In line with the founder’s focus on hands-on learning, Oswego has long offered students the chance to tinker with transportation technology.

The Transportation Lab in Room 105 of Park Hall is a best-kept secret on the lakeside campus. It dates back more than a half century, but even though the space is currently undergoing renovation and the lab moving to another building on campus for two years, students can get up close and personal with a Cessna 120 airplane and an electric car.

In his day, the lab included a “Link Trainer” flight simulator, small engines, bicycles, boat building and model airplanes, said Brian Kelly ’59. “We had a five-cylinder radial aircraft engine and we used to fire it up every so often,” remembers Kelly, who taught technical drawing at Rome Free Academy and Earlville Central Schools until his retirement.

Mark Hardy ’91, newly named chair of the technology education department, says he remembers visiting the lab as a student and teaching directly above it as a professor, where his electrical lab students could hear the roar every time an engine started up below.

“It’s exciting to know that we will keep this space intact” after the renovation, he said. The new space will combine the transportation and energy labs, as students learn about alternative fuel vehicles and alternate sources of energy. “We have a long history and a lot of pride,” he said of his department. “We are not getting rid of the old but bringing in new technology to give a fresh, new look.”

They say a teacher’s reach extends into eternity, due to the many lives she touches.

For the late Carol Adams Nelson ’59 that adage holds true, not only because of the lives she impacted in her classroom career, but also the current and future SUNY Oswego students who will benefit from her generous bequest to the college.

When Carol announced in early 2000 that she was naming Oswego in her will, she told Oswego alumni magazine that one of her greatest delights was to meet her former third grade pupils and hear about their successes in life and contributions to their communities. Retired after 35 years of teaching at Blue Point Elementary School on Long Island, she said, “Time and again, I turned down other opportunities because I never wanted to leave the classroom. I felt that what I was doing was significant, that I was making a difference every day.”

Carol Adams Nelson '59

“She enjoyed life and she certainly enjoyed being a school marm,” said her husband of 30 years, Jim Nelson. “That was her first love.”

Her Legacy Lives On

Although she passed away several years ago, through her gift to the college in her will, Carol is still making a difference every day in the lives of Oswego students.

“Something that was always in her mind was that she would leave something to her college, such was her love for Oswego,” said Jim. He said his wife, who sang in Symphonic Choir and Swing Sixteen, had “a voice like an angel” and “the most beautiful smile in the world.”

Carol had a deep affection for Oswego and wanted to express it through her philanthropy. She recalled her “wonderful Oswego professors” and the impact they made on her life and career. The Alpha Sigma Chi sister remembered the Class of 1959 as a “close class.”

“I want to continue to have an interest in and influence upon the future of my alma mater,” Carol told Oswego magazine in 2000. Through her gift, this generous and loyal alumna will continue to influence and strengthen the college’s future, while benefiting the lives of Oswego students for generations to come.

— Michele Reed