A number of faculty and staff members earned 2025 Chancellor’s Awards for outstanding accomplishments.
Decades of dedication to innovative teaching, service and leadership to Oswego, the State University of New York and beyond earned John Kane, an economics professor and director of the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT), the prestigious SUNY Distinguished Service Faculty rank.
A tremendous record of outstanding work in teaching, leadership, organization, volunteering and community support earned Richard Bush, professor and chair of technology education, the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Faculty Service.
Grace Maxon-Clarke of the Dean of Students Office and Jacqueline (Jackie) Wallace of Career Services earned the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Professional Service for their long-running dedication to supporting SUNY Oswego students. Nominators described Maxon-Clarke –- the associate dean of students -– and Wallace –- associate director for career education and career coach for Oswego’s exploratory and undeclared community –- as exemplary professionals who care about student success, equity and the Oswego campus and greater community.
A career highlighted by adapting ever-evolving technology to better serve students earned John-Jay Grass of the Student Accounts Office the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Classified Service.
Focus on big data
During 2025, Ulises A. Mejias of communication studies published the chapter “The Museum as a Cultural Response to Data Colonialism” in the edited volume Digital museum: intelligences and artifices, and his 2024 book “Data Grab” was published in Turkish. He published four op-ed’s: ”Big Tech is powering Trump’s immigration crackdown” (Al Jazeera), ”AI Isn’t Going to Cut Government Bureaucracy — It’s Going to Vastly Worsen It” (Truthout), ”The Core of Gen-AI is Incompatible with Academic Integrity” (FutureU) and with Nick Couldry, ”Data Colonialism Comes Home To The US: Resistance Must Too” (Tech Policy Press).
Mejias delivered invited in-person talks at the University of California Berkeley and University of California Irvine, and he presented virtually at University of Warwick, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Siegen University, Internet Forum of Brazil, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Grupo de Puebla and Red de Investigadores en Plataformas.
He was interviewed for the podcasts ”GenAI & Academic Integrity in Higher Education” (FutureU), ”Homebrewed Christianity”, and ”17Radio.” Mejias was also interviewed for an article in BBC Mundo, and his work was mentioned in The Observer (UK), LatinAmerican Post, the draft of the report on Human and Peoples’ Rights and Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics and Other New and Emerging Technologies in Africa, The Guardian (Nigeria) and Fair Observer. Mejias’ expertise also appears in a National Public Radio “The World” story, “An AI that speaks the language of Latin America.” His co-authored book “Data Grab” was reviewed in Methaodos Revista de Ciencias Sociales and Lawfare.
Faculty journal publications
Criminal justice chair Roger Guy published “Los carteles son la ley”: Organized crime, criminal governance, and illicit opportunities in Mexico” in Criminology and Criminal Justice. The paper looks at how the “war on drugs” in Mexico nearly 20 years ago spawned an unintended consequence of strengthening the influence of organized crime and increased lethal encounters between rival drug trafficking organizations.
Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy Shashi Kanbur co-authored “Multiwavelength study of observed and predicted pulsation properties of First overtone Cepheids in the Magellanic Clouds" in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Main Journal. Kanbur also provided an invited lecture on Aug. 22 via Zoom for the Federal University of Paraiba, Brazil. He presented on stellar structure and evolution and stellar pulsation, with a brief overview of the applications of pulsating stars for measuring the size and age of the universe.
Matthew McLeskey of the criminal justice faculty published "Embedded and Embodied: How State Neglect of Lead Poisoning Contributes to Women’s Green Victimization and Perpetuates Intersectional Inequalities" in Race and Justice.
Distinguished Teaching Professor Ampalavanar Nanthakumar published "Bivariate-Uniform Representations and Copula Approximations" in the June issue of the International Journal of Statistics and Probability. He also presented a research paper, "L-Moments and Its Applications," at the 19th International ATINER Conference on Mathematics and Statistics in Athens, Greece.
Criminal justice faculty member Margaret Schmuhl co-authored the paper “I’d hookup with them, but never date them: How attitudes towards hooking up influence willingness to date those with a criminal history” in Criminal Justice Studies.
Damian Schofield, director of SUNY Oswego’s human-computer interaction (HCI) master’s program, published papers, often with current students or graduates from the program. These included:
- “Designing and Evaluating XR Cultural Heritage Applications Through Human–Computer Interaction Methods: Insights from Ten International Case Studies” in Applied Sciences; co-authors included HCI graduates Theo Johnson and Pezhman Parvari and former Oswego computer science faculty colleague Jolanda Tromp
- “Fantapsychology: An Investigation into Perceived Gender Stereotypes Within the Final Fantasy Game Series” in American Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Research; co-authors included since-graduated HCI majors Dennis Lelic, Clara Tribunella, Charles Noto and Kedar Naga Harish Bhetalam, as well as former computer science faculty colleague John K. Lindstedt
- “The Fabric of Fellowship: Examining Group Dynamics in Final Fantasy Video Games” in Computer and Information Science; co-authors include HCI graduates Annabel Sharrin, Joel Betancourt and Jeffrey Zhang, and Lindstedt
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