The American College Personnel Association (ACPA) has named SUNY Oswego’s Title IX Coordinator Lisa Evaneski a 2022 Diamond Honoree. “It’s a huge honor and I’m very humbled by being included in this class. I’ve known some of these people for 20 years. It’s just really cool to be included in this class of incredible professionals,” Evaneski said about her nomination. Evaneski was nominated by ACPA member Jeanne Sevigny, now the associate director of housing operations at University of Texas - Dallas. A former residential life administrator at Oswego, Sevigny praised Evaneski's dedication, mentorship, accessibility and ability to accomplish great things for her causes and students. The Diamond Honoree program, both a recognition and fundraising program, allows individuals to fundraise and donate to the ACPA Foundation for programs that will promote and ensure an intersectional and equitable future and opportunities for higher education professionals and students. Read full story.
Senior physics major Lauren Samson (pictured at left) earned the Top Presenter Award at the 2021 Sigma Xi Student Research Conference for a summer research project tackling a pressing environmental concern. Titled “Using Self-Assembled Monolayer (SAM) Peptides as Biosensors for Soluble Uranium-oxide,” the project was a collaboration when Samson and her mentor, Carolina Ilie (pictured on right) of Oswego’s physics department, participated in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Summer Research Program -- a highly competitive Research Experiences for Undergraduate program sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The program allows talented students like Samson to learn more about research and academic work while tackling important problems, in this case potential uranium contamination of drinking water that impacts rural Western Nebraska and beyond. “We decided to explore a proof of concept that used peptides that bind with uranium, and we found that it works,” Samson said. Peptides are naturally occurring short chains of amino acids, which are more plentiful for this use, and they successfully bonded with uranium in these tests to show the presence of the dangerous element. Read full story.
Samson also presented to the Women in Physics Conference, in person from Oct. 21 to 23 at University of Nebraska - Lincoln, with the poster “Optical Properties of Lithium Tetraborate: Transparency and Scintillation Efficiency.” Co-authors include Katherine Shene and Ilie from SUNY Oswego; Elena-Maria Echeverria from Cornell University; John McClory and James Petrosky, from Air Force Institute of Technology, AFIT/ENP; Juan Colón Santana from Aurora University, Yaroslav Burak, Volodymyr Adamiv and Ihor Teslyuk from the Institute of Physical Optics in Lviv, Ukraine; Lu Wang from CAS Key Lab of Materials for Energy Conversion, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefe; Wai-Ning Mei from University of Nebraska - Omaha; Kyle A. Nelson, Benjamin W. Montag, and Douglas S. McGregor from SMART Laboratory, Kansas State University; and Archit Dhingra and Peter Dowben from University of Nebraska - Lincoln.
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Several students from the college presented research at the Rochester Academy of Science 47th annual Paper Session at Nazareth College on Nov. 6.
From biological sciences:
- Two seniors working with faculty member Karen Sime -- Luke Deland and Gabrielle Waters -- co-presented a poster titled “The infection rate of Ophryocystis elektroscirrha upon Danaus plexippus in Oswego County and the western Adirondack Park in New York State,” describing research supported by the Rice Creek Associates Small Grants Program with travel supported by the Biological Sciences Touhsaent Fund. Jack Gembala presented a talk on fossils titled "Vertebral Fossils of the Squamates and Anurans of Cathedral Cave, Nevada,” which was co-authored by Mariabelen Salinas and faculty member Jennifer Olori. Students from Yulia Artemenko’s lab gave poster presentations on their work related to directed cell migration and adhesion. Alexia Perez and Sarah Buckler discussed their research on how cells sense and migrate in response to mechanical stimuli. Their posters were titled “Role of SibA Protein in Cellular Adhesion and Mechanosensation of Dictyostelium discoideum” and “Role of the Dimerization Domain of Filamin in Dictyostelium discoideum Response to Shear Flow,” respectively. Kelsey Roberts, Tiffany Flores and Palina Saljanin presented their projects aimed at understanding the molecular mechanisms of cell attachment. Their posters were titled “Establishing Imaging Conditions for Evaluating the Role of KrsB in Rap1-Mediated Adhesion of Dictyostelium discoideum,” “Regulation of Ras-Associated Protein-1 By Kinase Responsive to Stress B in Dictyostelium discoideum” and “Investigation of the Adhesion-Modulating Properties of Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) in Dictyostelium discoideum,” respectively.
From physics:
- Michel Manno presented “Interior Light Curves of Cepheid Variables,” Hugh Riley Randall presented “Linearized Pulsation Calculations for 3 types of Variable Stars” and Selim Kalici presented” Machine Learning Based Estimates of the Distance to Galactic Globular Cluster M3.”
For many of the students, travel to this event was supported by the office of Research and Individualized Student Experiences through their student travel grants.
From left, biological sciences students Kelsey Roberts, Tiffany Flores, Palina Saljanin, Sarah Buckler and Alexia Perez present at the Rochester Academy of Science 47th annual Paper Session.
Dean of Graduate Studies Kristen Eichhorn was named an education alternate for the Proposed Lake Ontario National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council for a three-year term. Alternates play an important role in the Advisory Council, including attending meetings, acting as the primary in the absence of the primary member, adding to the overall discussion of sanctuary issues, increasing the voice of constituents, chairing working groups and participating on subcommittees. National marine sanctuary advisory councils are community-based advisory groups established to provide advice and recommendations to the superintendents on issues including management, science, service and stewardship.
Health promotion and wellness faculty members Jessica Harris and Minjung Seo, and Joshua McKeown, associate provost for international education and programs, co-authored “Global Competency Through Collaborative Online International Learning-COIL,” and co-presented it virtually at the 7th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd’21) hosted by Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Spain, in June. The paper and presentation explored a successful COIL partnership between students from SUNY Oswego in New York and The Hague University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands during the COVID-19 pandemic, where 35 students participated in the experience that served as a platform to educate students through a health educator’s unique cultural lens.
Criminal justice faculty member Martin Koen co-authored “Transitioning from pandemic to normalcy: what police departments can learn from the rank-and-file” in the journal Policing. Written with Janne E. Gaub of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Shelby Davis from the University of Houston, the article looks at how the institution of policing needs to acknowledge changes that had been made during the pandemic and decide what modifications and innovations can help them continue moving forward.