CHEMISTRY FACULTY MEMBER FEHMI DAMKACI, LEFT, recently was honored with a Center for Environmental Initiatives’ Environmental Excellence Award for his work in creating and growing the GENIUS Olympiad, SUNY Oswego’s environmental competition for high school students around the world.

The center recognized GENIUS Olympiad at its 39th annual Community Salute to the Environment for leadership in environmental education and “outstanding commitment to the environment through implementing effective changes.”

GENIUS — Global Environmental Issues-U.S. — is an international high school science, art, writing and design competition where students present solutions to environmental problems using scientific methods and artistic and design disciplines. More than 450 finalists are expected to attend the third annual GENIUS Olympiad June 16 to 21 at SUNY Oswego.

“What makes the GENIUS Olympiad is that it’s unique in itself both in the United States and internationally,” Damkaci said. “And as a new thing this year, we would like to encourage our cities to implement projects relating to the environment.”

Physics Professor Shashi Kanbur works with his advisee Danielle Citro ’13 on an astrophysics project she will present at a national conference.

SUNY OSWEGO PHYSICS PROFESSOR SHASHI KANBUR travels to India this spring to open a new collaboration in Delhi for course development in astrophysics and research in realms including the evolution of stars.

A travel award from the Indo-U.S. Science and Technology Forum and the American Physical Society will fund his trip to the University of Delhi.

Among Kanbur’s objectives are to develop and teach a two-week course, with an emphasis on statistical methods, to graduate and undergraduate students on topics related to stellar evolution, the extra-galactic distance scale and cosmology. With the assistance of professor Harinder Singh of the University of Delhi, he plans to work with researchers to construct software for the automated classification of variable stars. Also he aims to draft a grant proposal for the U.S. National Science Foundation to bring American undergraduates to India for summer research and to develop a joint online course in astrophysics between SUNY Oswego and the University of Delhi.

A long-term goal is to establish Delhi as a research partnership in SUNY Oswego’s Global Laboratory program, Kanbur said. The Global Laboratory offers students hands-on, immersive problem-solving opportunities in international laboratories in promising fields of study such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

There are two Global Laboratory sites in India, at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and the University of Calcutta, as well as in Brazil, Congo, Costa Rica, Republic of Korea, Taiwan and more. For more information on Oswego’s Global Laboratory program, visit oswego.edu/globallaboratory.

And in a true “medium is the message” moment, he is doing it, not only in person in a campus seminar room for several class meetings, but live from New York City via video conferencing the rest of the semester.

Utley

“The digital age has changed our lives and will continue to do so in many profound ways,” said the longtime NBC and ABC news veteran.

Utley teaches and holds seminars in the communication studies department in a variety of topical areas related to contemporary journalism, modern media and globalization. In addition, Utley continues to serve as the director of New York in the World, an initiative of the SUNY Levin Institute that focuses on the competitiveness of New York in today’s global economy. He was the founding president of the Levin Institute and served from 2003 to 2011.

Utley had his choice of SUNY schools, but he chose to join Oswego’s faculty. “The School of Communication, Media and the Arts at SUNY Oswego is a recognized leader in its fields,” he said. “I am excited to be joining the faculty and working with the students. This offers the opportunity to draw on my professional and personal experience in media, journalism and communications, which are all undergoing dramatic and rapid change. Working together I know we will be able to understand and cope with what these changes will mean for all of us as individuals and as a society.”

Before joining SUNY, he worked as a broadcast journalist on NBC, ABC and CNN, as well as public radio and public television, specializing in international affairs.

Utley began his career with NBC News in Brussels in 1963. In 1964-1965 he covered the American entry into the Vietnam War and then served as NBC’s correspondent in Berlin, Paris and London. In the 1980s he was the network’s chief foreign correspondent working out of the New York headquarters. Utley also served as anchor of the weekend editions of NBC Nightly News (1971 to 1973 and 1988 to 1993). He was the host of several network magazine programs, the Sunday edition of “Today” and the moderator of “Meet the Press.”

From 1993 to 1996, Utley was chief foreign correspondent for ABC News based in London and, from 1997 to 2002, he was a contributor for CNN.

Utley has received broadcast journalism’s most respected honors, including the Overseas Press Club’s Edward R. Murrow Award and the George Foster Peabody Award. He is the author of the book You Should Have Been Here Yesterday, published by PublicAffairs in 2000, a narrative of the growth of television news in the United States.

