All Entries in the "Campus Currents" Category

The Fund for Oswego National Chair Jennifer Shropshire ’86 speaks in a class as part of the School of Business Alumni Symposium Nov. 8 and 9. The Oswego Alumni Association co-sponsors the annual symposium, where accomplished professionals return to campus to interact with students and faculty.

BRIAN POTH OF AUBURN CRANE AND RIGGING inspects the rebuilt mast and weather vane atop the newly refurbished Sheldon Hall cupola Nov. 12. Bob Lloyd ’81, the facilities design and construction liaison to contractors on the $10 million renovation, said the mast assembly includes some original, century-old parts. The working weather vane joins the cupola’s restored clocks.

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

SHERMAN SCHOLARSHIP RECIP­IENT JENNIFER XU ’13, center, poses with Ken ’54 and Anne MacDonald Sherman ’53. Friends and family established the Sherman Scholarship as a gift for the couple’s 60th wedding anniversary. Visit oswego.edu/magazine/sherman to see the impact of scholarships on deserving students like Xu.

You might say Miles B. Borden ’50 is on the right track. Some 63 years after setting Oswego State records for speed, Miles is still putting on miles.

As a member of the Laker track team, Miles crossed the finish line in the record-breaking mile-long relay race at Cortland State in May 1949. The invitational track meet brought together college track teams from Hamilton College, Hartwick, Brockport, Rochester, Cortland and Oswego.

Miles Borden ’50 carries the baton across the finish line for Oswego State in the record-breaking mile relay race May 1949 at Cortland State. Borden placed first in the mile race earlier in the meet.

Miles continues to run five days a week with his wife, Leona. Miles and Leona have been cross-country skiing for about 40 years and often head north instead of south for the winter. When he’s not on the road, track or trails, Miles enjoys studying local history with middle school and high school students.

Miles has written five local history books, his latest being The History of Kings Park.

He was president of the Kings Park Fire Department for six years and chaired the committee which established the department’s ambulance squad. Miles has since retired after serving as a volunteer trustee of the Smithsonian Library Board of Trustees for 20 years.

At Oswego, Miles was the student body president for the 1949-50 academic year and a member of Beta Tau Epsilon.

Emmett Van Slyke ’99 is the composer of sidewalk sounds. Sounds are activated when stepping on the red pavers installed outside Syracuse Stage on E. Genesee St.

Photo Credit: David Lassman, The Post-Standard