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Vol. 3, Issue 5 |
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| In this edition of Saints Go Marching: we crossed an ocean to pop in with Saints studying abroad. From England, to Denmark, to Ireland - from the London Eye, to the streets of Copenhagen, to the best butter museum (only butter museum?) in the world, Saints are marching and loving it, internationally. |
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| Breaking News from the TV News Studio |
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Upgrades to the TV studio/control room in Foy Hall rival any local television station The College's TV studio was gutted this summer, painted, and then stocked and wired with state of the art upgrades used in TV stations and newsrooms throughout the world. The main studio is controlled through a Ross Carbonite video production switcher with two new Sony HD video cameras and a Sony robotic HD video camera. The adjacent control room has been outfitted with a new digital audio switcher, CuelT teleprompter system, Ross xPression graphics system, and a Ross Tria video server.
Students in the journalism program and the new sports communications major will be able to produce a simulated newscast. The students will staff production positions in the control room and also deliver the news from an anchor desk recently used in the News 10 ABC studio in Albany.
The studio can also be integrated with the College's all-new Frank '85 and Sheila Ambrose Media Center. The Media Center, powered by much of the same equipment now found in the TV studio, is used to produce live coverage of Siena sporting events for ESPN platforms.
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 |  | "This studio is vital to ensuring our students get a competitive edge in the industry. It is a testament to Siena's commitment to provide practical, hands-on training using top technology in our industry."
Rebecca Taylor, J.D., director of the communications major and journalism minor
"The newly upgraded Siena TV studio is another wonderful opportunity for me and everyone in the journalism and sports communications major. I am excited to begin gaining valuable experience on the equipment and taking another step in my well rounded Siena education."
Sam Allard '21
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| Every Student Has a Story: Milena Pereira Machado '21 |
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Milena Pereira Machado '21 wouldn't leave her teenage daughter behind in Brazil, but her daughter wouldn't let her mom leave her dreams behind either
When they walked into their Latham apartment for the first time, it was empty. Milena and her daughter, Maria, had the clothes in their suitcases, but little else. They made a quick run to Walmart for the essentials, and then unfolded a mattress on the floor. For dinner, they used the mattress box as their table. In that moment, balancing their first New York meal on a cardboard box, Milena asked Maria if they were crazy. Maria owned it with a grin. "I have to be honest, Mom. We are kind of crazy." Five years ago, Milena was 29, recently divorced, and faced a turning point in her life. She was comfortable in her small Brazilian town, but she wasn't satisfied. When she was younger, she dreamed of college and studying in the United States. But she got pregnant, married young, and her priorities changed. Her daughter was still her top priority, but sitting on the beach one day, staring out into the ocean, the dormant dreams she had as a little girl came back to her like the tide. Milena decided to move, with her daughter, three hours away from home and family to a larger Brazilian city where she enrolled at a university. It was an adjustment, but family was relatively close. Through her program, Milena traveled to the U.S. last summer and spent nearly a month studying on the Siena campus as part of the Brazil Summer Institute program. Milena says she felt God on the Siena campus, and decided that if she was going to study business internationally, it would be here. Maria was inspired by her mom's new-found inspiration. She's a 14 years old with friends, a school, and a life in Brazil, but told her mom to go for it. Siena's International Programs office helped make the arrangement, and Milena and Maria uprooted their lives this summer and moved to Latham. Maria is a freshman at Shaker High School, she's made some really good friends, and her grades are better than they were back home. Milena says there's a "macho culture" where she's from. Women are identified as someone's wife, or ex-wife. She says she's free of the stereotypes. Milena credits her daughter's sacrifice for her opportunities, and no matter the struggles, she believes every part of the journey has been beautiful. But also a little crazy. |
 |  | "Our family back home was really worried for us at first. But one thing I told my daughter, 'What do we actually need?' We have each other. We have the essentials. We're on this journey, and it's beautiful."
Milena Pereira Machado '21
"My mom wanted to come here to study, and I didn't want her to be alone. So I came here to keep her company! I'm just happy she's trying a new life. It was her dream to study abroad when she was my age."
Maria Victoria Machado Kloster Oliveira
"The Siena community is better with Milena and her daughter in it! Milena is a true positive light, she pushes herself and is always open to learning. Her resilience and bravery are awe-inspiring."
Susan Ambrose, assistant director for international student services |
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Shining a Light on
Dark Energy |
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A Siena professor is part of a global network of scientists collaborating on "one of the highest-profile astronomical activities over the next decade"
This week, the Arizona-based Dark Energy Spectroscopic
Instrument (DESI) came online and started recording its first images of the
night sky.
