SUNY Cortland To Hold 12th Annual Scholar's Day April 9

CORTLAND, NY (04/01/2008)(readMedia)-- The 12th annual Scholars’ Day, a series of presentations highlighting faculty, staff and student scholarship and research at SUNY Cortland, will take place in Old Main on Wednesday, April 9.

This year, the event encompasses 110 different presentations and poster sessions offered by hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students and more than 60 faculty and staff members. The subject matter covers a wide array of academic disciplines at SUNY Cortland.

All Scholars’ Day presentations take place in Old Main starting at 8:30 a.m. The event is free and open to the public. SUNY Cortland President Erik J. Bitterbaum has suspended daytime classes to allow the SUNY Cortland community to fully benefit from the lectures and demonstrations. Area high school juniors and seniors and their instructors were again formally invited to attend this year’s event.

“The great thing about Scholars’ Day is the way it allows students, faculty and friends of the College to interact with some of the exciting research that is happening on campus,” said Jerome O’Callaghan, associate dean of arts and sciences, speaking on behalf of the Scholars’ Day Committee. “SUNY Cortland has so many reasons to be proud of the exceptional work being done by faculty, by faculty collaborating with students and by students working with our neighbors in the community. When Scholars’ Day rolls around, we appreciate anew the commitment of talented faculty and students to academic success. There is a tremendous vibrancy in the air when we all see the work being undertaken at Cortland.”

Among the many topics this year are: the effects of pre-competition meals on athletic performance; Adirondacks wilderness today; the fashion-beauty discourse as an acculturative force; presentations by SUNY Cortland writing contest winners; the scholarship of service-learning; the Cortland-Binghamton Passenger Train Study’s examination of the feasibility of operating tourist excursions on the New York Susquehanna and Western Rail Line; teacher and administrator ranking of the importance of the national learning standards; in search of an American foreign policy ideology; implementing the new Person First! state law at SUNY Cortland; 17th century Spanish drama, which looks a little like Broadway, flamenco and Chinese opera; and the possible contribution of the man-made chemical polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) to attention deficit disorders in males and alcoholism in females.

Anne Knupp Crossway ’78, business and biosciences consultant, will deliver the keynote address on “Nature Versus Nurture” at 11:30 a.m. in Old Main Brown Auditorium.

The Scholars’ Day events will conclude with the dramatic presentation, “Harlotry Players: Students and Faculty Perform Scenes from Classic and Contemporary Plays,” at 4:30 p.m. in Brown Auditorium. The event will feature Janet Wolf, assistant professor of English, Jaclyn Pittsley, lecturer in English, and drama students.

The Scholars’ Day Committee, chaired by Mark Prus, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, includes: Phil Buckenmeyer, associate professor of kinesiology; Chris Cirmo, professor and chair of geology; Daniel Harms, coordinator of instruction at Memorial Library; David Miller, distinguished teaching professor of geography; Gigi Peterson, assistant professor of history; Kevin Pristash, associate director of Corey Union and conferences; and Hailey Ruoff, media operations coordinator.

Scholars’ Day is supported by the President’s Office, the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs’ Office, The Cortland Fund, the Cortland College Foundation and the Auxiliary Services Corporation.

For more information, including the complete schedule of events, visit the Scholars’ Day Web page at www.cortland.edu/scholarsday or contact Prus at (607) 753-4312.

Biotechnology Consultant to Discuss Innovative Field

With more than 25 years experience in the life sciences, Crossway has offered her consulting services to clients that include bioscience companies in early stages of development and non-profit science and technology organizations. She currently bases her business out of Leander, Texas, where her husband, Thomas, is an administrator of the Leander Independent School District.

Crossway was previously president and CEO of CIStem Molecular, a genomics company with a systems biology gene expression technology. Before that, she was CEO of Cosmederm Technologies, a biotech-based dermatological products company. Crossway was brought in by the major investors to lead its successful turnaround.

Her earlier career includes venture capital experience as well as progressively responsible technical and management positions in companies in the early stage of development within the biotechnology, consumer products and over-the-counter (OTC) drug/device industries. While serving as a managing scientist at the first agricultural biotechnology company, Calgene, Inc., she authored scientific publications, book chapters and patents in the biotechnology field.

In addition to consulting for numerous bioscience companies, Crossway has been a management fellow at UCSD CONNECT, a technology and entrepreneurship organization at University of California at San Diego (UCSD). She has also has been a senior advisor to Building Engineering and Science Talent (BEST) and to Springboard Enterprises, a women’s venture capital group. She is a past president and director of UCSD Athena, a business organization for senior executives in high-tech and life-science companies in San Diego County.

A native of DeRuyter, N.Y., Crossway graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Biology from SUNY Cortland. She earned an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and a doctorate in genetics from the University of California at Davis.

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Posted Tuesday April 01, 2008 at 02:27 pm by SUNY Cortland