Snapping photos with just a smartphone, ��spent four months traveling across southeastern Europe to create a powerful collection of images that capture life in a region still shaped by its history of conflict and resilience.

The results from Strong’s overseas endeavor are now on display. The new “Call to Me, Balkans” photo exhibition is open on campus in the Schine Student Center’s Panasci Lounge. The exhibition, also simultaneously on display in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, features black-and-white images from Strong’s travels to the region during his 2023 sabbatical and two subsequent trips.

The timing is significant: “Call to Me, Balkans” commemorates the 30th anniversary of the��Dayton Peace Accords, the agreement that ended the Bosnian war of the 1990s.

“‘Call to Me, Balkans’ captures the rich, diverse and interconnected cultures of the region,” says Strong, an associate professor of visual communications who teaches photo and video storytelling at the . “It celebrates the resilience and beauty of an area heavily impacted by such a devastating conflict.”

Strong has said he hopes the exhibition also fosters connections with Central New York’s Bosnian immigrant community.

Strong is The Alexia Endowed Chair at the Newhouse School. Through grants, scholarships and special projects for photographers, filmmakers and other visual creatives,����promotes the power of visual storytelling to shed light on significant issues around the world.

The November opening of the exhibition at Schine featured remarks from , dean of the Newhouse School; , senior associate dean for academic affairs in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs; , professor and undergraduate director of Maxwell’s anthropology department; and Imam , assistant dean for religious and spiritual life at Hendricks Chapel.

The exhibition is curated and designed by his wife, , the curator of communications, design and exhibitions for The Alexia, who also teaches graphic design and writing courses at Newhouse. Strong’s travels took him through Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia and Slovenia.

Strong developed the Schine exhibition with support from the Newhouse School’s , which funds faculty and student research. The National Gallery exhibition in Sarajevo was funded by the University’s .

Strong said he challenged himself on this project to work exclusively with a smartphone in order to push creative boundaries and prove that powerful storytelling doesn’t always require expensive equipment.

This project has already received international acclaim, with work from the exhibition awarded by the Sarajevo Photography Festival and featured in China as a solo exhibition at the Pingyao International Photo Festival in 2024.

Nine faculty members in the (VPA) and five Universitywide organizations are among more than 2,400 nonprofit arts and culture organizations and individuals receiving (NYSCA) funding for 2026. NYSCA recently.

The following organizations received Support for Organizations awards totaling $110,000 to assist with general operations:

• , $10,000
• , $25,000
• , $10,000
• , $40,000
• , $25,000

Support for Artist awards of $10,000 each were also announced for these faculty members:

• , professor, Department of Film and Media Arts, for the project “Aphrodite’s Conception”
• , assistant professor, Department of Film and Media Arts, supporting the Light Work project “By the Skin of Her Teeth”
• , associate professor, Department of Film and Media Arts, for “By All Your Memories”
• , associate professor, Department of Film and Media Arts, for “Mid-Film Crisis,” presented with New York Women in Film & Television
• , assistant professor, School of Art, for “Demigoddess Comic Series”
• , associate professor, Setnor School of Music (in VPA) and School of Education, for “We Hold These Truths: Commemorating the 250th Birthday of The United States of America”
• , assistant professor, Department of Drama, for the project “Wolf Women”
• , instructor in the School of Art, for the work “Night Field,” presented at Stone Quarry Hill Art Park.

In addition, , associate professor in the School of Art, in collaboration with Columbia University faculty members Lynnette Widder and Wendy Walters, received a for the book initiative, “Seeds of Diaspora: Plants, Migrations, Settlements, Cities.” The grant program, a partnership between NYSCA and The Architecture League of New York, recognizes work in architecture, historic preservation and various fields of design.

was an Iraqi Kurdish refugee and respected imam living in Albany, New York, when as part of a controversial FBI sting operation in 2004. Though critics argued that the government failed to provide evidence of Aref’s guilt, he was before to Iraq.

What role did media coverage play in Aref’s story? That was the focus of a research project sponsored by the and conducted by and five Lender Student Fellows.

Their findings, which will be presented at a symposium, “: The American War On Terror,” on Nov. 7 and Nov. 8, showed how local and regional news coverage shaped public understanding in ways that supported prosecution narratives and made conviction more likely.

The findings are also being showcased as an exhibition on Nov. 8 and Nov. 9 at . That event is sponsored by the Lender Center with support from the New York Humanities Center, Coalition for Civil Freedoms, Muslim Counterpublics Lab and Syracuse Peace Council.

The research team’s comprehensive examination of news coverage around the case found the following themes and patterns.

Over-Reliance on Official Law Enforcement Sources

• Reporting contained official government narratives and cited law enforcement and government officials more frequently than any other source, an imbalance that presented readers with primarily one perspective on the case.
• Coverage failed to question the legitimacy of the sting operation via independent experts.
• Alleged connections to terrorist organizations in news reports were based on weak or unverified evidence.