The goal of DESI is to help understand “dark energy,” an
unknown force discovered in 1998 that appears to be causing the universe to
expand faster and faster. By determining the distances of faraway galaxies,
DESI scientists are hoping to make some sense of dark energy, and Siena is
playing a part in the cutting-edge project.
John Moustakas, Ph.D., associate professor and chair of physics
and astronomy, has been part of the DESI collaboration since its inception in
2014. He was recruited specifically for his expertise in spectroscopy, the
science of using the relative amounts of different colored light from galaxies
to determine how fast they are moving away from the Earth.
“DESI will be one of the highest-profile astronomical
activities over the next decade, and has the potential to profoundly influence
how we understand the past and future evolution of the universe,” Moustakas
said.
Siena is the only undergraduate-focused institution in the
world working on this project – check here to see a listing of the other
collaborators.
How does DESI operate? |
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The Untold Story of...
Alicia Pepe |
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Ten things you probably don't know about the director of internships
1. I was fortunate to be raised by two of the best people you could
ever ask for. My dad worked here at Siena in the 70s, so I spent much of my
childhood on this campus. My favorite memories were dinners in the Friary (when
it was in Hines Hall) and going to the basketball games in the ARC. I feel like
I have come full circle!
2. I spent six weeks during a summer in college backpacking through Europe. My uncle was working for IBM London, and we spent
quality time together including an incredible medieval dinner in the Tower
of London. I made stops in seven other countries including Germany. Visiting
the Berlin Wall (above) was a definite highlight.
3. I met my future husband while he was training to lead five blind
climbers up Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa. One of our first few “dates” was
spent hiking the Adirondack Mountains. Two years later, we were engaged atop
Cascade Mountain.
4. Internships had a profound effect on my career. I was an English/communications major in college and thought I wanted to be the next Katie Couric… until I participated in my first internship and found it was not for me. Instead, I spent most of my career with GE Plastics in customer service, sales, marketing, and procurement roles. I wouldn’t change a thing!
The full list includes: a terrifying fear of heights, heightened by the parachute on my back; buying houses, just so I can sell them; and 2019 - the year of the bucket list.
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| A Simple Game of Quantum Mechanics |
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Quantum mechanics may not sound like fun and games, but a board game designed by a Siena student is intended to make quantum mechanics exactly that
Delaney Corrigan '21 (above, 2nd from left) developed the idea for a quantum mechanics board game with the help of a physics professor a couple years back. The problem, Corrigan isn't much of a board game aficionado, and she's not a physics major either. Still, the idea of creating a fun way to teach quantum mechanics in high schools appealed to her. So, she teamed up on a CURCA project with Matt Bellis, Ph.D., associate professor of physics, and they developed Entanglement.
The first prototype of the game involved cards, a spinner, and six dice. They've since condensed the game to simply a spinner and a single die. Essentially, players move around the board completing experiments. Players learn
background about the experiments by landing on spaces with information, they
get to take trips around the world to science conferences, earn grant money and
do all sorts of science related activities. The ultimate goal of the game is
for the players to build a Bose Einstein condensate apparatus, which
essentially uses six laser beams to cool atoms to temperatures close to absolute
zero. As of now, players can obtain lasers by completing an experiment section.
There are also opportunities to acquire “bonus cards,” which can be used to help
oneself or to hurt another player's game in some form.
The game is almost ready for testing (playing). Before mass distribution, select high schoolers will provide feedback, then Corrigan and her team will decide what tweaks need to be made. Two weeks ago, Corrigan attended Science Hack Day in San Francisco (below, right) and, in the company of fellow science students, made advancements to the game. The version they took out to the west coast was deemed to be a bit too complicated. They've since made it more fun and more functional. Who's ready for game night?!
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Faculty-led, hands-on research, like Corrigan's board game, is the hallmark of Siena’s
Center for Undergraduate Research and Activity (CURCA). Students conduct
first-hand research with their faculty mentors, reinforcing and expanding on
what they learn in the classroom. Their work is presented each spring at the
College’s Academic Showcase, and often at professional academic conferences.
To open these research and scholarship opportunities to more
students, Douglas Lonnstrom ’66 Ph.D., professor of quantitative business analysis, and his wife Cris have created a named
endowment to support CURCA scholarship at Siena.
This year saw 103 students engaged in
high-impact learning with more than 50 faculty members. Lonnstrom collaborated with Anthony Pistritto '22, below, on developing a new Siena course, the History of Golf.
