Campus bus system reduces car usage, promotes sustainability

Since the introduction of the Geneseo public bus service in 2002, bus usage in Geneseo has nearly tripled, while the percentage of students requesting parking spots has decreased. This decrease in car use has reduced carbon emissions and created a more environmentally friendly campus, according to Vice President for Student and Campus Life Robert Bonfiglio.

While the environmental aspect was not a primary motive for the introduction of free buses that service both Geneseo and Rochester, it is a positive side effect of the initiative, Bonfiglio said. The bus services have been steadily increasing for the past 14 years.

“The environmental impact was thought of, but it was not the primary impetus for the bus,” Bonfiglio said.

“We are always looking for ways to improve service to students,” Bonfiglio said. “It’s complicated developing a schedule that coincides with people’s class times and interests and so forth … and there’s a cost for everything, of course.”

The bus system was originally created as a response to feelings of disconnectedness on the Geneseo campus, Bonfiglio said. Students and faculty felt that local resources were either inaccessible or that they were isolated from local resources and activities, which prompted Bonfiglio to start an initiative to form a free public bus system.

“I felt as if the campus was disconnected from things that were important to students such as other colleges—where they could connect with other students— and stores where they could buy things they couldn’t buy in Geneseo,” Bonfiglio said. “Food-wise, there was not that much available in Geneseo. Then there’s transportation back and forth within the Village. That was the main impetus for starting this bus.”

Today the bus system has expanded to connect students to local resources, such as Walmart and Wegmans, as well as weekend trips to Letchworth State Park and Rochester. When it began in 2002, the bus was used 42,763 times in the academic year, but in the 2015-16 school year it was utilized 117,554 times, according to Rochester Genesee Regional Transportation Authority’s Geneseo Public Bus Services Yearly Totals.

Students benefit from the local bus system as well as its accessibility to take students to Rochester, according to psychology major senior Mariam Aminalhaq.

“I use it to go to Rochester more so than places like Wegmans, so I don’t have to ask my friends for longer rides to the train station,” Aminalhaq said.

Conversely, some students have criticized the bus system.

“I don’t think the bus system is convenient,” sociology and political science double major junior Shauna Ricketts said. “You can only go to Rochester on the weekends.”

Ricketts voiced support for a bus or car rental program that could connect students with internships in Rochester that would have shifts on weekdays.

The connection between the rise in bus usage and the decrease in car usage is not concrete, Bonfiglio said. Alternate routes to Geneseo have opened; for example, Bonfiglio cited that additional plane routes connecting New York City and Rochester might lower students’ need for a car to go back and forth from school.

Not only is the lower number of cars on campus better for the environment, it is also better for the ambiance on-campus, Bonfiglio said.

“We had hoped if there’s a bus, students might be less likely to bring cars to campus, at least right away. We thought that it would be a good thing not only because less cars on campus are better for the environment and it would decrease the demand for parking spaces, but [also] a campus is more cohesive when people don’t have cars,” Bonfiglio said. “There’s a strong sense of community when people look internally for things to do rather than externally.”

Restoration begins for Main Street fountain

After months of planning, the restoration of the Main Street fountain commenced this fall. The fountain has an estimated date of summer 2017 for being fully restored, according to Mayor of the Village of Geneseo Richard Hatheway. “It looks as though by the summer we should be in a position to put all the pieces back together and put the fountain back in place,” Hatheway said.

Plans to repair the fountain began the day of the accident when Hatheway reached out to Moorland Studios, a New Jersey-based restoration company that replaced the fountain’s lantern in 2010. They have been, “intimately involved in the project from the get-go,” according to Hatheway.

“[Moorland Studios is] a world-class restoration team,” associate professor and chair of sociology Kurt Cylke said. “They specialize in historic preservation.”

The fountain—first built in the late 1880s—is a Geneseo landmark and is part of the reason Geneseo is considered a National Historic Landmark District. Richard Morris Hunt, who also devised the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, designed it.

Much of the time between the accident and now has been spent assessing the extent of the damage and determining where to find the stone to repair and replace various parts. The town also had to decide whether to keep and repair the historic fountain despite its inability to hold water, or to replace it with a functioning replica fountain.

“From a historic preservation point of view, the ideal thing to do would be never to replace anything,” Cylke said. “Unfortunately, it is so badly damaged that … the basin will never hold water again. You need to weigh functionality against authenticity.”

