SUNY Oneonta

A new project developed by SUNY Oneonta's Psychology and Sociology departments will give six students an immersive applied-learning experience in the fields of health care and human service while simultaneously looking to alleviate some serious community problems. During the year-long venture, student researchers Joshua Garufi, Kathryn Kilichowski, Taryn More, Judson Parisi, Stacy Pinto and Peter Richardson will work with several local health and social service agencies to examine the well-being of area residents and identify areas that need improvement. To learn more about the area and its residents, students will conduct survey research at the Southside Mall in Oneonta. This research will focus on knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of residents of Chenango, Delaware, Herkimer, Otsego and Schoharie counties. Specifically, it will assess residents' risk of alcohol/illegal drug abuse and mental illness and identify challenges to health wellness in rural areas. Funding for the research is being provided by LEAF Inc. (the Leatherstocking Education on Alcoholism/Addictions Foundation) and by a grant from the SUNY Oneonta Faculty Center for STEM-related applied learning. In its annual Community Health Assessments, the Otsego County Department of Health routinely names promoting mental health and preventing substance abuse as two of its top priorities, with an emphasis on affordability, since many residents are living at or near poverty level. "It is so important to include our students in this project and have them gather data from members of our community," said Julie Dostal, executive director of LEAF, "so we can better define the problems and also refine the resources we are offering." The project will culminate with students developing a county-wide map of substance abuse treatment and mental health services and resources. Students will also assist local agencies with program evaluations and run an analysis to identify gaps within the county's continuum of care. Each of the six student researchers will receive a $600 stipend for the project.

SUNY Oneonta graduate student Alexandra Vlk has an important mission - to learn all she can about the endangered wood turtle in Oneonta and protect it for future generations.

Four SUNY Oneonta students are involved in a year-long project with the goal of shaping the future of science education by designing and creating their own instructional models for use in classrooms. The project, titled "Authentic Research Experiences for Earth Science Education Majors," gives pre-service Earth Science teachers the chance to design and build their own models of particularly complex or abstract Earth processes and concepts, according to project leaders Dr. James Ebert of the Earth & Atmospheric Sciences Department and Dr. Paul Bischoff of the Secondary Education Department. Participating students, who were selected from a pool of applicants, spent four weeks in the spring designing and building the models and will work throughout the year to tweak and perfect them. Four of the students were from SUNY Oneonta, and two were from other SUNY schools. The students were given a stipend of $2,500 for their work. Six more students will participate next year, with six more after that.

Nearly 140 SUNY Oneonta students presented original research and creative projects at the college's 2017 Student Research and Creative Activity Day on April 12.

Eight SUNY Oneonta chemistry and biochemistry students gave poster presentations about their research at the 253rd American Chemical Society National Meeting & Exposition from April 2-6 in San Francisco.

Seven students represented SUNY Oneonta at the third annual SUNY Undergraduate Research Conference, held April 21-22.

SUNY Oneonta Senior Jillian Young presented original scientific research at the 97th American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting in Seattle from Jan. 22-26, 2017. More than 4,400 scientists, educators, students and other professionals from across the weather, water, and climate community came together to share, learn, and collaborate.

Nine SUNY Oneonta alumni have co-authored an article describing five new species of tapeworms in Folia Parasitologica, a peer-reviewed, open-access, international journal covering all branches of animal parasitology. The co-authors, all of whom were undergraduate biology majors at SUNY Oneonta, collaborated with Associate Professor of Biology Florian Reyda on the research over a period of six years.

Students and faculty from the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences presented research at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, held September 25-29 in Denver, Colorado.

Lyndsey Farrar is doing research at the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) in Ithaca, NY, this summer after receiving two competitive student research grants. Farrar, a SUNY Oneonta senior majoring in geology, received The John W. Wells Grant, awarded by PRI, and The Allison R. "Pete" Palmer Award, awarded by the Paleontological Society. Both grants were awarded through national competitions.

Two SUNY Oneonta students from the Class of 2016 presented their limnological research experience on Lake Atitlán, Guatemala, at the Northeast Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (NE GLEON) conference from April 15-17.

Five SUNY Oneonta students were selected to receive the 2016 College at Oneonta Foundation Awards for Excellence in Student Research & Creative Activity.

Nearly 200 SUNY Oneonta students presented original research and creative projects at the college's 2016 Student Research and Creative Activity Day on April 20.

Eighteen SUNY Oneonta students presented posters and projects at the 2016 SUNY Undergraduate Research Conference, held Friday, April 15 at SUNY Cobleskill.

Peter Booth of Hamden, NY, co-presented a research project at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Baltimore, Md., last fall. Booth co-authored "Views of the River: Flood Records, Lidar, UAV, and Canoe Based Monitoring of Meander Migration in Upstate New York" with another SUNY Oneonta student and Associate Professor of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences Les Hasbargen.

SUNY Oneonta physics majors Bridget Chartrand and John Beach won third prize in the student poster competition at the American Physical Society New York State Section 113th Topical Symposium held Sept. 11-12 at Vassar College.

Eleven SUNY Oneonta students and two alumni spent a month of their summer searching for 4,000-year-old cooking hearths, stone tools and other evidence of ancient hunter-gatherer communities. Now in its seventh season, the Pine Lake Archaeological Field School is a collaborative effort of SUNY Oneonta and neighboring Hartwick College. SUNY Oneonta provides most of the equipment for the field school, which is held every other summer at Hartwick's Pine Lake Environmental Campus eight miles away in West Davenport, NY. SUNY Oneonta anthropology Professor Renee Walker and Cindy Klink, an anthropology lecturer at both Hartwick and SUNY Oneonta, co-direct the field school.

Three SUNY Oneonta students have been selected to participate in summer research internships through the SUNY Networks of Excellence. Students will conduct research alongside SUNY faculty members, gaining hands-on experience in their fields of study. The program is administered by the Research Foundation for SUNY.

Six biology students presented research at the 90th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Parasitologists in Omaha, Nebraska, in June.

Two SUNY Oneonta students and one alumna co-authored a paper on contagious yawning in budgies with Andrew Gallup, assistant professor of psychology. Titled "Experimental evidence of contagious yawning in budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus)," the paper is published in the May 2015 peer-reviewed journal Animal Cognition. It is the first study to show that contagious yawning occurs between members of a bird species.

Four SUNY Oneonta students presented research alongside three faculty members from the college's Psychology Department at the 27th Annual Convention of American Psychological Science on May 24 in New York City.

Two SUNY Oneonta mathematics students gave research presentations at the spring 2015 conference of the Seaway Section of the Mathematical Association of America, held at Colgate University on April 17-18. Both students worked under the guidance of Dr. Laura Munteanu from the Department of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Statistics.

More than 150 SUNY Oneonta students presented original research and creative projects at the college's annual Student Research and Creative Activity Day on April 16.

Two students represented SUNY Oneonta at the inaugural SUNY Undergraduate Research Conference, held at SUNY Brockport on April 10. More than 500 SUNY students gave presentations on a wide range of topics across academic disciplines.

Twelve SUNY Oneonta students have been selected to receive the 2015 College at Oneonta Foundation Awards and Honorable Mentions for Excellence in Student Research & Creative Activity. Students were nominated for the awards by their faculty sponsors. During the college's annual Student Research & Creativity Day on April 16, finalists presented their work to a team of reviewers, which ranked and selected the winners.

Two SUNY Oneonta geology majors presented research with faculty from the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the 50th Anniversary Meeting of the Northeastern Section of the Geological Society of America in Bretton Woods, N.H., from March 23-25.