noted the RISE-administered SCAC grants for Summer Scholars to assist professors with research improved last year, supplying not only a stipend but housing. More than $67,000 in funds supported 17 projects.

Undergraduates have pursued a wide variety of research interests, from robotic telescope software development to diabetes prevention in Congo, from wetlands ecology in Brazil to creating musical and artistic works.

In addition to outside grants, funding has come from sources like The Fund for Oswego. In all, SCAC last year recommended 23 grants for faculty and students totaling about $96,500.

The new program is expected to help meet demand regionally and nationally for engineers in such cutting-edge fields as bioinstrumentation, robotics and power systems and in embedded systems such as microprocessors, which are omnipresent in machines and products from autos to refrigerators.

Rachid Manseur, director of the electrical and computer engineering program at SUNY Oswego, works on programming a robotic arm with students Samantha Bielli ’13 and Ben Parsons ’13. The bachelor’s degree program will get under way for freshmen next fall.

Oswego is only the second public college in the state to offer an undergraduate degree in electrical and computer engineering. The program joins software engineering in the college’s computer science department.

Industry backing

From the beginning, Oswego’s proposal for an electrical and computer engineering program has had the support and guidance of employers throughout the region, including Welch Allyn, Lockheed-Martin, National Grid, Saab Sensis, O’Brien & Gere, Novelis and SRC, said Rachid Manseur, program director.

Some of those companies are represented on the college’s Engineering Advisory Board, which provides oversight and will assess the program as it moves toward a rigorous accreditation process through ABET, the quality-assurance authority for engineering and technology programs.

The college estimates that it will have at least 80 students enrolled in the program when it is fully up and running, producing about 20 graduates a year.

Lorrie Clemo, provost and vice president for academic affairs, noted that the college is prepared to gear up to meet higher student demand and to help reverse the region’s engineering shortage.

“At the heart of our proposal was a commitment to be laser-focused on curricula, activities, projects and learning facilities that would foster a vibrant, challenging and populous presence in engineering for Central New York,” Clemo said.

The Shineman Center will include two project laboratories, three studio teaching facilities combining lecture and lab, a faculty research lab, a project-building room and a computer lab, with state-of-the-art equipment for designing and testing medical and robotic devices, circuit boards and microprocessors.

A robotics expert, Manseur emphasized that robotics, embedded systems and the other specialties under Oswego’s electrical and computer engineering umbrella are “synergistically compatible” with existing Oswego programs in software engineering, human-computer interaction, cognitive science, graphic design and information science.

SUNY IT is the only other public college in New York that offers a bachelor’s degree program in electrical and computer engineering. Regionally, Cornell University and the University of Rochester offer the degree.

The grant will enable the college to increase support services — especially in math and chemistry — and research opportunities for all science, technology, engineering and math majors, with a particular eye to helping younger students avoid academic disqualification, switches to non-STEM majors and other departures from science and math disciplines.

Shirley Peng ’12, right, a chemistry major and journalism minor, talks with Fehmi Damkaci, assistant professor of chemistry and associate dean of graduate studies about the possibility of mentoring freshmen and sophomore STEM majors whose difficulties with required math and chemistry courses can lead to academic disqualification, changes in major or transfer.

“This will be one piece in the puzzle to streamline success for our students from high school to graduation,” said Associate Dean of Graduate Studies Fehmi Damkaci, assistant professor of chemistry and principal investigator for the grant.

The grant outlines a five-step program to shore up support for freshman and sophomore STEM majors: expanding a summer math camp for incoming STEM majors to include chemistry content and more students; integrating “math in context” components for introductory chemistry and physics classes; expanding and improving the tutoring services available to STEM students; instituting peer mentoring by upperclassmen for freshmen and sophomores; and expanding summer research opportunities for freshmen and sophomores in STEM.

The college plans to expand its Summer Scholars program to offer more opportunities for freshmen and sophomores to work with faculty on research projects.

Jerry Oberst ’77, front left, associate director of admissions at Oswego, poses with more than three dozen first-year South Korean college students among the 53 eligible accepted, contingent on success this year, for admission to Oswego for their final three years of undergraduate study. Oswego was also represented by Peace Li of the Office of International Education and Programs.

Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul held ceremonies in February for 200 first-year students potentially destined to study for three more years at seven SUNY colleges. Of those, 53 students have been admitted, contingent on success this year, to spend their final three years at Oswego, starting in spring 2013.

“Partnerships such as this one, designed to facilitate degree-seeking transfer students from outside the United States on 1-plus-3 (years) and 2-plus-2 programs, are gaining traction,” said Joshua McKeown, director of international education and programs. “We have multiple agreements, starting with China and Korea, and the HUFS program is the first to bear fruit in such a substantial way.”

Jerry Oberst ’77, associate director of admissions, represented SUNY Oswego at ceremonies in Seoul to kick off the series of agreements between Hankuk and SUNY colleges.

SUNY last June announced plans to increase international enrollment by 14,000 students over the next five years, to approximately 32,000 across all 64 campuses.

Lewis, a multilingual teacher-scholar for nearly three decades and a pre-eminent expert on the literature of Paraguay, has taught Spanish, Portuguese, Spanish literature and more with patience, humor and creativity.

Belt, a teacher of technology design for 37 years at Oswego, has earned lifelong admiration among students in many fields for his groundbreaking and rigorous teaching methods in pursuit of making the world a more livable, sustainable place.

Tracy K. Lewis, Professor of Modern Languages and Literature

John Belt, Associate Professor of Technology

Katherine “Ellie” Webster ’12 spends time with students at Charles E. Riley Elementary in Oswego. Master’s-seeking teachers specializing in the key areas of science, math and TESOL will take assignments in Central New York and Downstate as part of a pilot program starting this fall.

The state Education Department will use $1.73 million in federal Race to the Top funding to support a three-year, graduate-level proposal to raise the bar on traditional student teaching.

The Oswego Residency Initiative for Teacher Excellence, or O-RITE, encompasses two school placements totaling an academic year as well as summer residencies with two community organizations and a variety of other degree requirements.

“I think it (the grant) is going to allow Oswego to take a leadership role in these sorts of teacher-residency programs,” said Lorrie Clemo, interim provost and vice president of academic affairs. “One of the reasons this money is so important is that it will enable us to reconstitute the teacher-preparation model for high-need schools.”

Candidates’ undergraduate degrees must be in math, a science or linguistics. Full scholarships and living stipends in exchange for a commitment to stay in the

Steven Vincent ’13 interacts with students at Charles E. Riley Elementary in Oswego. A new pilot program aims to put master’s-seeking teachers in high-needs districts in Central New York as well as New York City starting this fall.

district after the placement ends are aimed at midcareer professionals.

A former teacher in the Bronx, O-RITE Field Coordinator Anneke McEvoy is familiar with the lack of science and math courses — and people to teach them — in disadvantaged districts.

“We really are targeting shortage areas,” McEvoy said. “Right now I’m reaching out to schools and finding out what they need from us in terms of plans and goals.”

Project leader Dr. Barbara Garii, associate dean of education, said the new program presents an opportunity to add special education to the secondary education experience.

“If we combined secondary education with the special education, then we saw that students who come through our program could walk into schools — in Syracuse, in Oswego County, in New York City — with really solid grounding that would enable them to support students across boundaries,” Garii said.