• Most media misreported, and then failed to correct, a claim by federal government translators that Aref’s name was found with a Kurdish word meaning “commander” in front of it; the word actually means “brother.”

Uncritical Framing of Sting Operations as a National Security Necessity

• 60% of articles portrayed terrorism stings as essential to national security and helped normalize controversial law enforcement practices.
• Coverage celebrated the sting as a counterterrorism success before the trial had concluded.
• Articles linked the arrest to heightened terror alerts, even when officials said cases were unrelated.

Direct Impact on Public Perception

• An emphasis on potential terrorist connections influenced how the public viewed Aref’s credibility.
• News coverage emphasized Aref’s identity as a Muslim more than any other identity he held.
• Most reporting was incomplete and did not include the voices of his family, community or even his lawyer.

Gauging Fair Reporting

Husain, an assistant professor of magazine, news and digital journalism in the Newhouse School, examines and reports on the ongoing “war on terror,” including the impacts of its news coverage. She believes that newsrooms have the potential to use their resources to assure more accuracy in reporting, and that the public has the ability to assess the reliability of news coverage they see.

“One of the big solutions is to give journalists enough time to properly report a story using objective and investigative methods,” she says. “It’s Journalism 101, but reporters speaking to many and varied sources about a situation is an important step in getting as close to the truth as you can.”

News outlets can also guard against poorly reported stories and assure better accountability to their audiences “by making sure their reporting is driven not by those in power, but by the people who are most affected by the decisions of those in power,” she says.

Journalists can also audit their own systems to make sure their reporting is not harming communities, she says. “When newsroom leadership fails to do this, it falls upon individual journalists to take responsibility. Reporters have always been able to push editors and higher-ups to change coverage or to pursue certain stories.” Husain also cites the resource ��and its as a tool for news consumers.

The student fellows for the project are:

• Mohammad Ebad Athar (College of Arts and Sciences/history); and Azadeh Ghanizadeh (College of Visual and Performing Arts/writing studies, rhetoric, and composition); both current doctoral candidates
• Olivia Boyer ’26 (S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications/magazine, news and digital journalism)
• Mary Hanrahan ’25 (College of Visual and Performing Arts)
• Tia Poquette ’25 (Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs)

Five years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic upended daily lives across the globe, changing how we learned, how we shopped and how we interacted with each other. Over the following two years, the virus caused the deaths of several million people, including more than 1 million Americans.

For the next month the Maxwell School’s Qualitative Data Repository (QDR) will help us remember this time by hosting a traveling version of an exhibition titled “Picturing the Pandemic: Images from the Pandemic Journaling Project.”

The exhibition is drawn from a collection of images and audio files contributed to the Pandemic Journaling Project (PJP), which was started in May 2020 by a team of researchers from the University of Connecticut and Brown University. Their goal was to create an online archive of COVID-19 stories, described as a “grassroots collaborative ethnography.” By May 2022, over 1,800 people from 55 countries had shared nearly 27,000 online journal entries of text, images and audio—including almost 3,000 photos.

Maxwell is the seventh stop for “Picturing the Pandemic,” following exhibitions in Heidelberg, Mexico City and Toronto, as well as Hartford, Connecticut, where the show was first launched in 2022.�� The from phase one of the wider PJP early in 2024, making it a natural stop for the traveling exhibition. The exhibition can be found in the first floor foyer of Maxwell Hall until May 15.

The kickoff of the exhibition included a panel discussion featuring PJP co-founders Associate Professor Sarah S. Willen of the University of Connecticut and Associate Professor Katherine A. Mason of Brown University, as well as University Professor Amy Fairchild and Maxwell Associate Dean for Research Shana Gadarian. The talk was moderated by Sebastian Karcher, associate director of QDR.

The full PJP data maintained by QDR is currently available for use and re-use by researchers. Though, to protect privacy, access requires prior approval, with requests submitted from the dataset’s page on the��. A significant subset of more than 2,000 entries are also publicly available for searching and browsing by anyone on the��.

The creator of the term “bio art,” an expressive form that interprets scientific principles and concepts through artistic installations, exhibitions and performances, is the keynote speaker for the University’s annual in the Sciences and Humanities.

, an internationally recognized contemporary artist and poet, will speak on��, at 4:30 p.m. in the Life Sciences Complex atrium. His talk, “Rockets for the Sake of Poetry,” will feature highlights of his 40-year artistic career, his development of bio art and insights about his space artworks. This year’s lecture is hosted by the and its research focus group.

‘Bio Art’ Developer

Kac uses biotechnology and genetics to create and explore scientific techniques. In the early 1980s he created digital, holographic and online works that anticipated today’s global culture of information that is constantly in flux. In 1997, he coined the term “bio art,” which launched a new art form.