The town concluded that the five parts that compromise the fountain—the basin, the column, the metals and pipes, the bear and the “capital,” which is the stone that the bear sits on—will be replaced or repaired. The basin and the capital stone were both broken beyond repair, while the bear and column will be touched up.

The challenge thus far has been finding exact replicas of the granite and brownstone of which the fountain is comprised. Last week on a trip to Connecticut, Mooreland Studios located an exact match for the granite basin. The week prior, the company traveled to Albany to find the brownstone needed for the capital stone.

“We were happy the granite could be replicated,” Hatheway said. “It looks like a really good match.”

Moorland Studios has been working diligently to find the appropriate materials, according to Cylke.

“They have been painstaking in their research,” Cylke said. “They want it to be as close to the original as possible, and they nailed it.”

The new fountain will be an exact replica of the 1888 original, thanks to a 3D image scan made in 2008, according to Cylke. The town was able to purchase this 3D image after a fundraiser was held to replace the plastic lantern with a replica of the original.

After the lantern was repaired, there was over $20,000 remaining due to Geneseo alumni’s significant donation, Cylke said. The rest of the donations went to this 3D image, which was completed so that if the fountain were damaged again, a record of its exact dimensions would be available.

“If they had not contributed to the project, we would not have the 3D scans now that we need to reproduce it,” Cylke said. “It really is a community effort.”

NASA loans geology department lunar rocks

Assistant professor of geological sciences Nicholas Warner obtained a sample of 14 lunar rocks to utilize in his planetary geology classroom. Lent from National Aeronautics and Space Administration from Sept. 26 to Sept. 30, this rock set is one of only 20 in the world. The set contained 14 pieces of rocks taken from the moon by astronauts and a geologist who were on Apollo 17.

“What’s unique about these and why I really wanted to bring them in was that humans physically collected these samples,” Warner said. “It’s a good lesson for the students to say, ‘Yes we sent a geologist, they did field geology and they brought it back here.’”

This is the second time Warner has brought a NASA lunar sample to Geneseo in his three years as a Geneseo professor. They were shown to two geology classes and a group of high school teachers, but otherwise the samples were kept private so they would remain unharmed.

The samples, called “thin sections,” are thinner than a piece of paper and were placed in plastic slides to be observed under a microscope. “The best way to understand the mineralogy and the texture of a rock is to actually look at it under a microscope,” Warner said.

Three different types of rock were represented: volcanic rocks, impact breccias and regolith. Impact breccias are rocks that were broken up by asteroids and meteors hitting the moon billions of years ago, and regolith refers to “lunar soil,” which is similar to soil on Earth, but does not have any organic properties.

Lunar rocks are valuable to study compared to rocks located on Earth because the moon does not have an atmosphere, according to Warner.  Therefore, they have not experienced erosion and have not been weathered down in any way. The samples included were three to 4.4 billion years old, according to a dating method called radiogenic isotope dating.

“The moon captures a period of time that represents the earliest formation of the solar system. The moon rocks show you what was going on 4.4 billion years ago,” Warner said. “It’s just a rare opportunity.”

The lunar rocks were the focal point of a lab done by Warner’s Geological Sciences 334: Planetary Geology-Lab. The lab was mostly composed of observing the sections of rock under a microscope with polarized and un-polarized lighting, geophysics major senior Anna Chinchilli said.

“We look at thin sections a lot … it’s pretty standard,” Chinchilli said. “But I have never seen a thin section that looks like this one.”

The presence of the lunar rocks made outer space more physical and less conceptual to students, Chinchilli said. “When I think of outer space, I don’t think of the rocks that are there,” she said.

“It was for educational purposes, so the students could actually see something real and tangible, as opposed to a picture,” Warner said.

“It’s just so cool to think that these came from such a far distance away,” Chinchilli said. “You look up at the sky and the moon and it looks so distant, but astronauts actually brought part of that back and we could hold it and look at it.”

StandUp Leadership event gives area high schoolers opportunities

Geneseo hosted over 100 high school students for leadership workshops, speeches and networking for StandUp Leadership, a day dedicated to extending leadership events from the Geneseo campus to surrounding communities. The daylong event took place in the MacVittie College Union Ballroom on Friday Dec. 4. The event was led by Geneseo Opportunities for Leadership Development mentor junior Brandon Gaylord, who had the idea to offer leadership programs to local high school students who could benefit from the guidance and empowerment.

