Week of March 7, 2016

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The next Sharing Stories forum will be March 22 in IT 225 at 2:30 p.m. Speakers: Bill Zogby, Cheryl Plescia, and Bob

Gould

Sharing Stories

Women’s advancement in the cor-porate and professional workplace has taken significant strides over the last century, however, research demonstrates that despite an increased presence of female employees in mid-management

positions, executive positions continue to be male-dominated.

To shine some light on this issue, the Col-lege hosted the Hon-orable Bernadette T. Clark, New York State Supreme Court Justice in the 5th Judicial Dis-trict of New York, for a

lecture and open forum workshop on the Utica Campus. The workshop, “Women in Power,” explored the role that author-ity, power, education, discrimination, sexism, and female objectification play in the lives of professional women.

It is a known fact that women are un-derrepresented in areas of governance, directorship, and executive leadership. The Hon. Clark broke through this “glass ceiling” to become the first woman to be appointed as First Assistant District Attorney for Oneida County (2001-2005) and be elected Family Court Judge in Oneida County. During her tenure in the DA’s office, she established and served as Chief of the Oneida County Special Victims Unit prosecuting the perpetrators of violent crimes against women, chil-dren, and the elderly.

“We need to ensure equal pay for equal work. Women earn 84 cents for every $1 men earn. Our legislation would prohibit employees from paying disparate amounts for the same job due to gender,” state NY Senator Joseph Griffo, in a news release on women’s equality. “We also shouldn’t let employers discriminate against women who have children or are pregnant. If you’re good enough for the

job or the promotion, employers should not factor in your family status.”

These were some of the topics put out to the audience by Hon. Clark, who received her bachelor’s degree from St. Mary’s College of Notre Dame in 1974, Cum Laude, and her Juris Doctor from Syracuse University School of Law in 1989, Magna Cum Laude. She was ad-mitted to the New York State Bar, Appel-late Division, Fourth Department in 1990.

The Hon. Clark spoke about the pro-cess of becoming educated in the law, as well as the struggles she faced because of her gender and chosen professional goals and aspirations. She gave an intimate, first-hand account of some of the challenges she faced being a wife, mother, student, and attorney while run-ning her election campaign.

A lifelong resident of Oneida County, she was the first woman elected to rep-resent Oneida County in the New York State Supreme Court. She answered scores of student questions, and was met with a standing ovation from the crowd. Her message was one of perse-

verance, persistence, and motivation - citing tenacity as the determining factor in personal success.

The workshops raised the corporate, social, and economic benefits to allow-ing women to fairly advance to positions of power through the removal of barriers that is vital to the strength of companies, social networks, and jurisdictions.

Workshop shines light on barriers women face in corporate America

Hon. Clark

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For the past decade, Rich Pucine has been wearing many hats. As the Associate Director of Academic Systems, he has his hands full with keeping the programs running without a hic-cup on the academic side of the College. His dedication and hard work was recognized earlier this semester for 10 years of services during a ceremony in the Office of the Vice President for Learning and Academic Affairs (VPLAA).

A native of Utica, Pucine is responsible for overseeing program development through the College, Board of Trustees, SUNY, and SED processes. His duties require him to sit on many committees at the College, which include the College-Wide Curriculum Committee, College Senate, College Senate Advisory Board, Strategic Planning Committee, and the Aca-demic Policies and Standards Committee, just to name a few.

His other duties require him to be available to assist the VP-LAA and academic center deans in the planning, development, and justification of the annual budget.

He also coordinates the oversight and analysis of records, statistics and other data related to the learning and academic affairs area, tracks and submits all curricular information for addition to the catalog, supervises the creation of the academic schedule, and oversees classroom and faculty furniture re-placement.

On the state level, he works as the Liaison with SUNY Ad-ministration on submission of all courses for General Education status. In the classroom, he teaches Computers and Society (IS101), Computer Applications and Concepts 2 (IS102), and College Seminar (ED100).

Other committees he serves on includes Administrative Pro-cess Review and Oversight Committee, President’s Think Tank, Behavioral Emergency Response Team, DegreeWorks Imple-

Honoring Employees for Years of Service

mentation Team, Calendar Committee, and countless search committees.

With this busy schedule, as a form of stress relief and en-joyment, Pucine rides his bicycle into work when the weather permits and loves playing sports outside of work. A huge sports enthusiast, he has traveled the country on his vacations to at-tend baseball games in all the major league stadiums.

SUNY Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher this week highlighted SUNY programs and resources as educators across the country recognize Open Education Week 2016 (March 7-11) in an effort to raise awareness about free and open educa-tional opportunities for students.

“Like our colleagues in higher educa-tion across the country, SUNY continues to expand its open education offer-ings and support the many faculty who contribute to our growth by developing free or low-cost textbooks and learning materials for students,” said Chancellor Zimpher.

In addition to what is available by individual campus, Open Education Re-sources include:

Open SUNY Textbooks, an open ac-cess textbook publishing initiative. To date, 14 textbooks have been published and 12 more are in-process. In the past year, these have been downloaded more than 72,000 times.

