Week of September 19, 2016

1 Communitas

Nearly three years ago, the College and regional foundations joined forces to take a leap of faith in the creation of the thIN-Cubator, a business incubator and student accelerator located in the Bagg’s Square District of Utica.

The goal was to create an organization to provide people, programs, and a place to accelerate the ideas of entrepreneurs. Modeled after other successful accelerators, the thINCubator has paid off in spades for community groups, individuals, and teams of student teams to refine and pitch their business ideas.

The brainchild of Frank DuRoss, Vice President for Community Development and Executive Director of the MVCC Foundation, the thINCubator become the model of success within the region. DuRoss’ efforts and hard work on this project have not gone unnoticed as he was presented the 2016 Community Catalyst Award this past weekend during the Venture Ecosystem Awards ceremony held at the Turning Stone Resort and Casino.

This event was held in conjunction with the Second Annual Upstate Unleashed Conference, hosted by the Upstate Venture Connect (UVC). More than 300 entrepreneurs, founders, men-tors and investors from the startup community were in atten-dance from communities such as Albany, Buffalo, Binghamton, Syracuse, Rochester and the Hudson Valley.

DuRoss was among an elite group of nominees with one company and four ecosystem leaders receiving awards for their achievements from more than 100 nominees.

“This was a great honor on behalf of the College and the community organizations who believed in the vision and had the foresight to see how this will help students and the region as a whole,” said DuRoss. “Our role is to help students to succeed and it is very rewarding to see our students who have a dream to ac-tually start their new business venture with a solid business plan.”

DuRoss has been a proven leader with an established track record in change-management and start-up strategies. His functional competencies include outstanding skills in business development, sales and marketing, accounting and finance, public and private capital funding, human resource manage-ment, real-estate development, environmental management, and higher educational settings.

The Community Catalyst Award recognizes individuals who organize programs to bring together diverse startup ecosystem players in a local community and/or increase the amount of capi-tal and number of active early stage investors in that community.

Along with his work at the College, DuRoss is the co-founder of the Utica Comets and the driving force behind relocating this American Hockey League affiliate of the Vancouver Canucks to Utica, an effort that has revitalized the Mohawk Valley. In

his role at MVCC, he has been instrumental in reaching out to community stakeholders and campaign donors, which has en-abled MVCC to award more than $327,000 annually in scholar-ships to more than 550 students.

To date, the thINCubator has hosted 47 student teams from MVCC, SUNY Polytechnic Institute, Utica College, and Hamil-ton College to help them hammer out possible business plans. There have also been 40 community-based teams and indi-viduals who have benefited from the services during the four 14-week cohorts held at the downtown facility.

Due to the success of the thINCubator, it recently relocated to a larger building in Bagg’s Square located at 326 Broad St. This 8,500-square-foot space features open space, conference rooms, mobile stations, production space, along with a 3D printer, iMacs and PCs, and seating for a 100 people. Under the leadership of Program Director Ryan Miller, the new space allows for more op-portunity, and is really about helping people grow.

“The reasoning behind that is if we put creative people to-gether that are working on different things, inevitably there are going to be some creative collisions, and new ideas and new businesses will start out of that,” said Miller. “So this really acts as a catalyst for bringing people together, through the space or through the programs. And hopefully those connections will result in a lot of new businesses here.”

DuRoss credits Miller, along with added help from Stacey Smith and John Liddy, for the success of the thINCubator. There are seven local business which have grown out of the fostering programs offered at the thINCubator.

DuRoss honored for work with launch of thINCubator

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Honoring Employees for Years of Service

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to rhaubert@mvcc.edu

Most colleges and universities in Central New York of-fer one form or another of a criminal justice degree pro-gram. But the program at MVCC can easily be argued as the best in the region.

This claim can be made due to the dedication and hard work performed by Marianne Buttenschon, Ed.D., over the past 16 years. Her commitment to the success of these programs and the students was recognized this past summer as she celebrated 15 years.

But Dr. Buttenschon’s story goes much deeper. During her time as the Dean for the Center of Social Sciences, Business, and Information Science, she used her connections within the community to develop and implement many of the programs which have enabled MVCC graduates to find work.

She blazed the trail for MVCC to create the Law Enforcement certificate and degree programs along with offering MVCC students a different avenue in the field of criminal justice with an Associate of Science.

