free
THURSDAY
aug. 31, 2017 high 64°, low 43°
t h e i n de p e n de n t s t u de n t n e w s pa p e r of s y r a c u s e , n e w yor k |
N • New faces
dailyorange.com
P • Ride or die
Recently-hired faculty members at SUNY-ESF discuss their academic backgrounds, research topics and curriculum plans for the fall semester. Page 3
FOOTBALL GUIDE 2017
Say goodbye to the Great New York State Fair. Here’s how to make the best of its last weekend in Syracuse this year. Be there or be square. Page 9
SEE INSERT
‘FORWARD MOMENTUM’ G
By Jordan Muller asst. news editor
Gene Anderson has spent decades leading business schools. Now he’s tasked with leading Whitman.
GENE ANDERSON traveled to talk to SU alumni after he was officially appointed Whitman dean in July. paul schlesinger asst. photo editor
ene Anderson, the new dean of Syracuse University’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management, began open water swimming when he was a doctoral student at the University of Chicago in the 1980s. He only swam casually at first, because his first summer at the university was hot. A spot near the school, which jutted out into Lake Michigan, made a good starting place for his swims. He eventually discovered a group of people that would swim across the bay and back, every day. One of them, he said, set records swimming across the English Channel. Anderson began swimming with the group each summer. One day last August, Michael Haynie, SU’s vice chancellor for strategic initiatives and innovation, was relaxing on a dock at the edge of a lake in the Adirondacks while on a strategic retreat with other university leaders. Anderson, Haynie said, walked out onto the dock, put on a swimming cap and dove into the lake. He swam the length of the lake — and back. “I was a little worried I might have to chair another dean search when he disappeared out of view,” Haynie said. Said Anderson: “It beats the heck out of swimming in a pool.” ••• Eugene “Gene” Anderson formally began his tenure as dean of the Whitman School on July 1. For most of the academic year prior to Anderson’s appointment, the Whitman School had been without a permanent dean. Kenneth Kavajecz, Whitman’s previous dean, was arrested in September 2016 after he allegedly agreed to pay an undercover police officer who was posing as a prostitute. A Whitman marketing professor was named interim dean in October, but a committee of SU faculty, trustees, students and other deans was soon formed to seek out Kavajecz’s replacement.
Haynie, who chaired the search committee, said Whitman was moving with “forward momentum” in terms of the student experience and educational opportunities when the committee was formed. They weren’t looking for a dean with a specific set of qualifications, he added. “What we were really looking for and focused on was identifying a future dean that was in a position to build from and continue that very positive momentum,” he said. Though the candidate pool was diverse, Haynie said Anderson was uniquely positioned for the job, not only because Anderson had previous experience as a business school dean, but because his future vision aligned with that of the Whitman School’s. Many of Anderson’s past and present colleagues interviewed by The Daily Orange said he has a shrewd sense of the future of business education. Anuj Mehrotra, currently a senior vice dean at the University of Miami’s School of Business Administration — where Anderson served as dean from 2011 to 2016, said Anderson understood the business and education world “extremely” well. “He actually had foresight to see that the business education world is changing,” Mehrotra said. Anderson spoke about how business students will need to learn how to work alongside technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. But Anderson didn’t talk just about changes to business school curriculums. The ways students interact with their education is also evolving. “In the digital environment, a lot of the fundamentals of business are all going to be out there, freely available online,” he said. “Trying to figure out how you play in that environment is a real interesting challenge.” If the university is to continue to function as a strong residential experience, learning has to be enriched, he said. Basic business information is available online, so the school will have to make sure it’s offering value-added experiences, Anderson said.
see anderson page 6
city
SPD tests body cameras in federally funded pilot program By Kerri McAneney contributing writer
The Syracuse Police Department is testing out a new program that will evaluate the usefulness of body cameras among city law enforcement officers. Candidates in the upcoming Syracuse mayoral election said they are pleased the program is underway. “It’s a way to show some of the things and experiences officers have to go through before they make the decisions that they make,” said SPD Lt. Geno Turo. Over a year ago, SPD won a
federal grant of about $59,000, according to Syracuse.com. Those funds are going toward the pilot police body camera program. Fif teen body cameras are currently in use, according to an SPD statement. The cameras are distributed among patrolmen, communit y police and traffic police. Each camera is assigned to one specific officer, said SPD Sgt. Richard Helterline. Officers are trained to use the camera and upload and store the footage collected from a shift, Helterline said.
15
Number of Syracuse Police Department body cameras in use
A camera must be on during any and all interactions with the public. It does not have to be on if an officer is simply driving around, Helterline said. But, if the officer is on call, they should keep
the camera on, Helterline added. Most of the federal funding goes toward storing the body camera footage, rather than the cameras themselves, Turo said. Turo did not say how much that storage costs. All footage from the body cameras is recorded and kept in a database and will be used for future evaluation. “We don’t know the value of this yet,” Turo said. “We won’t be able to determine that until we really do a test run.” Helterline said this is where the main issue with the program came
into play. Before the cameras could go out on the streets of Syracuse, the SPD had to update its internal computer servers to store the body camera footage. To view footage collected by a police officer’s body camera, an individual would have to fill out a Freedom of Information Law request with the city of Syracuse. At this time, the specific policies regarding the body camera project have not been made available to the public or to the Syracuse Common Council, said Councilor-Atsee body
cameras page 6