News Hartwick Announces Faculty, Staff Service Milestones
Hartwick celebrated the invaluable work of its faculty and staff during the College’s annual Quinquennial Awards, held April 13 in the Anderson Theater.
“It is with great pride that we recognize the service milestones of our colleagues,” said Suzanne Janitz, vice president for human resources, inclusion and compliance. “These individuals embody a level of dedication and commitment that is integral to making Hartwick an exceptional place to work, study and grow. We are grateful for their passion and the energy they bring to our community and the important and meaningful work we do to support each other and our students.”
Congratulations to the following members of the Hartwick community for their dedicated service and contributions to developing a dynamic and engaging campus environment.
The 2022 Honorees include:
Five Years (2017)
Stephanie Carr – Assistant Professor of Biology
Lisa Corbett – Executive Assistant to the President & Assistant Secretary to the Board of Trustees
Geri Delamater – Office Manager for Student Experience
Alison Dodge – Learning Support Specialist
Janet Donovan – Head Women’s Volleyball Coach
Bradley Fest – Associate Professor of English
Joshua Garrett – Assistant Professor of Biology
William Gleiberman-Kowalczyk – Assistant Professor of Psychology
Donna Gray – Aramark Facilities Services, Painter
Tareq Issa, Adjunct Clinical Instructor in Nursing
Evan Jagels – Lecturer in Music
Frederick Obermeyer – Part-Time Public Services Assistant
Lara Sanford – Director of AccessAbility Services
James Tate – Campus Safety Officer
Shane Webb – Aramark Facilities Services, Set Up Coordinator/Mail
Mitchell Woodbeck – Aramark Dining, General Utility
Ten Years (2012)
Paul Blake – Private Lessons Instructor
Kathleen Carlson – Coordinator of the Center for Student Success Operations
Janet Eckard – Adjunct Clinical Instructor in Nursing
Patricia Grust – Clinical Associate Professor of Nursing
Kyle Maison – Aramark Facilities Services, Carpenter
Steven Nanni – Visiting Assistant Professor of Music
Michael Parent – Aramark Dining, General Utility
Rick Robinson – Aramark Facilities Services, Custodian- Binder Athletic Center
Kevin Schultz – Associate Professor of Physics
Heidi Tanner – Director of Wellness & Health Promotion/Director of the Campbell Fitness Center
Erin Baxter-Toal – Director of Pine Lake Environmental Center & Challenge Education
Elizy Wellman – Aramark Food Services, Production Manager
Kevin White – Aramark Food Services, Chef
Karen Zuill – Vice President for Finance
Fifteen Years (2007)
Patricia Dopazo – Director of Planned Giving
Joseph Ficano – Major Gifts Officer
Andrew Piefer – Professor of Chemistry
Marc Shaw – Professor of Theatre Arts
Joseph Von Stengel – Professor of Art
Ricky Vroman – Aramark Food Services, General Utility
Recipients of Quinquennial Awards, presented to those with 20 years or more of service to the College, were recognized by Suzanne Janitz, vice president for human resources, inclusion and compliance. She offered a brief introduction and reflections on each recipient.
Twenty Years (2002)
David Heyduk graduated from Hartwick College with a bachelor’s degree in accounting in 2001. Heyduk joined the staff of Hartwick’s Stevens-German Library in 2002 as the library acquisitions manager. After graduating with his master of library science degree from Drexel University in 2008, Heyduk was appointed the interim director of library and information resources in 2009. He has chaired the Library & Educational Technology Committee and overseen improvements to the interlibrary loan system and the restructuring of library instructional courses for first-year students. Heyduk was appointed director of library and information resources in 2023.
Karl Seeley began teaching at Hartwick in 2002 as an assistant professor of economics. He has had multiple appointments as chair of the Economics Department, first in 2012 and again currently. A campus leader, Seeley served as the faculty chair during the challenging years of the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2022. He specializes in macroeconomics and environmental economics, and has taught courses on macroeconomic theory, development and transition, and environmental economics. Seeley has also led January Term experiences to Cuba and Central Europe. In 2017, Springer Verlag published Seeley’s book, Macroeconomics in Ecological Context. He is also an accomplished musician and plays trumpet in the Hartwick College Wind Ensemble.
