Starbucks supervisor brings laughs, lattes to students

Gina Ronci is not your average clock-watching Starbucks employee—the on-campus supervisor of Starbucks has a passion for customer service that students notice. “I guess it’s just self-gratification through others,” Ronci said. She explained that she enjoys her job with Campus Auxiliary Services. “I feel sometimes like I’m the campus mom.”

Brought up in Orange County, New York, Ronci’s life drastically changed at 16 when her family relocated to Palm Beach, Florida. She moved back to New York after getting married but said that she misses the “blue skies” and tries to vacation there twice a year.

Now a Dansville resident with her husband and two teenage children, Ronci has been with Starbucks at CAS since January 2014. This is not where she imagined her career would lead, however.

“When I went into the workforce, I was in the banking industry and what I call the ‘cube world,’” Ronci said. She did customer service work at a desk, but loved baking for fun in her free time.

She eventually switched from office work to food services, saying, “I went into the food thing because what better way to please somebody than to keep them fed?” Ronci worked for CAS at Starbucks, Uncle Vito’s and the Chowhound.

“In a ‘cube world,’ you have customer service, but not that face-to-face [interaction],” Ronci explained about her shift to CAS. “It was a huge change, but I got into it.”

After graduating from Genesee Community College with an associate degree in hospitality and tourism and business administration, she took a break from CAS and decided to try a foray into small business ownership, opening a bakery called Tasty Too.

“I just started baking and fell in love with it,” Ronci said. The bakery did not last, but she still gets questions about it around town. Ronci said she has no regrets looking back at the experience because of the people she got to work with along the way.

“Everything happens for a reason and you have to enjoy where you’re at now,” she said.

In her free time, Ronci is a self-proclaimed “bookworm,” who loves reading both novels and magazines. She is also an animal lover—the proud owner of four cats and fish—and an amazing chef; matzo ball chicken soup is her specialty.

She also greatly values her family and every minute she gets to spend with them, especially her son and daughter who are currently enrolled locally at GCC.

“You want them to go, but you want them to be careful,” she said about her children, ages 18 and 19. Even though they live at home, she jokingly diagnoses herself with “empty nest syndrome.”

Every Sunday, however, Ronci’s family comes together to watch football. Her brother lives six minutes away and brings his preteen children with him for this classic western New York tradition.

“My siblings are both my best friends,” Ronci said. She FaceTimes her younger sister in Palm Beach without fail every Monday.

“They will drive you crazy like no one else, but at the end of the day, there is no one that loves you more than your family,” she said.

Poet continues pursuit of knowledge, self-actualization

Avid volunteer freshman Lilly Perry has seen poverty both in the United States and abroad. Her passion for service work stems from her personal experiences with volunteering and a deep commitment to bringing about positive change. “My family was always into volunteering, but I became passionate about it when I went to Guatemala,” Perry said.

Perry’s experience in Guatemala as a high school freshman through the nonprofit Safe Passage organization helped to guide her course toward her future in philanthropy. According to Perry, she was most affected by visiting the mile-long city dumps, where impoverished Guatemalans scavenge through gigantic trash piles for items and material to sell for whatever money they can get.

Perry explained that the Guatemalans label this occupation “dump picker” and that children look to dump-picking as a future career. Her most resonant memory is the sight of Guatemalans running after the garbage trucks to get the first look at the trash.

---

Favorites

tv show: “Lost”

book:  Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

food:  Penne a la vodka

poem:  “for Those of You Who Can Still Ride an Airplane for the First time”  by Anis Mojgani

song: “She’s a Jar” by Wilco

---

Perry’s volunteering experience didn’t stop in Guatemala. As a sophomore in high school, she continued her mission by volunteering in New Orleans through her Unitarian Church. Perry said that her trip involved projects that focused on rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit.

This trip encouraged her to volunteer again in New Orleans in the spring of 2014. Perry noted that that this return trip was much more eye-opening; she was focused more on “social justice, not just building houses.” Perry added that she experienced workshops in racism and classism, issues she said “were brought to light [in New Orleans] after the hurricane.”

According to Perry, there are still 100,000 displaced people in Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. “It was heartbreaking to see all the abandoned homes, knowing that those families couldn’t return,” she said.

Perry’s experience in New Orleans demonstrated that even in the United States, people suffer immensely from poverty. “After Guatemala, I was interested in developing countries,” Perry said. “After New Orleans, I was interested in domestic work,” Perry said.

Perry continued to pursue domestic volunteering through Girls Inc., an organization that works with girls from kindergarten up until their senior year of high school. The organization helps the girls with homework and gives out snacks. According to Perry, many of the students come to the program hungry because they don’t have a lot of food at home.

In addition to being an active volunteer, Perry is a member of Peace Action Geneseo and the Slam Poets’ Society on Avon Road. Perry encourages others to volunteer not only for the joy that comes with helping others, but as a means of self-discovery and growth.

“By focusing on the world around me, I ended up learning about myself accidentally,” Perry said.

