Geneseo Scene summer 2015 by SUNY Geneseo

Summer 2015

geneseo scene

A magazine for alumni, parents and friends of SUNY Geneseo

Finding GENESEO How do they get here?

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geneseo Summer 2015

scene CONTENTS

FEATURES 8

Numbers Game Every year, Geneseo chooses a new freshman class and a new freshman class chooses Geneseo. Here’s how Geneseo admissions makes it happen.

14 First Impression Incoming Geneseo President Denise Battles talks about rocks, her management style and her roots in Upstate New York. Her colleagues at UNC Wilmington talk about her.

Challenge and Response Three special programs and an unusual classroom intervention show faculty at Geneseo’s Ella Cline Shear School of Education at work in the real world.

DEPARTMENTS 3 23 27 33

One College Circle: Campus News Athletics and Recreation Alumni News Class Notes

COLUMNS 2 17 24 26

President’s Message What’s Your Story? Perspectives Random Profile

Cover Photo by Keith Walters ’11. Table of contents: High above Laguna del Maule, a volcanic caldera in Chile, Geneseo geological sciences professor Jeffery Over points out features of Andean geology during the department’s biennial trip to the country in January 2015. Postmaster: Please address changes to the Office of Alumni Relations, Doty Hall, SUNY Geneseo, 1 College Circle, Geneseo, NY 14454-1484. Standard-class postage paid at Lebanon Junction, KY 40150

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Vol. 40, No. 2 Summer 2015 Geneseo Scene is published by SUNY Geneseo, Division of College Advancement, Office of College Communications. Carol S. Long, Interim President Jon A.L. Hysell, Interim Vice President for College Advancement Judson Mead, Interim Editor Carole Smith Volpe ’91, Creative Director Contributing writers: Kris Dreessen Tony Hoppa Jim Memmott

Contributing photographer: Keith Walters ’11 Alumni Relations Office Ronna Bosko, Director of Alumni Relations Michelle Walton Worden ’92, Associate Director of Alumni Relations Amanda McCarthy, Assistant Director of Alumni Relations for Regional Events Tracy Young Gagnier ’93, Assistant Director of Alumni Relations Alumni Relations Office: Doty Hall SUNY Geneseo 1 College Circle Geneseo, NY 14454-1484 Phone: (585) 245-5506 Fax: (585) 245-5514 alumni@geneseo.edu Contact the Scene at scene@geneseo.edu. Visit the website at www.geneseo.edu/geneseo_scene Phone: (585) 245-5516

FROM THE PRESIDENT

Fighting above our weight

s the academic year comes to a close, we welcome another graduating class of students into our extended alumni community of influence. Commencement is always a joyous time, when we celebrate the success of our core mission, educating socially responsible citizens equipped with skills and values important to the pursuit of an enriched life and success in the world. The world will benefit from the presence of our 2015 graduates as they take up their careers or pursue graduate and professional programs. In this issue, you will learn about our new efforts in admissions and enrollment. Under the leadership of Vice President Meaghan Arena, who joined us nearly a year ago, our staff, faculty and alumni are working to sustain a diverse and able student body. Because of the culture we sustain, we always fight above our weight. We’re small but powerful. Whether taking five awards in our second year of participation in the New York State Business Plan competition; ranking as one of the top 15 Relay for Life events in the country; taking top paper honors in communication and English in national undergraduate research conventions; or winning the Commissioners Cup in the SUNY Athletic Conference, we achieve unexpected excellence because of our motivated students and the fine mentors on campus and in the community. Our efforts in enrollment management help us to sustain that culture. You will also learn more in this issue about our Ella Cline Shear School of Education and its excellent faculty and staff. Beginning as a state normal school, Geneseo has always seen educating teachers as a core mission of the college. Faculty across the curriculum are involved in our teacher programs. Both the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program, funded by the National Science Foundation, and the New York State Master Teachers Program involve our STEM as they take up their careers faculty. The history department sponsors an or pursue graduate and annual teacher day. Our student teachers gain professional programs.” experience in urban and rural settings and have the opportunity to engage with international placements. For Geneseo, education at all levels is a global enterprise. Perhaps most importantly, in this issue you will get to meet our new president, Denise Battles, who takes the helm as our 13th president on July 1. President Battles has already made many friends on the campus and in the community, and we know that she will be a great leader for this gem of a campus. We hope you enjoy learning a bit about her, and that you will visit Geneseo soon to meet her in person.

“The world will benefit from the presence of our 2015 graduates

Carol S. Long Interim President

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PHOTO BY KEITH WALTERS â&#x20AC;&#x2122;11

One College Circle

Psst...Looking for a good time? Bubble ball battle, Geneseo Late Knight, spring 2015. In the MacVittie College Union on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights? You could also get an airbrush tattoo, or watch a balloon artist get twisted, or belly dance; try your luck at the Blizzard of Bucks or Casino Knight with mocktails; get sticky with cotton candy and snow cones, go on a digital scavenger hunt, play in a dodge ball tournament or frolic at a foam party. Need to relax? Get in a giant hot tub. Daring? Ride a mechanical bull. Monster Mash Bash, Nerf Wars, Oxygen Bar and the Rocky Horror Picture Show; or the roller coaster simulator, roller skating in the ballroom, spelling bees and tango lessons. The list goes on.

CAMPUS NEWS

4 4 5 6 7

President named A Mars landing Student engagement recognized Geosciences earn grant Diabetes breakthrough Summer 2015

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CAMPUS NEWS

Denise Battles named Geneseo President The State University of New York Board of Trustees has appointed Denise Battles as the new president of SUNY Geneseo. She begins her tenure in July. At the time of her appointment, Battles was provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Her appointment caps a 25-year career as a geologist, professor and higher education administrator that includes positions at the University of Northern Colorado, at Georgia Southern University and at Wilmington, where she also holds the rank of professor of geography and geology. Battles succeeds Christopher C. Dahl, who retired in the fall of 2013 after 20 years of service. She becomes the third woman appointed to lead Geneseo; Carol C. Harter served from 1989 to 1995 and later became president of the University of Las Vegas, Nevada. Interim President Carol S. Long has led the college since Dahl’s retirement and will return to her previous position as provost and vice president for academic affairs. For a profile of President Battles, see page 14.

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Craters with rocks around them in the InSight landing region.

From Geneseo to Mars Before joining the Department of Geological Sciences as an assistant professor in fall 2014, Nick Warner ’00 spent three years working on Mars projects as a postdoctoral fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. When he came home to Geneseo, he brought his Mars work with him. Warner is part of a small team of surface geologists responsible for choosing the landing site for the upcoming InSight mission, scheduled to launch in March 2016 and touch down six months later. InSight will sit where it lands, not rove. It carries two main research instruments: a seismograph and a heat-flow probe that will penetrate 5 meters (about 15 feet) into the surface of Mars. The landing site can’t be rock-strewn or steep, to minimize the risk of InSight tipping over when it lands; but just as important, the site has to be on ground InSight’s probe can penetrate. The probe is not a drill: it will push down through the Martian regolith (loose material) like a pile driver. Landing on solid rock or on a thin layer of regolith above solid rock will defeat the purpose of the mission’s heat-flow instrumentation. So Warner and one of his planetary geolo-

gy students, Anthony Pivarunas ’15, are studying thousands of images from the orbiting High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, looking for areas of the Martian surface within candidate landing zones that have been

churned up by small meteor strikes—what is called “impact gardening.” Larger strikes blast right down to bedrock, throwing up large rocks and scattering less loose material. For Warner, the work is a planetary geologist’s dream assignment; for Pivarunas, it’s a first chance to touch the Red Planet.

Geneseo engagement earns Carnegie, White House recognition Geneseo’s “exemplary practices of community engagement” have earned the college a highly respected Community Engagement Classification for 2015 from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. To be selected, institutions had to provide descriptions and examples of exemplary practices of community engagement. The college has been engaged for many years in community outreach initiatives at the local level and beyond. In 2014, an estimated 3,678 students engaged in 262,706 hours of community service and academic service learning. Local projects included such efforts as providing leaf raking for senior citizens, Red Cross blood drives, numerous charity fundraisers and serving as

volunteers for the Geneseo Fire Department. Nationally, 826 college volunteers have participated in 32 Livingston CARES service trips to the Biloxi/Gulfport region since 2006 for disaster relief and recovery efforts following Hurricane Katrina. Volunteers have done similar relief work on Staten Island and Long Island since 2013 following Hurricane Sandy. In addition, the college is actively involved in global service learning initiatives in Ghana, Haiti and Nicaragua. Geneseo’s commitment to community service also has put the college on the President’s Higher Education Honor Roll every year since its inception in 2006. For the fourth year, the 2014 honor roll gives Geneseo the designation “with distinction.”

Twenty-five rings for Geneseo’s Roemer Arboretum Founded in 1990 with an endowment from Spencer J. Roemer, a generous benefactor of the college and former director of admissions at Geneseo who died in 1997, the 20-acre arboretum that bears his name is both little changed and very different from his day. The land, which adjoins the south end of the campus, belonged to the Wadsworth Homestead from 1790 to the 1960s when Geneseo acquired it as a site for future expansion. Roemer’s gift assured that it would be preserved in its natural state in perpetuity. According to Jennifer Apple, associate professor of biology at Geneseo and chair of the arboretum’s board of advisors, in Roemer’s day, he would have been able to look out across the Genesee valley from the arboretum. Today, the view is obscured by two decades of forest growth. As late as the 1960s, the land was mostly open, used for grazing, dotted with old oaks, one of which is now the arboretum’s logo. Apple says that after some early tree plantings, now lost in the thickening woods, the arboretum has largely been left to grow on its own. In addition to the oaks, a biology department survey has counted 70 species of trees, shrubs and wildflowers. Apple is now introducing some native perennial herbaceous plants, such as bloodroot, Solomon seal, twinleaf (which is threatened in New York) and wild ginger. She has organized students to help control invasive shrubs such as honeysuckle and European buckthorn. Apple conducts research with her students in the arboretum on the habits of the slave-making ant. One colleague uses the arboretum to study bird songs and another is planning to conduct research on the old oaks. Apple says contributions to the arboretum support modest projects and landscaping materials. Beyond science, the arboretum’s gazebo provides a peaceful sanctuary for strollers from the campus and the village. Another change in the past 25 years: Roemer Arboretum has a website (arboretum.geneseo.edu) and a lively Facebook page (find it with the search term “Spencer J. Roemer Arboretum–Outdoors”). Summer 2015

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Benjamin Laabs, middle, chair of the Department of Geological Sciences, works with Jenelle Wallace ’16, and recent graduate Eric Kolakowski ’15 during the department’s recent biennial field trip for juniors and seniors, which took place this year in Chile.

NSF grant to fund geosciences students Academically talented students with financial need will benefit from a $639,136 grant the National Science Foundation has awarded SUNY Geneseo to recruit students interested in geology, geochemistry and geophysics programs at the college. Called the “Geoscience Scholarship to Improve Recruitment and Retention of Academically Talented Students,” the funding program will provide an estimated 34 students with 114 annual scholarships of about $4,575 over the five-year project period from April 1, 2015, through March 31, 2020. “The faculty members of geological sciences are excited to launch the GeoS program,” said Benjamin Laabs, chair of the Department of Geological Sciences, when the grant was announced. “The program is timely and important, given the growing interest in the geosciences at SUNY Geneseo and the national need for more and better-trained geoscientists.” The college will recruit freshmen and sophomore students to the program who will be granted scholarships for three to four years. Department faculty will work with the Office of Admissions and some 20 alumni who are geoscience teachers in area high schools to recruit candidates for the scholarships.

