Medaille College News

Dr. Richard Jurasek, president of Medaille College, and Dr. Norman Muir, dean of the undergraduate college, recently spent four days in Taiwan signing a dual-degree 2+2 partnership with the Fortune Institute of Technology in Kaohsiung. They delivered a presentation on Medaille College and trends in higher education to over 100 students at
Ping Dong High School in Kaohsiung and Yan Ping High School in Taipei, and participated in a country-wide university recruitment fair in Taipei.

Students completing the 2+2 will earn a B.S. in business from the Fortune Institute of Technology and a B.S. in Liberal Studies from Medaille.

The high schools are among the most prestigious in Taiwan, with a number of high-quality students interested in pursuing a postsecondary degree in the United States or other countries.

At the recruitment fairs, Drs. Muir and Jurasek met personally with over 50 prospective students interested in either the 2+2 Medaille in Taiwan program, the first such dual-degree program in Taiwan, or applying to attend Medaille in Buffalo to answer questions and share information.

An article, “Cultural Issues in the Business World: An Anthropological Perspective,” by Dr. Michael Lillis and Dr. Robert Tian has been published in the Journal of Social Sciences. Their investigation outlines cultural issues in business, and examines the relationship between culture and human behavior, between organizational values and organization behavior, and “identifies several effective methods for managing cultural differences that often permeate an organization’s workforce.” Dr. Lillis is a professor and chair of the Business Department, and Dr. Tian is an associate professor in the Business Department.

After a career as an organizational development manager, Pat Seischab embarked on a new challenge: teaching adult students at Medaille’s Rochester Campus. “After 25 years of corporate work and consulting experiences, I developed insights in change management, process improvement, leadership and adult learning that I now bring to the classroom,” Seischab says.

From her organizational development background, Seischab offers, “I know you must accept people where they are and not where you would like them to be.” Bringing that concept into the courses she teaches in Rochester many evenings, she regularly customizes class activities to the learning needs of students, working to maintain academic standards and to meet individual learning needs.

In the past, prospective students have asked Seischab, “Why should I go back to school to get a degree?” Her answer is simple, and informed by her own experience. “To anyone considering going back to school, I say ‘do it!’ I was 39 when I went to graduate school, and I always tell students how much easier it is to return to school as an adult now than it was years ago.” Adult students who have looked at other colleges in the Rochester area may think there are no other options besides the traditional college experience of a campus with lots of buildings, daytime classes, and activities that are designed to appeal to the typical 18-year-old freshman.

According to Seischab, “Most students don’t realize the types of accommodations made by Medaille for non-traditional students returning for a degree.” The path to a degree begins with a personalized admissions and registration process, where student services staff assist with financial aid and course registration. From there, classes are held in a cohort structure, meaning that students travel with the same group of classmates for each class. With evening classes and coursework that can be immediately applied to one’s own work, students do not have to wait to complete the degree before seeing direct benefits to their professional career.

Bringing leadership insights to the classroom“Medaille students share a strong desire to make a better life, and that’s why our faculty works so well with our students,” Seischab says. “We are highly motivated to use our knowledge to help our students get ahead.”
She continues: “Medaille students leave with self-confidence in their ability to achieve, and that self-confidence fuels a positive attitude. A positive attitude, self-confidence and a degree in business are a powerful combination.”

Dr. Daniel P. Kotzin has written Judah L. Magnes: An American Jewish Nonconformist, a biography of an American Reform rabbi, Jewish community leader and active pacifist during WWI. The book, which is scheduled to be published by Syracuse University Press in June 2010, “tells how Magnes, immersed in American Jewish life, Zionism, and Jewish life in Mandatory Palestine, rebelled against the dominant strains of all three.”

Dr. Kotzin is an assistant professor in the social sciences department and chair of the interdisciplinary studies department.

