News Archive

The State University of New York at Geneseo has invited 101 students into the college’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa this spring, prompted by their recent election by the college’s faculty. Phi Beta Kappa is the nation’s oldest and most widely known academic honor society.

The U.S. Green Building Council recently awarded Red Jacket Dining Complex with a Gold certification in Leadership Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for its green-minded design, construction and operations. 

Rachel Britton ’18 has won a 2020–21 U.S. Student Fulbright/Icelandic Ministry of Education and Culture Award. She will study modern Icelandic at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies at the University of Iceland in Reykjavík.

The InSight mission to Mars has completed its first Earth year of observations. The results were published as a set of six papers in Nature journals. The papers show that Mars is seismically active and reveal information about its complex atmosphere, magnetic field and geology. SUNY Geneseo Assistant Professor Nicholas Warner is a co-author on two of the papers that detail the discovery of quakes on Mars—marsquakes—and describe the alien landscape at the landing site.

The American chestnut tree was made functionally extinct by an invasive blight fungus in the early 1900s. Work is currently underway to develop a blight-resistant variety through breeding and genetic engineering. With the potential reintroduction of American chestnut in the Eastern United States, SUNY Geneseo assistant professor of geography Stephen Tulowiecki, mapped the historical location of chestnut using land surveyors from 1797–1799. His research appears in the journal <em>Forest Ecology and Management<em/>.

SUNY Geneseo has updated and expanded its existing gender-neutral language guide to include additional guidelines for writing about Abilities and Disabilities and Ethnic and Racial Designations as well as Gender, Sex, and Sexuality. The new Inclusive Language Guide is grounded in academically regarded sources such as The Chicago Manual of Style and reflects the style guidelines of peer universities and best practices for inclusive writing.

SUNY Geneseo ranked No. 8 among medium-sized schools on the agency’s list of top 25 volunteer-producing colleges and universities in 2020. For the past six years, Geneseo has consistently ranked within the top 25 medium-sized schools. This year marks the highest ranking for the College since entering the ranks in 2014. There are 25 alums currently volunteering in countries around the world.

Thanks to funding from the State University of New York’s Capital Program, which is financed by the State of New York, SUNY Geneseo is moving forward with a $35 million renovation of Milne Library. The fully renovated library is expected to open during the 2024–25 academic year.

For the third time in the college’s history and the third consecutive year, SUNY Geneseo has been named a Top Producer of U.S. Student Fulbright awards, the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs announced in its annual article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

SUNY Geneseo’s Department of Theatre and Dance Studies presents the Geneseo Dance Ensemble in Dancing on the Edge featuring new works by faculty and guest artists. The program will be presented in the Alice Austin Theatre on February 27–29 at 7:30 p.m., and March 1 at 2 p.m. The performances are open to the public and free parking is available. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at the Student Association Ticket Office or online at bbo.geneseo.edu.

SUNY Geneseo President Denise A. Battles and her spouse, Michael Mills, director of national fellowships and scholarships, have created a $32,000 endowment to support student research.

Joyce Wechsler, associate professor emerita of education, has made an endowment gift to provide financial support for Geneseo students who participate in co-curricular activities.

SUNY Geneseo President Denise A. Battles is pleased to announce that Ellen Leverich ’90 has been named vice president for college advancement and executive director of the Geneseo Foundation.

The 17th century proverb "My son is my son till he gets him a wife, but my daughter's my daughter all the days of her life," still rings true according to a recent study by SUNY Geneseo professor of communication Meredith Harrigan and her coauthor, assistant professor of business communication Allison Alford, of Baylor University.

Michael Suchyna ’21, a business administration major from Williamsville, NY, has won a Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship to spend Spring 2020 studying at the KEDGE Business School in Marseilles, France.

Holiday-season donation drives are underway across campus, with the hosting departments and programs collecting food, gifts, and other goods for families and individuals who are in need in our region.

SUNY Geneseo has received a SUNY's PRODiG initiative grant to help support four newly hired faculty members at Geneseo. The initiative was launched in March by Gov. Cuomo to increase the representation of historically underrepresented faculty and women faculty of all races in STEM fields throughout SUNY.

The State University of New York Board of Trustees has appointed Harry Howe, a professor of accounting in SUNY Geneseo's School of Business, to a distinguished teaching professorship. The distinguished rank recognizes and honors the superior mastery of teaching, outstanding service to students and commitment to their ongoing intellectual growth.

The Department of Anthropology at SUNY Geneseo is introducing a new major for undergraduate students interested in the social determinants of disease and health. The sociomedical sciences major examines the correlation between trends in health and its social causes, including social inequality and structural inequities.

SUNY Geneseo was honored recently by the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge for achieving a student voting rate between 30 and 39 percent in the 2018 midterm elections. The Challenge recognizes colleges and universities committed to increasing college student voting rates.

SUNY Geneseo’s Department of Theatre and Dance Studies presents the Geneseo Dance Ensemble in Dancing to Defy Limits. The program will be presented in the Alice Austin Theatre, William A. Brodie Hall, on the Geneseo campus on November 21–23 at 7:30 p.m. and November 24 at 2 p.m. The performances are open to the public and free parking is available. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at the Student Association Ticket Office or online at bbo.geneseo.edu.

SUNY Geneseo has launched Geneseo Points of Support (GPS), a program that helps students address critical problems by providing them with guides who assist with navigating unfamiliar institutional processes. Spurred by the college’s committed retention efforts, the program is especially geared toward students who lack experience or support in understanding how colleges and college offices work.

Assistant Professor Jason Ozubko runs the Human Cognition and Memory Lab at SUNY Geneseo. Ozubko, a faculty member in the Department of Psychology, was recently awarded a grant from the National Institute on Neurological Disorders and Stroke, a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to study spatial memory using Google Street View. The project, which is aided by undergraduate researchers, is in its second year.

SUNY Geneseo student Karilyn Nieves ’20 was one of 42 students in SUNY’s Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) to receive the inaugural Norman R. McConney Jr. Award for Student Excellence. The award recognizes outstanding EOP students for their academic achievements.

The SUNY Geneseo Alumni Association (SGAA) and the Geneseo Foundation, Inc., presented their top awards for service and philanthropy on October 18, during Geneseo President Denise A. Battles’ annual donor recognition gala. The 2019 Distinguished Service Award went to Frank L. Vafier ’74, and the foundation’s Philanthropic Leadership Award went to Larry Scoville.