Watt Farms baker brings delightful donuts to Geneseo

Geneseo’s weekly Farmer’s Market on Center Street draws in throngs of students every Thursday. Out of all the stands, however, one in particular draws a notably large crowd. Watt Farm’s Country Market’s delicious donuts are the top-selling product at the Market, selling about 1,200 donuts each Thursday. Baker Kirsten Newbould makes all of the donuts, frying almost 2,000 each week for all of the towns she visits. According to Newbould, Geneseo is where most of her donuts are bought. At 50 cents each, the donuts usually sell out within the first hour or two of the three-hour slot that the Market is open for.

Newbould said she has had a passion for baking ever since she was a little girl growing up in Albion, New York. She learned how to bake from lessons with her grandmother and father. She particularly enjoys working in the fall season, when she can enjoy the atmosphere and do what she loves.

“Whenever I make the donuts, it reminds me of how much I like fall,” she said.

According to student workers juniors Grant Horner and Brittney Richardson, donuts are by far their top-selling product.

“Our first week of school, we sold out of the donuts in the first two hours,” Richardson said.

Newbould started making donuts in 2009 after she left culinary school in Orlando, Florida to work for Albion Farm. Newbould began making these donuts in a unique twist of fate––Watt Farm won “Donut Robot,” a donut-making machine valued at $1,000 for the price of $100 at a 2009 auction. According to Newbould, it was “a killer deal.” The machine has been a blessing for the farm as the donuts’ popularity only continues to increase.

This fall is Newbould’s seventh season working for the Watt Farm’s Country Market and has been selling donuts in Geneseo since 2010. Watt Farm’s Country Market offers Geneseo three donut flavors: the original apple cider, pumpkin spice and this year’s newest addition, raspberry vanilla.

Newbould said that the donuts all are made from the same mix, but the farm adds special ingredients grown right on the farm to make the special flavors. For instance, the apple cider donuts are made with special Watt Farm cider, the pumpkin spice donuts are given a special touch of pumpkin and the raspberry vanilla donuts are given a slightly purple tint that comes from the farm’s fresh raspberry juice.

In addition to its popular donuts, the farm offers a wide variety of food such as pears, donut peaches, nectarines, apples, cheese, plums, pluots, raspberries, flavored syrups and many delicious baked goods.

Newbould aspires to open a bakery of her own one day, and hopes that she can share her recipes with other baking enthusiasts.

“I would like to expand my baking abilities to other people,” she said.

Junior Tyler Sherman: a team player, in hall and on ice

Junior math major Tyler Sherman is not your average residence assistant. A transfer student from Monroe Community College, he began contributing to Geneseo the moment he arrived. Sherman applied to be an RA only two weeks after starting at Geneseo in the spring 2013 semester. Due to his newcomer status, he failed to receive the position and instead “settled” for hall council president.

Since then, he has served on Nassau Hall’s Inter-Residence Council Executive Board as a national communications major. He co-organized delegations to conferences about programming in residence halls and is a member of the National Residence Hall Honorary.

Sherman now works as an RA in Monroe Hall, where he lived his first semester. Sherman’s enthusiasm and hard work fits his new clients: incoming freshmen.

“I’ve been able to bond with them and act as guidance … I feel like I’ve built a pretty strong community with them,” Sherman said. One of his events involved teaching time management through blowing up water bottles with rubber bands, drawing about 50 participants––a huge number by hall activity standards.

“I do this because it’s a good leadership opportunity for me,” Sherman said. “I’m big on personal development and this is hands-on learning.”

Not only is he extremely active in student affairs but Sherman also has an important role as goalie on Geneseo’s club hockey team.

He began playing on a whim his sophomore year when the actual goalie was unable to play and Sherman stepped up.

“I kind of got thrown into it really fast,” Sherman said. Sherman’s stint as a goalie worked out as he helped to bring his team to the championship round.

Sherman’s contributions to the team are clear both on and off the ice as he helps with various public relations and student association duties.

“I know how to put up posters, I signed us up for a table at the Student Expo … I use my connections to kind of manage the team,” he said.

His student affairs expertise will collide with hockey again this semester when he begins working on the Intercollegiate Athletic Advisory Board, which, among other things, budgets and schedules the varsity hockey games. “I’m a big sports guy, so I think it will be cool to see the background behind it,” Sherman said.

He’s not all work and no play, however. Sherman is a member of the infamous Geneseo Blue Crew, the boisterous row of boys sporting shorts, body paint and not much else at Geneseo Ice Knights home games. He tries to arrange his schedule around Ice Knight hockey and estimates he has only missed three or four games in his Geneseo career.

“That was a huge part of me coming here,” Sherman said. “I love hockey, so I love a school that runs around hockey.

When he first enrolled at Geneseo, Sherman planned on majoring in childhood special education and math but now sees himself going to graduate school for student affairs.

“With all the opportunities I’ve had since I’ve been here, I want to be there for freshmen who are still trying to figure it out,” Sherman said. “I’m starting to see how the school functions and that’s what I want to start doing with my life.”