Carol Silverberg is a dynamic teacher with experience teaching various courses, including first-year writing, success skill courses, and theatre, at several institutions, including Hartwick and SUNY Broome. In addition to teaching in person, Silverberg is skilled at online tutoring and teaching for Pearson and other companies. Her teaching style is engaging; she starts every class with a “bad joke,” an activity that establishes a playful, friendly tone but also helps center each class, getting students to laugh, even at stressful times in the semester. Indeed, in 2021, Silverberg earned the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching. She is devoted to theatre, directing Tom Stoppard’s “The Fifteen Minute Hamlet” as a fundraising event for UNIFEC’s Ukraine fund and a one-act play ensemble titled “A Woman Scorned,” staged at SUNY Broome. In 2022, Silverberg published an article, “Chemung Valley’s Ghostlights: A Glimpse into Elmira’s Theatrical Past,” in the Chemung County Historical Journal. She also loves bunnies.
Twenty-Five Years (1997)
Mary Allen arrived at Hartwick twenty-five years ago to share her expertise in microbiology and microbial ecology. Her recent courses have included Microbiology of Food, Emerging Infectious Diseases, and Microbes, Markets and Food. Together with Carli Ficano, she has developed an off-campus January Term course on fermentation and local food systems in Portugal. Allen chaired the Biology Department from 2009 – 2015. She received the Teacher-Scholar Award in 2008 and the Margaret Bunn Award in 2009. Allen’s current research includes “The Microbial Community Colonizing Different Varieties of Fresh and Dried Hop Cones as Determined by Next Generation DNA Sequencing.” She collaborates with Hartwick’s Center for Craft Food & Beverage and her leadership and advocacy can be credited for Hartwick’s selection as a partner institution in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Inclusive Excellence Program, which seeks to remove institutional barriers to persistence in the sciences by students of historically marginalized backgrounds.
In 1997, Carli Ficano became an assistant professor in Hartwick’s Economics Department. She specializes in labor economics, social policy on low-income family well-being, and the economics of higher education. Her courses include the Economics of Race and Gender, Labor Economics, The Marketplace, and Econometrics. Ficano is engaged with the Center for Craft Food & Beverage through her research and a first-year seminar on food. She has partnered with Mary Allen to develop an off-campus January Term course on food in Portugal that has generated great enthusiasm among Hartwick students. In 2019, she published her research on “Identifying Differential Benefits from a Flipped-Group Pedagogy in Introductory Microeconomics” in the International Review of Economics Education. Ficano won the Wandersee Scholar-in-Residence in 2001 and the Teacher-Scholar award in 2016. From 2016 to 2021, she chaired the Business Administration & Accounting Department. Ficano significantly revised the major requirements to align them with different career tracks, and to emphasize the liberal arts by requiring students to minor in a field outside of business.
Bob Kraus started with Aramark at Hartwick 25 years ago in the dish room. He was promoted to ‘front of house’ grill cook within a short period. Two years later, Kraus earned another promotion to cook at the Table Rock Café. Over the past five years, he has assisted in many areas and played an integral and multifaceted role during the pandemic – from helping with meal deliveries to cooking at any station needed. Kraus’s interest and perception of other people is evident. When he sees you need a boost, he is always ready with a story or some old-fashioned advice.
Mark Kuhlmann began as an assistant professor in the Biology Department in 1997 with expertise in ecology, and marine and freshwater biology. He regularly teaches courses at Hartwick’s Pine Lake environmental campus and gives students hands-on experience learning about the ecology of freshwater plant and animal communities in local waterways. Kuhlman’s recent courses have included Behavioral Ecology, Aquatic Ecology, and an off-campus January Term course on Island Biogeography in the Bahamas, generating great enthusiasm among Hartwick students. In 2021, he published his research on rusty crayfish as invasive species in New York stream systems in the Journal of Crustacean Biology. Kuhlman has won the Wandersee Scholar-in-Residence twice – once in 2004 and again in 2021. With Mary Allen and several colleagues in the Division of Physical and Life Sciences division, he is leading the implementation of Hartwick’s HHMI Inclusive Excellence initiative.