Open SUNY MOOCs, which provide free, global access to Massive Open

Online Courses (MOOCs) developed by SUNY colleges and universities. SUNY now offers 19 MOOCs, covering topics such as non-profits, metaliteracy, elearn-ing, and computational arts.

Two Applied Learning Courses cre-ated through a multi-campus effort. The courses are SUNY Professional Skills Career Launch for All Majors and SUNY Professional Skills Career Launch for Engineers.

Student and faculty leaders at SUNY are highlighting the importance of pro-viding free textbooks, citing a Buffalo State College study, which found that 75 percent of students do not purchase required textbooks because they can-not afford them, and that 25 percent of students have withdrawn from a course due to textbook costs.

“The FCCC supports community col-lege faculty in their pursuit and selection of high quality, low-cost digital instruc-tional materials for our students’ benefit,” said Nina Tamrowski, president of the SUNY Faculty Council of Community

Colleges. “We are committed to student success in many different ways, and open educational resources—with appro-priate supports for faculty and access for students—may be one of many ways that faculty can support completion.”

SUNY Chancellor highlights free resourcesImportance of free and low-cost textbooks emphasize

Big things come in small packages. This will be apparent when MVCC holds its annual NanoDays, a nationwide festival of educational programs about nanoscale science and engineering, on Friday and Saturday, April 1-2.

NanoDays engages the general public of all ages in learning about this field of science, which holds the promise of developing revolutionary materials and technologies.

Volunteers are needed to staff exhibit tables. No prior nano knowledge re-quired. If interested, contact Shahida Dar at sdar@mvcc.edu.

Volunteers sought for NanoDays

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Joann DeTraglia, assistant professor of Hospitality Pro-grams, recently returned from the 2016 ServSafe® Food Protection Manager meeting in Chicago, where

she worked on ServSafe training and testing.

This event is held through the Na-tional Restaurant Association (NRA), which is the national leader in ServSafe training and testing program. The NRA selected DeTraglia as a food service expert for the 2016 event, and DeTraglia qualified for both the Food Handlers and Manager Job Task Analyses groups of experts.

DeTraglia collaborated with other instructors and industry profes-sionals on the revision of the ServSafe certification exam and train-ing materials. She had the opportunity to meet and work with other

food service experts in the country. The 2016 ServSafe meeting was a huge success, and DeTraglia’s work placed MVCC on the list of contributors to the ServSafe exams and training.

ServSafe is accredited by the American National Standards Institute and the Conference for Food Protection, and it provides educational resources, training, and certification exams in food safety. ServSafe certificates are accepted by more nation-al, state, and local authorities than any other food certification and are recognized by health departments all across the country.

Any foodservice establishment in NYS must have a certified ServSafe employee on the premises during operational hours.

DeTraglia

DeTraglia completes safety training for the kitchen labs

Up in the sky. It’s a bird! No, a plane! It’s a drone.

There will be quite a few more sightings of drones over the MVCC campuses in the coming months as the College was granted a Section 333 Exemption to fly Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) by the Fed-eral Aviation Administration, paving the way for broad educational and commercial UAS operations.

This exemption is required to fly any unmanned aerial vehicle for commercial purposes under current FAA regulations within the National Airspace System. This exemption will allow MVCC faculty and staff to fly UAS for the purposes of conduct-ing aerial photography, videography, inspections, surveying, closed-set motion picture filming, and search and rescue operations. With this au-thorization, MVCC faculty and stu-dents will be able to greatly enhance their research and studies in a wide range of courses and activities.

The Section 333 Exemption pro-cess provides operators who wish to pursue safe and legal entry into the national airspace system a competi-tive advantage in the UAS mar-ketplace, thus discouraging illegal operations and improving safety.

To learn more regarding the exemption and UAS activities in the near future, contact Seyed Akhavi, Dean of the STEM Center, at 792.5366 or sakhavi@mvcc.edu.

MVCC gets exemption to fly UAS

MVCC LENDS A HELPING HAND – The Mohawk Valley Community College employees donated $1,250 to the House of the Good Shepherd earlier this month. The employees raised this money by holding a basket raffle (34 offices and departments donated gift baskets for this event) during the Celebration of Success for the fall semester. Presenting the check is MVCC Vice President for Administrative Services Tom Squires to Bob Roberts, CEO of the House of the Good Shepherd.

The New York Community Colleges Association of Presidents (NYCCAP) gained a strong ally last month as the New York State Association of Counties (NYSAC) has placed a call to Albany for an increase of $285 per full time equivalent (FTE) for community colleges in the 2016-17 State Budget.

“Community colleges are the most effective economic and community development solution in the state, and we need to secure our ability to serve the educational needs of our students, both those choosing to attend after high school and

adults returning to school for new job skills and careers,” said MVCC President Randall J. VanWagoner, who is also president of the Association of Community College Presidents.

N.Y. community colleges are funded through a three-way part-nership: the state, the student, and the sponsor county. Tradition-ally, this was intended to be an equal partnership. That fund-ing formula has shifted considerably since the 1970s. Today’s students now fund 43 percent of community college operations while the state picks up less than 25 percent of those costs.

Counties back community colleges on state aid