Favorites Favorite hockey team: Buffalo Sabres Favorite superhero: Spiderman Favorite Geneseo activity: broomball Favorite band: Awolnation Favorite season: autumn

Statesman owner finds home in Geneseo

As underclassmen return to the residence halls, there is a new portion of the student body that is stepping out into the village of Geneseo––into real homes and apartments. The Statesmen owner Rocco Dragani plays a large part in that step, buying and leasing off-campus properties in Geneseo to students. Dragani is no stranger to the Geneseo area. He grew up in the town of York, New York, a short trip down the road. Dragani moved away from the area for school, traveling to the University at Buffalo to pursue a bachelor’s degree in legal studies. He also studied abroad in England and pursued a master’s degree there, but according to Dragani, something was always drawing him back to New York.

He decided he no longer wanted to pursue a legal career and was eventually presented with the opportunity to work in a trading firm. He spent around 12 years as a “market maker,” someone who works for a bank or brokerage firm and stands by all hours of the day with a firm to ask and bid prices on stocks.

“There are a lot of examinations and certifications, but it was something that was very interesting to me,” Dragani said.

After four years of working with the trading firm in Rochester, Dragani moved to New York City for eight years. Despite this, he felt that something was still drawing him to the area where he grew up.

“I wanted to come back home,” Dragani said.

He started to travel back to Geneseo on weekends, laying out a plan for transitioning back home by securing a job for himself.

“I started buying properties around the Geneseo area. I would buy and sell them, traveling home on the weekends to make deals,” he said.

The rental business was in his family for years, so it was an easy occupation for him to jump into while entering back into the Geneseo community. Dragani moved back during the summer of 2011.

At the start of his involvement in renting, he began to realize how much the student population affected his life and business. “It’s really enjoyable to work with students,” Dragani said.

Dragani’s passion for working with the student population was a large factor in his decision to assume ownership of the popular Geneseo bar The Statesmen. He took over when the previous owners chose not to renew their lease.

“I never thought I could see myself in the bar business, but it’s a lot of fun,” Dragani said. “I get to see the social side of the town and be a part of it. The Statesmen was one of the bars I came to, so now I get to see a new side of it…Geneseo is a great college town.”

Dragani is enthusiastic about the community surrounding both the college and the town, especially when it comes to student involvement.

“The quality of life here is greatly enhanced by the presence of students,” he said. “I love that I can’t find a parking spot on Main Street. Geneseo comes alive when the students come back and I love getting to be a part of that.”

Poetry professor brings culture, creativity to English department

Now that school has been in session for more than a week, you’ve probably started to notice some new faces. One of those belongs to Icelandic translator, poet and assistant professor of English and creative writing Lytton Smith.

Smith isn’t a stranger to Western New York. He lived between Rochester and New York City four years ago when his wife had a fellowship at the University of Rochester for a year. Smith has done work for the university himself; translating works of Icelandic fiction like Bragi Ólafsson's The Ambassador. Smith said that the “independent stuff going on with music, radio and breweries” has him excited to be back. He grew up in a small town in England. While, his parents got him into verse speaking competitions at a young age and exposed him to a range of poetry, Smith didn’t identify as a writer until he was in high school.

Writing became a larger part of his identity while he attended University College in London, England. There were no workshops, so he set up a literary magazine called 50 Meters Fully Clothed with some of his friends. Another major shift in Smith’s writing destiny occurred when he decided that the time he was taking to memorize lines for theater would be better spent on writing. Smith has published two books of poetry and is working on a third. One of his books, All Purpose Magical Tent was published in 2008. “It’s about being unsettled, not having a place in either in language or in the world,” Smith said. “It’s fascinated with circuses and exclusions, but in a fairly whimsical way.” Displaying a trait that isn’t uncommon in poets, Smith admits that while he’s written a book influenced by the circus, he’s only been to three in his life. Smith’s second book, While You Were Approaching the Spectacle But Before You Were Transformed by It, published in 2013, switches topics and themes drastically as it tries to explore the relationship between poetry, politics and ethics.

Now, Smith is astonished that he thought of applying for MFA’s in fiction. “I’ve always been interested in form, like the line, and discovering a range of forms, getting beyond just the sonnet,” he said. Translation and poetry are complimentary activities to Smith. He describes the translation process as a "wonderfully creative jigsaw.” “You try to work out what all the pieces are and how they fit together, but then you get to rearrange it so it’s an even better image than you started with, in a sense,” he said. With Icelandic being a more obscure language, it comes with the satisfaction of introducing the literature to people who wouldn’t otherwise come to it.

Traveling senior assesses cultural aspects of health care

Popular thought would have it that the sciences and humanities occupy two separate worlds – so much so that our brains occupy two separate regions, using two mutually exclusive skill sets. That is contrary, however, to the work senior Tasmia Naz has done. Merging the methodology of the exacting scientist and the contextually minded anthropologist, Naz has traveled to Borgne, Haiti twice and anticipates returning.

