The Oswego Alumni Association welcomed Yvonne Spicer ’84, M ’85 as this year’s mistress of ceremonies at the Commencement Eve Dinner and Torchlight Ceremony May 11.

“You are deeply immersed in the digital native generation,” she told 700 students, faculty, staff and family gathered for Commencement Eve Dinner. “Many of the jobs you will have, have not been invented yet.”

Spicer is vice president of advocacy and educational partnerships for the National Center for Technological Literacy based at the Museum of Science, Boston.

Broadcast majors Tyler Edic ’13, right, and Katherine Koehler ’12 completed a semester-long internship at the “Late Show with David Letterman” in New York City in June. Only 12 of more than 200 applicants from across the country earned coveted spots as interns.

for the show.

Amanda Woomer ’12 has made so many tiny colored paper cranes that now, as she carries on a conversation, she doesn’t notice her hands meticulously completing each fold to produce a finished crane.

In fact, she only notices what she is doing when she sets the finished crane on the table and starts on another. The intricate piece of origami is roughly the size of a matchbook and very delicate. In two minutes, she has transformed a 3-by-3-inch scrap of paper into a work of art. She is folding for her friends and for people she’s never met.

Amanda Woomer ’12 folded 1,000 origami cranes to aid Japan.

Woomer folded 1,000 cranes and raised $1,000 in just 19 days for the relief effort for victims of the tsunami that devastated Japan in March. She added 400 more cranes and $400 to that total by working through the end of the semester.

In Japanese culture, the crane is revered as a symbol of peace, longevity and good fortune. It is customary to fold a thousand paper cranes when making a special wish.

“Currently my wish is that Japan is just able to rebuild itself and overcome this,” Woomer said.

Japan is close to her heart.

Her grandfather served in the Marines in Japan during World War II. He fell in love with the people and culture, eventually living in Japan for several years after the war.

That love and appreciation of the culture just rubbed off on Woomer at a young age, she said.

“I want to do something and folding a thousand cranes, I feel like it’s the least that I can do,” Woomer said. “It kind of seems like a small task in comparison.”

— Ken Sturtz ’12

The President’s Climate Commitment and Environmental Sustainability Team was formed this spring and charged by President Deborah F. Stanley with creating a plan to make Oswego a more environmentally sustainable campus. Members took part in a retreat led by Lee Davis and Rob Neimeier from the engineering firm of O’Brien and Gere, with a goal to creating a sustainability roadmap for Oswego’s future. Members include, back row from left, theatre and sociology major Nick Pike ’12, Co-chair John Moore of Facilities Design and Construction, Tim Braun of Biological Sciences, Eric Foertch of Health and Safety and, front row from left, Barbara Shaffer of Penfield Library, Judith Belt of Technology Education, Kim Armani of the Metro Center, Rebecca Nadzadi of Campus Life and Betsy Oberst of Alumni and Development. Absent from the photo are Co-chair Casey Raymond of Chemistry, Lisa Langlois of Art, Mike Flaherty of Auxiliary Services, Rick Kolenda of Residence Life and Housing and Larry Perras of Small Business Development.

As they prepared to return this summer, they had a chance to share their stories with representatives of the international partnership that is supporting a Brazilian research experience for them and 13 other SUNY students this year and another 15 next year.

Officials from Sovereign Bank/Banco Santander, the State University of New York system and Brazil’s State of Alagoas visited SUNY Oswego in May to preview the work that 15 SUNY students will do this summer at Oswego’s global laboratories in Brazil under the first phase of a $160,000 Santander-funded project.

Officials from Sovereign Bank/Banco Santander, the State University of
New York system and Brazil’s State of Alagoas visited SUNY Oswego in May and heard Bellinger’s and Buckner’s presentations. Banco Santander awarded $160,000 to SUNY to support student participation in ongoing research at Brazilian sites in Oswego’s new network of global laboratories.

“We strongly believe that future leaders will be global leaders,” said Eduardo Garrido, director of the Santander Universities program at Sovereign Bank, a U.S. subsidiary of Spain-based Banco Santander. “This has to be fostered.”

Emerging scientists

Buckner gave an illustrated presentation of her work in Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands with Cleane Medeiros of Oswego’s biological sciences faculty. She participated in a survey of reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates, gathering data that will help protect the habitat.

“I’ve had dreams of being a scientist forever,” the senior zoology major said. This summer she returned in search of ideas for her doctoral research. A McNair Scholar at Oswego as well as a participant in the college’s Honors Program, Buckner has been accepted to pursue a doctorate at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Bellinger reported on his work last summer studying the period luminosity relationship of Cepheid stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, working with Shashi Kanbur, Oswego’s faculty fellow and a member of the physics faculty. “You can’t see the Magellanic Cloud from the northern hemisphere yet it holds all the data that I’m researching,” Bellinger said.

This summer the junior double major in computer science and applied mathematics worked on computational quantum physics at the Federal University of Alagoas in Maceio.

‘Tight-knit collaboration’

SUNY Oswego President Deborah F. Stanley last year traveled to the Brazilian state of Alagoas, the fast-developing northeastern region of Brazil, to sign three agreements that established some of the first global laboratories in Oswego’s planned world-spanning network, including agreements with the federal university and the state of Alagoas.

In turn, Eduardo Setton, secretary for science, technology and innovation for the state of Alagoas, came to Oswego and heard Buckner’s and Bellinger’s presentations. Setton spoke of the tech park in Maceio and the opportunities for international collaboration there through such agreements as SUNY Oswego has established.

Kanbur described Oswego’s network of global laboratories, which he is helping to develop, as “absolutely unique,” and Bellinger added that his experience supports that claim: “My friends at private universities have expressed envy that we have such fantastic opportunities at our public university.”

Josh McKeown, Oswego’s director of international education and programs, agreed. “We have built something special,” he said. “Our students can so seamlessly enter into a research program in another country because of the close relationship of our international faculty with researchers abroad.”

Oswego’s agreements in Alagoas are among nine the college has with universities and states in Brazil. “That’s really a tight-knit collaboration. I’m proud of Oswego for forging these alliances with such an important country,” said Sally Crimmins Villela, SUNY’s assistant vice chancellor for global affairs.

President Stanley noted that Oswego is deepening the relationship as it sends more students to the country to participate in hands-on research while gaining understanding of another culture, and she said she hopes to bring students from Brazil to Oswego. “Banco Santander’s support is helping our global laboratories come into full blossom,” she said.