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New chief named Thomas J. Kilcullen was appointed chief of University Police Department in March 2015. Kilcullen came to Geneseo as interim chief of police in January 2014 after service in the University at Albany police department, where he was deputy chief of police and chief investigator. He is a graduate of Southern Vermont College, Hudson Valley Community College and the FBI National Academy Police Executive Training Program in Quantico, Va. The Geneseo University Police Department recently earned accreditation status from the New York State Law Enforcement Accreditation Council. It is the ninth SUNY police department to achieve accreditation. “It is highly complimentary to be recognized for our accomplishments as a professional police organization,” said Chief Kilcullen. “I congratulate all of my staff and particularly those who worked tirelessly to achieve our goal of becoming an accredited agency.” The department has 18 officers and three staff members. Officers are on duty 24 hours a day.

Geneseo research calls for diabetes rethink In a study published in the journal Nutrition, Wendy Pogozelski, Distinguished Teaching Professor and chair of Geneseo’s Department of Chemistry, describes evidence from clinical and experimental studies that supports a carbohydrate-restriction approach to treatment of type 2 diabetes. According to the study, evidence in favor of a low-carbohydrate diet as a first line of attack on the disease is so overwhelming that waiting for results from long-term randomized clinical trials on the effectiveness of such an approach could heighten the incidence of the disease. Pogozelski and her co-authors contend the evidence merits a re-evaluation of current recommendations for treating diabetes, already at epidemic levels in the United States. The second lead author on the study is Richard Feinman, professor of cell biology at SUNY Downstate Medical Center. A group of 24 additional physicians and researchers from around the world are coauthors of the publication. “My co-authors and I believe that resistance to carbohydrate restriction is partly due to the erroneous belief that high fat intake is more detrimental than high carbohydrate intake,” Pogozelski says. “Reducing fat leads patients to compensate with the intake of more carbohydrates, which we now see has exacerbated the diabetes problem, leading to less glycemic control, more complications and increased and oftentimes unnecessary treatment through medication.” The authors of the study recommend that government or private health agencies conduct open hearings on the carbohydrate restriction approach in the treatment of diabetes.

College partners with Letchworth State Park This summer, Brandyn Balch ’15 is conducting stream and forest canopy research to measure the effect of a tiny invasive insect that poses a big threat to Letchworth State Park’s hemlock trees. Last winter, a team of geography professors taught a geography course over a snowy camping weekend in the park. A five-year partnership between the college and the state park will provide opportunities for more hands-on educational experiences and research at the new Letchworth State Park Nature Center. Construction of the $6 million center is expected to start soon as a centerpiece of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s NY Parks 2020 initiative. The center will be a hub for visitors to learn about the rich geological history and diverse ecosystems of the park. The college is providing $75,000 for display and research equipment that will be

used at the center by Geneseo students and faculty members. The college will have preferential use of two classrooms at the center, as well as a group campsite and other facilities. Letchworth is a valuable resource for studies, says Jim Kernan, assistant professor of geography. At least 10 projects or field studies will have been conducted there by fall 2015, from studying the impact of deer on park biodiversity to surveying and monitoring invasive species. The partnership with the college makes it easy to incorporate the park into projects and programs. An advisory committee composed of faculty, staff, students and park officials is just beginning to develop the agreement. “There are so many opportunities—it’s wide open,” says Kernan.

Summer 2015

The college is its students. They don’t just materialize. This is how they get here.

By Judson Mead riday, Feb. 20, 2015, the last day of midwinter break in most school districts in New York. It’s prime time for college visits by high school juniors, as is spring break and summer. By fall, they’ll be making their applications. Geneseo is postcard beautiful—cloudless sky, bright sun, fresh snow. Prospective applicants and their parents arrive at the Office of Admissions in Doty Hall for an afternoon of tours and presentations. Couches and chairs fill up, then standing room, until the crowd spills into the lobby. Geneseo student “lobby hosts” circulate, introducing themselves, asking visitors where they’re from, answering questions (mostly from parents): Is this as cold as it gets? How did you decide to come here? How’s the food? What’s the typical class size? Is it true there’s free laundry on campus? By noon, the reception area and the Doty Hall lobby are packed with more than 100 visitors. Parents sip coffee, prospective applicants look around for clues to what this place might be like. The doors to Doty Recital Hall swing open and the crowd files in for a general information session. Georgenson Anselme, senior assistant director of admissions, warms them up with a suspenseful story told with perfect pacing in his faint Caribbean lilt about arriving as a Haitian kid from Brooklyn on the rural SUNY Potsdam campus—SUNY’s northernmost outpost—to begin his freshman year, without having first visited. He advises his audience to tour as many colleges as they can before they decide where to apply. “If that school is Geneseo, I’ll look forward to welcoming you back.”

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Finding

Summer 2015

Bring us the Class of 2019 Anyone who has been to college, and every parent of college-bound children, knows about the college search. But what about the other side of the hunt? How does Geneseo find its new class? This is the assignment for the Geneseo admissions department: deliver for registration every fall approximately 1,500 new students—mostly first time freshmen, but transfers as well—who will invigorate and contribute to the Geneseo college community and maintain its character. As a group, they should be diverse in their talents, race and ethnic background, interests, hometown (city, suburb, village) and economic situation. Each new student must be able to meet Geneseo’s academic standards. And, not least, they must number 1,500, give or take a few. Geneseo is built, staffed and budgeted to accommodate a certain enrollment. Within a fairly narrow margin, either more or fewer could throw these complex calucations off balance. The appearance of the incoming class in the fall can feel inevitable, like an occurrence in nature. But, in fact, each new class is the product of calculation, legwork, customer service, painstaking scrutiny, guesswork, science, hope, word of mouth, accident, guidance, contact, visits and a little luck. Congratulations! At the close of an admissions department meeting, Meaghan Arena, Geneseo’s new vice president for enrollment management, reminds everyone, “Customer service is everything.” They know. She knows they know. They’ve been discussing yield. In late February, one of the signal dates in the so-called admissions cycle is just days away: Decision letters—accepting, not accepting, or wait-listing—go out to all applicants on March 1. Yield is the percentage of students Geneseo accepts who will eventually enroll. A certain number of acceptances yields a certain number of enrollees. Shopping for college: Prospective applicants and their parents on a guided tour of the Geneseo campus. Campus visits are the most important factor in decisions to apply and to attend.

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You know exactly what your yield was after everyone has enrolled. But when you send out acceptance letters, you can only predict what it will be. Set the yield too high or too low and that produces

ARENA

REED

too many or too few enrollees. Applications arrive during the fall; the deadline is January 1. A few hundred prospective students apply for early decision, committing to attending Geneseo if they’re accepted. They will either be accepted by Dec. 15 or have their applications forwarded to the general applicant pool. In a typical year, Geneseo receives around 9,500 applications. From January 1 to March 1, admissions counselors review them all, often more than once, to select which applicants to offer admission to the new class. Applications come from prospective

students who know of Geneseo from mailings—Geneseo sends literature to students who have scored well on the SAT and ACT—from high school guidance counselors, from Geneseo admissions

PATTERSON counselor visits, from college fairs, from Geneseo-connected friends or family members, from college guides. Most (more than 90 percent) are from New York State. The college is working to increase out-of-state enrollment and has signed on part-time regional admissions counselors in New Jersey and throughout New England. Out-of-state enrollment, including international enrollment, is currently about 4 percent of the Geneseo student body. Some applicants have their hearts set on attending Geneseo; for others, who have their hearts set on going elsewhere, Geneseo is a second choice. Other applicants, using a shotgun approach to choosing a college, don’t know much about Geneseo, or even much about where they want to go. Some applicants have visited the campus more than once; others (an increasing number) have never visited. Arena, who came to the post at Geneseo from Westfield State University in Massachusetts, is looking for data that will make the admissions process—from attracting applicants to fine-tuning the yield—even more precise. “I like the actual hard numbers,” she says. For example, she wants to know where all the accepted students who decided not to attend Geneseo went, so she can look at whether those schools have been doing anything different recently. She will

Now recruiting

college graduates

get that data from a national clearinghouse for college decisions. She wants to know whether the number of times an applicant visits the campus is an indicator of likeliness to enroll. The answer already exists in Geneseo databases, waiting to be teased out. It could make a big difference in gauging how many applicants to admit to make up the class. Data will be crucial in the next several years as Geneseo and its peer institutions compete for enrollment from a declining applicant pool. The demographic reality is that there are fewer high school students in New York State: in 2012, the state produced 181,604 high school graduates; by 2016 that number will have sunk to 166,975, remaining within a few thousand of that total each year through 2020. “There are fewer students applying to college today,” Arena says, “but there aren’t fewer seats in college.” So keeping up the application and enrollment numbers means increasing them as a share of the total. Arena says alumni can help by spreading the word about Geneseo to potential students. (See the card attached to this issue of the Scene.) Arena is assessing Geneseo’s admissions marketing efforts to be sure it is reaching audiences likely to respond, and delivering the messages the kinds of students Geneseo is looking for need to hear. She also hopes metrics will point to specific opportunities to increase diversity in each incoming class.

his spring, after four hectic months of preparation—write a communications plan, build a website, produce informational fliers, create an online application, get a phone number, set up email management, optimize search results—Mike George, Geneseo’s first graduate enrollment coordinator, was ready to open his office for business. In the short run, that business will be recruiting and enrolling students to start Geneseo graduate programs in the spring 2016 semester. The college now GEORGE offers master’s degrees in the School of Business (accounting) and in the School of Education (four programs) that together enroll about 130 students annually. He will start recruiting close to home, in fact, for the most part, at home. Geneseo students with the right interests and career plans make great graduate candidates, but they may not have considered the benefits of staying for another year. In the longer run, George will be part

One by one As March 1 approaches, Kevin Reed, interim director of admissions, and Amanda Patterson ’02, senior assistant director of admissions, meet daily to review applications as they round out the number of acceptances needed to produce the class, now that the yield has finally been set. They stare into computer screens in Reed’s office, Reed at his desk, Patterson on a laptop, pilot and copilot. In 2014, Geneseo did not receive a single paper application; supplementary material that comes in on paper—letters of recommendation, transcripts—is scanned and attached to the digital application.

