SIFE Team Helps Businesses Get “Smart”
Kyle Stephens, SIFE member, in training for Google Places. (Photo by Hung Do Le '12)
“Spend-ready” customers are the ones business owners most desire.
Now, a dozen members of Keuka’s SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise) team are ready-and-available to assist local Chamber of Commerce members from Rochester to Ithaca better market their businesses with Google Places.
A web tool from the online search-engine giant, Google Places merges the basics of Google Maps and the phone book with a simple business listing. But everything from hours of operation, photos, videos, payment options, customer reviews and more can be added to the basic listing to create a web search tool powerful enough to tempt say, a thirsty traveler with a GPS-enabled smartphone, anxious to satisfy a caffeine craving at the nearest coffee shop.
Dan Stephens of Montour Falls studies a Google Places listing. (Photo by Hung Do Le '12)
That’s how it works for Dan Stephens, sophomore English education major from Montour Falls.
“Anytime I go someplace I’m not familiar with, such as when I go to the Adirondacks in the summer, or go out to eat or go shopping, [I] go on Google [with my phone] and type in ‘local pizza parlors,’ and find 10 different [listings.]” (more…)
Keuka College, Rochester Folk Art Guild Team Up
Two Chinese students pursuing master’s degrees in management, with a concentration in international business, at Keuka College have embraced the College’s model of experiential, hands-on learning.
Yang An works at the Rochester Folk Art Guild.
For their final project, Yinqi Lu, from Guangdong Province in southern China, and Yang An, from Anhui Province in central China, are creating a business strategy and marketing plan for the Rochester Folk Art Guild’s woodshop in Middlesex.
“Simply asking the Guild questions would not be enough,” said Yang. “We started the consulting project by visiting the Guild, working together with the woodworkers, and observing their behavior. By doing so, we could obtain a direct awareness of their working procedure, define problems, and offer some potential solutions.” (more…)
Thinking Globally, Working Locally
Hien Pham may be a Vietnamese student studying for a degree at an American college, but she’s taking advantage of every opportunity afforded her to pave the way to a future job. At Keuka College one of those opportunities is Field Period, the 140-hour internship in real-world workplaces that each Keuka undergraduate conducts each year.
Pham hails from Hue City, Vietnam, and studied at Vietnam National University (ISVNU) in Hanoi, a partner school to Keuka, before transferring to the home campus in Keuka Park last year. With a business management major and a communications minor, the senior put multiple skills to use in January for Action for Boston Community Development Inc. (ABCD), a non-profit agency that provides a range of services to low-income families, including minorities and internationals.
During her four weeks at the Dorchester City neighborhood branch, Pham used her graphic design skills to create a four-page branch newsletter, which showcases numerous programs and offerings for the many Asian and African-American families served by ABCD. She also drew and painted a large banner of Rosa Parks’ bus to hang on a center wall for children to add names of famous Black Americans during Black History Month in February.
Pham's front-page design.
A Taste of France
Just like the many wines sampled, senior marketing major Jennifer O’Donnell got a taste of France itself on an independent tour of the country during January.
O’Donnell conducted her final Field Period—the 140-hour real-world investment Keuka students make in career, world and life exploration – overseas and visited spots such as the World War II battlefield cemeteries at Normandy, the Louvre art museum, Versailles, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, and the Mediterranean Sea in Cannes.
Hosted by her great-uncle, who holds triple citizenship in America, France and Ireland and his wife, a French native, O’Donnell said her goal was simply to experience the country, especially its food and wine, during her time there. At the suggestion of her faculty adviser, she also observed how the French market and sell their wines.
A World War II cemetery at Normandy.
While O’Donnell’s relatives did not take her on tours of French wineries, each day they would visit a different café for lunch and try a different wine with the meal, she said. The 21-year-old was introduced to a sparkling red wine, Lambrusco, as well as a specialty wine, Kir, to which flavored syrups can be added, such as blackberry or cassis.
The country also has a strong tradition in the culinary arts.
And while the French eat lots of fish, pasta and chicken, O’Donnell said she noticed that “they’re very health-conscious and there are almost no fried foods at all. I had some fries, but they had no salt on them—they tasted very plain. It is just very different [cuisine].” (more…)
Bravo, Bonnies!
The small town of Olean, N.Y. is alive with basketball fever as both the St. Bonaventure men’s and women’s teams earned spots in the NCAA Division I tournament.
The success of the Bonaventure women (31-3 overall), who went undefeated in the Atlantic 10 conference and won the most games in a season in school history, can largely be credited to longtime head coach Jim Crowley, a 1993 Keuka College graduate who played for the Storm’s men’s basketball team and also coached the Storm’s women’s basketball team.
Crowley, who has spent the last 16 years with the Bonnies, including the last 12 as the women’s head coach, was named the 2011-12 ESPN.com National Coach of the Year after leading Bonaventure into the Big Dance for the first time in school history.
