Campus Report
News, Calendar & Events

Commencement at SUNY Fredonia is approaching all too quickly, but registration has already begun for two summer sessions, each offering undergraduate and graduate level courses along with assorted noncredit courses, workshops and online learning opportunities. “There are many reasons why students enroll in summer sessions at SUNY Fredonia: to get ahead in their studies; to explore new or special areas of interest; to fulfill professional continuing education requirements; or to simply catch up,” said Eric Skowronski, the new director of SUNY Fredonia’s Office of Lifelong Learning. “It’s never too late to learn,” Mr. Skowronski said. “That’s my personal philosophy and the philosophy of this department.”
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Though her internship is limited to 50 hours of total work, Brittany Nighthawk, a junior majoring in criminal justice, has actively participated in a wide range of projects while working in the crime scene analysis area of the Chautauqua County Sheriff's Department. She assisted the District Attorney’s office with technology preparation for a homicide hearing. That assignment involved research into the use of three chemicals to generate latents, or invisible images produced on porous material that can be rendered visible through photographic processing.
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Students at SUNY Fredonia swept the research poster competition at the 47th annual New York State Speech Language and Hearing Association conference, scooping up top awards at both undergraduate and graduate levels. In addition to being formally recognized at the association’s conference, held April 13 in Buffalo, two Fredonia students also received $1,500 scholarships.The competition drew entries from both public and private institutions from across the state.

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Revealed in a survey conducted by the State D.E.C. and biologists at SUNY Fredonia recently is that anglers from all over the United States—and even as far away as Europe—travel to Canadaway Creek in hopes of landing a hefty, hard-fighting fish known as the steelhead. The researchers determined that on average each non-resident angler spends $64 per day in the Village of Fredonia and other parts of the county. With the prime steelhead season running from September to December, and again from February to April, that could add up to an impressive flow of dollars into the county’s economy.  In photo, a D.E.C. interviewer queries a fly fisherman in Canadaway Creek.
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Sportfishery of the smallmouth bass in Lake Erie has for years been of considerable economic value to Chautauqua County. In an effort to learn more about the population of this species in the lake and its tributaries, SUNY Fredonia Biology Professors Tim Strakosh and Ted Lee will study the genetic makeup of the smallmouth bass, beginning this summer.  “As far as we know Lake Erie has never been stocked with smallmouth bass, which means that the fishery is based upon a possibly pure, wild strain of smallmouth bass,” Dr. Strakosh said. “To help ensure a healthy fishery we need a good understanding of their population genetics.”
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A major grant to facilitate oil and natural gas exploration by improving an analytical technique used to assess rock formations thought to contain these deposits has been awarded to Gary Lash, professor in SUNY Fredonia’s Geosciences Department. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority awarded just over $131,000 to Dr. Lash to address problems associated with the assessment of thermal histories of Middle and Upper Devonian black shale, an emerging source of hydrocarbons – or natural gas and oil -- in Western New York State and Western Pennsylvania.
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Award-winning poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil, associate professor of English at SUNY Fredonia, will read from her eagerly anticipated second collection, At the Drive-In Volcano, on Wednesday, May 2, at noon in room G-144 of the Williams Center. The event, part of the Brown Bag Lecture Series at SUNY Fredonia, is free and open to the public.
"From the tropical landscapes of the Caribbean, India, and the Philippines to the deep winters of western New York and mild autumns of Ohio, the natural world Nezhukumatathil describes is dark but also lovely-so full of enchantment and magic," the publisher wrote.
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The New Horizons Band of Western New York will present a Spring Concert at 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 3 at Fredonia High School Auditorium in Fredonia, NY. The concert is free, but the band would appreciate donations of non-perishable food that will be donated to the Food Pantry of the Chautauqua County Rural Ministry.
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SUNY Fredonia has begun installing automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) in its public buildings, and will have them in all buildings campus-wide within three years. “This is part of a safety initiative launched by the State University of New York,” President Dennis L. Hefner said.
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Angela Dilkey

JoeDan Harper

Quinn Patrick

Daniel Ihasz

Won Cho

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This spring’s Pottery Sale will be the last to be held during the career of retiring Distinguished Teaching Professor Marvin Bjurlin. The sale will take place on Friday, May 4, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Rockefeller Arts Center Ceramics Studio, Room 242.  Professor Bjurlin said this spring’s sale will be unique because it will include many demonstration pieces he created for his classes as well as work left behind by graduating SUNY Fredonia ceramics majors."For Ceramics students creating pieces for the sale has been a voluntary extracurricular activity above and beyond assigned work done for critique," Professor Bjurlin said.
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Free testing for hearing, speech-language and vision for all ages will be offered to the public on Saturday, April 28, from 9 a.m. until noon at SUNY Fredonia. In addition testing for ambliopia (lazy-eye in children) will be offered to young children. These screenings will be conducted by The Henry C. Youngerman Center for Communication Disorders, the Chautauqua Blind Association and by members of the Dunkirk-Fredonia Lions Club in honor of Better Speech and Hearing Month that is celebrated throughout May. This testing will take place on the first floor of Thompson Hall where the center is located.
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The Institute for Research in Science Teaching at SUNY Fredonia has been selected as an educational distributor of An Inconvenient Truth, the 2007 Academy-Award winning documentary film on global warming directed by Davis Guggenheim and presented by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.