They are taking a detailed last look at applications that have already been read and commented on in detail, deciding who will be getting acceptance letters in a few weeks. Grades, program of study and test scores are important, essentially a threshold for further consideration—it wouldn’t be fair to admit someone who couldn’t handle Geneseo’s academic expectations. But recommendations, personal essays, extracurricular activities and achievements—even parent essays—are equally or more important. Arena wants to get the word to high

of the effort to match what Geneseo could offer beyond bachelor’s degree programs with what potential graduate students are looking for. Meaghan Arena, Geneseo’s vice president for enrollment management, says there are high-demand areas—she cites data analytics as one—in which Geneseo faculty have an interest in developing master’s-level programs. She expects that five years from now Geneseo will have more graduate students. Creating a graduate enrollment position and hiring George was one of her early initiatives. A robust graduate enrollment brings tuition to the campus that supports all of Geneseo, not just graduate programs; it also helps smooth the effects of year-toyear fluctuations in undergraduate enrollment. Graduate students live and, for the most part, eat and recreate off campus, so enrollment can rise without adding infrastructure, such as dorms. George, who spent two decades in graduate enrollment at Canisius College in Buffalo, N.Y., before coming to Geneseo, says prospective graduate students ask very different questions from those asked by prospective undergraduates—all pragmatic: Do you have my program? What does it cost? When can I start?

school guidance counselors that Geneseo is taking a holistic approach to admissions, not just looking at numbers. “We’re in an odd sweet spot right now with guidance counselors,” she says. “Because we’re known as a selective school, we know some students with 1250 SAT scores are being dissuaded from applying because they’re being told they won’t get in.” She wants those students to apply. Reed says that in the total pool of applications, a portion are clearly not possible to accept, a portion are clearly easy to accept, and the rest—most, in fact—are the ones he and his colleagues spend

Summer 2015

Geneseo depends entirely on student volunteers to present the campus to prospective applicants. While they can reel off volumes of information about all things Geneseo, the tour guides’ most important message is “this is who we are.”

their time considering. Admissions counselors read the applications (about 1,500 each) from the counties where they recruit: they know the schools, they know the guidance counselors. They sift and sort. They consult each other. They forward the files to Reed for the next round of review. Gradually the potential Class of 2019 takes shape. Trying it on How does a 17- or 18-year-old decide where to go to college? Distance from home? Prestige? People? Cost? Scholarship offers? Feel (whatever that is)? Most prospective students have never made such a momentous decision. It’s not like shopping for a dress, or even a car. Parents chaperon the process and form their own opinions. The first decision is where to apply. The second decision is the big one— where to go. And that produces a second recruitment season: closing the deal, recruiting accepted students to accept you back. To give accepted students the information they need to choose Geneseo, the

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college invites them to spend the night, or at least a day, on campus. The college hosts these extended visits on six days in March and April. On the first of these, a late March afternoon this year, accepted students visiting overnight arrive at Doty Hall with pillows and sleeping bags under their arms, parents in tow. The students head off with their hosts. Their parents are left alone. Hello, college! The college hosts an early evening reception for the parents at the Big Tree Inn. They’ve come from Long Island, Queens, Manhattan, Niskayuna, Homer and other places around New York. One couple is from Phoenix, Ariz., having visited with their daughter the previous summer during a trip to Niagara Falls. The daughter was impressed enough to apply. For Sara and Jim Brazo, from Homer in central New York, this is a third trip to Geneseo. Sara brought her daughter Julia for a visit in June; Julia brought her father back to show him the college later in the summer. The oldest of three, Julia applied to 22 colleges, was accepted at all of them, and

has reduced the choice to four, two public, two private. She’s active in everything, an athlete, and wants to study mathematics and physics. One of the privates has already offered her a $22,000 scholarship. In Julia Brazo’s case, it may not matter. The cost of attending the school offering the big scholarship is $60,000 a year. The cost of attending Geneseo is $19,000 a year. She texts her parents occasionally that evening (“We’re doing homework now”) and again in the morning (“Showers are awesome”). After breakfast, on the way to a class, she comes BRAZO with her host to Wadsworth Auditorium, where her parents are waiting for a Preview Day information session. By the end of the day, Julia has gone to a class, eaten lunch with other accepted

students and hosts in the MacVittie College Union ballroom, gone off on her own across campus (after huddling over a map with an admissions counselor) to meet a professor in the math department, and attended a panel discussion by five young Geneseo alumni with impressive stories to tell. Finally, 24 hours after she arrived, she huddles briefly with her parents and makes her deposit. She goes home Julia Brazo, Geneseo Class of 2019. At 11:20 that night, she posts to the Geneseo Class of 2019 Facebook page. “Hey everyone! I’m Julia and I’m from Homer, NY (just north of SUNY Cortland). I sent in my deposit today and officially committed to Geneseo. I plan to double major in physics and mathematics […] I was voted my senior class ‘most athletic’ so I guess you can say I like sports. I also play the French horn […] I’m really looking forward to attending Geneseo in the fall.” Everything she experienced at Geneseo contributed to her decision, but the clinchers were the arguments in favor of a pure undergraduate experience, especially what she heard from Charlie Freeman, chair of the physics department, and the success of Geneseo students getting into top graduate schools. For Sara Brazo, it was a happy choice, because of all the schools they visited, she felt Geneseo had treated them the best. “It felt like you were being pampered,” she says. Later, her husband, Jim, said maybe they should skip the college search when Julia’s brother, Jackson, now a high school freshman, is ready, and just bring him to Geneseo. I am Geneseo What sells Geneseo, if that’s even the right word, is the place and the people— students and faculty. Especially students. Especially students like Sarah Nafis ’15, from Clifton Park, N.Y., who leads a small group tour out of Doty Hall on that bright, bitter cold February afternoon. It’s so cold, Nafis says she’ll just hurry the group from building to building and

explain what they’ve seen along the way, when they’re back indoors. From the atrium of the newly renovated Bailey Hall, she gestures in the direction of Main Street and talks about NAFIS the village; in Milne Library, she tells what to look for in Sturges Quad when they fly through on their way to the Mary Jamison dining hall—the Seuss Spruce, the Painted Tree. All the way, Nafis talks. She tells the Geneseo story, building by building. She delivers a stream of facts with commentary, and a few things about herself— she’s a senior, she’s going to graduate school next year, she has studied abroad, when she applied to Geneseo she wished she’d applied for early admission because she knew Geneseo was the place she wanted all along. Mary Jamison is busy and loud. Nafis rocks up on her toes as she talks. Her

enthusiasm is casting a spell. By the time she shows a sample dorm room and winds up the tour in the MacVittie College Union, she’s what the visitors will remember most: the soundtrack for what they’ve seen, the person who, for them, is Geneseo. She’s not promoting the college, she’s just being Sarah Nafis. But for some eventual applicants, she may be why Geneseo felt right. Admissions is a data-driven numbers game—it’s a complex information delivery and data processing business, a customer service operation. It’s also the thousands of uncontrollable moments and emotional reactions that make up any individual decision to come to Geneseo, or not. At the end of the day, all the work— and all the wonder—produce a class. And that class, green and hopeful when it arrives to enroll, which saw in Geneseo what it wanted—will make the Geneseo that attracts the next class, and the one after that. That’s the virtuous circle of Geneseo admissions.

Decision day: A big Geneseo envelope in an applicant’s mailbox in the first week of March is good news. By May 1, Geneseo has its next class.

Summer 2015

Rock Solid Denise Battles brings a life’s work to lead Geneseo as its 13th president By Tony Hoppa keep rocks around to remind me that I am a geologist,” says Denise Battles, Geneseo’s incoming president. Her words are as much a reflection on her academic identity as an invitation to discovery in her provost’s office at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Figuratively — and literally — evidence abounds. A watercolor conveys the rugged beauty of the Grand Teton Range. A rare North Carolina sample of orbicular diorite (a relative of granite) sits in a glass cabinet, its opaque green circles radiating against a background of white. And on her desk? A small rock holds business cards. “It’s a skarn — a rock type that I studied when I was doing my dissertation,” she says, picking it up. “You see red, that’s garnet, and it has some quartz and some feldspar-looking minerals. The green would be epidote — E-P-I-D-O-T-E — and it looks like it has some amphibole in there, too. You know, good old mineralogy.” This “geology minute” offers a telling glimpse into Battles’ knowledge and her love of teaching. “You can do some great quality instruction within the confines of the lecture or the laboratory,” she says. “But geology requires you to get out — boots on the ground.” Her own introduction was more like boots on the shore. Battles spent childhood summers at her grandparents’ cottage in northern Oswego County, along the rocky shoreline of Lake Ontario. “Instead of having a lemonade stand, I had a rock stand,” she recalls, laughing, “with a differential pricing structure. The pretty rocks — the granites, were

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far more dear than the soft sedimentary rocks.” Growing up in Central Square, N.Y., Battles followed the path to geology by way of Colgate University, where she graduated with honors in three years. The oldest of four (and the only daughter), she took local college courses while in high school to spare her parents the cost of extra tuition. “I went to Colgate thinking, ‘Maybe art, maybe science,’” she remembers. But one course changed everything: “Hot-blooded Dinosaurs.” “I loved it,” she says. “Dr. Linsley was marvelous — very energetic, very engaging. And I said, ‘Oh, this is what I want to do!’” After graduation, she began her academic odyssey. UCLA, Georgia Southern University, Auburn University, University of Northern Colorado, UNC Wilmington, and now, back to her upstate roots, Geneseo. Becoming a dean, then provost, brought greater — and unpredictable — demands. Passionate about teaching, Battles did not want to shortchange her students due to last-minute meetings or travel. She scaled back instruction and research, yet delighted in unexpected opportunities for student interaction, like chaperoning an undergraduate research conference. Battles’ easygoing manner and genuine interest in students’ lives resonated with participant Colby Jones ’13, who was unaware that UNC Wilmington’s provost was part of the group. “It wasn’t until the next day that I learned who she was,” she recalls. “Yet I never felt intimidated, and that’s what I love most about her: she was willing to listen, to encourage me.”

PHOTOS BY MARK COURTNEY

Denise Battles, at home in Wilmington, N.C.

Summer 2015

What colleagues say ... UNC Wilmington and former colleagues shared their thoughts on Denise Battles. Wendy Murphy – past chair, Board of Trustees “Denise has done a really good job of educating trustees from the academic side and I’m thankful for that. She’s had to make some tough decisions and be creative, and that’s always difficult in higher education.” William Sederburg – interim chancellor “I’ve increasingly admired her ability to make good judgments on personnel items and to recruit a good team. Denise is very ready for this role.” Clyde Edgerton – Thomas S. Kenan Distinguished Professor in Creative Writing “Denise will inspire fellowship as a consequence of her leadership. She is thoroughly researched in whatever position she might have but graciously willing to listen and discuss other points of view.” Tobi Polland ’15 – Student Government Association president “She’s a very kind-hearted person. When I first met her, I would try to match her professionalism. I still remember the first time she really joked around with me and I was like, ‘Whoa, this is great!’” Anny Morrobel-Sosa (former colleague, Georgia Southern University) — president, Association for Chief Academic Officers; provost, Lehman College “Denise is a visionary. She can develop ideas and set direction. Her ability to forecast directions that an institution should move in is a result of her networking and collaboration in higher education circles.” Michael Shivar – chair, Board of Trustees “She was working day and night — she’ll do whatever it takes. Whatever learning curve there is as president of Geneseo, Denise has that learning ability and work ethic to grasp it.”

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Incoming President Denise Battles and her husband, Michael Mills, will become a daily sight on Main Street, walking Texas Lucy, their 12-year-old Basenji. They moved into the President’s House in June.

