Recognizing Rocklanders

The following Rocklanders are students who are being recognized for outstanding academic accomplishments. Many have received scholarships to assist them in their continued success. Congratulations to all our brilliant Rockland minds! 

Lucas Berg, of Nyack, NY, was one of 64 SUNY Oneonta students to receive money for an unpaid internship through the campus Career Planning and Networking Center. Berg is majoring in Media Studies and is part of the class of 2027.

The Career Planning and Networking Center on campus offers career counseling and helps students find and secure internships in their fields of study. To help with the application and registration process, the Career Planning and Networking Center hired Internship Facilitators in 2024 to assist students, faculty and staff.

SUNY Oneonta awarded $31,100 in grant funding to support 38 students pursuing internships during the fall 2025 semester. The grant program aims to make internship experiences more accessible by helping defray costs such as transportation, living expenses, technology, etc. Any student who plans to complete an internship for academic credit can apply for a grant of up to $3,000 through SUNY Oneonta’s Career Planning and Networking Center, which also provides career counseling and helps students find and secure internships in their fields of study.

Nia Flowers of Nanuet, NY, received funding from the Casper Internship Support Fund to help defray the expenses of their SUNY Oneonta internship.

Niamh Galligan of Pearl River, NY received funding from the Casper Internship Support Fund to help defray the expenses of their SUNY Oneonta internship.

Briyana Rentas of Haverstraw, NY received funding from the Dewar Internship Support Fund to help defray the expenses of their Oneonta internship.

Construction Management major Riley Welsome of New City, NY, was part of a SUNY Delhi student team that took second place in the Associated Schools of Construction (ASC) Region 1 Heavy Civil Competition held in Albany, NY. The annual competition brings together the best construction programs from across 13 states in the Northeast to compete in a demanding two-day event that tests their industry knowledge and skills. Team Delhi placed ahead of several major engineering institutions, including the University at Buffalo, Clarkson University, and Penn Tech.

SUNY Delhi’s team consisted of seniors Daniel Carlos of Putnam Valley, NY; Frank Caminitti of Mahopac, NY; Luca Russo of Lynbrook, NY; and Riley Welsome of New City, NY. The same team placed third in the Commercial Construction category of last year’s ASC competition.

In the heavy civil competition, students were required to prepare a full response to an industry-level Request for Proposals (RFP) based on the I-540 highway loop project in Raleigh, North Carolina. Student teams evaluated engineering drawings, phasing plans, and technical documents and developed multiple deliverables under tight deadlines before presenting their proposal to a panel of industry judges. Faculty were prohibited from offering guidance, making the competition a true test of student skill and independent problem-solving.

FlatironDragados, a leading infrastructure construction company that sponsored the heavy civil competition, commended Team Delhi for its exceptional professionalism, construction knowledge, and real-world experience far exceeding that of most of their peers.

All four SUNY Delhi team members have completed industry internships and received full-time job offers with leading construction firms. Russo and Caminitti have received offers from Barnard, Welsome from Kiewit/Weeks Marine, and Carlos from Whiting-Turner.

Caroline Jones, of Stony Point, NY, was one of 74 SUNY Oneonta who received the Richard Siegfried Student Award in the fall 2025 semester for earning a total GPA of 3.9 or higher. To be eligible for the award, a student who meets the GPA requirement must either be a full-time first-year or transfer student.

Students received the award on Nov. 20 following the annual Richard Siegfried Junior Faculty Prize for Academic Excellence Lecture, titled “In the Shadow of Giants: What animal fossils reveal about human origins,” at the Morris Conference Center on campus.

The Siegfried Junior Faculty Prize for Academic Excellence is named in memory of Richard K. Siegfried, SUNY Oneonta Professor of Theatre (1958-1995). Professor Siegfried (or Sieg, as generations of students fondly called him) epitomized excellence in his academic life, through imagination, meticulous scholarship and discipline, and through his expectation of the same pursuit of excellence in his students and colleagues. His dedication brought excellence to his work in such historical theater worlds as Aristophanes, Moliere, Ibsen, or Chekhov, to his rigorous study of the skills of voice and movement, and to his leadership in the imaginative creativity of improvisation.

Jessica Sansone of Nyack, NY, was recently elected to membership into The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, the nation’s oldest and most selective all-discipline collegiate honor society, at Fordham University.

Sansone is among approximately 20,000 students, faculty, professional staff and alumni to be initiated into Phi Kappa Phi each year. Membership is by invitation only and requires nomination and approval by a chapter. Only the top 10 percent of seniors and 7.5 percent of juniors are eligible for membership. Graduate students in the top 10 percent of the number of candidates for graduate degrees may also qualify, as do faculty, professional staff and alumni who have achieved scholarly distinction.

Phi Kappa Phi was founded in 1897 under the leadership of undergraduate student Marcus L. Urann who had a desire to create a different kind of honor society: one that recognized excellence in all academic disciplines. Today, the Society has chapters on more than 300 campuses in the United States and its territories. Its mission is to “cultivate a community that celebrates and advances the love of learning.”