“I think it’s important to recognize that the hard sciences, the social sciences and the humanities aren’t opposing at all but rather complementary,” she said. The English major and biology minor finds she is concerned with the “macroscopic,” through public health, rather than the “microscopic” field of medicine.

“The first time I went to Haiti, I got my feet wet and learned about the different projects that were happening in the community,” she said. “We learned about [Haiti Outreach-Pwoje Espwa’s] agriculture initiatives. They had a pepinye farm where they grew fruits and vegetables and sold them around the community to keep the agricultural economy local.”

That summer, Naz developed the methodology of a researcher through an internship with the SUNY Upstate Medical University in the summer after her junior year. During her time there, she worked in a leukemia lab, learning various techniques including gel electrophoresis.

“I know I always wanted to work with people – I wanted to work in healthcare, but over time I realized that I wanted to focus more on social issues on that macroscopic level rather than that microscopic level,” she said. “That’s kind of what drew me to more of an anthropological way of going about that.”

Naz has traveled to Bangladesh many times throughout her life, as it is where her family is from. She traces her experiences of traveling through the country as formative, as she observed many of the structural barriers that the nation faced. Though her interests are aligned, Naz sees Haiti and Bangladesh, or any other developing nation, as unique.

“I don’t want to compare [Haiti and Bangladesh] and make it seem like they are the same thing because they are developing nations,” she said. “It isn’t like that at all. In terms of the things that people tend to think about developing nations – like problems with living with infrastructure, not having access to clean water – those things are similar and I’ve had experience with that.”

Starting her sophomore year, Naz became involved with Community Health Alliance. This year, she is the international outreach coordinator, focusing on reaching out to the campus on the international opportunities available to students, particularly the spring break trip to Haiti.

“CHA … their values are community, outreach – combining health and education initiatives with the local community,” Naz said. “That was something that really resonated with me. So I got involved my sophomore year. I started out volunteering at the parish outreach center down at the end of Court Street. They provide really inexpensive [or free] healthcare to local residents. I did that over the summer after sophomore year.”

Naz returned to Haiti this year, during spring break, conducting preliminary research for a larger project on community cardiovascular health. After graduation, she hopes to secure funding to study this project further, something she is currently working in a directed study with professor and chair of the anthropology department and the founder of HOPE, Rose-Marie Chierici.

Edgar Fellow Grant Kusick seeks well-rounded productivity

If The Lamron’s Photo Editor Zoe Finn didn’t nominate the “guy in the purple shirt” for this very article, we would have never had the pleasure of meeting sophomore Grant Kusick, who said he’s “obsessed with being productive.” Kusick compares himself to Johannes Sebastian Bach, who said “I’m obliged to be industrious.”

“I would consider myself a goal-oriented person,” Kusick said. “What I’m realizing is that I don’t derive as much satisfaction from the sort of normal things that people go about doing.” And this is true: What he loves to do most is “getting things done.”

A typical day in the life of Kusick involves a morning of strength training at the gym (“I try to get three to four sessions in per week”), class, then relaxation before he delves into his school work. Arguably most students finish their work in order to relax, but Kusick said that he relaxes to prepare himself for work. It pays off, as he said he rarely finds himself cramming for assignments.

Kusick learned early on that procrastination does not fall in line with this mentality: “What you have to remember is that if you put something off, you’re probably going to do worse on that assignment, or you’re going to be really miserable,” he said, adding that he always “pays for it” when he procrastinates.

“If you have the opportunity to do it, do what you know is going to be in your best interest,” he said. Kusick’s keys to productive success include “being able to self-analyze, know what’s the right thing to do and having the willpower obviously to execute that.”

Now that he’s mastered the art of college coursework, Kusick has noticed a comfortable pace in which he retains more information than when he crams. It’s hard in college, he said, where there is more freedom than ever with deadlines: “You have to make yourself do the work and I think the issue is that people aren’t prepared for that in high school.”

“Expecting people to magically adapt to that is hard … the fault may be with secondary education more than higher education,” he said.

A biology and Spanish major in the Edgar Fellows program, Kusick said that his repertoire of interests – biology, literature, classical music – is an “easy thing to let happen to yourself at a liberal arts college.” But his goal of going to a top graduate school to become a biologist keeps him on track, as he knew he loved science since taking AP Chemistry in his sophomore year of high school.

Through his studies, Kusick aims to deflate the “false dichotomy between the humanities and the sciences” as studying both requires the ability to think analytically and critically. When he was a freshman, Kusick had a lot of high school credits, and was not afraid to take classes that interested him. Courses like political science and British literature have rounded out his thinking ability, and they’ve been beneficial to him, he said.

Coming upon his junior year, Kusick said that there are more than enough offerings in biology and Spanish to continue his productive academic career in strides.

Kusick’s goals for the remainder of the semester include achieving a 4.0 GPA (“I had a 3.97 last semester.”) and to not let his semester pass him by.

“When you live deadline by deadline, that can happen,” he said.

