Achievements of three alumni honored at Homecoming Brunch Saturday, Oct. 2

SUNY Fredonia alumni representing the arts, invention, and American policy on Indian affairs will be honored with the Outstanding Achievement Award at a brunch on Oct. 2 during Homecoming 2010. Tony Caramia '73 (Music), Carol Stanley '71(Theatre Arts), and Jacquelyn Dean Cheek '76 (English) will be honored at 11 a.m. in the Cranston Marche of University Commons. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased online>>

Tony Caramia graduated from Fredonia in 1973 with his bachelor’s degree as a Piano Performance major and is a professor of piano, Director of Piano Pedagogy Studies and Coordinator of the Class Piano Program at the Eastman School of Music. He earned his master’s degree in 1975 from Fredonia, also in Piano Performance. In September 2007 he participated in the dedication concert for the new Steinway piano in the Juliet J. Rosch Recital Hall at SUNY Fredonia in memory of his former teacher, Distinguished Professor Claudette Sorel. Mr. Caramia is a frequent national and international workshop presenter, lecturer, judge and clinician, and his solo jazz CD, “Tribute,” was released in 2006 featuring the music of Duke Ellington, Marian McPartland and Dave Brubeck, as well as original compositions. Mr. Caramia’s recent solo piano compositions, “Suite Dreams” and “Jazz Moods,” were published by the Hal Leonard Publishing Corp., and he was a featured performer at the 2007 and 2009 National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy.

Graduating from Fredonia in1976 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, Jacquelyn M. (Dean) Cheek has been the Special Assistant to the Director, Bureau of Indian Education of the U.S. Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C., since November 2007. She previously served as Director of the Office of Congressional and Legislative Affairs in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs from 1996 until October 2007, and has held other positions within the Department of the Interior. An enrolled member of the Seneca Nation of Indians, Ms. Cheek served as a Technical Specialist for Native American Consultants, Inc., of Arlington, Va., and as Director, Public Affairs, for the Presidential Commission on Indian Reservation Economies. She earned a master’s degree in education in 1978 and a Certificate of Advanced Study in Human Development in 1981 from Harvard University.

Carol A. J. “Stash” Stanley graduated from Fredonia in 1971 with a Bachelor of Arts degree with majors in Speech, English and Theater, with secondary certification. Since June 2000 she has been University Registrar at the University of Virginia and from September 1985 until June 2000 was Director of Student Information and Records at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pa. In addition to other appointments at the University of Pennsylvania and SUNY Binghamton in the student records area, she also coached softball at Ohio State University and SUNY Binghamton, and organized, established and trained the Peruvian Women’s National Softball Team. She holds U.S. Patents for several inventions including the STAN-MILL MITT hand protection system, which sits in the permanent collection of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. She earned her M.S. in Education in 1974 from SUNY Cortland, and a M.S. with a major in Information Studies from Drexel.