Jennifer Nichols-Stewart has been a key creative designer for Hartwick College since 1997. From her earliest years at Hartwick, Nichols-Stewart has played a significant role in developing the visual identity of the College’s printed and digital materials. From collateral pieces shared with prospective students and their families during the enrollment process to the style and tone of the Hartwick magazine, The Wick, Nichols-Stewart has, to a large degree, developed and maintained the Hartwick College ‘creative voice.’ And it’s that voice and the breadth and depth of her institutional memory that continues to guide Hartwick’s storytelling – ensuring that countless generations of prospective and current students, alumni, faculty, staff and friends of the College are filled with the same sense of pride that she so ably demonstrates.
James Terwilliger joined Hartwick in 1997 as a telecommunications & networking technical associate. Initially, he worked collaboratively with the Physical Plant, creating the cable and wiring infrastructure on campus. While working with Davis Conley, Terwilliger built upon his knowledge of phone systems and began taking on increasing responsibility for managing Hartwick’s computer network. Combining those two skill sets was integral to migrating from analog to a VoIP phone system. Throughout his tenure at Hartwick, Terwilliger has mentored countless work-study students and student employees, helping to introduce them to networking technologies and providing real-life experience to bolster their degrees. Many of these students have gone on to successful careers in information technology and remain in touch to this day. Through his efforts and willingness to learn and grow, Terwilliger embodies the ethos of the liberal arts and Hartwick’s mission.
Howard Lichtman, professor of computer and information sciences, was also recognized at the Quinquennial Award ceremony. However, he was not able to attend the event.
Thirty Years (1992)
David Cody is a full professor in the Department of Literature, Media, and Writing and has taught widely in the fields of British and American literature and cultural and film studies. Cody has over 30 specialized courses to his credit, including “The Gilded Age,” “Four Fantasists: Tolkien and His Precursors,” “Nineteenth-Century New England Women Writers,” “The Films of Alfred Hitchcock,” and “American Screwball Comedy.”
His list of Hartwick recognitions is considerable: he has twice served as the Babcock Professor in English and has been awarded the Winifred Wandersee Scholar-in-Residence Fellowship, the Margaret B. Bunn Award for Outstanding Teaching, and the Teacher-Scholar Award.
In 2000 and again in 2014, Cody was Hartwick College’s nominee for the Carnegie Institute National Teacher of the Year. He has served on several campus-wide committees, including search committees for senior leadership, and was elected several times to the Committee on Appointments, Tenure, and Promotion.
In collaborations with Brown University Professor George Landow, Cody created many of the original materials for the Victorian Web, a hypermedia project funded by IBM, Apple, and the Annenberg Foundation that, at its inception in 1988-90, anticipated in character and function the World Wide Web. His essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in many scholarly journals, and his book chapters figure in collections published by Johns Hopkins, Oxford, and Cambridge University Presses. Cody’s unmatched ability to unearth buried source material accounts for critically acclaimed readings of major works within the Hawthorne, Melville, and Dickinson canons, and has earned him a reputation in American studies as a “literary sleuth” and cultural historian of the first order.
Cody is an editor of The Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, The Edgar Allan Poe Review, and The Emily Dickinson Journal. As Fulbright Specialist Lecturer in Japan, David gifted Hokkaido University, his host institution, a cutting from one of the last New England rose bushes that Emily Dickinson is known to have planted at her home in Amherst, Massachusetts. Cody has recently been invited to join the Grolier Club in NYC, the oldest existing bibliophilic club in North America—membership secured strictly on the basis of recognized expertise in rare books, first editions, book bindings, and illustrated books.