On the heels of offering the Fire Hawks Scholarship for volunteer firefighters, Dr. Buttenschon also worked on MVCC offering a Fire Protection Technology degree as well as revised the curriculum for the EMS Para-medic degree to be more in line with modern methods and technology.

She also helped implement the College’s Public Policy degree and worked with the faculty on developing the Cybersecurity degree. She also played a role in launching the Entrepreneurship degree and certificate programs.

Along with her time as a full-time instructor and administrator, Dr. Buttenschon worked 10 years as an adjunct in the areas of Political Science, Sociology, and Criminal Justice.

Prior to being named the Dean of the Center of Social Sciences, Business, and Information Sciences, she was the

Department Head of Social Sciences and Criminal Justice for eight years. In her latest role, she is the Dean of the Institute of Emergency Preparedness.

She is responsible for working with members of the college-wide community to create and promote course and program development, community and academic partnerships, and supporting the faculty and staff in their innovative thinking that makes MVCC the best community college.

Constitution Day goes live on Talk of the TownThere was a lot of talking occurring on the Utica Campus on

Thursday as the MVCC hosted Roser Communication’s Talk of the Town radio show as part of the celebration for Constitution Day.

The radio broadcast was held on the Alumni College Center’s stage in the Commons, where students were given the chance to ask questions about the government, politics and other top-ics. The hosts of WUTQ’s Talk of the Town - Dave Coombs, Beth Coombs, and Jason Aiello – kept the conversation lively with guests Oneida County District Attorney Scott McNamara and New York State Assemblyman Anthony Brindisi fielding questions from the audience of students.

Also providing legal insight was local lawyer Mark Wolber and MVCC adjunct instructor Bob Cardillo who teaches public policy.

Constitution Day was established to recognize the adoption of the Constitution and those who have become U.S. citizens. It is slated for Sept. 17, which falls on this weekend. Because of this, schools and other institutions observe the holiday during the week.

This event was organized by Cardillo, Gail Warchol, and Marianne Buttenschon. This was a DGV event. MVCC has hon-ored Constitution Day annually since 2005 with various events with the support of public policy students.

THE TALK - MVCC hosted Roser Communication’s Talk of the Town radio show as part of the celebration for Constitution Day. Seen here are Bob Cardillo, New York State Assemblyman Anthony Brindisi, and local lawyer Mark Wolber.

The small Unmanned Aerial Systems program is running at full speed.

Recently two faculty members, Pro-fessor Bill Judycki and Professor Brian Judycki completed a three-day train-ing session using an unmanned fixed wing mapping aircraft. This aircraft was donated to MVCC by the same industry that provided the equipment for the state-of-the-art flight simulation lab used in the UAS degree program. Refer to: http://metavr.com/casestudies/MVCC.html

The aircraft was designed and pat-ented by two young entrepreneurs and recent Embry-Riddle graduates. The overall cost of the aircraft with sensors is around $15,000.

This aircraft has a wing spread of six feet and cruises at 34 knots. It has a three-hour flight endurance and is capable of mapping 1.2 square miles. The aircraft flies autonomously through programmed mission planning software and is hand launched. It uses a deep-stall approach for landing.

For further information on the aircraft and its landing approach, refer to www.swiftradioplanes.com.

The first day of training involved aircraft pre-flight checks, as well as operating and safety procedures. The second day of training focused on creating autono-mous flight missions and practice land-ings. Bill’s responsibilities included flight preparation, pilot in command controls and landings. Brian’s responsibilities included processing imagery, sensor cali-bration and mission planning. A minimum of two pilots are required for any mission with this aircraft.

The last day was a perfect weather day, and the objective of flying and map-ping the entire 120 acre MVCC campus

using a high resolution 24 mega-pixel camera was completed in a mere 15 minutes.

Upon completion of the flight, the pro-cess of post-processing the data began. This included stitching together and cre-ating point clouds from the 624 images taken. The final product produced was a digital elevation model and an ortho-photo mosaic.

It took seven hours of processing to complete the task. The final image is around eight gigabytes in size. The first person that was notified of this major ac-complishment was Executive Director for

Public Safety, David Amico. Impressed by the very high resolution of this map, Chief Amico intends on sharing it with surrounding police and other public agen-cies as part of an emergency response initiative.