After reaching out to local schools, Gaylord secured seven districts to participate in the daylong event: Geneseo, York, Dansville, Wayland-Cohocton, Caledonia-Mumford and Keshequa. Each school could nominate approximately 20 students to participate in the leadership event.

School counselors, principals and administrators could nominate students to attend this event, but Gaylord wanted the participants not to be the “typical” student usually nominated for these types of events.

“We wanted them to identify students who had leadership potential, but did not get many leadership opportunities,” Gaylord said.

Gaylord also stressed the role of accessibility in planning the event. Other leadership programs exist for high school students, but are often costly, multiple days long or require the family to pay for travel, housing or program fees.

“There are other leadership programs that target secondary schooling, but they try to reach the students who can pay thousands of dollars or they can fly to Stanford [University] or Harvard [University] or wherever for weeks,” Gaylord said. “There isn’t anything that says, ‘We’re going to offer a free program. We’re going to reach those who don’t normally get opportunities and we’re going to keep it local.’”

The event consisted of GOLD workshops run by faculty and staff from various departments of the school. The team-building workshop was mandatory; afterward, students could go to two others of their choice.

These session options included a representative from the Lauderdale Center for Student Health & Counseling speaking about stress management, a communication professor talking about public speaking and an active listening workshop done through the Career Center.

Some workshops—such as the required team building one—were adapted from Geneseo GOLD Workshops, but others were specific to the event, such as “Intro to Being Environmentally Conscious” and “Being Happy and Successful at the Same Time.”

The event also involved 20 local businesses such as Wegmans, Noyes Health, Energy Enterprises and FTT Manufacturing, which spoke to and networked with students during the lunch session. They spoke to students about what they look for in their employees and applications, and also told them about more direct job opportunities they could have.

Nicholas Palumbo ’14 is assisting Gaylord in the quantitative assessment of the program’s success. Palumbo created an official proposal and submitted it to the University of Rochester’s institutional review board, which approved of the research.

Palumbo then created a pre and post-conference survey for participating students to fill out regarding their self-confidence and leadership. He currently is processing the data that has been gathered.

The data will assist in Gaylord’s efforts to make the StandUp event annual and to include more schools in future years. According to Associate Dean of Leadership and Service Tom Matthews, Provost Carol Long also expressed interest in making it annual,

This year’s StandUp Leadership Conference was funded by an Ambassadorship grant through the Center for Inquiry, Discovery and Development. Matthews and Gaylord are currently applying for grants to fund future events and are accepting donations. Gaylord noted that he hopes to expand the event to more college campuses in the future and increase the number of high school students participating by hundreds.

“We’re reaching out and trying to find other schools that would be interested in hosting something like this,” Gaylord said. “You can go to a school in Rochester like [Monroe Community College] and you can host 500 students, even twice a year.”

“Stand with SUNY” investment campaign begins

State University of New York Chancellor Nancy Zimpher is traveling across New York State to gain support of “Stand with SUNY,” an initiative to increase investment in New York’s 64 SUNY campuses. According to Geneseo’s Vice President for Administration and Finance James B. Milroy, the campaign focuses on continuing the current system of rational tuition increases, base funding from the state and an additional $32 million for innovation.

“At the end of the day, everyone’s asking for more money,” Milroy said. “The question is how does it come and how are the campuses benefitted at the end of the day from the increase in state support and/or your tuition.”

The SUNY2020 plan—which is the investment plan “Stand With SUNY” and Zimpher are advocating for—will not be passed until much closer to the current five-year plan’s expiration date of June 2016.

“I don’t think there’s an assumption that it will pass, but I think we have an exceptional case in SUNY for this investment,” President Denise Battles said. “I certainly appreciate the work the Chancellor and her team are putting into this process.”

If passed, the investment plan would go into effect in 2016 and extend the current five-year plan another five years into 2020––hence the name SUNY2020. Battles described “Stand With SUNY” as an “initiative to re-up the five-year funding model.”

Zimpher is focusing the campaign on both state investment and tuition increases, which are both supported by Geneseo’s administration.

“She feels it’s important to go to where people are so that she can convey that message and tell the story and not assume that people will come to us,” Battles said. “She’s being proactive and making it easy for folks to hear the case and hopefully gain an appreciation for it.”