Among his famous works are the transgenic rabbit , for which he used and a jellyfish protein to create a live rabbit that glows a fluorescent green color under blue light.��In “,” he combined his own��DNA with that of a petunia flower to form a new “plantimal.”

His pieces have been shown around the world and, in one��instance, out of this world: his , “,” was . Kac’s “” was also realized in outer space with assistance from French astronaut Thomas Pesquet.

His career also spans poetry, performance, drawing, printmaking, photography, artist’s books, early digital and online works, holography, telepresence and space art. He is a professor of art and technology at the and a Ph.D. research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Inquiry in Interactive Arts at the University of Wales in Newport, Wales.

BioInspired Focus

As an institute for material and living systems, BioInspired hosts researchers who examine topics in complex biological systems and develop and design programmable smart materials to address global challenges in health, medicine and materials innovation. They include faculty, undergraduate and graduate students, and postdoctoral scholars from life sciences, engineering, physics and chemistry who work in three focus areas: �� and��

Last year, the institute added a fourth focus area, Posthumanities: Arts and Sciences, to push the boundaries of traditional scientific inquiry through activities and collaborations between the arts and humanities and the science-based disciplines.

The Posthumanities’ focus area coleaders, Boryana Rossa, of the College of Visual and Performing Arts, and G. Douglas Barrett, of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, spearheaded the proposal to invite Kac as the 2024 Wali Lecture keynote. They worked with BioInspired leaders Jay Henderson, institute director; Heidi Hehnly-Chang, associate director, and Jeremy Steinbacher, operations director.

The Wali Lecture represents a partnership of the Department of and the Syracuse University . It is part of the 2024-25 Syracuse Symposium “.”

The lecture was established in 2008 by his daughters to commemorate Wali’s vision and leadership to recognize their parents’ dedication and contributions to the University and the greater community. Wali was the Steele Professor of Physics Emeritus in the College of Arts and Sciences and internationally recognized as a theorist for research on the symmetry properties of fundamental particles and their interactions, as well as for his work as an author. He joined the University in 1969. He previously was at Harvard and Northwestern Universities, the University of Chicago, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in France and the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Italy. As a fellow of the American Physical Society, whose India Chapter named him Scientist of the Year in 2022, he received Syracuse’s Chancellor’s Citation for exceptional academic achievement and was one of the founding members of the .

An award-winning journalist, a hall of fame basketball coach, a nationally recognized library conservationist, a global financial executive and a renowned computer scientist will be recognized with honorary degrees from Syracuse University at the 2024 Commencement on Sunday, May 12, at the JMA Wireless Dome.

Hilton Als, writer at The New Yorker; Jim Boeheim ’66, G’73, former Syracuse men’s basketball coach and special assistant to the director of athletics; husband and wife, William “Bill” Brodsky ’65, L’68, chairman of a specialized investment firm and an investment management firm, and Joan Breier Brodsky ’67, G’68, a National Museum and Library Services Board member; and Lynn Conway, inventor of methods for designing Very Large Scale Integrated silicon chips, will be honored for their outstanding achievements in their professional careers and the difference they have made in the lives of others.

Hilton Als
Doctor of Letters

Als is an award-winning journalist, critic and curator. He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1994. Prior to The New Yorker, Als was a staff writer for the Village Voice and an editor-at-large at Vibe. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism (2017), Yale’s Windham-Campbell Literature Prize (2016), the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism (2002-03) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2000).

His first book, “The Women,” was published in 1996. His next book, “White Girls,” was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the winner of the Lambda Literary Award in 2014. His most recent book, “My Pinup,” a meditation on love and of loss, of Prince and of desire, was published in November 2022.

In 2017, he curated the critically lauded exhibition “Alice Neel, Uptown,” which traveled from David Zwirner, New York, to Victoria Miro, London and Venice. In 2019, Als presented “God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin” at David Zwirner, New York, followed by Frank Moore at, David Zwirner, New York (2021) and Toni Morrison’s “Black Book,” at David Zwirner, New York (2022). He curated a series of three successive exhibitions for the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, of the work of Celia Paul (2018), Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (2019) and Njideka Akunyili Crosby (2022). In 2022, he curated “Joan Didion: What She Means” at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, which traveled to the Perez Art Museum Miami in 2023. He curated Jared Buckhiester “No heaven, no how,” which opened March 2024 at the David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles.

Als is currently a teaching professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and has also taught at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, Princeton University, Wesleyan University and the Yale School of Drama.

Jim Boeheim ’66, G’73
Doctor of Humane Letters

Hall of Fame member Jim Boeheim had a remarkable run as head coach at his alma mater, Syracuse University. Boeheim guided the Orange to winning records in 46 of 47 campaigns. Syracuse made 35 trips into the NCAA Tournament, including Final Four appearances in 1987, 1996, 2003, 2013 and 2016. The Orange won the national championship in 2003. Boeheim retired from coaching after the 2023 season but continues to work for the University.

