The New Paltz Loop provides free transportation around the Town and Village of New Paltz to students, faculty and staff (who show a college ID). Bus service is provided by two Ulster County Area Transit (UCAT) buses (such as the one seen here).

Connecting the campus and local communities just got a little easier.

The Student Association, college staff and local government worked together to create a free, New Paltz bus loop. Bus service began on Dec. 29. The schedule runs 7:30 a.m.-10 p.m., Monday through Friday. A full schedule will be available at www.co.ulster.ny.us/ucat.

“It is great to see this many entities come together, all working on a project that alone none of us thought we could achieve,” said Ben Olsen ‘09 (Economics, Finance), president of the Student Association.

Bus stops on campus are at Route 32 near the Haggerty Administration Building circle; Huguenot St.; the Student Health Center; and at the Esopus and Lenape residence halls. Stops off campus include: the Trailways bus terminal on Main St.; Shoprite Plaza on Route 299; Stop and Shop Supermarket on Route 299; and New Paltz BOCES.

Students, faculty and staff with a valid college ID can ride for free. Cynthia Ruiz, director of the Ulster County Area Transit (UCAT), said the Student Association subsidizes all student rides and college faculty and staff also receive subsidized fares. The service is being funded by Ulster County, the Village of New Paltz and the Town of New Paltz; the college is paying for gas.

Ulster County Executive Mike Hein said he is very happy about the service, which will benefit the college and the whole New Paltz community.

“This is an example of how the county, towns and the colleges can work together to support the community with shared resources,” he said.

Olsen said he initially got the idea when, as he was running for Student Association president in 2007, he learned that among the key issues students wanted improved on campus was transportation to the surrounding community. Together, with former Student Association president Brian Gold ‘08 (International Relations), Olsen began researching how to acquire bus service for students.

Once he found out that the local community was interested, Olsen connected with John Shupe, assistant vice president for facilities management, and Julie Majak, director of administrative services, to find a company to work with. The group decided to work with UCAT.

Shupe also said he admires the forward-thinking approaches of Olsen and Gold. “The students initiated the project. We just helped to move it along,” he said.

Ruiz was equally impressed. “His (Olsen’s) dedication to the project and his proactive approach to working with the Town of New Paltz and with Ulster County is remarkable,” said Ruiz.

A ribbon cutting ceremony was held on Jan. 9 for members of the campus and local communities. The project is a collaborative project spearheaded by the SUNY New Paltz Student Association under the leadership of Student President Ben Olsen and former Student Association President Brian Gold; SUNY New Paltz; the Town of New Paltz; the New York State DOT and the Ulster County Area Transit (a service of Ulster County). An on-campus event will be held in February.

A ribbon cutting ceremony was held on Jan. 9 at the New Paltz Town Hall with representatives from the college; town, village and county officials; and members of the public. An on-campus ceremony is planned for early February.

Sara Pasti is the new Neil C. Trager Director of the Samuel Dorksy Museum of Art on campus. It is the college’s first endowed position. Photo submitted

Sara Pasti has been appointed the Neil C. Trager Director of the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art. Pasti, who has served as interim deputy director of the museum since January 2008, succeeds founding director, Neil Trager, who retired in August 2008 after 14 years with the college.

Pasti said working in an interim capacity allowed her to become familiar with both the museum and the campus. “I am both thrilled and privileged to be appointed director of the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art,” she said. “I very much liked what I saw here, as well as the potential for making things happen in the future.”

As a former arts administrator and a community development consultant, Pasti has worked on start-up projects, institutional and capital project management, and capital and annual fund development. She has worked with such organizations as the Newburgh Institute for the Arts and Ideas; LandAir Project Resources; the Dutchess County Arts Council; the Bearsville Theater; and the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art.

Pasti earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., and a Master of Fine Art in Painting and Printmaking from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick.

For more information, visit www.newpaltz.edu/museum.

The Career Resource Center’s front doors on the first floor of the Humanities Building. The center’s staff begins moving to its new location this week.

In an effort to bring student advising and career support to the center of campus, the Career Resource Center is moving from the Haggerty Administration Building to the Humanities Building, beginning Jan. 14.

Tonda Highley, associate dean of student advising and director of the Career Resource Center, is excited about moving to the heart of campus. “We’ve been interested in finding a more accessible space for students,” said Highley.