An article on Medaille’s community outreach projects in Buffalo appeared in the February 2010 newsletter of the Viable Futures Center. In addition to the successful Community 101 projects of the fall 2009 semester, the article highlighted Medaille’s upcoming initiative with the Buffalo City School District at Riverside Academy of Entrepreneurship and projects that connect with the Veterans Art Therapy Program with the Arts in Education Institute, the Niagara/Buffalo Riverkeepers, and the Buffalo Olmstead Parks Conservancy.

Dr. Deborah Legge, assistant professor and clinical coordinator in the mental health counseling program, has written a post at the American Counseling Association’s blog: “Are you holding out for or holding on to a “real job“?

An interview with Dr. Legge was also part of the most recent issue of Counseling Today, a publication of the American Counseling Association.

Throughout March 2010, Medaille will hold a series of presentations on Chinese geography, history and culture by Dr. Xuehong Lu, coordinator of the Chinese Language and Culture Program at the University of Buffalo.

As the College prepares for the arrival of students from Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China by fall 2010, Medaille’s Faculty Development Committee, Office of Human Resources, and the International Student Campus Readiness Team are jointly sponsoring this series on historic and contemporary China.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010: Introduction to China’s Provinces and People
12:30-2 p.m., Main Building Lecture Hall

Friday, March 12, 2010: Introduction to Chinese Culture and Philosophy
12:30-2 p.m., Main Building Lecture Hall

Tuesday, March 16, 2010: Introduction to China’s Provinces and People
3:30-5 p.m., Main 104

Thursday, March 18, 2010:  Introduction to Chinese Culture and Philosophy
3:30-5 p.m., Main 104

Tuesday, March 23, 2010: Cultural Integration and Daily Life
3:30-5 p.m, Main Building Lecture Hall

Thursday, March 25, 2010: Family, Occupations and Society
3:30-5 p.m, Main Building Lecture Hall

Dorthea King-Simpson, the director of family child care at the Rochester Childfirst Network, made the choice to advance her education at Medaille College in Rochester. “When I moved from Utica, NY to Rochester in 2004, Rochester’s unemployment pool was saturated with highly-educated individuals,” she says. “I knew that I needed to go back to school to remain competitive.”

Two years after graduating from Medaille College with a master’s in organizational leadership, King-Simpson offers that her choice was the right one. “My organizational leadership degree is paying me back exponentially. Every day, on the job, I work to show the staff at Rochester Childfirst Network that they, and their contributions to the agency, are valued – that they are paramount to our success,” she explains. “Medaille taught me how to build trust with, invest in, and to earnestly praise those with whom I work.”

For King-Simpson, the design of Medaille’s Accelerated Learning Program was a major factor in her selection of a Rochester-area business program. “Without Medaille’s accelerated program, flexible schedule, and convenient location to where I live and work, I would not have been able to make the necessary commitments for my personal development,” she says. “My Medaille degree has without a doubt, increased my value as a member of the leadership team in our organization.”

Medaille College has announced that The John R. Oishei Foundation will provide $400,000 in grant funding over three years to support Project EQUIP, a comprehensive program focused on community-based learning for undergraduate students at Medaille’s Buffalo Campus.

In the 2006–07 academic year, Medaille implemented a pilot learning community program for provisionally admitted students, who make up 35% of incoming classes on average. Within just two years of implementation, the freshman-to-sophomore retention rate of this group increased from 56% to 69%, with measured levels of academic engagement rising to surpass selected peer institutions, based on the National Survey of Student Engagement.

“One of the major purposes of the learning communities is to offer students an opportunity to interact with the Western New York community,” says Alan Bigelow, Ph.D., professor of humanities. “In my classes, students wrote a series of research papers on topics including Attica prison, Love Canal, Wegmans, the Zebra mussel problem in Lake Erie, the Buffalo Zoo, the Mayoral race, and the Science Museum. They are venturing out into the community, a community which some of them were born in, and others are seeing for the first time.”