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Judycki professors make sure sUAS program is flying high

LET IT FLY - Recently Professors Bill Judycki and Brian Judycki completed a three-day training ses-sion for small Unmanned Aerial Systems. Above, Bill Judycki launches the aircraft. Right, they check the flight controls.

The Administrative Assistant students went to Utica National Insurance in New Hartford on Wednesday, Sept. 21, to get a behind-the-scenes look at the operations of a major coorpera-tion in the Mohawk Valley.

During the introduction, the students were given a quick his-tory of the company by President and CEO of Utica National

Students get a peak behind the curtainAdministrative Assistant students tour Utica National

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New York State Department of Health approached Mohawk Valley YouthBuild to create and construct a “green cart” that could be used as a kiosk style platform for selling healthy snacks to low-income areas. The intended target area for selling these healthy fruits was the Levitt Series Concerts, which began July 4. YouthBuild designed two carts in preparation for July Fourth.

As the holiday drew near, NYS Depart-ment of Health approached YouthBuild again to inquire about YouthBuild’s ability to staff these carts at the concerts on Monday nights. Since the service of these carts falls perfectly under our AmeriCorps service hours, the college felt that this opportunity to teach our participants “first job” skills as well as earn AmeriCorps service hours was too big to pass up.

As an added bonus to this partner-ship, the Health Research Incorporated group will be giving YouthBuild $1,000 for research gained while working these carts. The AmeriCorps members have been tasked with the job of finding weekly deals on seasonal fresh foods, washing and packaging, and overall promotion and sales of the produce. Cathe was kind enough to provide us with our first weeks’ produce cost, and it is our task to make enough money to buy more produce each consecutive week.

All collected information (including: what produce bought, how much we sold, and what was our total profit each night) will be turned over to the Health Research Incor-porated at the end of the 10-week “experiement.”

This partnership has allowed our participants to have real world experience in cus-tomer service, cashier related experience, accountability and responsibility.

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The women’s tennis team is off to an outstanding start with a 4-1 record heading into the weekend.

Leading the path for the Hawks this season has been Kim Roberts. Her performance this week has earned her the honor of MVCC Athlete of the week. Roberts is undefeated as the No. 1 singles and this past week she out-dueled her opponents by a com-bined score of 24-4.

The freshman Business Management major is a graduate of Ballston Spa High School.

Athlete of the Week

Roberts

Green Cart Project partners withBrownfield Project

Rich Creedon. Utica National has been in business for over 100 years and during which time the role of the administrative assistant has changed.

“You need a core skill set, good communication skills and the ability for accurate writing and verbal skills,” said Creedon. “You must have good customer skills in high stress situations, listen and take good notes, and be calm and be professional on the phone at all times.”

He summed up his talk by telling the students they must stay calm and resolve problems with answering the phone.

Human Resources Analyst Lindsey M. Mandia led the group on its tour to the of-fices of payroll, benefits, recruitment, and human services.

MVCC alum Denise Romanow, the human resource executive assistant, met with the students to give them insight of what working in a corporation environ-ment is like. Romanow, a graduate from MVCC’s former Secretarial Science program, told her story of how she began in the typing pool 22 years ago, filled in for secretaries on the executive floor, and has been a floater at times.

She now is in the reception area in Human Resources where she helps with payroll, benefits, recruitment, family leave, disability, support on the execu-tive’s calendar, setup meetings, and much more. Romanow advised the students to learn as much as you can on any job, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Mandia told the group on how to apply for a job at Utica National Insurance, to upload resumes and letter of application on the company website. She showed the group the many benefits of working at the company — health and life insurance, retirements, and 401 (k) profit sharing and savings program.

“When you write your resume, you must sell yourself. Have your skills and technology on your resume. The resume must be professional with contact infor-mation on it — phone number and ad-dress should be correct,” said Mandia.

She went on to suggest to make sure the resume is appealing to the eye and to network through online services such as LinkedIn.

Following the field trip, the students were treated to a lunch at Sumo’s Restaurant. They students learned a lot about Utica National Insurance and what great opportunities there are at the company. This field trip was sponsored by Student Congress.

Continued from Page 3Utica National tour