As an administrator, Battles brings the same precision and discipline to chip away at academic bureaucracy as she did with a rock hammer to unearth samples in the Singatse Range in Nevada for her dissertation. Some 300, to be exact. (Read the story of her rocks online at go.geneseo.edu/traveledrocks.) Jessica Magnus, associate professor of management, worked with Battles on UNC Wilmington’s Innovation Council and knows her managerial skills. “Denise doesn’t want to make a decision without knowing all of the details,” Magnus says. “But once she has the details, she wants to make a decision. I think that's important because you can have scenarios where the outcome is not what everybody likes, but that’s okay as long as everyone thought the process was fair. She’s a master at that.” Geneseo College Council Chair Bob Wayland-Smith, who directed the presidential search, observed similar qualities during Battles’ interviews. “We were looking for someone who was strong enough to get lots of input on the front end but not be paralyzed when it came time to make decisions,” he says. “Those are two different skills.” Battles knows that she’s quite analytical. She brings a reputation for being incredibly thorough and precise. In meetings, she takes detailed notes. “She catches the little details that could have serious implications down the line,” says Aaron Wilcox, associate professor of art at UNC Wilmington. “One of her strengths is looking forward and seeing what that's going to mean.” “I like to make decisions that are data-

informed, and I think I’m a good problemsolver,” Battles says. “But my interest and passion for the arts and humanities have helped round me out. I don’t look at things purely from a scientific perspective.” Still, her background as a geologist offers an advantage. “You have to have a pretty high level of tolerance for ambiguity and working with the relics that you have, to figure out the story,” she explains. “And a lot of administration is dealing with ambiguity. You never have as much information as you really would enjoy having. You make your best call based on what you have.” There is no doubt, however, how Battles and her husband, Michael Mills, will work together. Mills has been a faculty member in the Department of English and the Honors College, as well as coordinator of major fellowships at UNC Wilmington. At Geneseo, he will serve as director of national fellowships in the Center for Inquiry, Discovery and Development, raising awareness of programs, including the Goldwater and Fulbright awards among Edgar Fellows, and Geneseo’s student ambassadors. “Michael and I are a team. We’re going to do everything we can to advance the college,” Battles affirms. “We give everything to every position we’ve been in.” Former UNC Wilmington Chief of Staff Max Allen, who served with Battles on the chancellor’s cabinet, knows the partnership works. “I think you’re getting a twofer,” he said. “They’re going to immerse themselves in the community. People will enjoy getting to know Denise and Michael. They complement each other.”

WHAT’S YOUR STORY?

A good argument By Judson Mead ersonal injury law can be harrowing: people don’t sue unless they’ve been hurt. Often the injury is devastating. Anne Joynt ’02 practices in the area of toxic torts, an especially tough corner of personal injury litigation. Her firm, Lipsitz and Ponterio, in Buffalo, N.Y., sues on behalf of persons, usually old, who are sick with mesothelioma from asbestos exposure and on behalf of children who have been damaged by exposure to lead-based paint. Mesothelioma means certain death. Lead-paint exposure causes a lifetime of diminished intellectual capacity. In her first years with the firm, Joynt worked on asbestos cases. They were emotionally challenging. “I was coming in at the end of someone’s life,” she says. “Because of the age difference, I felt like a granddaughter.” Now that she specializes in injury from lead-paint exposure, she likes to think a successful suit can help make the victim’s life better, even though damage is permanent. She didn’t know the exact destination, but Joynt’s path from the Erie Canal town of Medina, N.Y., to an office with a view of the federal courthouse in Buffalo was set before she was 10 years old. Her father was director of admissions for the University at Buffalo School of Dental Medicine; her mother was an elementary school principal. On family sightseeing vacations, they liked to visit college campuses. Anne Joynt, who was a third-grader at the time, vividly remembers walking around Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., and, when they reached the law school, asking her father what lawyers do. He said they research, read and argue. All three were things she liked to do, especially argue. By the time she was a senior in high school, Joynt was knocking on the door of the University at Buffalo Law School. She’d been accepted at UB and at Geneseo. If she planned to come to law school at UB, she

PHOTO BY KEITH WALTERS ’11

Anne Joynt ’02 always wanted to be a lawyer. Geneseo helped her realize her ambition. She uses her skills on behalf of children who have been injured by lead-paint exposure.

asked, where should she go to college? “Geneseo, definitely.” At Geneseo, where she double-majored in English and Spanish, Joynt honed her writing under the tutelage of Graham Drake, English professor and pre-law advisor. In law school at UB (there was never a question) her writing made such an impression on her first-year research and writing instructor that two years later, when Lipsitz and Ponterio called him looking for potential recruits, he forwarded her name with the strong recommendation. “So I fell into this,” Joynt says today. “It was a happy accident. I never expected to litigate.” Writing was the ticket. She credits Geneseo for that. She has around 90 cases on her desk at any time in various stages, from the earliest conversations to settlement negotiation or preparation for trial. She tries half a dozen cases a year. Lead-paint exposure injury requires a lot of fact-finding, which can he heartbreaking when the injury is unquestionable but the facts to support a case are lost. Asbestos liability is relatively unambiguous: mesothelioma is a signature disease, only caused by asbestos. Low IQ can have many causes. Children who have been exposed to lead

paint usually don’t show clear signs of damage until they reach fourth grade, although the exposure may have been years earlier. A lead-exposure injury suit must show negligence, with proof the defendant landlord knew there was peeling or chipping paint on the rental premises; knew there was a child living on the premises; was aware of the hazard of lead paint; knew the building had been built before 1979 (when lead paint was removed from the market); and retained the right of entry on the premises at the time in question. She sums up the plaintiff’s burden with the adage, “It’s harder to build a bridge than knock it down.” When a case winds up in court (most are settled), its final success or failure is in the hands of a jury, which introduces yet another set of considerations for the lawyers on either side. Joynt is a member of the SUNY Geneseo Regional Board of Directors; she lists more than a dozen ongoing professional and community activities on her resume. She was named an Upstate New York Rising Star by Super Lawyers in 2013 and 2014. She clearly loves what she decided to do way back in the third grade.

Summer 2015

FIELD CHALLENGE AND RESPONSE BEYOND THE CLASSROOM Teaching the teachers of the future is the primary business of Geneseo’s Ella Cline Shear School of Education. But faculty at the school are also active outside their Geneseo classrooms, building and directing programs designed to serve the needs of particular populations — and, as an additional benefit, creating learning opportunities for Geneseo education students. The following pages describe three of those programs and an experiment based in a firstgrade classroom that’s making an entire elementary school happy.

TRIPS

By Judson Mead

Decked out for St. Patrick’s Day, a Livonia first-grader reads a story to Laney, the classroom therapy dog.

geneseo scene

PHOTOS BY KEITH WALTERS ’11

THERE’S A DOG IN MY CLASSROOM! Challenge: Do therapy dogs in an elementary school classroom teach us anything about students and learning? Response: The nonjudgmental companionship of a dog in a classroom appears to help students make academic, social and emotional progress. This might have interesting implications for all classrooms. hree years ago, Erin Marozas, a firstgrade teacher at the Livonia, N.Y., elementary school, had to bring her puppy to school because her husband was on a study abroad trip. She got an inkling of the beneficial effect of a dog in the classroom when her normally rambunctious class started whispering the “Pledge of Allegiance.” When Marozas asked why, someone pointed at the puppy and whispered, “She’s sleeping.” She is Laney (aka Evergold’s Beautiful Lady of the Land), a big, soft golden retriever, now a certified therapy dog and fixture in Marozas’s classroom. Erin Marozas owns Laney with her husband, Don, a professor in the School of Education and a supervisor of Geneseo student teachers in the Livonia school. They are watching how Laney’s presence changes the demeanor of the class as a group, the school as a whole and the behavior and learning of individual students. For this kind of observation, circumstances have to be exactly right. The most difficult to arrange would be the dog. It was only after Laney proved herself that there was anything to watch. When she came to the class as a puppy, she seemed to acclimate to the children quickly. Erin and Don wondered if she could be trained to work in the school. Training consisted of up to three obedience classes a week with constant reinforcement at home. After working through several increasingly rigorous training schools, she was certified as a therapy dog and went to work in Erin’s classroom. The Marozases tick off results they’ve observed: petting Laney reduces the rigidity in the muscles of a child with cerebral palsy; she’s a good listener, and students pick up that behavior; students know she can’t come to class if they aren’t calm, kind and quiet— so they are. Students love to read to her and she has a calming effect on jittery students. One student who could never complete assignments started to finish work when Laney sat next to him so he could rest a hand on her. The stories go on and on. Don Marozas calls what he’s seen amazing. From the beginning, Erin Marozas has

Laney poses for her portrait in Erin Marozas’s first-grade class at the Livonia Elementary School where she works as a therapy dog.

observed that the first-graders more readily empathize and express caring and concern for Laney than they are yet able to consistently toward each other. In another role, Laney, accompanied by Don Marozas, goes to school counseling sessions. He reports that her presence in the room, always within reach of a hand seeking comfort, has caused students to open up with the counselor. Don Marozas speculates that Laney’s demeanor and soft coat contribute to the comfort that comes from touching her. One boy said he would miss Laney over the summer because her fur soaked up his stress. Laney wears an official vest when she’s at work—complete with faculty photo ID. When the vest is on, she’s a therapy dog. When it’s off, according to the Marozases, she’s like any high-spirited young dog, running and playing. In school, Laney is quiet, unflappable and curious. Erin Marozas says Laney has an uncanny sensitivity to students’ needs; she will sit or lie down next to a student who

needs her company. The class keeps the floor picked up because no one wants Laney to swallow something that might hurt her. Time with Laney is an effective reward in many behavior management plans in the school. Laney’s own training must be consistently and constantly reinforced. Don Marozas can put a dog treat on the back of her outstretched paw and command her to wait; she won’t touch it until he releases her. Laney is a masterpiece of training. Using dogs in this way in classrooms will always be rare. But what the Laney effect can teach the observer is something to be pondered and reported. If she can help students, maybe this is an idea that should reach more schools.

Summer 2015

RURAL PROGRAM INSPIRES FLEXIBLE THINKING Challenge: How can we improve educational outcomes for rural youth challenged by economic disparity? Response: Provide a summer learning program that builds on children's interests, enhances the family's role in their child's education, and develops the child's sense of self-worth and competence. ity schools get a lot of attention for low graduation rates. But rural schools also can have trouble getting students to graduation. Annmarie Urso, associate professor, taught in rural schools for 20 years before earning a doctorate and joining the Geneseo faculty. She says it’s not unusual to see schools with 90 percent attendance but 60 percent graduation. Students leave school to work because they don’t know what they could do with their education. “The data on kids in rural schools is heartbreaking,” Urso says. “I used to see kids who had dreams but didn’t know how to realize them.” Geneseo’s Soaring Stars program, which Urso directs, is designed to widen those limited horizons. For five weeks every summer, Soaring Stars has provided enrichment and stimulation to disadvantaged rural elementary school students. It is a picture window looking out on a wider world of possibilities. Located in a wing of the Genesee Valley Educational Partnership’s May Center in Mt. Morris, Soaring Stars started in 2011 with 27 kindergarten students and has promoted that cohort and added 33 more kindergarten students each year since. By 2017, the program will have a full complement of the elementary grades. The program has three professional teachers and employs a handful of Geneseo education students. Students come, three each, from 11 Genesee Valley school districts. Criteria for admission include family income that qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch. According to Urso, the students range from academically capable to needing both academic and emotional support. One student came to the program having never seen crayons. Following the Reggio Emilia approach to education—favoring pupil-initiated exploration and discovery—Soaring Stars builds on whatever is interesting to students at the moment, using what Urso calls provocative activities. The question, What do you know about water? might

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(Above) Younger Soaring Stars with faculty. (Left) The premier performance of “The Three Snow Tigers,” a play written and produced by Soaring Stars students.

lead to splashing with a garden hose and then talk about evaporation. Noticing shadows on a sidewalk might lead to chalk outlines and a look at what happens to those shadows later in the day. The sight of a big cargo helicopter one day last summer led a group of boys to build a 20-foot “airplane,” complete with accommodations for a goldfish bowl in the cockpit. They corresponded with a local pilot. They spent the entire five-week session on their project. It took imagination, cooperation, problem-solving and persistence—good qualities to bring back to school. Urso stays in contact with principals at the schools that send students to Soaring Stars. They are enthusiastic. Teachers report that program students, who were

often the ones who had the most trouble sitting at their desks, come back as more flexible thinkers. Children fall out of the summer program when they move, or when family living arrangements take them away in the summer. Of the 27 who were the Soaring Stars initial cohort, 12 remain with the program. Soaring Stars fills vacancies as they occur. It is Urso’s hope that Soaring Stars will gain recognition as a national model for increasing parent involvement and, ultimately, graduation rates in rural school districts. Two years from now, when the first Soaring Stars students graduate from the program after their sixth-grade year, Urso hopes to blend them into Geneseo’s summer science, technology, engineering and mathematics camp (see story on page 21). “We want to give these kids glimpses of what’s out there,” she says, “and the confidence that they are capable.”