Boeheim was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2005. He was also honored with the John R. Wooden “Legends of Coaching” Award.

Boeheim enrolled at Syracuse in 1962 and was a walk-on with the basketball team. The Orange were 22-6 overall his senior year and earned the program’s second-ever NCAA Tournament berth. He earned a bachelor’s from the College of Arts and Sciences and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and a master’s from the Maxwell School. In 1969 he turned to a career in coaching and was hired as a graduate assistant at Syracuse. In 1976, he was named head coach.

A four-time BIG EAST Coach of the Year, Boeheim has been honored as NABC District II Coach of the Year 10 times and USBWA District II Coach of the Year on four occasions. In the fall of 2000, he received Syracuse University’s Arents Award, the school’s highest alumni honor.

Boeheim was named 2001 USA Basketball National Coach of the Year. He has served as an assistant coach for the U.S. Olympic teams that won gold medals in 2008, 2012 and 2016, and the World Cup in 2010 and 2014.

A champion of many charitable causes, Boeheim and his wife started the Jim and Juli Boeheim Foundation with the goal of enriching the lives of kids in need.

Joan Breier Brodsky ’67, G’68
Doctor of Humane Letters

Joan Brodsky graduated from the College of Arts and Sciences in 1967 with a bachelor’s in Latin language and literature and went on to graduate from the School of Information Studies (formerly the School of Library Science) in 1968 with a master of science degree.

Joan is passionate and knowledgeable about rare book and cultural heritage conservation and has been active nationally for many years, including sitting on the board of the Newberry Library in Chicago, as a Trustee for the Abraham Lincoln Museum and Library, as well as the library advisory board of the Jewish Theological Seminary. She also served on the Advisory Board for the School of Information Studies and has been a member of the Syracuse University Libraries Advisory Board since its founding.

In 2022, Joan was appointed by President Joe Biden to the National Museum and Library Services Board, which advises the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the largest federal funder of America’s museums, libraries and related organizations through grantmaking, research and policy development.

At Syracuse University, she is the founder and sponsor of the Brodsky Series for Advancement of Library Conservation. This sponsored program promotes and advances knowledge of library conservation theory, practice and application among wide audiences, both on campus, in the region and now online. This is an annual lecture series and workshop on book and paper conservation now in its 19th year.

In 2022, she and her husband Bill, a Syracuse University life trustee, funded the Conservation Lab in the Bird library and the Joan Breier Brodsky Media Preservation Vault in honor of Joan’s commitment to the preservation and conservation at the Bird Library.

Joan and Bill have been married for 57 years and reside in Chicago.

William “Bill” Brodsky ’65, L’68
Doctor of Laws

Bill is chairman of Cedar Street Asset Management, LLC, an investment management firm devoted to investing in equity securities in international markets, and chairman of Bosun Asset Management, a specialized investment firm.

During his combined 35-year career at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), he was recognized as a global leader in the development of the future and options markets. His contributions to Chicago’s futures and options markets were a major factor in Chicago’s becoming the world’s preeminent city for the futures and options markets.

Bill served as chairman of the CBOE Holdings Inc. now known as CBOE Global Markets and its predecessor firms between 1997 and 2017. He also served as the chief executive officer of the CBOE from 1997 to 2013. During his CBOE tenure, he served as the chairman of the World Federation of Exchanges and the International Options Market Association. From 1985 to 1997, he was president and CEO at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

Bill, who earned a bachelor’s degree from the College of Arts and Sciences and the Maxwell School and a law degree from the College of Law, began his career in 1968 at the Wall Street-based investment banking and securities brokerage firm of Model, Roland and Co. Inc. In 1974, he joined the American Stock Exchange and ultimately was executive vice president for operations.

In 1982, he became executive vice president and chief operating officer of the CME. In 1985, he was appointed president and CEO of the CME.

In 2019, Governor J.B. Pritzker named him to co-chair the newly formed State’s Pension Consolidation Feasibility Task Force. In 2022, he was inducted into “The Order of Lincoln,” the state’s highest honor for professional achievement and public service.

Brodsky is chair emeritus of the board of directors of Navy Pier Inc., one of Chicago’s most iconic cultural destinations, and past chair of the board of directors of Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Brodsky was nominated by President Biden and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2022 to the Board of Directors of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, which maintains a special reserve fund authorized by Congress to help investors at failed brokerage firms.

Lynn Conway
Doctor of Science

Conway is a renowned computer scientist who revolutionized global information technology by inventing methods for designing Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) silicon chips. Her work paved the way for the powerful microchips that animate modern high-technology systems.

As a young engineer at IBM Research in the 1960s, Conway made pioneering innovations in computer architecture. Sadly, IBM fired her in 1968 upon learning she was undergoing gender transition. She restarted her career in a new identity in “stealth-mode” after completing her transition.