The College hopes the Lonnstroms’ gift will spur others to
fund named endowments for CURCA. Donors can support an endowment
jointly, possibly naming it after a faculty member who made a significant
impact on their lives and helped launch them on a successful career. |  |  |
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| The Friars of the Month |
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What day is 4th of July next year? Flip to Fr. Linh. Is Thanksgiving earlier in 2020? Fr. Dan is your man in November.
Megan O'Neill '21 and Meredith McElroy '22 will be traveling to Guatemala next spring on a Siena Stands With immersion trip through the Franciscan Center for Service and Advocacy. They have the service trip all planned out, but they could use help offsetting the cost. So they asked the friars for help. Very unconventional help.
McElroy developed the concept for the Friars of Siena College 2020 calendar. Friars, on a first come first serve basis, staked claim to their month. Fr. Larry loves the fall and called dibs on October before anyone else had a shot. Next, they posed for a seasonal-themed photoshoot. How did Fr. Larry capture the essence of October? For $20 you can find out (the cost is subject to change)!
O'Neill and McElroy will be tabling for pre-sale orders (the calendars would make a great gift!) in the SSU on Wednesday, November 20 from 11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. Also, a pre-order form will likely be posted to the Daily Digest soon. All proceeds benefit all students who make the Guatemala trip in March. If you're interested in attending, please contact Judy Dougherty, director for the Franciscan Center for Service and Advocacy at jdougherty@siena.edu.
|  |  |  | "The idea came to me on a whim. I was thinking of ways to fundraise and incorporate the friars. They are such an important part of this campus. The calendar is a way to show people that the friars are people just like everyone else. They love the Lord and they love life."
Meredith McElroy '22
"July is a midpoint of the year. It is a time to reflect on what has happened in the first six months and decide to do something different or stay the course. But really, for me, July is just a relaxing month with lots of sun and warm summer nights. A time to enjoy nature and the beauty of God's creation."
Fr. Linh Hoang. O.F.M., associate professor of religious studies (above, right, Fr. Linh is flanked by O'Neill, left, and McElroy, right)
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| Art, Literally, from the Heart |
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When old medical books are retired from the library, they're generally donated or recycled, but some find a second career as artistic inspiration
A ninth edition of the Textbook of Anatomy and Physiology was published in 1936. Its cover is tattered, and its pages are more yellow than white. The 600-page textbook has chapters like "Epithelial Tissues: Membranes," and its illustrations are purely clinical. They're certainly not a foundation for art, except in the mind of one Siena artist. Through December 15, Siena Art Director Sergio Sericolo's exhibition "Echoes of My Mind" can be seen in the Yaltes Gallery at the Standish Library. His collection of mixed media artwork features old lines of drawings from anatomy books as a starting point, integrated with his own line drawings—creating a puzzle for him to solve along the way to his final product. He has a free form sense of artistic style, and slowly, through solving the puzzles, his art comes together. His interest in anatomical artwork began while working on his master's at the University at Albany, and has been a staple in his portfolio ever since. |  |  | “If you are drawing a picture of a heart, you can see that a heart has different valves, it’s didactic, it’s educational, it’s something that you can do with a pen and ink. A photograph can do it too, however, anatomy books have old drawings inside and they're about showing people something different and I like deconstructing that. When I create my artwork, I don’t have a design plan. And that’s what I enjoy about it. It’s not a means to an end, it’s a process. And it’s fun for me to go through that process and see the results of my artwork.”
Sergio Sericolo, MFA, art director |
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| The Campaign was Gold |
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The Siena Guarantee earned gold level status
The Siena Guarantee - $52,000 in scholarships, your degree
in four years or the rest is on us, and custom career prep – helped the College
land a record freshman class this fall. It also garnered Siena a prestigious
international marketing award.
Siena received a MarCom
gold level award from the Association of Marketing and Communication
Professionals (AMCP) in the Strategic Communication/Marketing Promotion
category. Siena is listed as a 2019 winner alongside such famous brand names as
IBM, Google Cloud, Morgan Stanley, Universal Orlando Resort, MBTA and the Austin
Film Festival.
MarCom Award submissions are judged by industry leaders who
evaluate about 6,000 print and digital creative work entries from dozens of
countries each year.
The winning citation reads: “The $52,000 scholarship
guarantee allows Siena to talk about affordability in a simple, compelling way.
It then opens the door to other Siena value points, including on time
graduation, career preparation and success, as well as the opportunity to
customize curriculum.”