GENESEO AND ROCHESTER LEARN FROM EACH OTHER Challenge: How can Geneseo provide teacher education candidates long-term, meaningful teaching experience with students from linguistically, ethnically and culturally diverse backgrounds? Response: Rochester Young Scholars Academy at Geneseo brings grades 6-12 Rochester Central School District students to SUNY Geneseo for a residential summer camp and a follow-up program on Saturdays in Rochester during the academic year. Geneseo teacher education candidates staff both experiences.

think we may learn more from our students than they learn from us.” So says Susan Norman, director of Geneseo’s Xerox Multicultural Center, about a Geneseo tutoring and enrichment program for students from the Rochester Central School District. “We don’t change the reality of their lives,” she says, “but at least we can accompany them along some of their journey.” The program is the Rochester Young Scholars Academy at Geneseo (RYSAG). The students come from neighborhoods predominantly defined by poverty, where the need to work or the lure of growing up fast often competes successfully against educational opportunity. Every summer for the past nine years, Rochester students have come to the Geneseo campus for a two-week sleep-over education camp. They study, they work together, they have fun—and then they go back to what Norman knows is the reality of

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their lives, a little more curious, she hopes, and possibly excited by what they’ve learned they can do. The camp is organized each year around a theme calling for the understanding of the principles of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). One year it was crime scene investigation, which students knew from the popular CSI television series; another year, students applied science to crisis response, in this case to an invasion by zombies. When Norman polled prospective campers for this year’s theme, having floated such weighty topics as teen pregnancy or substance abuse, they came back with cookBy Jim Memmott from a muling. So, the theme is “nutrition ticultural perspective.” The experience is organized to mimic the popular Food Channel show “Chopped.” Campers’ core coursework will consist of English and language arts, in which they will do research on nutrition; social studies and

anthropology, looking at the foods of the world; the chemistry of food; and, of course, cooking. Campers will cook in the InterFaith Center kitchen. They will be divided into four teams by age. From 45 students in 2007, the RYSAG summer camp has grown to 90 this summer with a waiting list of 30. In any summer, a third to a half of the campers will have attended before. Recruitment is by word of mouth and by information circulated by the school district. The camp is staffed by 25, mostly Geneseo education candidates, many repeating two or three summers. Two former staffers who now have master’s degrees are back this summer. Two weeks of dorm life, classes, group activity like talent shows and dances give the Geneseo education candidates immersive contact with students from backgrounds usually quite different from theirs. Norman says this is a valuable opportunity for education candidates to practice culturally relevant pedagogies and more generally to work outside their everyday comfort zone. During the school year, RYSAG offers a four-hour tutoring and enrichment program staffed by Geneseo education candidates on Saturday afternoons at the Rochester Central Library. Recently, according to Norman, other Rochester school initiatives have pulled students away from these Saturday afternoons, so she is looking for other formats to keep the Geneseo connection strong. When camp is over after two short weeks, the Rochester students will have seen science applied to something they know in their everyday lives. They will have been on a college campus, so maybe that seed will grow in some. And they will have worked all day with college students—models of what they could be.

Campers in the Rochester Young Scholars Academy at Geneseo summer program study clues on a scavenger hunt designed to familiarize them with the Geneseo campus.

Summer 2015

WONDERFUL LIVES Challenge: Can students with moderate to severe intellectual or other developmental disabilities benefit from a college experience that teaches independence and vocational and educational skills? Response: Geneseo LIVES (Learning Independence, Vocational and Educational Skills), a rigorous, campusbased four-year program, has graduated 21 students. Eighteen now have competitive employment. Four earned GEDs.

LIVES program graduates (l-r) Brenden Porter, Mariely Vazquez Andino, Andrew Sass, Jenna Diskin, and Patrick Chmela at the School of Education convocation, May 2015.

tudents with intellectual and/or other developmental disabilities can stay in high school until they are 21 years old. But from age 18 to 21, they are often stuck: their grade cohort has graduated and they are left behind with nowhere to go. Elizabeth Hall, then an assistant professor in the School of Education, was galvanized in 2007 by the appearance of young persons with developmental disabilities in a panel discussion on the Geneseo campus organized by New York’s Office of Persons with Developmental Disabilities. She wanted to create a college-like program for students with intellectual or other developmental disabilities. Geneseo could be an ideal setting. Students would benefit from four more years of classes after high school and from job-readiness education. For School of Education certification candidates, this could provide on-campus practicum and course credit opportunities working with the LIVES program students. For the college, such a program would add a new dimension of diversity to campus life. After a whirlwind nine-month effort that touched almost every corner of the Geneseo campus, Hall opened LIVES to its first students in fall 2008. The program is a partnership among Geneseo, the Genesee Valley Educational Partnership, Hilltop Industries (a division of The Arc of Livingston-Wyoming), and

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the Finger Lakes Developmental Disabilities Regional Services Office. It accepts students in two divisions: ages 1821, and 21 and older. Hall is LIVES’ program project coordinator. Tabitha Buggie-Hunt, Geneseo assistant dean for disability services, is administrator and college liaison. LIVES staff includes full-time graduate assistants, a special education teacher, a teaching assistant, two day-habilitation aides, a day-habilitation manager, and 10 to 15 Geneseo students who serve as mentors and tutors during the academic year. The program is selfsustaining, funded by tuition. LIVES students are on campus for a little over six hours, from 8:30-2:45 five days a week. They take four years of functional academic classes; audit Geneseo courses— in subjects that range widely, from anthropology to philosophy; hold on-campus internships in such settings as Milne Library, Campus Auxiliary Services and the Fitness Center, working beside Geneseo students who are considered their “natural” supports. Hall says the Geneseo students rapidly come to regard their LIVES worksite colleagues as buddies and peers. The program also includes a social and recreational component, with LIVES students participating in campus clubs and organizations, and instruction in independent living. According to Hall, every LIVES graduate leaves the program with skills necessary to

gain competitive employment. Many live independently in apartments with support services. Potential LIVES students apply to the program in much the same way students apply to Geneseo: they take a campus tour, they interview. Geneseo students who want to work in the program complete a sevenpage application, four background checks and interviews with LIVES students and with Hall. Hall says that when those education students drop into her office to discuss their work with LIVES students, they invariably start with, “Hey, you’re not going to believe this….” In the second year of the program, LIVES students developed a list of 40 questions and surveyed 78 Geneseo college students about their strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, in order to find out how and if they were similar and different from Geneseo’s college students. They presented the results and conclusions at Geneseo’s GREAT Day (Geneseo Recognizing Excellence, Achievement and Talent). LIVES students have presented at GREAT Day every year since, and regularly present at the New York Council for Exceptional Children’s Annual Conference. It is a perfect realization of what Hall hoped a college experience could be for these exceptional students—and what those students can bring to the college.

ATHLETICS AND RECREATION

Women’s basketball

A season for the books By Judson Mead t was an amazing run. On Feb. 28, when the top-seeded Geneseo women stepped onto the court for the SUNYAC championship game against Cortland in Schrader Gymnasium, they were riding a 16-game winning streak. Geneseo senior forward Shannon McGinnis dominated, scoring 14 points and grabbing 14 rebounds for her 17th doubledouble of the season to lead the Knights to a 61-54 win over the Cortland Red Dragons. They were SUNYAC champions for the first time since 2010-11. Their win streak was now at 17. McGinnis was named the SUNYAC Tournament MVP. Junior forward Allison McKenna was named to the AllTournament Team. The win gave Geneseo an automatic bid to the NCAA Division III Women’s Basketball Tournament. As it happened, Geneseo was hosting first- and secondround games in the tournament. So six days later the Knights were back in Schrader Gym to take on the 23-4 Castleton (Vt.) Spartans. Once again, it was forward Shannon McGinnis’s night. She scored 27 points, tied for second-most in Geneseo NCAA Tournament history, and grabbed seven rebounds to lead the Knights past Castleton, 84-40. That ran the Knights’ consecutive victory streak to 18. The next night, McGinnis totaled 20 points and 14 rebounds for her 18th double-double of the season to lead the Knights to a 69-54 win over Muhlenberg (Pa.). Junior guard Dana Cohan recorded 18 points, while junior forward Allison McKenna had 10 points and six rebounds and sophomore guard Kara Houppert also added 10 points. The team headed for the Tufts University campus in Medford, Mass., and the NCAA Sweet 16. And that’s where the run ended. Despite 20 points and 16 rebounds from Shannon McGinnis, defending national champion

PHOTO BY KEITH WALTERS ’11

Knights on the brink: A last huddle before their quarterfinal game in the NCAA tournament. They lost to FDU-Florham.

The season was over, but the honors were not. FDU-Florham (N.J.) rode an early lead to a 68-54 victory that sent the Knights home. The Knights couldn’t overcome a first half that saw the hot-shooting Devils (29-1) connect on 10 of 19 three-pointers for a 4820 lead. The Knights out-scored FDUFlorham 19-5 to start the second half and got as close as 10 down the stretch, but Geneseo saw its 19-game winning streak stopped in its first appearance in the NCAA round-of-16 in 20 years. The season was over, but the honors were not. On March 19, Shannon McGinnis was named All-America by the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA). She was only the second Knights player in program history and first in 20 years to win

the award. Also voted the d3hoops.com East Region and State University of New York Athletic Conference (SUNYAC) Player of the Year, McGinnis became the first player in program history to eclipse 1,000 rebounds, finishing with 1,011. She finished third all-time in scoring with 1,473 points. On March 24, the final USA TODAY Sports NCAA Division III Women’s Basketball Coaches Poll ranked the 25-5 Knights No. 19 in the nation. It was the first time the Knights had cracked the top 20 in the national rankings in 20 years. It was a season that will be remembered any time a Knights team starts a win streak. With 19 consecutive wins, the secondlongest streak in program history, the 201415 women will be in any conversation about Geneseo basketball for a long, long time.

Summer 2015

PERSPECTIVES pril 15, 2013, dawned bright, clear and cool—the perfect day for running my first Boston Marathon. I was excited, but anxious. This was my biggest running challenge to date. No—it was my biggest life challenge to date, period! But my best friend, running buddy and business partner, Jared Chrudimsky, and his brother Jason, were running with me. They kept telling me I could do it. As we headed toward the starting line, I thought about having taken my first, tentative run less than three years earlier. Yet here I was at age 59, running in what many consider to be the world’s most elite marathon. It turned out to be a far more fateful day than I could have imagined. But let me take you back to the beginning of the story…. ••• The winter of 2009-10 was the darkest time of my life. Between November and March, I lost my father, my mother and my motherin-law; my father-in-law had died a year before. For eight months, I made weekly trips to New York from my home in Massachusetts to take care of family. All the while, I had to keep my business running. I was physically and emotionally exhausted. Before these calamities, I’d told Jared I wanted to do something to stave off the creeping effects of age I was feeling. The extra pounds that appeared during the holidays weren’t disappearing. I was sluggish. Jared, a lifelong runner, suggested that I run. I said, “Can’t do it.” I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of my best friend. I couldn’t run from here to there. Or so I thought. Growing up, I was always the least athletic kid on the block. I got teased and bullied for it. Even at age 57, I was afraid to submit myself to that kind of ridicule again. But Jared had planted the seed. In mid-April 2010—after a couple of practice jogs—I sucked up my fears and asked Jared if he would take me on a run. He ran from his house to mine to pick me up. Talk about being intimidated! We ran two miles, including some gentle inclines. I kept saying, “I can’t do this….” But I made it back to my house. It was the beginning of a new day for me. Jared started taking me out three times a week, encouraging me to run just a little farther each week. By September he had me ready to run my first 5K. I finished the race in 24 minutes. I did it!