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

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.

Geraldine Forbes, distinguished teaching professor of history

Distinguished Teaching Professor of History Geraldine Forbes is sharing her knowledge, and collecting more, through a Fulbright-Nehru Visiting Lecturer Fellowship to India. Faith Maina, a SUNY Oswego faculty member and a new Fulbright Scholar, returned this school year to her native Kenya as she seeks to build the research and writing skill sets of young Kenyan scholars.

Forbes is teaching courses on gender and history, gender and visual history and other topics at the Calcutta University Women’s Studies Research Centre.

Forbes, who first visited India as a graduate student researching Indian Positivists in 1969, had a previous six-month Fulbright Research Grant to India in 2003-04 to work on a monograph, Photographic Imagery in the History of Indian Women. She said she plans to return to that project while she is in India.

The Fulbright proposal Maina produced grew from her experience with universities such as Moi in Eldoret, Kenya, working with young researchers as an editor of the JINSIA-Moi University Journal of Gender and Women Studies.

“They weren’t getting promoted because their journal submissions were not being accepted due to poor writing,” Maina said. “No articles, no promotions, no gender equity. I feel this (Fulbright) would be an opportunity to break some of this cycle.”

Faith Maina, associate professor, department of Curriculum and Instruction

Maina attended primary and secondary school in Kenya, and did her undergraduate work at Kenyatta University in Nairobi. She learned to speak Swahili and English, in addition to her native Kikuyu, and wants the same educational opportunities for other girls and women in extraordinarily diverse Kenya, which has 42 distinct ethnic groups. l

— Tim Nekritz M ’05 and Jeff Rea ’71

Frank G. Pogue

Gus Silveira

“Seek your place in the world by following your own dreams, while at the same time, cultivating inner strength and a set of values and ethics that will guide you through life,” urged Silveira, who was honored at the morning commencement ceremony.

“Colleges and universities may be the only hope we have left to ensure the creation of a civil democratic society,” Pogue told graduates at the afternoon Commencement.

The awards recognize exceptional service in contributions to the central mission of the college and exemplary models of what it takes to make SUNY Oswego a community of excellence.

Marcia Burrell

Michelle Massaro Bandla '93

Bandla has played a significant role in improving the retention rate of Oswego’s first-year students. She was one of just 10 educators honored as an Outstanding First-Year Student Advocate by the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition at the University of South Carolina.

Bandla has made presentations at the national First Year Experience Conference and National Academic Advisement Association conference and shared her experience with other higher education professionals in a webinar.

An associate professor and chair of curriculum and instruction, Burrell has an extensive record of service to the campus as well as her community, SUNY, national organizations, and students and colleagues in other nations.

She helped establish the college’s first study-abroad course in Africa, in Benin.

Shashi Kanbur has a yearlong Faculty Fellowship through the President’s Office in support of two key initiatives: the Possibility Scholars and Global Laboratories programs.

Kanbur conducts many day-to-day activities of the Possibility Scholars program, launched by President Deborah F. Stanley to provide full funding and research opportunities for outstanding students who may not otherwise be able to study in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, fields.

Shashi Kanbur

“I develop grants to help support the scholarships and work with others to find grant support,” Kanbur said. “I try to publicize Possibility Scholarships with our partners in the Syracuse City School District, Oswego City School District and Syracuse Academy of Science charter school.”

The program launched with four freshmen this year — with an emphasis on first-generation college students — and Kanbur is working on a larger class for next fall.

The Possibility Scholars initiative dovetails with the Global Laboratories program looking to provide opportunities for students to study on all seven continents — from medicine in the Congo to ecology in Brazil to climate change in Antarctica.

“I try to encourage other faculty to make connections with research partners in other countries, to create programs and apply for funding to take their students abroad to do research for six to eight weeks,” Kanbur said.

To his new role, Kanbur brings the experience of taking students to a Brazilian national telescope facility in Minas Gerais, as part of a partnership between Oswego and Brazil’s Federal University of Santa Catarina. Kanbur hopes to take students to a telescope facility in Taiwan as part of a new Global Laboratory placement.

“We’re looking at experiences where students have a central role,” Kanbur said. l

— Tim Nekritz M ’05

“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.