SUNY Adirondack student Cameron Rogers talks about a scientific project at the college during the 2019 SUNY Undergraduate Research Conference.

Program provides valuable research skills

Christine O’Connor think SUNY Adirondack’s size is the right formula for success.

“Because we’re a smaller college, the faculty can really get to know the students and work with them to achieve their future goals,” said O’Connor, an associate professor of chemistry. 

Some of the elements that make SUNY Adirondack stand out in science is its offering of research opportunities.

“It’s great for freshmen and sophomores,” O’Connor said. “Typically, at larger colleges and universities, this opportunity is not available until junior or senior year.”

Lab research gives students advantages when they transfer to four-year programs or enter the workforce.  

“They get hands-on experience conducting novel research, which is really important for a future researcher,” she said. “They get experience with problem solving and troubleshooting, which is really hard to teach in a classroom, and is a very important soft skill in terms of hireability.”

Did you know?

SUNY Adirondack was one of several SUNY colleges to welcome students from across the state to its campus in 2019 for the SUNY Undergraduate Research Conference, a multidisciplinary event that brings together undergraduate student researchers and faculty mentors from across the SUNY system.

 

MEET OUR STUDENTS

SUNY Adirondack student Ethan Rittereiser is working toward a bachelor’s degree in Organic Chemistry.

Small class sizes increase learning opportunities

What Ethan Rittereiser likes most about SUNY Adirondack isn’t the high-tech laboratory equipment he uses to conduct research as part of an international medical study, or that he’s learning everything he would at a larger university without accruing debt. 

Instead, it’s the personal connection.

“If you go here, you’re going to get the same education you get anywhere else,” said the second-year Biology major. “But here you don’t have a class of 100. You get to learn one on one. You get professors — very knowledgeable people; they know their stuff — and they’re teaching it to you, not a million people at once.”

Rittereiser has plans of pursuing a doctorate to become an orthopedic surgeon, after earning a bachelor’s degree in organic chemistry, where his real interest lies.

He has been able to indulge his passion through an independent study under Christine O’Connor, an associate professor of Chemistry. He performs analytical chemistry research on drugs from third-world nations using ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography.

“I feel like it’s teaching me a lot about how difficult and time-consuming research can be,” Rittereiser said. “A lot of things can and do go wrong. You have to push through it. You have to be able to troubleshoot and solve it, so it’s definitely teaching me critical thinking.”