Coursework aside, Kusick loves to dance, especially at the Inn Between Tavern. On weekends, he lets himself “notch down the pace a little bit.”

Relay for Life advocate contemplates service, dedication

For some people, getting a simple haircut can be a huge ordeal. For junior Coli Bacharach, however, making the decision to shave her head to raise money for cancer research was surprisingly easy. “I saw students doing it last year and I thought it was awesome,” Bacharach said. “I’ve seen so many people suffer unnecessarily and I thought if I could do this small part to help, then why not do it?”

Bacharach has chosen to shave her head at Relay for Life on Saturday, April 5 in front of hundreds of supporters, surrendering to the clippers in the name of curing cancer.

“I just keep thinking about kids that have been confined to a hospital by cancer, living a life they don’t deserve,” Bacharach said. “They don’t have the choice to shave their heads, they don’t do it because they want to; they’re just victims of circumstance.”

“Your entire life can be uprooted by cancer and then on top of that, you have to shave your head. That’s your security, which you now have to get rid of it in the midst of this [trauma],” she said.

Bacharach admitted that the idea of losing the “security” of her hair made her a bit nervous at first.

“As much as I tell myself it’s just hair, it is a little scary,” she said. “People may look at me differently but so what? I don’t have cancer. I’m lucky enough not to.”

Bacharach hasn’t been contemplating this decision all year, rather it wasn’t until after she returned from studying abroad last semester that she decided to part with her locks.

“On the way up [to Geneseo], I told [my family] that I was thinking about doing this and at first I was afraid of what they would say,” Bacharach said. “But they were proud of me and it’s nice to have their support.”

Bacharach had raised over $2,500 within a few months, surpassing her goal and the individual fundraising amount at Geneseo; earning the title of Relay for Life Emerald Individual Fundraising Club member.

Bacharach explained that even in high school she had a passion for giving back. Bacharach has spent much of her time traveling and volunteering all over the world, meeting many children and adults who have struggled to win their battles with illness.

“They have such a spirit about them,” Bacharach said. “And I feel like most of us don’t appreciate our health until something bad happens. I’ve visited hospitals all across the United States and met a lot of great folks who have battled many diseases, including cancer.”

Throughout her time at Geneseo, Bacharach has been very involved on campus; serving not only as editor-in-chief of MiNT magazine, but also as the social and new student engagement chair of Hillel, a sister and service chair of the Royal Lady Knights and a resident assistant in Allegany Hall.

“I’ve had support from every group that I’m a part of, which I’m so thankful for,” Bacharach said. “And I’ve been so humbled by it … even people that I didn’t feel like I had that strong of a connection with have supported me.”

Though Bacharach said she was thankful for the support she’s received for her fundraising efforts, not everyone is totally on board.

“I have friends – really great friends – who still can’t believe I’m doing this and say they could never deal with the societal pressures,” Bacharach said. “And that’s really upsetting: that we would be so afraid of the opinions of others that we would keep ourselves from doing something important that we know will have a great response.”

Despite her incredible accomplishments, however, Bacharach has remained modest and thankful. She points out that contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to be a “certain kind of person” to make a gesture like this.

“I feel like anyone can make a difference. If you want to do something great, just go ahead and do it,” she said.

Bacharach has upped her goal to $2,650 and is still looking for donations, which will be accepted until Friday.

“I had no idea that we would break everyone’s records with the support I got … it makes it all worth it,” Bacharach said. “I’m ready to be bald.”

Invasion of Privacy: Peace Corp volunteer envisions geographies of portraiture, landscapes

Despite the almost absurd list of illnesses and injuries that senior Riley Burchell has encountered at home and abroad, including typhoid and malaria, she’s always busy in Geneseo and abroad. In high school she began traveling when she became interested in “an individual sense of place and sense of identity as it pertains to the physical space people occupy,” she said.

She did a photographic study in Mozambique and Botswana through portraiture and landscapes, although she said she enjoyed the interactions that came with taking the portraits more.

Portraiture originally sparked her interest in photography because of the way a person’s expression or pose can encapsulate the event occurring around them.

“It was a happenstance sort of thing,” Burchell said. “It was the first place I had gone where I was there for a long enough time to develop real relationships and real rapport with the people I came in contact with, and I walked out of that trip with a few good friends ... Also, I love deserts.”

Her attraction to photography and travel preceded her interest in geography, even though she came to Geneseo with her major undeclared.

During her second semester, she took GEOG 111: Physical Geography with associate professor of geography David Aagesen and was hooked from then on.

Burchell studied abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina, under Aagesen, through the “Latin America: Environmental Issues” program. This program allows students to study pollution in the Riachuelo, a river that runs along the southern boundary of Buenos Aires, for two and a half weeks.

Burchell said she appreciated the laid-back nature of the program; the students were allowed to explore the city on their own time. She also found the subject matter engaging.

For the first time, Burchell saw “the connection between doing something I love to do and studying something I love to study,” she said.

