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Alumni Spotlight
Fred Stoss '74
What you are doing now: I am the Biological and Environmental Sciences Librarian in the Science and Engineering Library at the SUNY University at Buffalo.
Major: Zoology
Favorite class at Brockport: Adaptive Physiology (it dealt with biological extremes, which is still fascinating).
Favorite professor at Brockport: Terry Haines, my thesis advisor who provided some good mentoring and some good lessons about fly fishing.
Most memorable Brockport moment: While traveling to a field research site on the drinking water reservoir in Attica, NY I was "questioned" by two guards from the Attica Correctional Facility while I was taking some photos of a practice session at their firing range. It was a friendly discussion, because they quickly discovered I was not with any newspaper! There's also something about a snow storm, a broken window at the Le Chase Apartments, a trail of roommates' footpints, and police, but the memory is a bit dusty. ;-)
Most interesting life experience: Being present to "catch" my daughter, Kaeti, the moment she was born.
Most famous person you have met: Mario Cuomo
Last book read: Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President (J.H. Hatfield)
CD most likely to find in your stereo: Essential Springsteen
Favorite movie: A River Runs Through It
Favorite vacation spot: Adirondack Mountains
Family: Wife: Dottie Married 30 years! One child: A delightful daughter, Kaeti Elizabeth, now a senior at the University of Rochester.
What you want to be doing next year: Taking a sabbatical leave.
What you want to be doing in 20 years: Hmmmm…. I'll be 74, being alive would be a good start! I will be retired (hopefully), so fly fishing the "easy waters" would be a nice thing to do.
Message to the students of today: Be prepared for big changes in your lives. When I graduated with my Masters degree in 1974, I had absolutely no hint whatsoever that eight years later I would be getting my Master of Library Science degree from Syracuse University. I thoroughly enjoyed research and writing and was stricken by the data and information aspects of environmental and biological research. God gave me some special talents and put them to use in ways I would have never dreamed of 30 years ago. I would also tell today's students to learn some things about the community in which they are living as students. The concept of sustainable communities is too important to ignore. Getting involved with some aspect of your local community is a great way expand your horizons beyond the classroom and way to make some good habits about being a good citizen.
More about Fred Stoss...
I was a Masters student in the Department of Biological Sciences from 1973-1974, after completing my BA in Biology from Hartwick College in 1972. Since leaving Brockport with a firmer grip on aquatic ecology and environmental science a lot of water has run under the bridge. I started my career as an environmental toxicologist (University of Rochester Medical Center and Syracuse Research Corporation). While working in Syracuse I got interested in the generation and use of environmental data and information. I started doing a lot of online information retrieval and was fast becoming somewhat of an expert database searcher and information specialist. I started taking a few classes to learn more about the structure of scientific, technical, and medical information and literature. I ended up with Master of Library Science degree added to my credentials.
The disciplinary jump from the environmental and life sciences to that of library and information science was not a giant leap, just a redirection of career paths. I had an opportunity to work as the director of the library at Rochester's Center for Environmental Information, where we did some pioneering work in the delivery of information services in a number of important environmental areas, such as acid rain, global environmental change, hazardous waste management, and environmental health. I had the opportunity to take a research position in the Energy, Environment, and Resources Center at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, which had me stationed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Environmental Sciences Division working in the rather unique setting of the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center and World Data Center for Atmospheric Trace Gases. I am currently at the SUNY University at Buffalo, where I am the Biological and Environmental Sciences Librarian in the Science and Engineering Library.
I was recently appointed to the ALA Literacy and Outreach Services Advisory Committee. This committee promotes programs and activities designed to improve the quality of library services to the rural and urban poor and to ethnic minority groups. My selection to this advisory board is based on my experiences in working with OLOS as a member of and Coordinator for the OLOS Social Responsibilities Round Table. My two-year term began following the June 2004 ALA Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida. I was also asked to serve as a Co-Chair of the ALA Task Force on the Environment (which I chaired from 1995-1999).
The very first professional publication I co-authored with fellow Brockport graduate student, Arthur E Robb, Jr., and Biological Sciences Professor, Clarence Gehris, was a Sea Grant report on the Possible Biological Impacts of Dredging the Existing Channel from Irondequot Bay to Lake Ontario in Rochester, Monroe County, New York. Since then I have written or written with others nearly 90 book chapters, reports, journal and magazine articles, presentations, and dozens of newsletter articles and scores of book reviews. I recently contributed an 11-page article entitled "Environmental Information" for the online version of The Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science (ELIS), and am currently working on the final draft of a second contributed paper for the ELIS on the "World Data Centers." My most recent publication appears in the fourth issue of volume 23 of the journal, Science & Technology Libraries and is entitled, "A National Environmental Data Network Revealed through the Study of Acid Rain."
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