Keuka College Establishes Desiree Marsh Memorial Scholarship
A year-and-half ago, Keuka College junior Desiree Marsh, an occupational therapy (OT) major from DeRuyter, was killed in an automobile accident.
Desiree Marsh
Now, members of Marsh’s class have helped create a scholarship in her name to assist Keuka students enrolled in the OT master’s program with some of their financial costs.
“Pi Theta Epsilon (PTE), the OT honor society, wanted to establish the Desiree Marsh Memorial Scholarship to honor Desiree because she had such an impact on our whole class, and we wanted to commemorate her in some way,” said Emily Conrad, a senior OT major from Geneva, who serves as PTE president.
Horse Sense
Like many youngsters, Holly White wanted a pony when she was 4-years-old.
Since her mom and grandmother both grew up with horses, and her dad used to work for a local polo club, it seemed natural that she would have a horse of her own one day.
Holly White and her first pony, Smokey.
“Every little girl dreams of having her own pony someday, and my grandmother helped to make that come true for me,” said White, manger of records. “I was 13 when I got Smokey, an Arabian-Appaloosa (buckskin) pony cross, and began taking formal riding lessons.”
White says Smokey taught her a lot about responsibility, and he “probably kept me out of trouble during high school,” she said. “My parents would always threaten to sell him or take away my privilege of having riding lessons.”
Lebanese Student Says Her Country is Beautiful and Safe
Aline Nasreddine understands the perceptions many Americans and other Westerners have about her country.
“When people read and hear about the history of Lebanon, they have lots of concerns and feel afraid to visit,” said Nasreddine, who is pursuing a Master of Science degree in management with an international business concentration at Keuka College. (more…)
Classroom Tech Showcase: Ready, Set, Tweet
Junior Gena Morales, of Waterloo, and Assistant Professor of Education Denise Love.
She Skypes. She shoots (video). She scores.
Denise Love, assistant professor of education, has boldly taken her classroom teaching into the next frontier – the virtual one.
In the Instructional Methods class this fall at Keuka College, students learned the ins and outs of classroom methods to teach math, science and social studies. Toward the end of the course, students practiced giving original lessons to one another, and Love integrated Twitter into the project evaluations.
At the end of each student presentation, classmates logged on to Twitter on their smart phones or laptops and posted brief comments. Concise, direct evaluations were necessary because Twitter limits postings to 140 characters.
According to Love, today’s students can best be described as digital “natives,” meaning they have been born and raised with many contemporary technology tools. By contrast, many of today’s adults, those of the Gen X and Boomer generations, are the “digital immigrants,” she said.
“Their learning is different from the way we learn,” Love explained. “We have to take the time to learn [a new technology] and that can be our downfall.”
By permitting a smart phone or laptop in the classroom, Love said she opens up a connection for student learning. Further, students using those tools can find answers quicker than if she sent them home to look up the answer to bring in the following day. Instruction that can keep students motivated and active in their learning will also prevent the distraction of checking e-mails or other electronic distractions, she said.
(more…)
SIFE Team Garners ‘Seed Money’ for Green Project
Senior Katelin Maxson led a team of SIFE students whose work on a sustainability project will bring "green" savings through motion-sensor technology to light switches like the one Rick Becker, maintenance manager, helps point out at Keuka's facilities plant.
The lights will soon dim in a campus building near you.
That’s what students working on the Keuka College CSI (Campus Sustainability Initiative) project are hoping. As members of Keuka’s Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) team, those working on the environmentally friendly project created a “green” project recommending motion-sensor lighting technology be used more places on campus, such as in classrooms vacated near the end of the day, dorm hallways and other locales.
SIFE CSI Project Manager Katelin Maxson submitted a proposal in early September to the national SIFE organization, hoping to be chosen one of 15 elite teams across the Northeast to qualify for a grant award through SIFE’s sponsor, o.b® a brand of Johnson and Johnson. In keeping with the sponsor’s marketing theme, “women for less waste,” adding motion-sensor lighting to select classrooms and hallways would reduce energy usage and waste, according to SIFE team president Nick Simpson. The team learned Dec. 1 they had won a re-grant award.
“I’m on campus late most nights,” said Maxson,, a senior accounting major from Whitney Point. “I go by Hegeman [Hall] and see almost every classroom lit up with computer screens and lights on at 9 p.m., but no one’s been in those classrooms for several hours.”
Simpson called the $1,500 award “seed money” for the next phase of competition, when the SIFE team can present data showing what kind of impact the green initiatives had on the campus. Maxson explained that the CSI team will receive an initial $1,250 to launch the project, with the remaining $250 to come when the tracking data – actual net savings shown on utility bills – is submitted to the national SIFE organization, likely in April. Prizes earned at the next level of competition could garner the team an additional $1,000 – $2,500.
Recent Comments