Ingrassia starts the Boston Marathon in 2013...

Yes I am... This once “wimpy kid” leaves his doubts behind By Tom Ingrassia ’74

geneseo scene

This former wimpy kid had competed in his first-ever athletic event and done pretty well. In that moment of personal victory, I felt the missing piece of my life fall into place. I’d felt a little “less than” because I didn’t do what the other guys did. Now, I felt whole. And I put into practice what I preach to my coaching clients—if you think it, you can do it. If you believe in yourself, you can achieve anything. Running became a life lesson for me. For decades I told myself that I was no good at sports. Couldn’t compete. Was a loser. Sure enough, I wasn’t any good at sports— because I told myself I wasn’t any good. Yet here I was, competing in races. After that first race, I ran a Thanksgiving Day 5K, then another, then 10Ks, then a half marathon and another half. And next, Oh, no… not a marathon! Me? Run 26.2 miles? Can’t do it. No. In October 2012, Jared and I ran the Atlantic City Marathon. Atlantic City is flat. If I was going to run 26.2 miles, I wanted them to be very flat. My goal was to finish in five hours. I crossed the finish line in 4:48. Then came the big one. The Boys and Girls Club of Newton, Mass., invited me to join their marathon team. At 59, this was the first time I’d ever been picked for an athletic team. All I had to do was train, and agree to raise $5,000 for the club. I discovered that people are willing to support you—if you ask. Before long, I’d surpassed my fundraising goal. I discovered that I inspired people because of what I’d accomplished with my running in a short time and at my stage of life. And that’s all I ever wanted to do—to inspire people, to make a difference in someone’s life. Who knew that my dream would come true in the form of athletic competition? ••• Everyone knows about the bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. I was less than a mile from the finish line when I was stopped. I was panicked when I heard what had happened. I’d arranged for a VIP pass so my wife, Barbara ’74, could sit in the bleachers right at the finish line. Was she there when the bombs went off? I didn’t know where Jared and Jason were. Barbara had been delayed in traffic, and was 10 minutes away from the finish line

when the bombs exploded. Jared and Jason were only .2 miles ahead of me when they were stopped. We were all safe. If it weren’t for the tragedy, I’d have nothing but good memories of my first Boston Marathon. It was the best, most joyful race I’d run. A friend watching from the top of Heartbreak Hill said I had a huge grin on my face as I powered

“I am a runner. I am an athlete. I am …” up the hill. Even though I didn’t cross the finish line, I achieved something that day that I’d thought was far beyond my endurance and ability. I witnessed acts of human hope and healing in the hours after the bombings: the runners gathered around an older runner

to keep him warm; residents along Massachusetts Avenue who offered blankets and water; the woman who offered me her jacket to keep warm when she found me standing in a storefront bedraggled, shivering from cold, caked in salt from sweating, wearing nothing but my running shorts, singlet and running shoes. ••• Running changed my life. It inspired me to push beyond my self-imposed limits and to live life with vision, courage, determination and passion. I ran Boston again in 2014, and this time crossed the finish line. I have run ultra-marathons. Running allowed me to prove to myself that I can do anything I set my mind to— no matter the obstacles. And, I’m told, I am inspiring others to live their lives without limits. You never know where you will find your inspiration and your passion.

...and finishes in 2014.

Summer 2015 25

RANDOM PROFILE

One Cup Emily Nolan Class of 2003 PHOTO PROVIDED

By Kris Dreessen

Inspired by the idea that everyone has a story to share, we offer the “random profile.” Each issue, we don a blindfold and throw a dart at a map of the United States to choose our state, then take aim again to choose a lucky alum. We catch up, relive memories and share life insight, like we are talking over coffee. Up next ... Florida Could it be you?

geneseo scene

QUICK FACTS

Home: Portland, Ore. Graduation year: 2003 Degree: geography and secondary education Favorite Geneseo hangout: Mama Mia’s Best Geneseo memory: Being ridiculously goofy with my roommate and friend, Colleen. Most rewarding experience since college: Riding my bike down the Oregon coast with my brother and my friend Karen. People are usually surprised to discover: I lived in Alaska. Favorite quote: “Cheese, Milk’s leap toward immortality.” A life lesson you’ve learned along the way: My parents always told me not to sweat the small stuff, but it took a lot of wasted energy and time worrying about the small stuff and a couple of major life events to realize that, in fact, my parents were right all along. The small stuff is gonna happen no matter what and you really have no control over it.

ILLUSTRATION BY AMANDA LINDLEY

ONE CUP

t’s nine miles by bicycle from home to work. Emily Nolan ’03 mentally plans out her day as she pedals past the bluffs along the windy Willamette River and into downtown Portland, Ore. On her way home, she reviews her day at Perka, a tech startup, clearing her mind. She wants to live in the moment at work, then at home. “I also just really enjoy the feeling of being self-sufficient and healthy and doing some small part of helping the environment by bike commuting,” Emily says. She started bike commuting in Alaska, when she lived in Fairbanks and worked with AmeriCorps. “You think you can’t bike in sub-zero but you can throw on five layers and a hat and not lose your nose,” she says. Emily flew into remote places like Nome and Barrow, and tiny villages between, organizing Girl Scout troop volunteers and running summer camps for Farthest North Girl Scout Council. It was a good fit: She was a lifelong Girl Scout and earned her Gold Award. She later worked directly for the Girl Scouts in Seattle, organizing more than 1,000 volunteers in the area. The lessons from rural Alaska, where residents tried to overcome rampant alcoholism and other social problems, stuck with her. “It taught me so much about the world and how fortunate we are in America to have the resources we have, and also how great our responsibility is to help others who are struggling, right here or abroad,” she says. The job with Perka, a mobile loyalty program for small businesses— think frequent-buyer cards for coffee at your favorite café—brought her to Portland. She still commutes by bike, and branches out on 500- or 800-mile journeys with her brother and friends. Free from zooming by at 55mph, Emily sees the world more intimately: “In Missouri, we had been riding along a forested trail for about three days, when we came into a clearing with a beautiful field on either side. The sun was beating down on us so hard but it felt so good, and the cicadas had just hatched so there was a roar of cicadas all around us.” On one long trip, she was thrown over her handlebars into traffic in rural Tennessee. She was lucky; she just needed stitches. “For about a year I would wake up feeling like I was crashing again,” Emily remembers. “It took me some time to get back on my bike, but I knew that getting over my fears was really the best thing I could do.” That strength to get back on the road gave her back all those miles for time for reflection. Is she happy? Does she need to make some changes? The quiet times lead to more immediate day dreams of what food she’ll eat at the next stop, and those slowly evolving epiphanies, that change her path. “Those big life choices that you push to the back of your mind on a daily basis, they all come to the forefront,” Emily says about time on the open road. “I think a lot about where I am in life and what I want to do next.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KEITH WALTERS ’11

U AT O Y SEE N 2016! IO N U E R

-4 3 E JUN

Alumni News ALUMNI NEWS Our first Reunion block party! “You come on campus and you get goosebumps,” says John Gleason ’87. He and 1,000 other alumni celebrated what makes Geneseo so special at Reunion. Most them of them gathered for the first-ever block party off Main Street, with music and group photos of Greek organizations. Milestone reunions ending in 0 and 5 were also celebrated.

29 32 33 35

Alumni event photos Revitalizing downtown Class Notes Scene Around the World Summer 2015

SAN FRANCISCO

Alums show their love for Geneseo and start a tradition hat do one night, 22 events and more than 500 alumni across the world celebrating Geneseo have in common? They equal a Great Knight. On April 21, the alumni office and volunteers from New York to California partnered to launch Great Knight, the first simultaneous celebration of Geneseo around the world. Alumni, parents and friends gathered at official and impromptu events, and connected on social media. Gatherings took place from New York to Southern California to Portland to Florida to Boston, with alumni from as far away as Hawaii, Taiwan and New Zealand participating through Facebook and Twitter. “Who’s up for celebrating Geneseo in New Zealand?” asked Joe McGarry ’96 with a sign, standing in front of the Auckland skyline sporting a Geneseo sweatshirt. Pamela Reader ’98 sent a selfie from the sunset in Maui, and another alumna sent greetings from a park in Taipei.

GREAT Knight — Raleigh N.C.

Save the date! Great Knight 2016 is April 19. What’s best is Great Knight is grassroots, created by alumni who wanted to create the feeling of being at Geneseo through one night of events. The Rochester crew even brought in Mama Mia’s pizza. The night connected all those alumni with one another, while back on campus, we celebrated GREAT Day, a college-wide symposium celebrating the creative and scholarly endeavors of Geneseo students. More than 900 students marked the ninth anniversary of Geneseo Recognizing Excellence, Achievement & Talent Day, presenting research, performing musical and theatrical pieces and other diverse talent and work. “Great Knight is proof of how much our regional committees have grown in such a short period of time,” says Brock Buffum ’02, whose Buffalo, N.Y., regional committee sparked the event. “We kicked the idea around at the regional level, and it was taken to the national level and eventually the pieces all fell into place. A nationwide event like that doesn’t happen overnight, and it took the combined efforts of a lot of dedicated alumni to orchestrate what turned out to be an amazing event. It was really cool to follow along on Twitter and Facebook throughout the night to see people celebrating all over the country. I’m really looking forward to watching this develop into a tradition that people look forward to every year." It was an amazing turnout. Special thanks to the alumni who hosted and sponsored events. We can’t wait to celebrate again with you next year!

geneseo scene

GREAT Knight — Tampa

GREAT Knight — El Segundo, Calif.

Alumni Events — GREAT Knight

GREAT Knight — Utica

GREAT Knight — Atlanta

GREAT Knight — Philadelphia

GREAT Knight — Buffalo

GREAT Knight — New Zealand

GREAT Knight — Rochester

Summer 2015

Upcoming

Alumni Events The Office of Alumni and Parent Relations is always looking for regional event ideas. Contact the office at alumni@geneseo.edu if you would like to work with us to plan an event in your area.

Family Weekend SEPTEMBER 25-26, 2015

25th Anniversary Celebration of Geneseo Crew

Alumni Reception — San Francisco

OCTOBER 3, 2015

Homecoming Weekend*

GENESEO EXTERNSHIPS

OCTOBER 16-17, 2015

Great Knight APRIL 19, 2016 Simultaneous Event in all regions

Alumni Weekend/Springfest APRIL 29-30, 2016

Reunion JUNE 3-4, 2016 Celebrating Reunion class years ending in 6 or 1

Make sure we have your email so we can invite you to join us! We are always planning events on campus and throughout Geneseo’s 18 alumni regions across the country. Most of our event invitations are sent by email to reduce cost and conserve resources.

Boston Externship

Visit alumni.geneseo.edu for events in your area!

*Volunteer Board Meetings held during these weekends.

Chicago Externship

geneseo scene

Alumni Events

GREAT Knight — NYC

GREAT Knight — Hawaii GREAT Knight — Parker, Colo.