“I’m highly supportive of everything the Chancellor is asking for,” Milroy said. “They are all hugely important to the operation of this campus, hugely important to your educational experiences and ultimately, in my view, hugely important to the competitiveness of New York State in the global economy.”

The current SUNY investment plan includes “rational tuition,” meaning that tuition increases incrementally instead over five years. Currently, the increase is $300 each year. SUNY2020 would extend the incremental increases in tuition.

“In order for us to really deliver on our promise to the students—to make sure we can recruit and retain those high caliber faculty, to make sure we have the support staff for all of the support systems that students come to really rely on, to make sure that you all are getting the best quality educational experience we can deliver—that requires investment,” Battles said. “I would encourage students to consider a potential tuition increase, but also to consider what the intentions are for the increased resources that we are seeking to increase what we can do for them.”

Rational tuition would make the costs of tuition rise, but the amount has not been decided yet and many different ideas for calculating it are still in consideration.

According to Milroy, in addition to rational tuition, SUNY2020 would increase base funding and innovation funding from New York State. The innovation funding Zimpher is calling for is in the range of $32 million. Any amount of innovation funding Geneseo receives would go to a variety of projects that Milroy calls “white papers,” or initiatives to improve non-classroom aspects of Geneseo such as graduation rates, retention rates and diversity.

Battles has also organized a Strategic Planning Committee—meeting for the first time on Friday Nov. 13—that would assess campus needs and create innovation projects accordingly.

“We do need the additional revenue in order to be able to deal with inflationary cost increase, hire faculty, buy equipment—all the things really necessary to provide for enhancing the educational experience of students,” Milroy said.

None of these can be solidly decided, however, until the state decides where the bill stands on maintenance of effort, which refers to inflationary costs in higher education. Inflationary costs include all costs that rise with time, such as professors’ salaries.

“Would a maintenance of effort provision cover costs that would be associated with core delivery of services? Whether it’s utilities costs, whether it’s the compensation, all of that,” Battles said. “If there is a certain pot of funds generated off a tuition increase, you have to know what else those revenues are obliged to cover before you can make decisions on the portion that is truly available and uncommitted.”

Milroy and Battles both expressed their concern that student tuition raises should be used for enhancing the student’s educational experience instead of paying for increases in faculty salaries or maintenance costs.

“Definition of terms is really, really important and so that’s going to be something that needs to be determined,” Battles said. “If we’re seeing an increase in the investment by our students or whoever is paying the tuition bills for our students, what I want to see is as much of those increases going to enhance the quality of experience for the students.”

“That money should go for your education, not to cover mandatory costs that you had no part in negotiating,” Milroy said.

Theater professor exudes creative enthusiasm, embodies authenticity

In her 27 years of teaching at Geneseo, professor of theater Randy Kaplan has changed Geneseo’s landscape regarding performance and Asian-American studies.

Born in a small suburb of New York City, Kaplan’s interest in directing began at an early age when she led theater performances with children in her neighborhood. This is also when her interest in Asian culture began.

“I can remember being a little, little kid and always being a director,” Kaplan said.

She also credits her interest in Asian culture to her father, who would take her on trips to Chinatown and who held a personal interest in Chinese culture despite his official career as a microbiologist. Her third grade teacher also encouraged her and bought her the classic Chinese book The Legend of the White Snake, which she read repeatedly as an 8-year-old and for years afterward.

When she began her undergrad career at The Ohio State University, she explained that she was still torn between her interests in theater and Asian culture.

“I sought a way of making my two interests talk to each other, more or less,” she said. Kaplan added that a pivotal moment for her was seeing the Beijing Opera perform during her freshman year at OSU.

Kaplan recalled the intense emotion that overwhelmed her during the performance. “This is home. This is who I am,” she said. “I felt this instant rush of identification.”

After receiving a theater degree from OSU, Kaplan completed her master’s degree at SUNY Albany and received her doctorate from OSU. After completing her thesis on the work of Asian poet and playwright Tian Han, Kaplan began to look for work as a professor.

“I knew I wanted to be a professor,” Kaplan said. “I love directing students; I love working with students.”

She explained that she taught at other universities but chose to stay at Geneseo due to the excellent relationship she had with the designers she worked with on her various productions.

“I thought, ‘Why would you ever want to leave when you have great colleagues and designers?’” she said.

In addition to working as a professor, Kaplan founded Geneseo’s Asian-American performance ensemble GENseng 17 years ago as a way to combine her love of Asian studies with her passion for theater. It is the only Asian theater program in the entire SUNY system—64 campuses—connected with a department of a university.

