Two SUNY Potsdam Professors Earn Distance Education Awards

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Crane School of Music Professor Dr. C. Douglas Rubio is a recipient of the 2016 Thomas L. and Jane D. Russell Distance Education Faculty Excellence Award.

• SUNY Potsdam Professor Dr. Jason F. Schreer is a recipient of the 2016 Thomas L. and Jane D. Russell Distance Education Faculty Excellence Award.

POTSDAM, NY (07/07/2016)(readMedia)-- SUNY Potsdam faculty members Dr. C. Douglas Rubio and Dr. Jason F. Schreer have been named the recipients of the 2016 Thomas L. and Jane D. Russell Distance Education Faculty Excellence Award.

Rubio received the award for his course titled "The Music of the Beatles," and Schreer was awarded for his class, "Advanced Exercise Physiology." Schreer had received the award previously for his "Human Biology" course.

The goal of Rubio's course is not only to teach about the music, lives and times of the Beatles, but to help students learn how to listen to and think about music in an active and critical fashion. The class website features an extensive collection of music, video and information by and about the Fab Four. The course requires students to write more than 20 short critical essays on individual Beatles songs, thereby honing both their listening and writing skills. One project asked the students to play "record producer" and reduce the double-disc "White Album" to a single album of only 14 songs, giving rationales for why they kept or cut each song. Rubio also used online discussion forums to ask provocative questions that further engaged students with the material, leading to a deeper understanding of the music.

Schreer's "Advanced Exercise Physiology" class, which was offered for the first time online in summer 2014, is the second online course that he has developed. The course is unique in several ways, most notably because it includes a lab where students use amount of equipment (e.g. heart rate monitor, hand dynamometer, goniometer, skinfold calipers) so that they can collect exercise data on themselves at home or wherever they are located. The data is then uploaded, labelled anonymously and analyzed by the whole class. To foster active participation and to have students apply their knowledge, Schreer provided a discussion forum link for each chapter. Students were required to answer a question posed to the whole class, but could not see other answers until they made their first post. They were then required to ask their own open-ended question related to the chapter, and lastly were required to answer another student's question.

About the award:

The Russells endowed the Thomas L. and Jane D. Russell Distance Education Faculty Excellence Award to encourage high impact practices in SUNY Potsdam's distance education program. They created the award to recognize faculty who are conducting their courses in an exemplary manner, providing them with a financial incentive to improve their distance education courses and reward those faculty who make their courses available to as many students as possible, by removing all unnecessary barriers.

A 1957 alumnus of SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Music, Mr. Russell, a resident of Raleigh, NC, is director emeritus of the Office of Instructional Telecommunications at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. His career covered more than 40 years, including the first five teaching elementary and secondary school music, before changing to instructional technology and eventually focusing on research and distance education at NCSU.

Mrs. Russell, who passed away in June, had taught at the elementary through university levels and then enjoyed her career as a university law librarian. From The University of Florida, she moved up to a position at The University of Missouri, Kansas City, and on to The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2009, Mrs. Russell was awarded Honorary Alumni status by the SUNY Potsdam Alumni Association.

About the recipients:

Dr. C. Douglas Rubio is professor and director of classical guitar studies at SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Music. He has performed throughout the United States as a soloist and chamber musician, and has been the featured concerto soloist with the Montecito (California) and Pennsylvania Centre chamber orchestras, and the Orchestra of Northern New York. His Avalon Guitar Duo won first prize in the 1985 Guitar Foundation of America International Duo Guitar Competition. Rubio is also an expert on the music of the Beatles, and teaches a very popular class on that subject. In 2010, he was honored with the President's Award for Excellence in Faculty Service. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of California at Irvine, and holds both Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in classical guitar performance from the University of Southern California, where he studied with Spanish virtuoso Pepe Romero. Prior to joining SUNY Potsdam, Rubio directed the guitar program at Illinois State University.

Dr. Jason F. Schreer holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Stony Brook University, a Master of Science degree from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Waterloo for two years and an assistant professor there for three years before coming to SUNY Potsdam in 2002. Schreer was promoted to associate professor in 2005 and full professor in 2010. He teaches courses in neurophysiology, human anatomy and physiology, comparative animal physiology and human biology at the College. Schreer recently developed a new course titled "Neuroscience of Consciousness." This fall, after spending a sabbatical in California and participating in many types of expanded consciousness practices, Schreer will offer a non-credit course on secular meditation through the College's Center for Lifelong Education and Recreation (CLEAR). His scholarly work originally involved diving behavior and physiology in marine mammals and seabirds, and the physiological effects of catch and release angling on fish. Schreer's work includes 54 publications, two technical reports and more than 100 presentations at academic conferences throughout the United States and Canada.

To learn more about SUNY Potsdam's academic programs, please visit www.potsdam.edu/academics.

Founded in 1816, The State University of New York at Potsdam is one of America's first 50 colleges -- and the oldest institution within SUNY. As the College marks its bicentennial in 2016, SUNY Potsdam will celebrate a 200-year legacy of pioneering programs and educational excellence. The College currently enrolls approximately 4,100 undergraduate and graduate students. Home to the world-renowned Crane School of Music, SUNY Potsdam is known for its challenging liberal arts and sciences core, distinction in teacher training and leadership in the arts. Empowered by a culture of creativity, the campus community is nearing the completion of Take the Lead: The Campaign for Potsdam, which has raised $33.5 million for scholarships and programs.

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