“Photography is interesting in the study of cultural and historical geography and human geography because it doesn’t necessarily deal with physical geography; it deals more with the propensity of certain ideas – the special component of how people associate places and ideas with one another,” she said.

Burchell returned to Africa last summer, doing medical work in a clinic in the Cape Coast region of Ghana.

“Establishing myself in a new place is something that has always been really attractive to me,” Burchell said. The work was particularly rewarding because the urgency of her work came from the need to improve quality of life rather than adhering to a deadline.

At Geneseo, Burchell is a member of Delta Phi Epsilon and is on the Student Association executive committee as the director of public relations. She was the campus photographer for two years with College Communications and she hiked the Appalachian Trail with the Geneseo Outing Club.

Burchell is far from taking it easy after graduating; this summer, she’s returning to Africa for an internship in the Volta region of Ghana, doing youth and female development, and she plans to work with the Peace Corps in Guatemala a month later.

“The first time I went there, I said, ‘This is really cool’… so it’s funny how it’s come full circle in that aspect,” she said.

Art enthusiast Lynette Bosch maps revelation in art, mind

Professor of art history Lynette Bosch first started going to art museums at age 10, and she never stopped. Born in Cuba, Bosch’s family moved to New York City when she was 8 years old.  Museums used to be free to the public, so her father would take her to different museums every weekend, where her love and appreciation of art began.

“I really grew up in New York City’s museums looking at art,” she said.

Thus, when she began her undergraduate studies as a commuter at Queens College, she majored in art history with minors in classics and comparative literature.

Bosch worked her way through college by working odd jobs and at a pharmacy, and any money that did not go to tuition or textbooks went to her annual trips to Europe.

“I paid for my own trips to Europe … every summer I would just take off and travel until my money ran out,” she explained.

She would choose her location based on the local art museums and exhibits, and go to different countries and cities each summer. Her first trip was to Rome, Paris and London, and future trips included Spain, Holland, Belgium and Italy.

After graduating from Queens College, Bosch worked full time in the fashion industry and later as a secretary at an engineering firm while earning her master’s at Hunter College in the evenings.

Although she received a scholarship to Princeton University to earn her Ph.D., Bosch still had to work three jobs while attending in order to pay her way through, earning a Ph.D. in Renaissance art and religion.

Since then, she has been a professor at several schools, including Tufts University, Brandeis University and Cornell University. She began working on Latin American art while at SUNY Cortland, curating exhibitions with Cuban-American, Mexican and Chilean artists.

“That soon developed into a whole field in and of itself,” she said.

This March, Bosch has a show opening at the University at Buffalo, starring Alberto Rey and including a book she co-wrote.

She has curated other exhibitions around the world, from Santiago, Chile to Boston, starring various Latin American and Spanish artists.

After years of travel and city life, Bosch chose to live in Geneseo, although she still regularly travels back to the Bronx and around the world with her husband.

“The city is not what I remember, and the longer I stay here the more I find myself thinking, ‘This is perfect,’” Bosch said.

Her favorite city out of everywhere she traveled, however, remains to be “Rome, always,” she said without any hesitation.

It contains artifacts from every art movement since classical times, especially her favorite era, the Renaissance.

“It’s a moment when the world was so hopeful,” she said.

Her current studies are much more modern. She is writing a book called The Mannerism Book that uses studies in the neuroscience field to understand visions and revelations, particularly in religion and art.

“I’m interested in the representation of visions, and I’m interested in what’s actually going on in the brain of someone who is in those states,” Bosch said.

The studies she looks at address brain patterns including those of Tibetan monks in a meditative state or nuns while praying. Bosch believes that a similar experience occurs in artists while they are creating.

“An artist in a creative zone is in touch with something beyond themselves,” she said.

Cattle queen milks career path out of lifelong passion

More than 30,000 gallons of milk are generated daily at El-Vi Farms, where senior Emma Andrew and her family’s 2,700 cows call home. Andrew’s father is one of five partners at the Newark, N.Y. farm. When Andrew was born, El-Vi kept 500 milk cows, but the farm has expanded since, housing 1,150 milk cows with an additional 1,550 cattle, mostly baby cows and young heifers.

At Geneseo, Andrew is still among cows, and she works at Mikelholm Holsteins Farms outside of Pavilion, N.Y. at least three times a week. Typically Andrew milks the cows, but not by hand. She preps the cows’ udders, cleans them and puts them on the milking unit. She also takes care of the cows’ general health and nutrition as well as baby calves.

Andrew owns 30 of her own head of cattle at El-Vi, but as graduation looms, Andrew may say goodbye to them. Her relationship to her cows is “kind of like a pet with benefits or mixing business with pleasure,” she said.

“I love my cows and I love to show them but I can sell them and pay my tuition at the same time,” she said.

If Andrew does sell, she plans to always co-own or board her animals somewhere.

“I like the aspect of owning animals, being on farms and like breeding my animals and then showing them … just to stay attached like that to the whole dairy-side of things,” she said.