“Geneseo GENseng is the only one that is embedded in our academic program … a club can go dormant but because GENseng is embedded in our academic program, students can get credit ... we are the only school that has that,” Kaplan said. “It’s something I’m really, really proud of.”

In addition to her contributions through GENseng and the Asian studies minor, Kaplan is also the faculty advisor for Shakti, Bhangra, Korean American Student Association, Students for Free Tibet and Liberty in North Korea.

Kaplan noted that she identifies herself as a “Jewbu,” or a person who is both Jewish and Buddhist.

“I am not by a long shot unique in that way,” Kaplan said. “Buddhism is very embracing of people who celebrate other faiths. There’s a lot about Buddhism that enhances Judaism and a lot about Judaism that enhances Buddhism.”

Kaplan also expressed her compassion for all beings of the Earth, inspired by both Buddhism and Judaism. She is a vegan of three years, the owner of five rescue pets and she tends plants in her husband’s greenhouse.

“In Buddhism, all beings who are sentient are to be respected,” Kaplan said. She also stands by a Jewish commandment to be kind to animals and believes that even Kosher meat invokes inhumane suffering to animals. 

“I think all of these things … the Buddhism and the vegan cooking and the saving animals and raising up plants—from all of that I try to be compassionate to my students,” Kaplan said.

Geneseo establishes presence in Brooklyn

The Community Institute for Well-Being has partnered with Greg O’Connell ’64 to refashion part of a warehouse in Red Hook, New York in Brooklyn into a space for students to do courses, research and internships while engaging with the local community. Project coordinator Maddy Smith ’14 has spent almost two months living in Red Hook and communicating with local nonprofits, citizens and connections back at Geneseo. At a forum hosted on Wednesday Sept. 23, Smith explained that she is investigating “what the needs are in Red Hook and how Geneseo can fit into them.”

One recurring concern at the forum was that projects would fade out or grow impersonal; Smith’s involvement is meant to counteract that. The goal is that Geneseo will have an engaged presence in the Red Hook community and will maintain an ongoing relationship with local schools and nonprofit organizations.

The initial opportunity arose when O’Connell bought 28 acres of warehouse space from the Port Authority in 1992 and began philanthropic work in the community. In recent years, he collaborated with Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Carol Long to create a link between the New York City area and the Geneseo community.

The project has begun and its first event—an alumni meet and greet—is scheduled for Oct. 3. Additionally, the Geneseo warehouse space was recently used for a local dance performance as a way to introduce the group to the community.

Smith and Director for the Community Institute of Well-Being and a partner of the project David Parfitt are looking for student input regarding what direction the project should take. Students at the forum were encouraged to share what they hope will come out of the Red Hook location and give Smith suggestions and advice on how to best move forward.

“Right now, it’s all about learning what sort of paths the program could take and understanding that if you have an idea, we are finding ways you can work with it,” Smith said. “If you have enthusiasm, then bring your ideas to the table so we can work with them.”

The program has definite faculty interest in research and coursework—particularly from the geography, English, history and communication departments. According to Smith, a large component of choosing which classes could be taught at Red Hook is a search for courses that could not be taught at Geneseo or online.

“The goal is to have place-based courses,” Smith said. “It just makes sense financially. There’s no reason to bring people to Red Hook if there’s no specific draw.”

Course development is underway and Smith is in the process of connecting with local nonprofits so that students can get internships in Red Hook. Students can also apply for grants of up to $5,000 and apply to research positions in collaboration with professors or individually.

“It gives students and faculty a chance to work with what people might say are underserved neighborhoods,” Smith said. “There’s many resources for doing that in Livingston County, but there’s so many more when it comes to Brooklyn and that can be a huge learning opportunity in itself.”

Another aspect of this program is student teaching and school outreach. Education majors can student teach in Red Hook, which would be a very different experience from student teaching in Geneseo. Smith is also considering different options for outreach to high school students, such as after school programs or outreach to potential Geneseo students.

“I think it turns into visual learning, engaged learning and it opens doors for diversity that might not be here at Geneseo—not because of the way this college works—but because of what we have to offer and where we are located,” Smith said. “New York City is a hub and Red Hook will allow students to work with alumni who are everywhere from TIME Magazine to the top bank on Wall Street.”