While working at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s, Conway innovated breakthrough methods that enabled engineers to design very powerful, complex chips. In 1980, Conway’s seminal textbook “Introduction to VLSI Systems,” co-authored by Caltech Professor Carver Mead, became an instant classic, forever transforming computing and information technology. Professor John V. Oldfield brought the new VLSI methods into Syracuse right at the beginning of that revolution.

In the early 1980s, Conway became assistant director for strategic computing at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In 1985 she joined the University of Michigan as professor of electrical engineering and computer science and associate dean of engineering.

When nearing retirement in 1999 she began quietly coming out as a trans woman, using her new to share her story with friends and colleagues. Conway became active in transgender advocacy.

In 2012 Conway published a that revealed how—closeted and hidden behind the scenes—she conceived the ideas and orchestrated the events that disruptively changed global industries.

Conway is a life fellow of the IEEE, fellow of the AAAS, winner of Computer Pioneer Award of the IEEE Computer Society, member of the Hall of Fellows of the Computer History Museum, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and holds five honorary degrees. In 2023 she was inducted into the for the invention of VLSI. She was awarded the by the and the .

In 2020, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna on behalf of the company for back in 1968. the IBM Lifetime Achievement Award.

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Syracuse University Libraries recently launched its new Digital Collections site at . This new online resource, available through the Libraries’ website under the “Collections” menu tab, is produced and curated by the Libraries’ Digital Stewardship team and primarily features distinctive content�� from the Special Collections Research Center. The new Digital Collections site is housed on the because of its flexibility and responsiveness as a digital asset management platform with extensive front-end capabilities that enable it to showcase, share and celebrate locally held materials with a global community of users.

Libraries’ users, including students, faculty, staff and global researchers, can find collections by choosing the subject topic, name, geographic location, original format or source collection from alphabetical drop-down menus. There are also various featured collections, including , ,�� or . The platform also allows for hosting various bespoke collections, like the .

In addition to hosting digital collections, the site serves as a portal to the Libraries’ digital exhibitions, including:

“As we wrap up this phase of migrating content from the previous platform, our team is really excited to add new digital materials to the site and experiment with different approaches to spotlighting and creating increased access to our unique content,” says Déirdre Joyce, head of digital stewardship and the Digital Library. “There are enormous opportunities to leverage the capabilities of this platform to support creative digital scholarship that we are just beginning to explore.”

“An increasingly key role for research libraries is building virtual libraries out of rare local collections so we can better preserve the originals and efficiently share them with the world whenever possible,” says Scott Warren, senior associate dean for research excellence. “By investing in state-of-the-art systems like Quartex, we amplify our ability to bring these critical cultural heritage items into Syracuse classrooms for use by Syracuse students and faculty and make them available to global researchers,” he says. “I’m thrilled our new Digital Collections platform is live! It’s just one of the many ways the Libraries helps drive student success.”

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We want to know how you experience Syracuse University. Take a photo and share it with us. We select photos from a variety of sources. Submit photos of your University experience using #SyracuseU on social media, fill out a ��or send it directly to ������Ƶ at��newsphoto@syr.edu. You might see it featured here.

The Center for International Services took a group of students to enjoy all that fall in Central New York has to offer, including apple and pumpkin picking. This picture is from their stop at Tim’s Pumpkin Patch in Marietta. (Photo by Meriel Stokoe)

According to Ron Novack, executive director of Syracuse University’s Office of Veteran and Military Affairs (OVMA), “Every day is Veterans Day at Syracuse University.” Given the University’s historic commitment to veterans and military families, it’s no surprise that the OVMA staff goes above and beyond to make the Veterans Day observance truly special each year.

This year’s celebrations commenced with the release of the Military Times Best for Vets College rankings on Nov. 6, where Syracuse University once again secured a spot in the top 10% of colleges and universities. Such an achievement is only possible due to the unwavering dedication of the University’s faculty and staff, along with a supportive campus community.

Throughout the week, three student veterans and one veteran alumni member of the OVMA advisory board shared their stories with the campus community. Benetta Dousuah G’25, Raphael Grollmus ’24 and Jack Pullano ’24 shared their reflections on their service and how Syracuse University is impacting their post-service lives.

Retired U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. Gary Ginsburg ’72, a member of the OVMA advisory board and a graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, spoke about a lifetime of service to those who have served and his selection for a leadership position within a national veterans’ service organization.

The Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center, in collaboration with the Department of Digital Stewardship, launched the digital exhibition, “.” Additionally, library staff created a table display to showcase the work of several student veterans and veteran alumni. A central focus of the display was a recently published book about , a U.S. Army Air Corps pilot during World War II who was a member of the historic Tuskegee Airmen.

