Social Work Student Earns Golden Apple Award
While she hasn’t yet completed her bachelor’s degree in social work from Keuka College, Canandaigua resident Melanie Nwaobia is already practicing the skills that will come into play for a career serving others.
Nwaobia on the job at Canandaigua Elementary, with student Noah Haus.
Over the last three years, she has worked as a one-to-one teacher’s aide with Noah Haus, who is now a fourth-grade student at Canandaigua Elementary School. While Noah’s autism means that his verbal skills are limited, he is “an incredibly smart young man” who works hard and excels with hands-on tasks, Nwaobia said. Using calendars and schedules with visual cues and icons, as well as technology tools like an iPad with apps he can manipulate and receive electronic “applause” for completing, Nwaobia assists Noah as he works through classroom lessons.
In December, Noah’s parents nominated Nwaobia for the Golden Apple Award from WROC- TV (Channel 8), the CBS affiliate in Rochester. A TV crew then came to the classroom to surprise her with the honor and to film Nwaobia and Noah going about the routines of his school day. (Click HERE to see the TV footage.)
In a letter to the station, Noah’s parents wrote how each day, Nwaobia sends home a full note detailing their son’s entire day, since he does not have the typical language and social skills to tell them himself. She sends text messages and photos too, so that they can celebrate the little successes Noah has each day.
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What’s New: Traditional Faculty
An interest in teaching smaller classes in order to foster greater student interaction is part of what brought Ithaca resident Laurel Hester to a new post at Keuka College this fall.
The small-college feel got in the assistant professor of biology’s veins during her own undergraduate studies at Swarthmore College, where she double-majored in biology and history. As a graduate student, Hester discovered she had a love of teaching, especially teaching biology, and as she worked toward her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, she began putting that passion into play. She went on to teach at the University of South Carolina, and later Cornell, where she taught as many as 400 students at a time in large lecture halls.
“The chance to teach smaller classes where I can really get to know the students and teach a wider variety of classes in a more interactive way is really what drew me here,” Hester said.
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Case in Point: Bringing Work Home
From left: Rappenecker's brothers, Frankie, Malik and Roderick
Almost two years after first taking her three younger brothers – now ages 6, 13 and 16 – into her home, and formally enrolling as a foster care parent, Kayleigh Rappenecker of Rochester is on the verge of adopting them. While a December court date has not yet been finalized, the adoption could be complete before Christmas.
It’s a personal milestone that has given Rappenecker an uncommon level of experience when working with future clients in the next vein of her emerging career as a social worker.
That’s because Rappenecker is still completing courses for her bachelor’s degree in social work through Keuka College’s Accelerated Studies for Adults Program (ASAP). At 25, Rappenecker is younger than the “typical” adult student enrolled in a Keuka ASAP course of study. She first began courses in January 2010, while pregnant with her first child.
ASAP Assistant Professor of Social Work Julie Burns said that while it is common for family members such as grandparents, aunts or uncles to take in younger children as foster children, or even adopt them, it is rare for an older sibling to take on the role of surrogate parent. In Rappenecker’s case, she wanted to intervene and keep her brothers together.
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Penny-Pride: Fund-Raiser Garners ASAP Support
They were cleaning the car out when the idea struck.
Helen Hoefer
Christie Hoefer, 17, daughter of Oswego resident Helen Hoefer, wound up staring at a handful of pennies in her hand, culled from the car’s interior, and voiced aloud, “These pennies are such a waste.”
“Not really,” replied her mother, an 11-year employee of Catholic Charities Food Pantry in Oswego. “Fourteen of them would buy a pound of food from the FoodBank of Central New York.”
Recomputing, the Oswego High School senior asked, “Oh, wow – I wonder how much a million pennies would buy?”
Christie's grandfather donated to her cause.
“Hmm, let’s see,” her mother responded, and within hours – after granddad Donald Greenlay had rolled $125 in pennies he had been collecting in a giant jar for as long as Helen could remember - Christie had the underpinnings for a fund-raiser officially launched in July: Pennies 4 Pantries.
When Helen, who is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in social work through Keuka’s Accelerated Studies for Adults Program (ASAP), relayed her daughter’s idea back to her fellow students in Cohort 239, which meets at Onondaga Community College each week, the group latched onto the concept.
“Someone in Helen’s cohort said ‘Let’s try to get a million pennies by graduation,’ and I said, ‘Excellent, that’s our goal,’” recalled ASAP instructor Vicki O’Connor. At the time, the students were working through what O’Connor called a “macro-level” social work course that dealt with volunteerism, social activism, and leadership within one’s own community.
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Social Work Students Serve in City
If good nutrition starts with a healthy source of food, what happens if the source is limited? What if that limited source is the only source? What if the “neighborhood grocery” is little more than a corner convenience store?
On Tuesday, six students studying social work at Keuka started asking questions like this in door-to-door interviews in the JOSANA (Jay-Orchard Street Area Neighborhood Association) community in the city of Rochester. It was part of a collaborative project, known as a neighborhood needs assessment, between the Finger Lakes Health Systems Agency, the Charles Settlement House and the College. As part of New York State Department Of Health’s Healthy Kids initiative, tackling the touchy issue of obesity, Keuka students conducted surveys of residents in that area, and will analyze their findings and return them to the Settlement House staff, who will, in turn, pass on the discoveries to the state government.