Summer 2015

By Jim Memmott

avid Colligan came to attend Geneseo almost by accident. “Let me tell you, my decision to go to Geneseo was one of the most random decisions in the history of the world,” says the ’74 graduate. “I never saw the school before I hitchhiked there to start classes.” And yet the Buffalo, N.Y., lawyer can point to two points in his college career that gave shape and purpose to his life. The first might have happened anywhere, but Colligan credits Geneseo with the moment. He was on campus when he happened to read a story on forestry in the New York State Conservationist that sparked his interest in raising trees, harvesting trees and perhaps especially valuing trees as a key part of our environment. Later, after he had graduated from the University at Buffalo Law School, Colligan’s practice increasingly involved timber law, a subject area in which he is a recognized national expert. He also would chair the Olmsted Parks Conservancy, a group that preserves Buffalo’s parks created by beloved landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. Beyond that, Colligan owns timber property throughout Western New York, though his heart of hearts may be with his maple sugar bush in Colden, Erie County. With the help of friends and family, he taps trees there every spring, then makes maple syrup that he gives away to those who

geneseo scene

PHOTO BY KEITH WALTERS ‘11

ALUMNI NEWS

ALUMNI PROFILE

class of ’74 David Colligan Buffalo’s man for all four seasons stops at the city’s new waterfront skating venue he helped create.

Playing the long game helped him. His timber holdings have given Colligan a handy metaphor for a key part of his law practice and his community service. For years, he has been an advocate for entrepreneurs and business startups. In this, he takes the long view, just as he does in the forest. Investors and the companies they fund can’t expect overnight results. “A lot of it goes back to trees,” Colligan says. “Every decision I make in the woods about trees is a 10-year decision.” Colligan, who lives in Buffalo, N.Y., came to Geneseo in 1971 as part of a program that allowed students to graduate in three years. In connection with his major in political science, Colligan spent a semester in Washington. It was the other key transformative influence of his time at Geneseo. He got to work in a congressman’s office. He got to study the practice of lobbying.

Most importantly, Colligan was in Washington when the Watergate scandal broke open. It was a real-time, reallife case study in politics. “Where was a young boy going to get an education like that for all the money in the world?” Colligan says. It may have been a cautionary tale, as well. After he started practicing law, a life in politics tempted Colligan. “I wanted to help Western New York,” he says. But the woman who would become his wife convinced him that politics could wreck lives, and he could do more for the area as a private citizen. Colligan came to agree, and he has proved her right with a long list of contributions to life in Buffalo and beyond. Currently a partner in the firm of Colligan LLP, he is the chairman of Launch NY, a venture development group that assists startups.

He’s on the board of directors of the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corp. The Buffalo News called him “perhaps the most progressive member” of that group, leading efforts to repurpose the old Erie Canal in downtown Buffalo. This past winter, Canalside, as the area is known, was open to ice skating for the first time. In the warmer months, there are concerts and other attractions. “What happened at Canalside helped to shape a new thinking about what was possible in Buffalo,” U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins told the News. For Colligan, it’s more proof of what he took away from the Conservationist magazine — a magazine he still has — and from his time at Geneseo. Good ideas, like forests, take time to develop. But with care and attention, they are well worth the wait.

Class Notes 1950s Class of 1951 — celebrating their 65th reunion and Class of 1956 — celebrating their 60th reunion in 2016. Sorrell Chesin ’58 retired last year after more than 45 years in administrative positions at SUNY Albany. He was recently appointed to the Governance Council of the UAlbany Senate and elected president of the UAlbany Emeritus Center.

1960s Class of 1961 — celebrating their 55th reunion and Class of 1966 — celebrating their 50th reunion in 2016 Texas-based interior designer Mimi Rosenthal ’65 won the 2015 Black Sheep Unique’s annual rug design competition for “Nicknamed Celeste,” which was inspired by the puffy clouds she saw from an airplane window. Philip McCray ’69 wrote a book, “Briffault’s Passchendaele: Arts, Empathy and the First World War.” The sixth chapter deals with the three individuals he met in September 1965 during his first weeks on the Geneseo campus, who were immensely influential on his artistic and literary career.

1970s Class of 1971 — celebrating their 45th reunion and Class of 1976 — celebrating their 40th reunion in 2016. Thomas Hellems ’71 recently accepted a position as director of operations at Ecogate. Patricia Foley ’74 ran the Cooler in Pooler Resolution 5K in January 2015 in Georgia and was joined by Geneseo graduate LuAnn Boulio-Lucier ’94. Thomas Ingrassia ’74 recently received two awards. His book, “One Door Closes: Overcoming Adversity by Following Your Dreams,” was recognized with a National Indie Excellence Award. He also was named Best Radio

Personality by readers of The Landmark, a weekly regional newspaper, in its annual Readers’ Choice Awards, for his show “The Motown Jukebox,” which airs on WCUW 91.3 FM in Worcester, Mass.

1980s Class of 1981 — celebrating their 35th reunion and Class of 1986 — celebrating their 30th reunion in 2016. Alfred Ntoko ’80 recently accepted a position at SUNY Empire State College as provost and vice president of academic affairs. Jeffrey Meadows ’82 recently

accepted a position at CitizenLink as the director, alliances southeast region. Arlene Giczkowski ’85 MEADOWS

received a doctorate in special education from Nova Southeastern University in 2013. Peter Crosby ’87 received a master of arts in national security/strategic studies (Asia/Pacific) from the U.S. Naval War College in 2014. Julie Roth Demcheshen ’87 obtained the certified professional contracts manager designation through the National Contract Management Association. Cynthia Nagle ’88 and her husband, James Larkin, relocated from the Albany, N.Y., area to Albuquerque, N.M. She is marketing director at DNV GLEnergy, which manages the Business Energy Efficiency Programs for Public Service Company of New Mexico.

1990 Kevin Vanyo was recently pro-

moted to the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army.

1991 Celebrating their 25th reunion in 2016.

1992 Julie Tong Arduini hit the

Amazon Kindle Bestseller list for women’s Christian fiction with her Adirondack romance, “Entrusted.” Anthony Mesi released a second book in his supernatural young adult series, “Sage Volume II,” which is about a fictional SUNY Geneseo student.

1993

chair of member programming and community outreach for the Western New York Genealogical Society Inc. She is serving a threeyear term on the society’s board of directors. Stephen Noviello was inducted into his high school’s alumni hall of fame for his Emmy awardwinning accomplishments as a TV journalist and consumer advocate. Mary Woods Tischler and James Tischler are proud to announce the birth of a baby girl, Ruby Catherine, born on April 25, 2014.

Beverley Waller-Braun was recent-

ly promoted to partner at Jaeckle Fleischmann & Mugel LLP in Buffalo, N.Y. Stuart Davidson, a partner at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP in Boca Raton, Fla., was appointed by Federal District Judge Susan Richard Nelson in Minnesota as one of the plaintiffs’ lead counsel in the NHL Concussion Litigation, representing dozens of former National Hockey League players in their case against the league.

1994 LuAnn Boulio-Lucier recently ran the Cooler in Pooler Resolution 5K in January 2015 in Georgia and was joined by Geneseo graduate Patricia Foley ’74.

1995 Daniel Gurvich has

GURVICH

been named executive director of the Neighborhood Music School in New Haven, Conn.

1996 Celebrating their 20th reunion in 2016. Kevin Burns was elected vice president of the Society of Emergency Medicine Physicians Assistants. Jennifer Liber-Raines was named

1997 Stephen Harris was recently promoted to vice president and general manager, Dell Federal Systems at Dell. Kerri Donaleski Howell has recently accepted a position at Syracuse University as director of communications and media relaHOWELL tions for the Martin J. Whitman School of Management. Karen Manganaro is proud to announce the birth of a baby boy, Giovanni, born on Oct. 20, 2014. Jeremy Oczek, an intellectual property and technology attorney with Bond, Schoeneck & King PLLC, has been chosen as a 2015 Rising Star for lawyers under age 40 who are top contributors in the field and in their communities.

1998 Marisa Capuano Philp recently

accepted a position at East Rochester Elementary School as the elementary principal. She recently was employed at Red Jacket Elementary School as principal. Sean Diehl and his research team have received a three-year, $2.2 million grant at the University of Vermont to study the immuno-

Summer 2015

ALUMNI NEWS

CLASS NOTES logical basis of protection from dengue fever. David Friedman started his own blog, The Disabled Foodie, to review restaurants and food venues on their food and service and on their accessibility. Amanda Pielecha Sauter recently accepted a position at the University at Buffalo as a prehealth academic advisor.

1999

Submit your class note or notice at

go.geneseo.edu/classnote Jake Bruno, Jan. 29, 2013, in Valhalla, N.Y. Born prematurely, Jake died Jan. 31 and Deskin spent more than nine months in the hospital before coming home Nov. 12, 2013.

Darren Anderson and Meredith

Anderson are proud to announce the birth of a baby girl, Meghan Rose, born on Sept. 19, 2014. Lori Lehmann Brady and Steven Brady are proud to announce the birth of a baby boy, Nicholas Steven, born on May 6, 2014. Matthew Ebbecke and Amanda Ebbecke are proud to announce the birth of a baby girl, Allison Kimberly Ebbecke, born on June 8, 2013. Dennis Lowenfels is vice president and senior compliance officer at HGI Asset Management LLC. Bradley Mattox is vice president and relationship manager for Citizens Commercial Banking. Mattox joins Citizens in Boston from BNY Mellon, where he was a vice president and senior private banker. Rachel Peters Razza and James Razza are proud to announce the birth of a baby girl, Sophie Anne, born on Jan. 30, 2015. Tara Sweeney Sroka was recently promoted to art supervisor at FCB Health, a pharmaceutical ad agency in New York City.

2000 Kelly O’Coyne Huss and Joseph

Huss are proud to announce the birth of a baby girl, Sophia Marie, born on Nov. 7, 2014. Ann Gallic Tiede is proud to announce the birth of a baby boy, Brooks Benjamin Tiede, born on Nov. 20, 2014.

2001 Celebrating their 15th reunion in 2016. Julie Ann Bruno-Burton and

James Burton welcomed the birth of twin sons, Deskin Joseph and

geneseo scene

2002 Jessica Exelbert Weiss and Elliot

Weiss are proud to announce the birth of a baby boy, Max Edward, born on Jan. 30, 2015.

2003 Christine MacDaniels Ferguson

is proud to announce the birth of a baby girl, Miranda Rae, born on Sept. 15, 2014. Tami Root Holihan is the full-time library media specialist at Park Road Elementary School in Pittsford, N.Y. Margaret Sites Kite and Joseph Kite are proud to announce the birth of a baby boy, Donovan Kilmer, born on June 24, 2014. Elizabeth Tertinek Midgley was recently promoted to partner at Anspach Meeks Ellenberger LLP in Buffalo, N.Y. She focuses her practice on litigation, including the defense of medical, dental and legal malpractice, as well as professional responsibility and ethics.

2004 Tim J. Conheady recently

accepted a position at Moody Associates PA in Mt. Pleasant, S.C., as the director of contract compliance and analytics. Laura Taczak Jacobs, senior account executive at e3communications, has been elected 2015 chair of the 32nd annual Taste of Buffalo presented by Tops. Kyle Nix was named the 2014-15 Teacher of the Year at LaVergne High School in Nashville, Tenn.

2005 Danielle Higgins and Jeffrey

Green are happy to announce their marriage on Oct. 4, 2014, in New York, N.Y. They currently reside in New York, N.Y. Zachary Staff and Betsy Staff are proud to announce the birth of a baby girl, Colbie Mae. She was born on Jan. 24, 2015.

