Momentum Issue

Monday morning, the second week of classes, and in the Western barn, the nicker of horses and warmth of well-used leather replaces the starch of lectures and laptops. A palomino named Trigger hangs his head over the stall door and poses for a selfie with a freshman whose experience with horses has been pretty much confined to cell phones. Down the aisle, another newly minted rider is trying to wrap the legs of a fidgety paint. A third is discovering that horses manage to get all sorts of interesting items caught in their tail.

Long days on the farm, grit and determination have come to define dairy management student Carrie Shuman on her journey to graduation. Born and raised on a former dairy farm in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, Shuman amassed emotional and financial hardship following the death of her father during high school and the recent loss of her brother. The unassuming, petite, 22-year-old has persevered and received her bachelor’s degree in May. It is more than a stepping stone into the dairy industry — it is a badge of her fortitude.

Talon Abrams has been fascinated with amphibians and reptiles since he was 4 years old, catching snakes and frogs in a backyard creek at his Madison, New York, home. Some even made their way into his bedroom so he could examine them more closely in a glass bowl. That allure eventually led him to SUNY Morrisville to pursue a bachelor’s degree in renewable resources technology. He wants to land in a career where he can help aquatic life, animals and the environment.

The room went silent as this year’s Global Game Jam® (GGJ) theme, “What Home Means to You,” was unveiled. And with that, James Cook and his teammates sequestered themselves in a classroom at SUNY Morrisville, serving as a host site, and spent the next 48 hours in imaginative indulgence and intensive programming, creating a video game from scratch. Four SUNY Morrisville teams joined 47,000 other jammers during this year’s 2019 GGJ, a hackathon-style event, in which participants worldwide collaborate to design functional video or board games in a weekend, to the same theme.

Tossing a lacrosse ball back and forth was a big part of Louie ’15 and Nick Geswaldo’s childhood. While others were playing video games, the brothers were shooting and catching, from dawn to dusk, in the backyard of their LaFayette, New York, home.   As they got older, their love for lacrosse deepened their brotherly camaraderie and spread to a college community. “We’re very close,” Nick said. “We’ve always had the same interests and hobbies and ended up always doing them together.”

After playing a major role in the revitalization of industrial hemp in New York State, SUNY Morrisville is rolling out a new minor in cannabis studies that will prepare students for the rapidly growing medicinal and recreational marijuana industry.

Breaking into the upper echelons of professional horse training isn’t easy, especially for east coast riders who aren’t from horse families. Jeremy Gates ’99 is proving that hard work and determination can overcome geographical boundaries and a later introduction to the horse industry. His career boasts one of the highest scores in a National Reining Horse Association (NRHA) event, as well as world and reserve world championship titles. "I had never ridden a reiner before coming to school. It opened up a whole new world of opportunities,” he said.

Five years ago, Elizabeth Hope Noble ’16 was finishing high school and serving as valedictorian of her senior class. The self-described "small-town girl'' was ready for college and thinking about life beyond it. She knew she wanted to work in a field where she could have a positive impact on people and she knew she wanted to see more of the world.

Dual-sport student-athlete Jordan Anderson turns competitive fire into a career A chance attendance of a lacrosse game changed the course of Jordan Anderson’s life. Anderson ’17 had just wrapped up a very successful freshman year on the Mustang women’s basketball team, earning Rookie of the Year status in the North Eastern Athletic Conference (NEAC) for her performance as the team’s starting point guard.

Mike ’79 and Stephanie Battisti ’79 have lived their lives in tandem since meeting as undergraduate students at SUNY Morrisville in the 1970s. The couple graduated in 1979 and grew their lives together on a maple and dairy farm outside of Morrisville. They shifted gears after their children were grown, starting a new chapter in the Adirondacks.