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.

“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 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.

Jack Narayan, distinguished teaching professor of mathematics, leads students through yoga during this summer’s math camp. In addition to project-based and team-based lessons, the incoming freshmen received tips on diet, exercise and study habits.

Faculty Fellow Shashi Kanbur coordinated a $600,000 National Science Foundation grant that launched the math camp while providing $4,000 scholarships to 14 new and 14 returning students pursuing a degree in the science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, fields.

The immersive three-week summer program was geared more toward interaction and problem-solving than traditional lecturing, Associate Provost Rameen Mohammadi said.

For one problem — “Would all living humans fit in Lake Ontario?” — students had to calculate volume of the lake, number of people on earth, and other factors while using mathematics concepts like probability and estimation.

“These students were taught in a project-based, group-based, problem-based environment,” Mohammadi said. “There is no doubt that active learning works well in the learning process.”

Mohammadi said administrators would like to find ways to expand the program.

“If these students persist, year after year, both in their disciplines and at the college, that will show the ultimate success of the program,” Mohammadi said. “The goal is to keep students in the sciences. Obviously, the result so far is very promising.”

Numerous programs already in place, such as one at the 400-acre Rice Creek Field Station shown here, will support “Full STEM” — the plan for a two-year, $300,000 grant intended to recruit and retain science, technology, engineering and math teachers.

The proposed program, “Full STEM: Creating Dedicated Science and Math Teachers for a Sustainable Future,” recently obtained the grant through the NSF’s Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program, which encourages promising students and professionals to become K-12 math and science teachers, particularly in high-need school districts.

“The whole goal is to try to attract more people into STEM teaching (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) — not just bodies, but more of our best and brightest. There’s a lot of competition,” said Martha Bruch, associate professor of chemistry and principal investigator for the grant.

The program aims to recruit teacher candidates in a number of ways and from a number of sources: partnering with local school districts to build awareness of the science and math teacher education program at SUNY Oswego, helping as many freshman science and math majors as possible discover the rewards of teaching, approaching upper-class STEM majors about teaching as they reach a career decision point, and to find and attract candidates from business and industry during career changes and after retirement.

Bruch pointed out numerous programs already in place to support Full STEM: Rice Creek Biological Field Station, a 400-acre living laboratory rich in field research and teaching opportunities; Project SMART, a cross-school-district, interdisciplinary learning community of teachers, administrators and community leaders across the state; summer research opportunities for undergraduates, as well as a collaboration with the Syracuse Academy of Science; Team Sheldon, a partnership of Oswego County public schools, Oswego County BOCES and the School of Education; and experienced faculty in education and in STEM disciplines.

“This is a really exciting opportunity,” Bruch said. “What gives me optimism that this can be successful is that we have such a network of support.”

The grant, titled “Astrophysics International Research Experience for Students in Taiwan: Connections Between East and West,” started this summer. It enables Kanbur and Ching Hung “Jean” Hsiao, adjunct instructor of Chinese, to mentor six students each of the next three years on research trips to the Graduate Institute of Astronomy at National Central University in Jhongli, Taiwan.

Student researchers from Oswego and other Upstate colleges and universities will advance work pioneered at SUNY Oswego on a more accurate means for determining the size scale of the universe, as well as several other groundbreaking projects related to Kanbur’s longtime research of Cepheid
variable stars.

“The projects the undergraduates will be doing are all absolutely on the cutting edge,” said Kanbur, an associate professor of physics working with the college president’s office as a Faculty Fellow.

The Global Laboratory is SUNY Oswego’s innovative undergraduate research experience offering students hands-on, immersive problem-solving opportunities at international laboratories in promising fields of study — science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

Civic Ventures honored Virginia “Ginny” Donohue ’88, executive director and founder of On Point for College, as a 2010 Purpose Prize Fellow at a November ceremony in Philadelphia. Purpose Prizes honor Americans over age 60 for making an extraordinary impact in their encore careers.

Donohue was named a Purpose Prize Fellow based on her founding On Point for College, which has enrolled 2,723 inner-city youth in more than 200 colleges and universities.

Virginia “Ginny” Donohue ’88 of Syracuse, at right, executive director and founder of On Point for College, was honored as a 2010 Purpose Prize Fellow.

“I am grateful to the Purpose Prize for this honor,” said Donohue. “On Point for College has never turned away a single student.”

“I never knew what tenacity meant, what courage meant or what loyalty meant until I met our students,” she said. “If we can make the road easier for these amazing young adults, it is an honor.”

In July 2009, SUNY Oswego President Deborah F. Stanley honored Donohue for her work with On Point for College by awarding her a Presidential Medal, calling her an “inspirational activist.”

In April 1999, after eight years of helping students from a local homeless shelter to enroll in college, she left the corporate world and her position as chief financial officer in order to launch On Point for College out of the trunk of her car.

On Point for College has expanded to 13 staff members and 160 mentors and volunteers, and has enrolled 2,723 teens from inner-city Syracuse in more than 200 colleges and universities. The not-for-profit boasts more than 350 college graduates in addition to several young people who have obtained or are pursuing post-baccalaureate degrees.

Marianne Hromalik, a new computer science faculty member, completed her post-doctoral work at Cornell University last spring, but the “homework” has kept right on coming.

Cornell’s Laboratory for Atomic and Solid State Physics has subcontracted Hromalik, under a Department of Energy Grant, to work on programming a versatile detector for X-rays used to examine the structure of viruses and proteins, to monitor materials fatigue in aircraft parts and to do much more.

Marianne Hromalik, assistant professor of computer science, displays a computer circuit board that includes a detector (bottom right gray rectangle) of the type used to capture and store X-ray data used in scientific research.

Hromalik is a native of the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago with a doctorate from the University of Sussex in England.

Cornell researchers, Oswego computer science chair Douglas Lea ’86 and Hromalik are working with computer science major Benjamin Paretzky ’11 on perfecting another detector developed in the larger grant.

Meanwhile, Hromalik is teaching courses in computer science that eventually will form part of the requirements of the new electrical and computer engineering program, now in development.

Rachid Manseur, associate professor of computer science, leads the effort to create the new engineering program, with Adrian Ieta, assistant professor of physics, and Hromalik.

SUNY’s Professional Science Master’s Program — which aims to increase the flow of scientific skills and innovation into the business-industry arena in New York state — got a boost with a $350,000 grant from the Sloan Foundation.

Oswego’s dean of graduate studies and research, David King, coordinates the 4-year-old program that has established 13 new master’s degree programs, with many more in the works, at 16 SUNY campuses across the state. Much of that progress occurred under an earlier Sloan Foundation grant.

Professor Fehmi Damkaci, left, of the chemistry department works with Ned Karcich, graduate chemistry student in the Professional Science Master’s Program

Professional science master’s degrees fill a need for science-trained professionals to work in business and industry. The degree provides students with supplemental education in such areas as business, project management, marketing and communications.

Oswego has professional tracks in its master’s degree programs in chemistry and human-computer interaction. Other new PSM degrees range from forensic biology at Albany to instrumentation at Stony Brook to biophysics at Buffalo.

“The PSM initiative dovetails beautifully with SUNY’s strategic plan, ‘The Power of SUNY,’ with its goal of economic revitalization for New York,” King added.

— Julie Harrison Blissert

Sylvia Chestnut ’11 developed a passion for family court law when she served an internship with the Greene County Family Court. The public justice major and African American studies minor hopes to go to law school and have a career in family law.