On the strength of these early results and with the support of the undergraduate faculty, Medaille expanded and improved the learning community program to include all incoming undergraduate students in September 2009. By the end of the fall semester, over 300 first-year students had completed collaborative, community-based projects that ranged from documenting narratives of senior citizens at the Northwest Buffalo Community Center, to working with the Niagara/Buffalo Riverkeepers to examine the long-term consequences of Buffalo’s industrial heritage.

“As students connect to the story and the institutions of Buffalo, their creative energies and talents, as well as those of their teachers, are brought to bear on important local issues,” explains Brad Hollingshead, Ph.D., associate dean for foundational learning and assessment. “The first-year learning communities—with our unique twist of using them to integrate academic and civic learning—not only help students persist and succeed academically; they also lay a foundation for the kinds of collaborative, interdisciplinary work that our students will need to be able to do once they graduate.”

“The John R. Oishei Foundation is pleased to be a partner with Medaille College as it launches Project EQUIP. Medaille is to be commended for its work to build partnerships and engage students in problem solving that will benefit them and the wider community. Civic engagement will not only enhance their learning experience at Medaille, but will build the leaders of tomorrow for the Western New York region,” states Robert D. Gioia, president of The John R. Oishei Foundation.

Expansion of this program, under the title Project EQUIP, will combine co-curricular activities, academic courses, internships and senior capstones that challenge students to explore their community, to question their roles within the community, to understand their academic discipline in the context of community needs, to involve themselves, and to produce new knowledge, while completing a four-year degree.

With The Oishei Foundation’s generous funding, Medaille’s Project EQUIP connects college students to the city of Buffalo and helps to serve common goals between Medaille and The Oishei Foundation by enhancing the capacity of higher education to contribute to economic and social renewal in Buffalo and Western New York.

About The John R. Oishei Foundation
The John R. Oishei Foundation strives to be a catalyst for change to enhance economic vitality and the quality of life for the Buffalo Niagara region. The Foundation was established in 1940 by John R. Oishei, founder of Trico Products Corporation.

With two master’s degrees and multiple professional certifications, Fernan R. Cepero has clocked many hours seated in a desk as a student. As an instructor of business courses for Medaille’s Accelerated Learning Program in Rochester, Cepero takes his role as a teacher quite seriously.

“Learning is bridge building, where unfamiliar content is made more meaningful by bridging from what is known to what is unknown,” he explains. “Adult learners actively construct their own understanding – they are not passive recipients of information.”

“I guide learning [in my classroom] by helping students individually, at other times instructing an entire class, and still at other times by encouraging class participation,” continues Cepero. “Spontaneity is a valued part of teaching, and if the teaching appears memorized, not spoken with eye contact, and if there are no visual aids, learning will likely not take place. Students also learn better if they know the immediate results of their work; therefore, I evaluate work and return it by next class time.”

Many students enter the business degree programs at Medaille with clear goals: to advance to a new position, to finish a degree they may have started years ago, or for the sake of building their knowledge to work more effectively in their current career. Thinking of the goals that he has for his students, Cepero states, “I want my students to learn to think critically and to become skillful listeners. Students learn the skills required to manage people, plans and projects in my class by immediate application of theory to their real world of work scenarios.”

With his animated classroom manner, Cepero consistently encourages students to voice their ideas about subject matter and to ask questions. “This type of classroom climate melts icy inhibitions toward attentiveness and participation. Learning involves active thinking,” he says.

Currently working as vice president of human resources for the YMCA of Greater Rochester, Cepero held previous positions at The Perrier Group of America and Xerox. He is immediate past president of the Genesee Valley Chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management (GVCSHRM) and currently serves as treasurer of the New York State Society of Human Resource Management and treasurer of Monroe JSEC. He is a member of the boards of the Ibero-American Action League, the Eugenio Maria de Hostos Charter School, and the Center for Disability Rights and is an active member of the Senior Human Resource Executive Forum of the Rochester Business Alliance.