Category Archives: The World

Research: Stony Brook University Unveils ‘Reality Deck’

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Stony Brook University unveiled its latest engineering feat, a 1.5 billion pixel Reality Deck, at a demonstration held at the University’s Center of Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology (CEWIT) this month.  Its purpose and primary design principle is to enable scientists, engineers and physicians to tackle modern-age problems that require the visualization of vast amounts of data.

The facility, constructed with a $1.4 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant and a $600,000 match from Stony Brook University, is dubbed as “largest resolution immersive visualization facility ever built”.  To simplify that description, Derek Mead at Vice’s Motherboard offers help: “[It's] a fancy way of saying they’ve created a room made up of 416 displays that can display a single, unified image.”

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10 Ways to Give this Holiday Season

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The holidays are fast approaching and with them, we see an increase in volunteer activity.  Given my extensive experience, I would like to share some general tips to keep in mind this holiday season and all year round.  While the instant gratification of extending a helping hand is great, forming lasting partnerships surrounding subjects you care deeply about can have a much more profound impact.  —Elise Newkirk, Coordinator of Community Relations for SUNY

UAlbany students volunteering1.  Assess what type of volunteer you are.   Are you looking for a single volunteer experience during the holiday season or would you like to volunteer your time more frequently?  Would you like to volunteer with a student group or your family or would you like to volunteer alone?  Consider what type of volunteer you are to help you choose a volunteer experience that will be a good fit and keep you coming back for more!

 2.  Find your volunteer venues.  Many campuses have centers for community engagement that help students find volunteer opportunities and connect students to ongoing projects and groups.  These centers can also help you volunteer locally in whatever topic area is most important to you.

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Alumni Profile: Deborah Gregory

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Alumni Profiles is an ongoing series highlighting successful graduates who, with a SUNY education, achieved interesting and influential careers.

Deborah Gregory headshotDeborah Gregory is an accomplished writer, director, and fashionista. Gregory is best known for her work writing the Catwalk trilogy and series The Cheetah Girls.  The latter’s popularity is exclaimed through the subsequent movies and brand that spawned out of the NYC-based storyline.  Moral lessons powerfully resonate throughout Gregory’s works, which likely is due to her arduous upbringing in which she faced a lot of adversity.

Before writing, Gregory graduated SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology with her A.A.S. and traveled internationally as a runway model. She was concurrently thrust into journalism, writing for Entertainment Weekly, More, US, and Grace following her enrollment at SUNY Empire State College. Today, Gregory stays busy between writing comedy, authoring books, designing clothes and accessories, and maintaining the “cheetahrama” that has extended far beyond New York City.

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SUNY’s 4 University Centers Named Among Top in World

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Times Higher Education has named all of SUNY’s university centers—University at Albany, Binghamton University, University at Buffalo, and Stony Brook University—as four of the world’s top 400 universities.

University at Buffalo and Stony Brook are ranked top 200 with UAlbany and Binghamton stacking up close behind in the 2012-13 Times Higher Education World University Rankings.  According to Times Higher Education, the criteria used to determine rankings are the only global university performance tables to judge world class universities across all of their core missions—13 performance indicators stemming from teaching to research, knowledge transfer to international outlook.

“The Power of SUNY resonates worldwide,” said SUNY Chancellor Zimpher,  “and this prominent international ranking of our four university centers by Times Higher Education serves as the most recent showcase of the outstanding work and remarkable impact that SUNY has on students and communities throughout New York State and across the globe.”

These most recent rankings are familiar as ranking institutions continue to prove and support the quality education that SUNY institutions offer.  In September, SUNY Campuses Ranked Among Best Colleges in the North by U.S. News & World Report and in August, there were 3 SUNY Mentions in Fiske’s Top 20 Best Buy Public Schools.

The SUNY 2020 Plan that Chancellor Zimpher introduced two years ago has already proven positive change for the system and will continue to foster growth in its resources.  SUNY continually invests in recruiting high-quality faculty, attracting researchers from around the world to join the largest higher education system in the world.  With over 400,000 enrolled students and 64 campuses, SUNY is not only a vehicle for personal enrichment, but for statewide and national achievement as well.

Times Higher Education is a leading higher education magazine and the recognition of the SUNY university centers as top-400 universities demonstrates SUNY’s growing global reputation. The data for the rankings were collected by Thomson Reuters, which considered about 700 institutions in 69 countries.

​Cover photo: University at Buffalo’s Health Sciences Library’s main reading room

SUNY Community Colleges Receive $14.6 Million Grant For Training & Education

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Students explore the TEC-SMART GE Wind Technology Lab at Hudson Valley CC, which is one of 30 SUNY community colleges to be affected by the $14.6M U.S. Dept. of Labor grant.

Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher last week announced that SUNY’s community colleges have received a $14.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to design, implement, and deliver a strategic approach to job training and education for high-demand jobs in breakthrough industries, such as nanotechnology and advanced manufacturing.

The grant will allow a consortium of SUNY community colleges, led by Monroe Community College, to design standardized curricula to directly address the needs of industry employers.

This comes amidst an economic period where education institutions are becoming ever more essential to the economies of their communities, state and global markets. And in a state that houses the world’s largest higher education system, the U.S. Department of Labor grant will go a long way in helping our community colleges lead students to compete in the world market to continue sustaining local and state economies.

“This federal support will help grow SUNY’s already powerful capacity to prepare students for careers in high-tech and advanced manufacturing fields where there is such a high demand in New York and across the country,” said Chancellor Zimpher.

The drive will be a team effort; students, community members, local businesses and governmental institutions all have a stake—and all have a say—in tomorrow’s growth through New York’s 30 community colleges.

Over 150 other industry associations and employers from across the state have joined with the SUNY collaborative as key partners to validate curricula, develop and implement learn and earn strategies, raise awareness of the industry sector and facilitate job placement. Manufacturers of all sizes and their representing associations will be involved from project design to implementation to placement and employment for eligible workers.

“You won’t find harder working people anywhere outside New York State,” Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said. “By strengthening our workforce with the right skills for the jobs of the future, we can help more local businesses grow, attract new businesses, and set the foundation for a strong and growing economy.”

The goal: Two years. That’s how long it should take a student to be educated and begin placement for the region’s demand, according to SUNY. To get there, an array of tools will be enlisted: Student services, prior learning assessment, workforce readiness assessments, and fast-track developmental education based on best practice models.

In all of the good that the grant brings to New York State and SUNY community colleges, at the end of the day, it is the students who get the most out of a reliable education geared for tomorrow and a stable future to grow in New York’s communities.

Johanna Duncan-Poitier, SUNY Senior Vice Chancellor for Community Colleges and the Education Pipeline, said, “The real beneficiaries will be the thousands of SUNY students who will receive education and preparation leading to high-wage, 21st century advanced manufacturing jobs, and our extensive network of industry partners, who will strengthen our state and local economies by hiring here at home.”