On Nov. 10, things kicked off early as more than 230 registered participants arrived on campus in the chilly morning hours for the annual Veterans Day 5K Walk and Run, hosted by the OVMA. The event welcomed participants from the Central New York region onto campus for a run with military-connected students, faculty and staff to build camaraderie and esprit de corps.

After the run, the doors opened at the D’Aniello National Veterans Resource Center to welcome guests for the University’s annual Veterans Day Ceremony. The ceremony featured Sheneé Bletson, a U.S. Air Force veteran who works in the Office of Inclusive Excellence as an office coordinator; U.S. Navy Veteran John Nipper ’23, G’24, president of the University’s Student Veteran Organization; and , a student in the College of Law who served as the keynote speaker.

“It is crucial that young people of diverse backgrounds and circumstances are exposed to the inspiration and confidence that come from having someone believe in them. Syracuse University’s position of educating leaders is a conduit to a better future,” said Coffey, who served for more than 20 years as a combat aviator in the U.S. Navy. “It is through community that we may come together and empower young people to achieve and gain self confidence.”

On Nov. 11, the Orange men’s football team faced the Pittsburgh Panthers at Yankee Stadium in New York City, marking 100 years since the two teams came together in 1923 to establish the collegiate football tradition at the historic baseball field. Taking place on Veterans Day this year, the game featured members from the University’s ROTC Color Guard presenting the national colors and a flyover by Lt. Col. Sean Stumpf ’07, a C-130 pilot in the U.S. Air Force.

In a poignant moment during the game, twin brothers and U.S. Army veterans were proudly featured as the game’s Hometown Heroes. The Watts twins both competed on the University’s track and field team in the early 1990s before serving in the U.S. Army. William stood in for both of the brothers on Saturday, as Clarence passed away due to complications from cancer in 2015.

Michael Greifenstein, ’27, a military-connected student and broadcast and digital journalism major in the Newhouse School, was among a handful of winners from the OVMA’s Orange in the City competition, which paid for transportation to and from the game, accommodations in the city, tickets to the game and other Syracuse-related festivities over the weekend.

“Getting to experience the 100th anniversary game, especially from the venue my girlfriend and I were in, was an unforgettable experience,” says Greifenstein. “Growing up as a Yankee fan and studying now as a Syracuse student, this a time I won’t soon forget.”

From Syracuse to New York City, OVMA Deputy Director Dwayne Murray ’91 played a crucial role behind the scenes to ensure a smooth celebration of Veterans Day at Syracuse University. Murray, who grew up in the Bronx and also competed on the University’s track and field team with the Watts Twins, shared his reflections on the weekend’s events.

“Spending time in Bronx while representing Syracuse University and the Office of Veteran and Military Affairs on Veterans Day was an enchanting experience,” says Murray, who grew up close enough to Yankee Stadium to hear the cheers after a home run. “From the color guard and the flyover by one of our very own alums to the hometown hero presentation, Veterans Day just meant a little bit more this year.”

For more information about OVMA, or how you can support the University’s goal of being the “Best Place for Veterans,” visit the OVMA website at veterans.syr.edu.

Each semester, upper-level architecture students participate in the visiting critic program that brings leading architects and scholars from around the world to the school. Four studios will be held on campus this fall.

Li Han and Hu Yan (Drawing Architecture Studio)

and , co-founders of Beijing-based , will teach the visiting critic studio, “Building Stories: The Poetry in Everyday Space,” where students will showcase how architecture and space transcend their utilitarian functions to become integral components of storytelling.

Inspired by the backdrop of the multi-family house featured in the graphic novel “Building Stories,” the studio is conceived as an experimental exploration of a design approach based on narrative and sensitivity. Beginning with the interior design of a multi-family house and gradually expanding to encompass various scales and design domains, ranging from everyday items and furniture to architecture and urban landscapes, students will embody different roles and derive inspiration from everyday spaces in Syracuse, defining poetic moments through design and telling their own building stories. The entire design process—emphasizing intricate observation, detailed representation, multi-threaded storytelling and collage—is viewed as a comprehensive study of multi-family housing, spanning from the functional layout of living spaces to the lifestyles of residents, and from the cultural aesthetics of architecture to the historical memories of the city.

Han and Yan will give a , focusing on their upcoming exhibition, “,” on Sept. 21 at 6 p.m. in the Hosmer Auditorium at the Everson Museum of Art.

Da-Un Yoo (Ewha Womans University)

, professor in the Department of Architecture at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea, will teach the visiting critic studio, “Extreme Living: 22nd Century Seoul Housing,” which celebrates the 100th anniversary of the publication “Towards a New Architecture” by Le Corbusier by exploring the ‘new architecture’ for the 22nd century.