Andrew has lived on El-Vi her entire life, and it was there where she learned to manage the farm and of course, milk the cows. Milking is so easy and mindless for Andrew, but breeding and showing the cows is more enjoyable for her.

She has participated in various regional, state and international shows. Her greatest goal is to show a cow at the World Dairy Expo. The Supreme Champion at the Expo is “is the end all, be all,” in the showing world, she said.

She also served as the 2012-2013 New York State Dairy Princess and was named the New York State Holstein Association Distinguished Junior Member. Andrew joined the American Dairy Association and Dairy Council Food Advocacy Network, a leadership and outreach program for young farmers ages 18-30. She was selected as one of the four delegates to represent New York at the Capitol for agriculture days, which included opportunities to discuss concerns and changes to legislators.

“I get involved somehow,” Andrew said. “People find me. That’s kind of nice though because it’s gotten to the point that I’ve obviously done a lot so people know me, and now people will come to me and ask, ‘Hey, can you come do this for me? Hey, can you do that?’”

Andrew, a communication major, is looking to combine her studies with her lifestyle in her imminent professional career. She is looking into agriculture advertising before moving onto milk marketing and promotion specifically.

While she is unsure if she wants to work for one dairy company, such as Chobani, or go down “the nonbias route” and work for the ADADC to promote agriculture and nutrition, she will continue to share “how I grew up on a farm and what it means to be a farmer, how … being a farmer helps me educate people and that’s my passion and how [children] can find their passion and how they can use it to educate people, too.”

Invasion of Privacy: 'Techie' browses life of leisure, computes sustainability

Nik Varrone measures his life in computers. The walls of his office are a museum of ancient iMac monitors, and in the midst of conversation he pulls down an old computer from his wooden shelves to point out the lacking hard drive or a laughable design flaw. Varrone, a Computing & Information Technology technical support professional, even reveals his first computer upon request, a bulky Commodore VIC­20 from the early 1980s that his dad brought home from work. Varrone describes himself as “a tactile learner,” playing with computer programming toys and gadgets from a young age.

The evolution of Varrone’s computer collection parallels his own personal growth from college student and computer specialist to Apple Store Mac Genius to Geneseo’s resident desktop management enthusiast.

Desktop management is an innovation in tech support meant to make using computers simpler by allowing control from one central hub to prevent widespread glitches and issues across campus. Varrone’s current job at Geneseo promotes ease of use. It involves fixing computer issues for faculty and staff, particularly in Brodie Hall.

“I think it’s understanding the customer more and understanding the systems they use and just making it less annoying,” he said.

Surrounded by aluminum monitors and floppy disk drives, it’s hard to guess that Varrone is also an organic farmer.

He studied horticulture at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pa. before moving to Geneseo to start up his own farm. Varrone wakes up with or before the sun each morning and works on evenings and weekends to maintain the 19­acre farm with his wife.

Together they care for an enormous variety of animals and grow organic crops from rapinito popcorn and beefsteak tomatoes – all while raising two children, ages 3 and 5.

“There are times when you just have to buckle down and work until the sun goes down,” Varrone said. “You somehow mix that in with being a couple and being a parent and being a taxpayer and having a full time job.”

As chairman of the operations committee of Geneseo’s Environmental Sustainability Commission, sustainable initiatives are one of Varrone’s proudest accomplishments on the farm.Varrone recently purchased draft horses to assist with plowing crops. In his commitment to avoid fossil fuels, Varrone said the horses make short work of a task that once took him days to do by hand.

While Varrone added that he and his wife are “still kind of figuring [themselves] out” as farmers after growing up in Philadelphia, he said he hopes that the farm will someday indulge gourmet, sustainable tastes with a “fully diversified [and] biodynamic set of crops.”

Immersed in technology during the day and plant life in the evening, Varrone is the first to poke fun at his contradictory passions, but he also acknowledges their unmistakable balance.

“I have my really strong interest in tech and I want the fastest and best computer I can possibly get, and I prefer to plow with a horse, so it’s like these two really opposite things, but somehow I make them manage to work the same – in my head anyway,” he said.

Whether it’s through the pastoral splendor of his crops or improving the usability of computers across campus, Varrone strives to communicate ideas with a universal clarity: to make people’s lives easier.

Invasion of Privacy: Former clowning career inspires passion for teaching in current newspaper advisor, Ginni Jurkowski

Donning full clown makeup and a vibrant costume, Ginni Jurkowski stepped into the center of an open-air mall in Ithaca. She pulled out a puppet and began to perform her rehearsed comedy routine.

Despite her quiet demeanor, Jurkowski drew a huge crowd of spectators. The lecturer of communication was employed in financial services at the time.

A light bulb went on for her at that particular clown conference in the 1980s, one of many she has attended. The instructor told Jurkowski that her puppet performance was successful because “'you didn't force yourself on people. You allowed people to have an interest and come to you,'” according to Jurkowski.

And with that she discovered new connections between entertaining people as a clown and teaching them new information.

