A sense of gratitude was a common theme among the three Oswego State students who received SUNY’s highest recognition for excellence.

The 2016 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence was awarded to seniors Juanita Diaz, Tyler Pelle and Iain Thompson.

This award recognizes students that have demonstrated their integration of academic excellence with other aspects of their lives such as leadership, campus involvement, athletics, career achievement, community service or creative and performing arts.

Diaz is a zoology major with a minor in biological anthropology from Cincinnatus, New York. She has gone beyond the classroom of academia with her involvement as a resident assistant and the active president of Oswego State’s Pride Alliance.

“I don’t do the things I do to get awards; I do them because they are interesting or because I am trying to help other people,” Diaz said.

Although she is also a member of Oswego State’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee, Diaz said it is her research and the relationship that she has formed with professors that can be attributed to her success.

“The two professors who nominated me I really respect, so the fact that they think I deserve it was awesome and really humbling,” Diaz said.

Geology professors Diana Boyer and Paul Tomascak were key players in shaping Diaz’s academic experience, she said. Ever since her freshman year, Diaz worked with Boyer in the labs and by sophomore year, Diaz was her research assistant in evolutionary paleoecology, studying Late Devonian mass extinctions and whether oxygen is the kill mechanism.

“[They] gave me the opportunity to be independent but still provided support and a safety net to fall back on if I needed it,” Diaz said. “[Boyer] was not only teaching but she really looked out for me and allowed me to do what I wanted to do.”

Diaz recently presented her independent study project to the Geological Society of America’s Northeaster Section conference over the break. She is looking forward to continued research of genomics or phylogenomics of arthropods at University of Wisconsin at Madison for a Ph.D. in zoology.

Meterology and applied mathematics major Tyler Pelle from Sparta, New Jersey, has taken his curiosity in research and his love of community outreach to help him become a more well- rounded individual. He has served as a counselor for Oswego State’s mathematics bridge camp, has volunteered with Adopt-a-Grandparent and joined Team Red, White and Blue to help veterans.

“Working for the community you really do gain a broader insight into society,” Pelle said. “For me, I want to go into climatology and I want to help solve problems that affect everyone and I think community service really helps rounds you out as a person.”

Pelle started his research with biology professor Michael Schummer to see how different weather patterns effected geese migration. He then continued research with Oswego State’s Lake Effect Storm and Research Center on the Ontario Winter Lake-effect System project. This is where it sparked his interest in field studies and winter weather. He worked last summer as a National Science Foundation research affiliate at MIT’s Haystack Observatory. He continued his work in the summer and is currently still studying arctic sea ice for his senior thesis.

“For me [meteorology] has been a life long interest,” Pelle said. “Where we are in New Jersey we get really good thunder storms that swipe through and so I remember just sitting out on my porch and watching the storm and my parents saying, ‘You’re going to get struck by lightening’ and I was like, ‘It’s worth it’ and so I remember thinking there was nothing else I can see myself doing other then weather and the natural environment. It was just a natural curiosity to do research.”

As a first generation college student, Pelle gets most of his support from the relationship he has with his mother who, according to Pelle, has been a constant support throughout his life.

Pelle plans to continue his research while attending the University of California in Irvine as a Ph.D. candidate to study both natural and forced climate change on Arctic Sea ice. He attributes most of his success to the opportunities presented to him through the different science departments and the director of the honors program Gwen Kay.

“I think a lot of undergraduate work is what you make of it,” Pelle said. “Every time I was presented with an opportunity, I always tried to accept it but then again a lot of the opportunities I had to seek out and they were done independently. I feel indebted to these departments because they kept on giving me more and more opportunities.”

Iain Thompson, a nontraditional biochemistry student from Buffalo, New York, described his reaction to the news of his recognition as being “elated.” Thompson has studied toxic metals such as lead in Syracuse children and was a researcher at the National Brain Research Centre in New Delhi. He is also the co-founder of the Pre-Health Care club and is a member of the Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program (C-STEP)

“It seems as if I have been extremely fortunate at my time at Oswego and everyone has been extremely helpful and it has been extremely easy to go through my time here,” Thompson said.

According to Thompson, the experience he is most proud of the his work in coordinating the Fight Ataxia Together Race. As a personal trainer at Stability Fitness, a local Oswego City gym, Thompson formed a close relationship with one of his clients that is diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder known as Friedreich’s ataxia when he dedicated to coordinate a 5K race to raise money for the Friedreich’s Ataxia Research Alliance. The race raised over $15,000.

“ I think it was the most rewarding thing I have ever done in my entire life,” Thompson said.

As a non-traditional student, 25-year-old Thompson has had to deal with supporting himself academically as he balances financial responsibility and school work. Thompson always had this sense that he was behind and would consistently go to office hours which made him able to make connections with professors.

According to Thompson, there were four professors he owes his experience to including biology professors Anthony Contento and Cleane Medeiros as well as chemistry professors Kestas Bendinskas and Kristen Gublo.

“It is hard to say one person over the other because they all have been instrumental in so many different ways of helping me whether it be giving me opportunities, emotional support,” Thompson said. “…I wouldn’t be able to have done anything if it wasn’t for the people around me and I have an overwhelming sense of gratitude for it”

Thompson will be taking the MCAT this summer and plans to apply to medical school in the fall while applying for research positions in the meantime.

“I very much enjoy the process of learning,” Thompson said. “There is something very very fulfilling to me about satisfying curiosity and one of the things about being very curious is when you read a paper that makes absolutely no sense because you haven’t taken any of the classes that would explain the concepts, you get hungry for the answers. I think it is in a pure sense of curiosity that make me want to be a life long learner and then the key part is the feeling that it will be very helpful for people in the future and provide a meaningful impact on people’s lives.”

All three recipients will all be attending an award ceremony on April 5 in the Empire State Plaza Convention Center in Albany to receive their award.