If word of these distinctions comes as a surprise to his Hartwick College colleagues, it is because Cody is by nature unassuming. His students are likely unaware that one of the country’s preeminent scholar-sleuths has taught them the art and science of critical analysis in the modest second-floor classrooms of Clark Hall. This hard-driving hockey player—known on the ice as “The Professor”—has wept alongside his students as they read aloud a moving passage of literature or poetry together. David has served with devotion and conviction, generations of Hartwick students, deepening their understanding of the complexities of human nature and encouraging them to celebrate the pathos and wonder of being a thinking, observant, and empathic individual in this fiercely beautiful world.
Lloyd Sines started working at Hartwick College as a custodian in December 1992. Sines has worked in several buildings around campus, and is currently working in Hilltops.
Sines is a dedicated employee with an unwavering loyalty to the College. He has a great work ethic and sets high standards, taking pride in ensuring our buildings are ready at the start of each day. He is well-liked by his colleagues, always has a smile, a good word to share, and is willing to help someone if he can. Hartwick is fortunate that Sines has been on the team for thirty years.
Aramark Facilities Services colleagues, Lindora (Linda) Banks, custodian for Dewar Hall, and Steven Sperry, utility worker, were also recognized at the Quinquennial Award ceremony. They were, unfortunately, not able to attend the event.
Thirty-Five Years (1987)
Lisa Onorato is a truly dedicated professor with whom students love to take classes. She has taught many classes, including cognitive psychology, research in cognitive psychology, psychological research methods, the psychology of creativity, and psychology capstone. Onorato has led a variety of off-campus January Term experiences to Hawaii, Peru, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and Germany.
During her time as chair, Onorato developed a psychology curriculum that truly sets itself apart from psychology departments of other liberal arts colleges. Because of her leadership, Hartwick’s psychology program has a particularly strong focus on research experiences and experiential learning. This focus pays dividends in the many students who are able to present their research at academic conferences. The introductory psychology sequence which Onarato developed also gives majors a particularly solid standing in the field. Through her leadership, her teaching, and her mentorship of students, she has helped make Hartwick’s Psychology Department an outstanding program.
Forty Years- (1982)
Emil Hansen began his career at Hartwick in 1982 as a food service manager/cook and has continued to perfect his craft. He has been a manager in the dining hall for almost all of the 40 years he has been with Aramark. Hansen became the assistant to the director of dining in the mid-2000s, a role in which he continues to serve, contributing his talents in scheduling, managing student labor, and processing financial information to support staff and the entire dining program. Hansen is an avid golfer who can compete with the region’s best. During the winter months, Hansen works on his woodworking craft.
Since 1982, Katharine Kreisher has directed the photography and printmaking programs at Hartwick College. Her areas of expertise include documentary photography, photo-related printmaking methods and women in photography. Kreisher received the Wandersee Scholar-in-Residence for 2018-19 and Arkell Hall Endowed Chair in the Arts from 2008-2011. In her early years with the College, her work featured hand-colored photographs and a combination of etching and lithography using added photo images, while her more recent installation works have moved beyond the page and incorporated textile and fiber elements as they explore memory and myth. Kreisher’s work is represented in numerous private and public collections nationally and internationally, with exhibitions in New York City, California, Ohio, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico, as well as in New Zealand, Europe, and Japan. Two recent exhibitions were: Hekate’s Dream in Transforming Space: Transforming Fiber – exhibited in New Mexico, and A Place at the Table for a Cooperstown exhibition on Inclusion, Bounty and Humanity. Kreisher is working on two exhibitions: Dream Plan: War Stories and Pantheon of Goddesses. Kevin Gray, a current colleague and former student of Kreisher’s, shared that he’s been fortunate enough to not only be a former student but is now a colleague, serving as an adjunct, teaching photography at Hartwick. That means that their history not only goes back over twenty years, it also spans the transition from film to digital and that’s more significant than mere time to photographers. Kreisher is admired for her dedication to her students and the kind, compassionate manner in which she interacts with them.
Fifty Years (1972)
The 50-year honoree, Anne Moriarty, facility manager for Aramark Facilities Services, was recognized at the Quinquennial Award ceremony but was unable to attend.