The major highlight of the new location is that it is closer to classrooms and faculty offices and is now across the concourse from the Academic Advising Center (in the Wooster Science Building), an office that the Career Resource Center works closely with in preparing students for meaningful careers after New Paltz.

The renovation of rooms 105, 105A and 105C in the Humanities Building will provide the center with seven new offices, a waiting area, a reception area, interview rooms and a conference room. The center, which is also the training site for students completing practicums in the Mental Health Counseling Program, will have additional space to carry out training. The center will also be working with Instructional Media Services to install digital signage outside of the new location to announce the center’s programming and events.

The waiting area (left) and an office (right) in Career Resource Center in the Humanities Building.

Highley said the move has allowed the department to continue enhancing its services towards their new focus established at the beginning of 2008. “We have shifted our department’s focus towards services to support students seeking internships and post-graduate employment opportunities,” said Highley.

For more information on the Career Resource Center, visit www.newpaltz.edu/careers.

Hybrid vehicles arrive on campus

Facilities Management recently purchased two 2009 Nissan Altima hybrid vehicles, which are being used by Facilities Design and Construction staff, including architects and project managers.

Facilities Design and Construction staff members are driving two 2009  Nissan Altima hybrid vehicles, which arrived on campus in December. John Shupe, assistant vice president for facilities management, said these are the college’s first two hybrids. The vehicles join the department’s fleet of nine electric service vehicles.

“This is another step forward in our continuing effort to achieve a more sustainable campus. Our new hybrid vehicles use less fuel than conventional vehicles, which saves money and helps to reduce the campus’s carbon footprint,” said Shupe.

For more information about such initiatives, visit www.newpaltz.edu/green.

Institute for Disaster Mental Health selects advisory board chair

Susan Rounds, the new chair of the Institute for Disaster Mental Health’s advisory board, has more than 20 years of experience working with the American Red Cross.

Susan Rounds of the American Red Cross has been appointed chair of the Institute for Disaster Mental Health’s (IDMH) advisory board. Rounds, a resident of Olivebridge, is the chapter planning and support manager for the Metro New York and Northeastern New York regions of the American Red Cross. She joined the advisory board in 2007.

The advisory board is a group of experienced and committed professionals and community leaders active in fields directly related to the work of the institute. The board assists in identifying community and professional needs for disaster mental health training; identifying funding sources; and disseminating the work of the institute to the public.

The board members are Gerald Benjamin, director of the SUNY New Paltz Center for Research, Regional Education and Outreach (CRREO) and associate vice president of regional engagement; James Halpern, SUNY New Paltz psychology professor and director of the Institute for Disaster Mental Health; Gweneth Lloyd, director of the college’s Psychological Counseling Center; Douglas Maynard, chair of the SUNY New Paltz Psychology Department; Jacki Brownstein, executive director of Mental Health America of Dutchess County; Charlene Mayville, deputy director of the New York State Office of Mental Health – Hudson River Office; Kevin Mulrooney, sergeant with the New York City Police Department – Counterterrorism Department; Debra Rauch, community business member; Art Synder, director of Emergency Communication and Emergency Management; Mary Tramontin, clinical psychologist – American Red Cross/Greater New York Chapter; and Eleanor Troy, public health preparedness coordinator.

For more information about the Institute for Disaster Mental Health, visit www.newpaltz.edu/idmh.

Evolutionary Studies Seminar Series starts second season

The Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) Seminar Series begins its second season on Monday, Feb. 9, with a lecture by internationally renowned evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup of the University at Albany. His lecture, titled “The Science of Sex Appeal: An Evolutionary Perspective,” starts at 5:30 p.m. and will take place in the Lecture Center room 100.

Evolutionary Studies director Glenn Geher (Psychology) said this year’s seminar series augments with a National Science Foundation grant. Another highlight of the seminar series will be a special week of lectures and activities celebrating Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday (Feb. 12).

All lectures and activities are free and open to the public. For a full schedule, visit www.newpaltz.edu/evos. For more information about the Evolutionary Studies program, contact Geher at geherg@newpaltz.edu.

