Momentum

One large, ongoing art project is how Taylor McDowell describes his life.Why? Because its elements combine to create a portrait of what the 2015 SUNY Morrisville graduate loves: web and game development, drumming, storytelling, art and music. Each has shaped the life of the 28-year-old New Hartford, New York resident, whose palette is a colorful blend of perseverance and will. Despite being born with 80% hearing loss, McDowell has persisted to become a drumming instructor, pit musician, well-known street performer, and a web and game developer.

Brian Simmons’ aunt offered him a job washing dishes on a Friday night when her restaurant in Nunda, New York, was short-staffed. “The rest is history,” he said. Since that day more than two decades ago, Simmons ’01 has built a successful career out of nourishing patrons as owner and chef of The Yard of Ale Restaurant. The casual-fine dining restaurant, located in Piffard, New York, the western Finger Lakes region, offers a diverse dinner menu, as well as a featured menu each week, showcasing specialty and seasonal ingredients prepared by Simmons.

As the COVID-19 pandemic caused the physical world to remain distanced, the virtual world of esports has emerged to connect people like never before. SUNY Morrisville students are among those taking a hold of esports (electronic sports), an organized sports competition featuring multiplayer video games where gamers from around the world can compete individually or as a team. They also can tune in as spectators.

As a business student, Rachel Jackson ’18 came to love the small-campus advantages offered at SUNY Morrisville. She never dreamed that her education would land her on one of the biggest campuses in the world — NBC Universal in New York City. Jackson worked as a campus programs coordinator with advertising sales recruiters for the CNBC network and the popular NBC late-night talk shows, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Late Night with Seth Meyers.

For Tristan Archambault ’22, receiving a scholarship changed his college experience. It gave him the opportunity to take summer classes, stay on track with his degree and be a member of the Mustang men’s ice hockey team.   “I could not have been more proud and honored to accept such a high honor here at SUNY Morrisville,” Archambault said of the Crawford Scholarship he received. “Scholarship support is a very important part of helping students advance their education.”

A beacon for generations, no end in sight for professor Shirley Crawford, SUNY Morrisville’s longest-standing faculty member Social science professor Norman Dann, Ph.D., recalls very clearly the day he returned to his office on the SUNY Morrisville campus to find a young faculty member, in her first days on campus, waiting outside his door.

Justanna Bohling ’13 keeps a bag packed with her firearm, a helmet with night vision goggles and heavy plated armor that will stop rifle rounds. She is trained in searching for fugitives, responding to active shooter situations and assessing radiological threats, and is constantly prepared to be deployed to any part of New York State. Bohling is the first female member of a special operations team assembled by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to assist law enforcement officers in crisis situations.

Julio Torres Santana ’07 didn’t speak English when he arrived in New York City as a teenager. No one in his family had ever graduated from college, and his childhood in the Dominican Republic was marked with poverty and hardship. But his drive to succeed and passion for architecture pushed him to complete an associate degree at SUNY Morrisville and become the school’s first architectural studies student to be accepted into the bachelor’s degree program at Cornell University.

A supportive professor who infallibly made himself available to his students, even long after they graduated; A hard-working dean always at the center of the action — that is how colleagues and students are remembering faculty emeritus Joseph Nassimos.

Only a lucky few know exactly what they want to be when they “grow up,” but most figure it out mid-way through college. When Jimmy Sardelli enrolled in SUNY Morrisville’s equine science program, he was still trying to find his path in life.