2006 Celebrating their 10th reunion in 2016. Theresa Clar has started her own interior design business, NAFASI, based in Arlington, Va. Taralyn Bouquin DiMillo and Ryan DiMillo were married in September 2011 and are proud to announce the birth of their first baby boy in September 2012 and their second baby boy in September 2014. Megan Havey MacDavey recently accepted a position at The Peter and Elizabeth C. Tower Foundation as a program officer. Sandra Frandina Segerson and Benjamin Segerson are proud to announce the birth of a baby girl, Valerie Lynn, born on Feb. 5, 2015.

2007 Michelle Humble English and Justin English are proud to announce the birth of a baby boy, Maceo Gregory, born on Aug. 31, 2014 in Chapel Hill, N.C. Michelle was recently promoted to director of operations at J&J Editorial LLC in Cary, N.C. Jenna Nigro Gutman and Kevin Gutman are proud to announce the birth of a baby girl, Cora, born on March 1, 2015. James Traylor created his own planning company, Upstate Special Needs Planning Inc., for individuals with disabilities. Martha Valenti recently accepted a position at

Mirror Show Management in Webster, N.Y., as program manager. Martha recently was employed at Foodlink Inc. as donor and government relations manager.

2008 Tarik Kitson is a health care

administrator at Memorial SloanKettering Cancer Center in New York City and is the founder and CEO of Active Plus, which focuses on reversing the epidemic of childhood obesity. Joseph Malach recently accepted a position at Sageworks Inc. as product manager. Kathryn Meyers Emery and Keith Emery are happy to announce their marriage on Oct. 4, 2014. They reside in Grand Rapids, Mich. Benjamin Povinelli earned his doctorate in cell and molecular biology from the University at Buffalo in May 2014 and began his postdoc fellowship at the University of Oxford in August 2014. Emily Rustin Sewnauth is a stay-at-home mom who also works from home and was promoted to team manager for Jamberry Nails. She was previously a Premier consultant. Melissa Waterman Solomon was accepted into the Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders program. She has been working as a zookeeper at Disney’s Animal Kingdom since 2008 and is completing her master’s in environmental studies through Green Mountain College.

2009 Ashley Westerbeck DePutron

and Jesse DePutron are happy to announce their marriage on May 25, 2014, in Rochester, N.Y. Larkin Kimmerer Podsiedlik

recently accepted a position at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Steuben County in Bath, N.Y., as senior nutritionist/issue leader.

2010 Brendan Chella recently accepted a position at Minot Public Library in Minot, N.D., as an

Scene around the world Submit your images to scene@geneseo.edu with a subject line of “Scene Around the World.” See the complete photo gallery at go.geneseo.edu/goworld.

Anne Bergstrom Gnagi ’69 tries to interest the gentoo penguins on Petermann Island, Antarctica, in the Scene.

Bob McCarthy ’92 reunited with a group of alumni from the early 1990s in Miami for Memorial Day 2014. They are already thinking about the next visit.

Bill Schnier ’75 and wife, Maureen, took their Scene to San Pedro Town, Ambergris Caye, Belize, this spring.

Darice Jill Ayson-Faley ’98 poses with her daughter, Brianna Faley, inside a prehistoric “beehive hut” in Slea Head, County Kerry, while visiting family in Ireland. Greg Gian ’83, left, and his family visited the Grand Canyon and represented Geneseo. His mother-in-law, Mary Lou Martello, to his right, is a class of 1964 alumna. So is his wife, Darlene Gian ’83. Also pictured is their son, Stephen, father-inlaw, and daughter, Maria.

Maureen Goldsberry ’75 waited 40 years to visit England. When she finally did last summer, she brought Geneseo with her. Geneseo alumni reunited at Chocolate Moose Chalet in Raystown Lake, Pa., last winter. From left are: Nick Inzinna ’08, Sara Hempson ’08, Cara Nelson ’08, Maggie Tagarelli ’09, Caitlin Lenahan Schrimmel ’08, Alicia Austin ’08, Danielle Pavone Henderson ’08, Kerri Schulte ’08, Leah Robbins ’08, Jill Kuhn ’08, Carly O’Keefe ’11, Mike Baker ’08, Courtney Coggins ’08 and Christina Moriarty ’08.

Summer 2015

ALUMNI NEWS

CLASS NOTES Betty Curcio Orlando ’71, Jan. 17,

2015 adult services librarian. Brendan recently was employed at Copiah-Lincoln College as assistant librarian.

Patricia Trumpfheller ’74, Feb. 9,

2015 Marie Dibiase Hallenbeck ’75,

Jan. 25, 2015 Jay Turzillo ’75, Nov. 16, 2014 Kenneth Nazinitsky ’77, March

Elizabeth Krause was

26, 2008 Donald Garramone ’79, Oct. 29,

promoted from CPA to a senior KRAUSE accountant at Lumsden McCormick.

2011

2014 Marshall Simonsen ’80 Valerie Walter ’81, Jan. 16, 2015 Robert Episcopo ’82, Jan. 10,

2015

Reuniting – for 30 years

Celebrating their 5th reunion in 2016. Adrienne Koder is graduating from medical school in May 2015 and starting an orthopaedic surgery residency in Philadelphia in June 2015.

Brothers of Phi Kappa Chi/Sigma fraternity have been gathering for shopping and dinner on the Monday before Christmas for 30 years. The tradition started in 1984 while some were recent graduates and most were students at Geneseo. This year, they reunited on Dec. 22, 2014. They are: Sam Gueli ’88, Jon Culpepper ’86, Mike Sanguinito ’86, Brian Coleman ’86, George Gagnier ’88, Scott Tinsley ’85, Tom Clarke ’85, Pete Deckman ’86, Kevin Sweeney ’84, Joe O’Donnell ’83, Frank Tortora ’84, Robert Carll ’88.

2012

Research Program, analyzing therapy effectiveness.

Martha Akin Brown ’36,

Samuel Pagano ’50, Nov. 5, 2014 Dorothy King ’51, July 19, 2014 Edward Dwyer ’53, Dec. 11, 2014 Harry Bartz ’54, Oct. 23, 2014 Barry Bower ’54, Oct. 22, 2014 Elizabeth Herrala da CunhaKoski ’55, March 14, 2015 Margelia Voorhees Fournier ’55 Lennart Hagberg ’55, Feb. 1,

July 6, 2014

2014

Julia Ryan ’38, Jan. 9, 2015 Ruth Shaw Roat ’39, July 17, 2014 Virginia Zimmer Fosdick ’40,

2014

Lauren Kmetz recently accepted a

position at the Wake County Public School System in Cary, N.C., as a fifth-grade math and science teacher. Cladia Plantin joined the Peace Corps in the Eastern Caribbean as a primary English teacher. Mariel Webber will be graduating from the University at Buffalo School of Dental Medicine in May 2015; she will join the Long Island Jewish Medical Center.

IN MEMORIAM ALUMNI Beulah Vandyke Westover ’35,

Oct. 20, 2007

Barbara Rich Muller ’55, Jan. 29,

Jan. 14, 2014

Ramona Smith ’55, Oct. 3, 2012 Sylvia Young Yueckstock ’55,

Victoria Kosek ’40, Dec. 22, 2014 Gladys Henty Stamp ’40, Sept.

Erma Hotis Hover ’56, Feb. 3,

Jan. 23, 2015

2013

15, 2014

2015

Adam Reinemann recently

Dorothy Jackman Bielefeld ’42,

Joyce Ardelle Newberry ’57,

accepted a position at the New York State Department of Health in Albany, N.Y., as a health program administrator.

Nov. 10, 2014

Oct. 24, 2014

Smith Higgins ’42, Dec. 27, 2014 Doris Barnard Werder ’42,

Evaline Kinney Dusek ’60, Nov.

2014

2013

March 30, 2012 Yvonne Furey Baker ’44, July 12, Martha Collins Cullinan ’45, Aug.

Elizabeth Faulisi has joined

26, 2010

Northeast Association Management Inc. as a claims analyst. Debbie Medina recently accepted a position at Casa-Nica in Nicaragua as program manager. She recently was employed at the New York State Assembly. Molly Vierhile accepted a job as a research coordinator at Stanford University. She will be working in the Eating Disorders

Claire Finnigan ’45, Jan. 3, 2015 Jennette Rausch Van Patton ’45,

geneseo scene

Jan. 22, 2009 M. Jeanne Brunner Osborne ’46,

Nov. 22, 2014 Robert Halsted ’48, Sept. 3, 2014 George Mascho ’48, Sept. 10, 2014 Carol Irene Timby ’48, Nov. 15,

14, 2014 William Webster ’60, Feb. 1, 2005 Beverly Pratts ’61, June 18, 2014 Jack Hawley ’62, Dec. 3, 2014 Donald Khoury ’62, Feb. 28, 2015 Gertrude Kanaley Yaxis ’64, Dec.

15, 2011 Ronald Cicoria ’65, Jan. 7, 2015 George Grimes ’65, Jan. 2, 2015 Beth Bentley Ostrander ’66 Kevin Dolan ’68, Feb. 6, 2015 Frances Pickens ’68, Feb. 15,

2015

Betty Baudendistel ’50, Jan. 6,

Barbara Hejduk Gausman ’69 William Boutwell ’70, Nov. 7, 2014 Hubert Henrichs ’70, June 15,

2015

2014

Patricia Milne Burt ’84, Oct. 1,

2014 Victor Tabuntschikow ’84 Christine Walker ’85, Jan. 1, 2015 Karin Golder Young ’86, Jan. 17,

2015 David Ours ’89, Jan. 22, 2015 John Scarpelli ’89, April 23, 2014 Gary Hodgins ’95, Feb. 8, 2014 Katie Taft ’11, Feb. 11, 2012 FACULTY Kenneth L. Deutsch, professor of

political science at Geneseo for 42 years and a scholar, died March 16, 2015. He joined the department in 1973 and was promoted to full professor in 1984. He served as department chair from 1979 to 1984. He received a Fulbright award for teaching and research in India and most recently was working on a book about free speech and the advocacy of violence in constitutional democracies. Shirley A. McNally, adjunct lecturer in the School of Education from 1995 to 2007, died on Jan. 5, 2015. David Martin, professor emeritus of economics, died Nov. 25, 2014. He served Geneseo from 1976 to 2000 as professor, chair of the Department of Business and Economics, and then head of the School of Business. A prolific scholar, he published dozens of articles in professional journals and authored 10 books, and received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1990.

Giving Back

By Kris Dreessen

A planned P gift that sings :

To learn more about planned giving visit go.geneseo.edu/fund/ways-give or call (585) 245-5077.

rofessor Robert “Doc” Isgro chaired the music department three times, and led the Chamber Singers choir for 35 years, from fledgling days to celebrated programs. The dedication he asked of his students for their success, he gave right back. His wife, Mary—or “Docette”—was at his side, a cheerleader for every aspiring musician at Geneseo. Together, they instilled the virtue of hard work and dedication, and other lessons students carried into life. “They are the chosen adopted parents of so many Geneseo alumni,” says Laura Heimes ’90, a world-class soprano. The Isgros never stopped mentoring, even after retirement. They go to almost every faculty and student recital and are proud of the talent. The Robert M. And Mary L. Isgro Endowment Fund is an extension of that unwavering support, included in their estate plan. It will fund scholarships for students pursuing a passion for music at Geneseo. “We are providing opportunity,” says Doc.

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Homecoming | Oct. 16-17, 2015