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Belize, a country in Central America struggling with few educational resources and a multitude of social ills, isn’t the first spring break destination of most college students. But it was the choice of a group of SUNY Fredonia students who devoted their entire mid-March hiatus to a service-learning experience far removed from western New York State.  “It was an adventure that I truly believe is life changing,” said Ellie Reddy, professor in SUNY Fredonia’s School of Education. “It is amazing to see and actually experience the poverty, to see life in another culture, to be part of their lives – even for such a short period of time.”

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Walter J. Gotowka, state Sen. Catharine M. Young and the Fredonia Rotary Club will receive the 2007 Fredonia College Foundation Distinguished Service Award, a prestigious honor bestowed upon area citizens and organizations that make significant contributions to society through business, government, education and the arts. The awards will be presented during a special dinner/dance at the State University of New York at Fredonia on Saturday, May 5, at the Williams Center.  Proceeds from the 2007 Distinguished Service Awards dinner/dance will benefit the Keeper of the Dream Scholarship and Leadership Program at SUNY Fredonia.
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Dr. Oppenheimer

World War II Veteran and former CIA officer Dr. Max Oppenheimer Jr. will be the speaker at the afternoon ceremony of the SUNY Fredonia 2007 Commencement, to be held Saturday, May 12 at 3 p.m. in Steele Hall. Dr. Oppenheimer is professor emeritus of the foreign languages department at SUNY Fredonia. There are two commencement ceremonies at SUNY Fredonia, one at 10 a.m. and one at 3 p.m. The speaker for the 10 a.m. ceremony is Dr. David Mittlefehldt, an alumnus who is being honored with an honorary doctorate from the State University of New York. Dr. Oppenheimer recently wrote an autobiography, An Innocent Yank at Home Abroad: Footnotes to History, 1922-1945 (Sunflower University Press, 2000) which details his youth as an expatriate and his U.S. Army service during World War II.  He has also translated numerous texts, including a Russian book on hydraulics for the U.S. Office of Naval Research. His most recent book, Is That What It Means? (Sunflower University Press, 2004) is a compilation of 110 of his newspaper columns on language.
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The unveiling of a new scholarship that will benefit future students of color at SUNY Fredonia will be among many highlights of the People of Color Concerns Conference that begins Friday.  Sponsored jointly by the Black Student Union, Latinos Unidos and the Fredonia Alumni Office, the two-day conference is expected to draw an estimated 100 to 150 alumni, including some from states as far away as North Carolina and NebraskaThe Nabta Fund is being established to support a scholarship that gives financial assistance to future students of color at SUNY Fredonia. A 20-minute presentation on the fund will be given during the Saturday lunch, beginning at noon.
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Exchange students from Great Britain met with members of the Seneca nation.

Fredonia’s College of Education has put together an entire calendar of events to acclimate the newest exchange students from Exmouth, England and Swansea, Wales.

The students will participate in a comprehensive study of American schools. Part of a program that has been in place since 1989, the International Student Teaching Practicum (ISTP) provides students with the opportunity to see the educational system at work in a different country.

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Jeffrey D. Corcoran of Ballston Lake, N.Y., has been named director of the SUNY Fredonia High Technology Incubator in Dunkirk, N.Y. He is responsible for all aspects of operating the facility, which was created last year with funding from New York State, SUNY, and New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research (NYSTAR). The incubator is in the design phase and is expected to be built in 2008. Meanwhile, temporary office space has been established in downtown Dunkirk’s Empire Zone and incubator space will be opening shortly. Mr. Corcoran took charge April 2 at offices in the Stearns Building on Central Avenue, and is already involved in developing strategic plans and marketing for the facility

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Award-winning documentary filmmaker Melinda Levin, a professor at the University of North Texas, will be presenting a workshop this week on Thursday, April 19 and Friday, April 20 thanks to a grant from the Carnahan Jackson Humanities Fund of the Fredonia College Foundation. Events on the 19th will be in Thompson Hall W101, and on the 20th in the Williams Center S104.
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Donald Bohlen

“Tally-Ho,” a concert celebrating the music and career of Dr. Donald Bohlen of the Fredonia School of Music, will be performed Saturday, April 14, in Rosch Recital Hall at 3 p.m. Admission is free and open to the public.  Ethos New Music Society, a student group at SUNY Fredonia, is sponsoring the concert in honor of Dr. Bohlen, who founded the group in 1977 and has been its advisor for 30 years.  The concert will feature music by Dr. Bohlen as well as by some of his past and present students, including James Piorkowski and Lisa Brigantino.
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It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say SUNY Fredonia “owns” the SIFE USA Regional Competition. Fredonia’s SIFE team has won the event the last nine times, and this year’s competition, held March 28 in Cleveland, wasn’t any different.  “This victory was especially gratifying,” said team advisor Joseph Izzo, marketing professor in the business administration department. “The team dedicated this competition to Dr. Franklin Krohn, who was the adviser since the team began 13 years ago.”  The National competition, to be held in Dallas, Texas, in May, is the team’s next destination.
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Two seniors and a junior at SUNY Fredonia will receive Rosa Parks Scholarship Awards, which celebrate creative works that examine multiculturalism or cultural pluralism, at a ceremony Thursday, 5 p.m., at the Juliet J. Rosch Recital Hall.  This year’s recipients and their respective award-winning entries are: Ashley Portman, a senior psychology major, East Windson, N.J., “Of Motherhood in America,” a poem; Sarah Offenbach, a senior English and sociology major, Olean, N.Y., “So What if We’ve had the Vote for 87 Years?,” an essay; and Marcelle Grant, a junior public relations major, New York City, “The Great Integrator,” a poem.
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