Just as Le Corbusier explored the various housing typologies and lifestyles that new technologies would change in the era of automobiles, airplanes, ships and mass production about 100 years ago, students will imagine the future of urban housing based on the latest technologies such as autonomous vehicles, drone taxis and online telecommunication. Using Seoul as the site for their investigations, students will research scenarios for extreme living and design a high-density urban housing proposal for 22nd-century Seoul. In addition to typical studio sessions, students will travel to Seoul in the fall, as part of a one-week sponsored trip, to gain a greater understanding of the city’s extreme housing culture—the high-rise apartment buildings and neighborhoods resembling ‘towers in the park’—reminiscent of the city Le Corbusier predicted 100 years ago.

Yoo will give a on Sept. 28 at 5:30 p.m. in the atrium of Slocum Hall.

Bing Bu (Syracuse Architecture and INCLS)

, director of the Syracuse Architecture Three Cities Asia program, will teach the visiting critic studio, “Project Promised Land,” where students will examine “managed retreat” as a necessary measure in response to climate change induced natural hazards in the contexts of social, technological, economic, ecological and political aspects.

Climate change now feels more real than ever as we have witnessed New York City covered by wildfire smog or California deserts flooded by a hurricane in the past summer. Whether or not we have lost the tipping point in the war against global warming, it’s time to take actions to adapt to these new climate patterns. Structured in two phases, the research phase and the design phase, the studio will focus on a relatively new approach to increased coastal hazard risks—managed retreat, the purposeful and coordinated action to move infrastructure and people away from areas of high-risk of negative impacts due to climate change. In phase one, students will research climate change and managed retreat for Lake Ontario communities in upstate New York and represent their findings through visual mediums. In phase two, working in site-specific project teams, students will identify issues and challenges from a local view and establish their managed retreat frameworks, design proposals and means of implementation for the built environment in both sending and receiving sites.

This studio is a part of the “ launched earlier this year by the New York Department of State (DOS) to engage graduate and undergraduate students in DOS programs and projects that focus on climate change and climate justice. During the semester, students will access a wide range of data and information provided by the DOS and meet twice a month with DOS officials and regional staff, as well as in-house experts and trusted partners. The final works produced by students will be shared with policymakers, program managers and decisionmakers from the Office of Planning, Development and Community Infrastructure as a visual tool, and incorporated into statewide policy and program guidance to be utilized by both DOS and other state agencies working on coastal and climate resilience.

Stephanie Davidson and Georg Rafailidis (DAVIDSON RAFAILIDIS)

and , co-founders of the architecture practice , will teach the visiting critic studio, “House for Everyone,” where students will look at an adaptive reuse project that exemplifies how architecture is both a private matter and a public good.

In this studio, students will examine a property located at the southern edge of the Adirondacks. Owned by a family with ties to Syracuse University, they have expressed an interest in opening up the use of the property, which has historically been a private summer home, and finding new ways that it can serve their private needs and serve a wider community. Students will analyze the existing buildings on the property: their materiality and construction, their apparent tectonic logics, the types of spaces they offer and their relationship to the landscape of the Adirondacks and the climate of upstate New York. They will study existing spatial typologies that have—either through design or happenstance—proven to be spaces for everyone: radically inclusive, and not bound to a specific program or user group, as well as a typology specific to the Adirondacks: “Great Camps.” Following these investigations, fragments of these studies will crosspollinate with documentation and exploration of the site—detailed measurements, exhaustive photos and an inventory of materials—taken from a sponsored site visit during peak fall foliage season. Through the complex process of adaptive-reuse, students will create outcomes that are typologically unclassifiable and alive, informed by the past and imaginings of the future, hopeful and provocative, populist and joyful.

Courtney Mauldin infuses her scholarly research with a clear purpose: to give Black girls innovative opportunities to dream big and envision futures filled with possibilities. Her involvement with the is critical to success: “We see the humanities as something that allows for dreaming, and we are creating space for girls to dream through art and literature,” says Mauldin, assistant professor of educational leadership in the teaching and leadership department in the School of Education. She co-leads the Working Group, one of dozens of in the corridor.

This fall, the corridor marks 15 years in existence and its fifth year into the endowment that provides humanities research support in perpetuity, thanks to an award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Though the administrative home of the corridor is at the��, the corridor is a consortium of 11 institutions connecting faculty, academic staff, students and members of the wider community across disciplinary, geographic and institutional boundaries.

“The corridor has truly become a regional consortium with global reach,” says Vivian M. May, director of the Humanities Center and the corridor, and professor of women’s and gender studies. “Thanks to our support this past year, working groups engaged with over 3,800 individuals and collaborated with over 260 institutions and organizations across at least 37 states and 23 countries around the world.”

With funding from the corridor, Mauldin has been able to bring together educators and others who aspire to mentor Black girls to explore ways to give them more voice. As part of their research (the working group is now in its third funding cycle), Mauldin and her co-lead Misha Inniss-Thompson, assistant professor in the department of psychology at Cornell University, discovered that the adult educators first needed to explore their own beliefs, backgrounds and judgments and “discover the Black girl in all of us and unlearn some of what we had learned as girls” to more effectively mentor and inspire the next generation.