“I'm a very introverted person, and I do not like being in front of people. But when I put on that clown makeup, when I put on the character, I could perform in front of other people,” she said. “That's when I realized that I could teach. That even though I don't prefer being in front of people for a period of time, when I have the knowledge that other people want, I definitely can.”

Jurkowski's true passion for learning and communicating with others is evident in her 20-year career as an educator and even as a nontraditional college student. Jurkowski attended college years after most students, gaining about 15 years of work experience in financial services and public relations beforehand. After receiving her undergraduate degree at St. John Fisher College, she immediately pursued her master's degree in communication from SUNY Brockport.

Jurkowski has taught at Geneseo for 15 years. She also teaches classes at St. John Fisher and Brockport. Although her first specialty was business, she is a currently spearheading online class format in public relations, online journalism and media writing.

“Radio, television, print, online and public relations are different ways of getting your messages out,” she said. “It's not that different from clowning. Whether you're actively communicating orally or you're communicating physically, it's the same type of thing.”

In addition to clowning professionally at parties and parades across the country, Jurkowski also started a group of puppeteers called Kids on the Block Rochester as a public relations move for a bank she was working for. The group has been performing informational skits on sensitive topics such as abuse and drugs for children for the past 30 years.

Jurkowski's role at the start of the company was to hire puppeteers, fundraise and locate the puppets, pulling from her group of clowning friends and local talent to staff the troupe. One of the original puppeteers is still with the nonprofit organization 30 years later.

The program has been so effective, Jurkowski said, that she had to bring counselors on board to assist children with serious issues that they confessed to the puppets in letters after the performances.

While Kids on the Block Rochester will have its final performance in early November, Jurkowski said the experience taught her the true reach of public relations.

“What started out as something that I was doing public relations for a financial services agency impacted people that weren't customers, weren't potential clients, but also shared something that was so important for us,” she said.

Jurkowski is constantly learning, journeying to conferences, classes and networking events across the country to cultivate her nearly endless list of personal hobbies and interests. It includes web journalism and public relations, cake decorating, candy making, motorcycles, dance classes, volunteer work, card making, board games and formal teas.

She goes through hobbies with a “kiss and go” approach, never learning the same thing twice or for too long. Learning for the sake of learning is her passion.

Jurkowski values these pursuits because of the things she takes away from communicating with others that she can carry into her own life.

“I think that perhaps we need to put learning on a pedestal, and we all need to strive for that whether we're an instructor or a student,” she said.

Invasion of Privacy: Published illustrator Carly Fowler reflects upon studio art program

As a student pursuing a degree from a department that will soon cease to exist, senior Carly Fowler made sure to expand her art career as early as possible and is now an accomplished children's book illustrator. An art history and studio art double major, Fowler painted the illustrations for The Adventures of Patch the Puffin and Patch Puffin and the Hatchlings by Brigid O'Connor, the latter set to be released in November, when she will start work on the third piece of the series.

It started after Fowler contacted the storyboard artist for The Hobbit, who told her that all storyboard artists begin as illustrators. Since then, Fowler said, “The ball just keeps rolling.”

Fowler works with a storyboard script and collaborates with O'Connor to develop a vision for the story, with each page taking around six hours.

Patch's plot reflects its title: Patch and his playful animal friends find adventures on his island home. Fowler's watercolor techniques, which she developed during her time at Geneseo, beautifully display the story's oceanside scenes.

Previously Fowler only used charcoal as a medium, but she points to the well-rounded studio art program that has helped her to hone in on her personality as an artist that she rediscovers every day.

“It's taken four years for me to develop a style,” she said, jokingly adding, “I'm just now at the point where I don't want to burn everything that I make.”

Because the program asks that students try everything from photography to 3-D design, Fowler has a stronger sense of her goal as an artist than she did when she first began at Geneseo.

“I definitely identify as a contemporary artist because I work as a feminist and a surrealist, and I do a lot with gender equality,” she said. This semester, Fowler is working on a directed study; the subject of her work is her rabbit from home and how she can apply it to settings that can be a social commentary.

“If I'm not painting, drawing, creating or doodling something, I don't feel like a person anymore. For me, it's never been a choice,” she said. “If I don't do it, I don't feel right.”

Fowler creates masterpieces and strengthens her passion with the reminder that the studio art program will be gone in one year, something that she reflects upon often. When the school announced the cut during her freshman year, Fowler said that she was both confused and angry.

“That was chaotic, because I got here and they cut it. It was stressful,” she said, adding that many people told her to discontinue her degree. “They told me, 'Don't complete the major; you're not going to finish on time,' but I find that the more people tell me not to do something, the more I'm going to show them that I can.”

Within the art department, Fowler has grown close with instructors and students alike; she said that what upsets her most is the job losses that her instructors may incur in the spring.

“They all know so much,” she said. “And I've learned and grown and had this opportunity placed in my lap because of these people, and they're just going to be gone next year; that's just heartbreaking to me.”

Upon graduation, Fowler is hopeful to continue illustrating, adding that, “The great thing about being an illustrator is that you don't have to settle; you can be anywhere you want.”