The "Dorm Windows" quilt, which was created by members of the New Paltz Faculty Wives and Women group, is the prize in a New Paltz Foundation raffle. Tickets are available in the Foundation office in Haggerty Administration Building room 501 or by calling x3240. The winning raffle will be drawn Feb. 16. Photo submitted

Raffle tickets for a New Paltz Faculty Wives and Women hand-crafted quilt are on sale at the SUNY New Paltz Foundation office, located in the Haggerty Administration Building room 501.

The quilt, titled “Dorm Windows,” features images of the ridge, Sojourner Truth, the Gunk, Jacobson Faculty Tower, Haggerty Administration Building and the Old Main Building. It is in a heritage quilt style – picture blocks are framed as one might see through a dorm window. In addition, the picture blocks are surrounded by an antique quilt block named “soaring hawks.”

The quilt may be viewed during office hours: Monday-Friday, 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Raffle tickets are $10 each or three for $20. The winning raffle will be drawn Feb. 16 and the winner will be contacted directly. Dorm Windows was hand- and machine-pieced and hand-quilted by Dolly Wodin, Norma Strothenke, Joyce Schiff, Sondra Harkavy, Cindy Dates and Marie Guard. Raffle sales will support the Fund for New Paltz.

For more information, contact the Development Office at x3240.

Collaboration leads to Second Life classroom

by Lee Conell ‘09 (English) – Public Affairs intern

This semester, Benjamin Junge (Anthropology) was able to move his classroom into the virtual realm with the help of Brian Waite (Academic Computing).

Junge scheduled a meeting in Second Life, a virtual world accessible for free online, into his Introduction to Cultural Anthropology class’s syllabus, in part so that he would not have to cancel the class while at a conference in San Francisco. His students set up program accounts, and arrived at the class’s regular 9:25 a.m. starting time (6:25 a.m. for Junge on the West coast).

The regular rules of the classroom still applied: Collaborating with Junge in order to prepare for the first class discussion on the college’s Second Life territory, Waite even created a device to check attendance: A green orb that, with the touch of their avatars’ (virtual representations of the user) hands, led students to an outside Web site where they could sign in to mark themselves as present.

On Second Life, Waite also built the island where the virtual New Paltz is located, the cyber Paltz Preserve, projecting onto it images of Mohonk and the Jacobson Faculty Tower to give the “seaside” locale a Hudson Valley feel.

Junge’s class meeting was pertinent to the non-virtual world, as earlier in the semester his students had begun to study and discuss Second Life together, using the game to analyze the effects of switching the identities and appearances of their avatars.

While other instructors on campus have had their students use Second Life, Junge’s class was the first to hold a sustained group discussion on the virtual territory that Waite has built for New Paltz. “This is the best example of faculty use to date,” Waite said.

Waite said he appreciated the experience of working on cutting edge technology with faculty like Junge. “When people are driven to embrace something new like this, I try to make myself available. Ben took the island and ran with it.”

AWARDS, HONORS, APPOINTMENTS AND RECOGNITION

Gregory Bray (Communication and Media) received the CINE Golden Eagle Award for “A Horse Connection,” a documentary film he wrote, produced and directed.  The film focuses on a therapeutic horse riding program for persons with special needs. Students and alumni from the Communication and Media Department assisted in the project over the two-year production period. Those students were: Rob Jameson ‘06 and Jae Verner ‘06, directors of photography; Bryan Neilon ‘07, editor; Joshua Farina ‘06, Ryan Conner ‘06 and Stephanie Man ‘07, videographers; and Yolan Baker ‘07, Mary Hall ‘07 and Daniel Asis ‘07, post-production crew.

PUBLICATIONS

Giordana Grossi (Psychology), Jeremy Murphy ‘06 (Psychology) and Josh Boggan ‘04 (Psychology) published “Word and Pseudoword Superiority Effects in Native Italian-English Bilinguals” in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.

Eugene Heath (Philosophy) co-edited a collection of essays, “Adam Ferguson: Philosophy, Politics and Society,” which was recently published by Pickering and Chatto (London, 2009). This is Heath’s second collection on Ferguson, an 18th-century philosopher and historian of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Gerald Sorin (History/Jewish Studies) has an essay, “American Jews and Radicalism,” appear in The Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora. His review essay on A.B. Yehoshua’s latest novel, “Friendly Fire,” was published in the November 2008 issue of Books – Ha’aretz, English edition.