Tactics for the Siena Guarantee campaign included targeted display, video,
social media, Pandora, and over-the-top (OTT) ads, as well as paid search,
email marketing, direct mail and short message service (SMS) marketing.
|  | "It's exciting to see the Siena name recognized with
this international award alongside some of the world's best-known brands. The Siena Guarantee
campaign opened the door to new audiences, allowing us to share our entire
value proposition with more people. This helped drive record visitors to campus
where the entire community delivered a best-in-class experience that improved
our outcome. The opportunity to provide The Education for a Lifetime to
more Saints is a college-wide accomplishment we should all celebrate."
Jason Rich '98, director of marketing and communications |
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| The Intern Journal: NYBDC |
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| Braedon LaBar '21 was a two-time defensive player of the year at his Pennsylvania high school. He also won first place in an architecture design content at Philadelphia University. When it came to picking a college, academics was on par with lacrosse. He was particularly interested in a business school where he could focus on finance. That's what attracted LaBar to Siena, and it was the same passion for finance that attracted LaBar to an internship with Northwestern Mutual. His long term goals are to pursue his interests in investment banking and private hedge funds. |  |  | LaBar says his summer internship days with Northwestern Mutual were a "grind," but that's exactly what he wanted. He would attend, on average, four to five client related meetings, handle 10 to 20 phone calls with current and potential business clients, and participate in weekly training sessions for the purpose of expanding his knowledge in business and finance. A Siena alumnus with the company visited campus and spoke to the lacrosse team. That connection opened the door to LaBar's opportunity this past summer. |
“Being kind and being personable goes a long way; it’s important to connect with other people. Don’t be afraid to speak to and with people, because it’s never too early to start. Keep applying, because it is beneficial to carve out your niches early on on your resume for future career”
Braedon LaBar '21
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| Educating the Computer Science Educators of Tomorrow |
Siena has just become one of the first colleges
in New York to offer state certification to teach computer science, supported
by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant
The College will now offer a B.S. in computer science with a
certification in computer science education, according to Prof. Robin Flatland,
Ph.D.
The state Board of Regents voted in 2018 to establish a
computer science certificate, to enable a steady pipeline of academically
trained, K–12 computer science teachers and grandfather in current teachers,
who may be certified in other fields but need teacher training. The new teaching certification program, featured recently in a Times Union article, was developed as part
of a $299,830 National Science Foundation grant awarded this fall to Siena’s
faculty to support expanding and improving computer science education in upstate
New York. |
 | “Students in Siena’s program will prepare to teach the
subject by taking a rigorous selection of computer science and education
courses in addition to spending a semester student teaching in computer science
classrooms. Currently there are no certified CS teachers in New York, but
with our grant and our new certification program, we plan to change that by
helping pre-service and in-service teachers get the background and skills they
need to offer engaging CS courses."
Robin Flatland, Ph.D., professor of computer science |
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| Saints Sharing Talents with the Community |
The Capital Region often borrows experts from the Siena community for public conversations. This month, a pair of Saints are lending their expertise to important community events. |
Beth DeAngelis, senior director of Siena’s Sr. Thea Bowman
Women’s Center, will moderate the panel presentation “Women in Vietnam” at 6 p.m. on
Wednesday, Nov. 6 in the Albany Room of the Empire State Plaza.
The free event will feature two U.S. Army nurses and one
civilian volunteer for the American Red Cross who served in Vietnam. They will
describe their own experiences as well as the contributions women made to the war
effort and how that service influenced the role of women in future conflicts.
For details, visit www.empirestateplaza.ny.gov, or call (518) 473-7521. |  |  | Laurie Naranch,
Ph.D., associate professor of political science, will lead a discussion in the
two-part course “Hannah Arendt: Challenges of Thinking, Acting and Judging in
Dark Times,” which will explore Arendt’s life; her response to the trial of
Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann; and current challenges with rising right-wing
nationalism, the status of truth, and the place of politics. Arendt coined the
now well-known concept of the “banality of evil.”
The course begins Nov.
14 with a screening of the 2012 film “Hannah Arendt,” followed by Naranch’s
talk at 7PM on Thursday, Nov. 21. Registration is required and there is a fee;
contact the B’nai Sholom office: 518-482-5283 or
office@bnaisholom.albany.ny.us. |
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| Straight from @sienacollege Instagram |
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The original idea involved smoke grenades inside the pumpkins. A fog machine turned out to be the more prudent choice. Happy, belated, Halloween! |
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| Connect With Us |
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| www.siena.edu |
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