“Often in impoverished communities, folks don’t have access to a grocery store,” said Julie Burns-Percy, assistant professor of social work. “They are bound by bus routes, they don’t have a car, and they can’t walk to any [suburban] grocery stores, just a corner store. So, corner convenient stores – stocked with a lot of processed foods and junk foods – become a primary shopping avenue.”
According to Burns-Percy, these corner stores rarely stock reasonably priced fruits and vegetables that more people would want to serve.
As part of their work, students will be challenged how to engage with those living in that community, to hone their interviewing and research skills, and to consider their own safety as they work. (more…)
Alpha Sigma Lambda Gains 12
Three 2011 graduates and nine students from Keuka College’s Accelerated Studies for Adults Program (ASAP) were inducted into Chi Alpha Lambda, the College’s chapter of Alpha Sigma Lambda (ASL), the national honor society for adult students, Aug. 11.
The inductees included:
- Jacinta Colombo, who received a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing and resides in Marcellus;
- Tanya DeNee, a social work major from Naples;
- Trisha Fooks, a social work major from Canandaigua;
- Igor Gorbaletov, who received a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing and resides in Bath;
- Shirley Hurlburt, a social work major from Liverpool;
- Catherine Lovejoy, an organizational management major from Middlesex;
- Shannon McCarthy-Leone, who received a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing and resides in Fairport;
- Kim McCloskey, an organizational management major from Horseheads;
- Lynn Orlopp, a social work major from Clifton Springs;
- Kimmy Radell, a social work major from Baldwinsville;
- Colin Taft, a criminal justice administration major from Woodhull; and
- Donna Wood, a social work major from Savona.
Inducted as honorary ASL members were:
- Gary Boyer, adjunct instructor of English and director of the Center for Professional Studies Writing Center;
- Kelsey Folckemer, student adviser, ASAP;
- Sandra Miller, instructional support specialist, ASAP; and
- Kathy Waye, executive director of alumni and family relations.
Also during the ceremony, Timothy Gilbert, adjunct instructor of statistics, received a certificate of excellence in teaching.
View more photos from the ceremony.
What a Day
Editor’s Note: This is the 4th in a series of stories saluting members of the Class of 2011. We asked division chairs for story ideas and they in turn contacted faculty members for ideas. We believe they came up with some terrific profiles.
In the process of becoming a social worker, Allyson Day has grown into “a tremendous and honest advocate,” according to Assistant Professor of Social Work Jen Mealy.
Allyson Day
Day, a resident of Great Valley, “is a leader,” said Mealy. “She is kind, compassionate and genuine. She is grounded, which allows those around her to feel comforted by her presence.”
Day enrolled at Keuka College because she heard it heard it had an “awesome” social work program from one of her mom’s friends, who graduated from Keuka in 2004.
First Field Period Lends Insight into Social Work in a School Environment
Editor’s Note: This is the sixth in a 10-part series on the 2011 Experiential Learner of the Year Award nominees. Nominees for the upperclass and freshman awards will be honored at a luncheon May 6; the winners will be revealed at Honors Convocation May 7.
When freshman Courtney Ray was about 10 years old, she dreamed of becoming an
Courtney Ray
actress on a soap opera. Three years later, the social work major wanted to be a pediatrician, and three years after that, a cosmetologist.
But after spending her first Field Period in her hometown of Cato at Cato-Meridian Elementary School, Ray knows exactly what she wants to do when she grows up—help others.
Capsule Captures College Diversity
Time capsules are receptacles containing documents or objects typical of the current period, and placed in the earth or in a cornerstone for discovery in the future.
Students in Associate Professor of Social Work Stephanie Craig’s Social Work Ethics & Diversity class are putting a twist on the standard time capsule with its culture capsule. Members of the class will create a capsule filled with materials that reflect the cultures and traditions found on the Keuka College campus today.
“This project is significant because we have so much diversity on the campus we wanted to do something that reflected the campus as a whole,” said Craig, who also serves as chair of the Division of Social Work.
Social Work Job … Guaranteed
In the current economy, where plenty of folks are scrambling to find jobs, to have one guaranteed to a college senior is, in the words of a Keuka faculty member, “pretty phenomenal.”
To be guaranteed a steady job for two years, with the possibility of also earning scholarship money for a master’s degree after that is even more rare. But that’s what senior social work major Angela Price, a Clifton Springs resident, has found, thanks to a pilot scholarship program New York State is offering in child welfare services.
Modeled after a Kentucky grant program, New York’s Social Work Education Consortium created the BSW Child Welfare Scholarship to counter the high turnover rate of caseworkers within the Department of Social Services (DSS), said Jen Mealey, assistant professor of social work at Keuka. Now, some 25 high-achieving college seniors across the state, including Price, will benefit. So will the service agencies and the families served by them.
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