“In a world where we are constantly bombarded with messages of who we ought to be (or not), in the working group we’ve cultivated a space that truly begins to embody what it means to express our thoughts freely, make space for our healing and co-construct spaces where current generations of Black girls can have a space to be in intentional community with one another,” says Inniss-Thompson.

Now, each event sponsored by Mauldin’s working group has an intergenerational element. “The corridor has given us an opportunity to do the kind of applied research that doesn’t fit into a box,” says Mauldin. “We go in with one idea and discover something new, always thinking about impact.” At an at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art in Ithaca, New York, the art of Nydia Blas will be used as a springboard for participants to��consider the role of family, history and home in shaping understanding of Black girlhoods.

“The corridor brings to life our commitment as stated in the Academic Strategic Plan to support and encourage research focused on the community good and fosters empathy and civic engagement through the arts and humanities,” says Associate Provost for Strategic Initiatives Marcelle Haddix. “Together with our academic colleagues across Central New York, we grapple with critical questions and address issues that have the potential to transform society in positive ways.”

The collaboration of researchers across disciplines and backgrounds is key to the corridor’s success in sparking new ways of thinking and ensuring that the humanities remain relevant as an area of study. “Many of us who were trained in the humanities didn’t really have to make a case for ourselves. It was a given that the humanities were important. It never occurred to me to wonder what I was going to do with the work,” says Lois Agnew, associate provost for academic programs and professor of writing and rhetoric. “The world has changed and students are pressing for answers on how to make the humanities more relevant and how they can make a difference in the world.”

Agnew, along with Stacey Langwick, associate professor of anthropology at Cornell, and Andrew London, professor of sociology at Syracuse, co-leads a working group on . “Health humanities is a broad discipline that provides a vehicle for acknowledging the complex factors that shape people’s experiences with health,” says Agnew. “For example, we know that illness is something everyone experiences. But we don’t always think about the structural inequalities that affect people’s access to medical treatments and the quality of care they receive. We are looking at the complex ways in which there are barriers that might not be obvious, as well as the sociocultural influences that shape people’s assumptions about health, medicine, disease and disability.”

An sponsored by Agnew’s working group is designed to move attendees beyond those assumptions by challenging them to consider how they define “healthy food” in the context of food deserts. Keynoter Hanna Garth, assistant professor of anthropology at Princeton University “illuminates how the concept of ‘healthy food’ is loaded with assumptions about the ways different racialized populations eat, and operates a racial signifier indexing whiteness and in opposition to Black and Latine ways of eating.”

“All of us in academia will likely take some of the questions she introduces back to our students and that should help them understand the world a little better, specifically how structural inequality in the world is interfering with people’s ability to live and flourish,” says Agnew.

Other corridor activities have included an early modern philosophy conference; a skills-building archival research workshop; writing workshops for military veterans; a colloquium on ethics and data science; a public lecture and youth workshop on grassroots organizing; Indigenous performance and art; a micro-theater festival; career workshops for doctoral students; the formation of a new public policy humanities network; several book circles and writing workshops to provide mentoring and advance research outcomes across all career stages.

“To my knowledge, there is no other program of its kind nationally, which is fiscally supported by a combined endowment physically located at three universities,” says Gregg Lambert, founding director of the corridor. He credits Chancellor Kent Syverud for providing the commitment and support that resulted in $3.65 million matching endowment grant from the Mellon Foundation, enabling the corridor to establish centers at Syracuse, and the University of Rochester, and include other institutions in the collaborative to form a whole that is truly more powerful than its parts (including Colgate University, Hamilton College, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Skidmore College, St. Lawrence University, Union College, Le Moyne College and the Rochester Institute of Technology).

“What is truly unique is a funding model that fosters interdisciplinary research that is organic and evolutionary,” says Lambert. “Through this faculty-driven collaborative model, the working groups have flexibility in developing and adapting their research in response to discoveries and innovations that broaden the creative process and impact.”

“In addition to advancing our mission to provide research support, build bridges and cultivate scholarly community for faculty, students and academic staff across our region, working group collaborations lead to diverse outcomes,” says May. “The ripple effects of our funding include publications, cross-institutional learning communities and teaching collaborations, external grants and fellowships, archive-building, newly commissioned musical scores, and more.”

“Central New York is fortunate to have such a thriving and engaged humanities community, and the consortium’s co-directors and I are proud to support the wide-ranging needs and interests of the region’s scholars, artists, performers and activists,” says May. “Such heterogeneity, evocative of a vibrant quilt of different fabrics, textures and colors, is key to our vitality as a research consortium that advances cutting-edge research and brings the humanities to bear on a range of local and global concerns.”