SUNY Oneonta

Five SUNY Oneonta students are having a direct, hands-on effect on the future of science education this summer by designing and creating their own instructional models for use in classrooms. The students are part of the Earth Science Model and Design Institute, which gives pre-service Earth Science teachers the chance to design and build their own models of particularly complex or abstract Earth processes and concepts. Project leaders are 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, will spend four weeks designing and building the models and will work throughout the year to tweak and perfect them. The models are made using everyday items such as plastic bottles, rulers, wooden dowels and index cards, so that they can be easily replicated. Bischoff said the experience gives students a more in-depth understanding of the research process and lets them see the creative components to teaching. The students receive a stipend, in addition to room and board.

Seven SUNY Oneonta students presented their research during the fifth annual SUNY Undergraduate Research Conference (SURC) on April 26. SURC is a multidisciplinary spring semester event that brings together undergraduate students and faculty mentors from across the SUNY system for a full day of activities, including sessions devoted to student presentations (oral, performance, artistic displays, and poster), a luncheon and keynote speaker(s), a SUNY Graduate School and Career Fair, and professional development workshops. This year, SURC was held at three different SUNY schools - Adirondack Community College and Farmingdale State College on April 26, and Niagara County Community College on April 27. Students could choose which host campus they wanted to present at. SURC is supported by the Offices of the Chancellor, Provost, and Research Foundation, as well as SUNY student and faculty governance organizations.

More than 100 students presented projects at SUNY Oneonta's annual Student Research and Creative Activity Day event on April 18-19.

Nicole Faraci, an undergraduate research student in psychology, is receiving a 2019 Psi Chi Eastern Psychological Association (EPA) Regional Research Award for her work titled "Disordered Eating Behaviors, Social Closeness, and Greek Life Membership," with Professor Katherine Lau from SUNY Oneonta's Department of Psychology. Nicole will be publicly recognized at the Psi Chi awards ceremony at EPA in Times Square in March, and she will deliver a presentation summarizing her research.

Two SUNY Oneonta students received awards recently in the undergraduate student paper competition sponsored by the New York State Economics Association (NYSEA). Participating students from around the state submit their papers to a panel of judges and then present their research at the NYSEA Annual Meeting. This year's conference was held at St. John Fisher College in Rochester on October 6-7.

During the Fall Break, a group of 16 SUNY Oneonta students traveled to the coast of Maine to study invertebrate animals and marine biology. They visited the Darling Marine Center, a field station of the University of Maine, where they spent three intensive days sampling from a variety of marine habitats. Students were immersed in the marine environment with the ultimate goal of observing as many marine animals as possible. Activities included a ride on a research vessel upon which students collected open water samples, a visit to a tidal mud flat, and a visit to an intertidal zone. Students learned about the importance of fisheries in Maine firsthand and were also introduced to the delights of cooking and eating seafood. The trip enabled the students to apply what they had learned in the classroom back on the SUNY Oneonta campus.

More than 200 SUNY Oneonta students were selected to present at the 2018 SUNY Undergraduate Research Conference (SURC), hosted by SUNY Oneonta on April 20. Students from 28 SUNY colleges and universities presented 179 research projects in two poster sessions, and another 100 projects in oral presentations throughout the day. Every spring, SURC brings together undergraduate researchers and faculty mentors for two daylong programs of presentations, performances, art displays and poster sessions held on two separate campuses. The second SURC event was April 21, at Monroe Community College in Rochester.

18 SUNY Oneonta students took part in the ninth annual undergraduate New Critics Literature Conference on Saturday, April 14. Students presented their scholarly work on literature, and the event culminated in a keynote address by one of the nation's preeminent scholars of African American literary history, Prof. Lawrence Jackson, Distinguished Professor of English and History at Johns Hopkins University.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.