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Donna Krompinger
Congratulations to Deanna Downs (Professional Assistant II, Earth and Space Sciences) for being selected as this year’s recipient for the Community Outreach and Social Justice Award! I nominated Deanna, and she has been selected mostly for incredible efforts in developing, organizing and hosting the Science After Dark program on the Ammerman Campus but for other outreach activities as well. A spookily successful community outreach event If you haven’t yet experienced Science After Dark, it’s an event organized by Deanna on behalf of the physical sciences department and sponsored by Campus Activities. It is a free, family friendly, Halloween-themed science event featuring hands-on activities, science experiments, telescope observing and arts and crafts. Deanna created and hosted the inaugural event in fall 2024 and it was wonderful. However, Science After Dark 2025 more than doubled in size! In fall 2024, there were an estimated 250 participants but in fall 2025 it was over 800 participants, including about 350 children. The program expanded so successfully, it was moved from being solely located in the Smithtown Science Building to both Smithtown and the Babylon Student Center cafeteria. This is remarkable in part because since the pandemic, there’s been a drop in the events the college offers that actively bring so many people from the community onto our campus. Deanna’s vision was to address exactly that, to bring the college and community together. On the college side, she wanted faculty and especially our students to have an opportunity to share what they’re doing in classes in engaging and interactive ways. On the community side, she wanted to help kids associate science with fun, exciting experiences and to ignite their curiosities. Impressive organizational skills This is also remarkable because Deanna organizes it all. She starts by organizing the dozen or so faculty and PAs who participate: Jonathan Brockman, Darryl Butkos, Glenda Denicolo, Scott Gianelli, Frank Longo, Magda Nawrocka, Matt Pappas, Sharadha Sambasivan, Gerry Schnal, Stephanie Taboada and Sean Tvelia from STEM disciplines (physics, geology, chemistry, meteorology, astronomy and engineering) as well as Frank Vino from Campus Activities. Nearly all of them develop some fun STEM-based activity to be hosted at a station in the cafeteria or in a classroom or lecture hall in Smithtown (most of whom funded materials out of their own pockets, by the way). Then Deanna works with campus clubs and reaches out to local high schools to get student volunteers. While she only had a couple high school student volunteers in 2024, in 2025 this increased to 15 high school volunteers who joined some 60+ SCCC students. In addition to volunteering to serve as a greeter, at the welcome table to hand out Bingo cards or at the prize table for complete Bingo cards, all of these high school and college student volunteers were busy at the following rooms and stations:
Community outreach To actually bring the community to campus for these terrific opportunities, Deanna designs and develops the program flyers and all of the handouts and materials. Then she advertises the event across the college and in local communities. Families come to campus for the event around Halloween, encouraged to come in costume (most of the faculty and student volunteers are in costume too), and they spend hours upon hours moving from room to room, station to station, gleefully learning about chemistry and astronomy and geology and meteorology. It’s a wonderful event. You see kids’ eyes light up, you hear them gasp and laugh and call to their parents to “come see this!” Campus is alive with families with children engaged in learning. This is invaluable in terms of shaping area families’ perceptions of the college and our programs, and at a time of declining enrollment it is sorely needed. Deanna is already coordinating with Campus Activities for an even bigger and better Science After Dark next year, and she’s working to bring in even more programs beyond the usual STEM areas. If you’d like to see pictures, here’s the college Facebook post about the event and here’s a link to pictures taken by Victoria Pendzick. Deanna does other community service projects too, though. For example, she’s been working with Matt Pappas and the Tesla Science Center to bring the community on campus for science-related fun. Deanna also organizes evening telescope viewings on the quad for SCCC students as well as for local Girl Scout troops to earn a badge. Her master’s thesis is about community engagement in the Earth and space sciences, so all of this not only comes from her heart but also is directly connected to her academic research and interests. Active on campus Finally, in addition to her outstanding community outreach efforts, Deanna is an exceptional worker among all of our PAs and specialists. She runs science labs for the entire Earth and space program and goes well above and beyond her mere job description. She doesn’t just set up and take down labs but actively works with faculty to improve the student experience, especially when it comes to integrating technology and digital elements. She oversees the physical sciences tutoring center; staffed by all student tutors, Deanna works diligently to help them achieve appropriate tutoring standards. She also works with the I-SUCCESS program to inform those students about internships, workshops and opportunities both on campus and off. Deanna is an active and engaged member of the FA elections committee and since being hired in 2021 has been one of the most involved PAs/specialists at the college, far exceeding her job description every single day she’s on campus. She is a dynamo who rarely sits still. Please join me in congratulating Deanna on earning this year’s Member Excellence Award for Community Outreach and Social Justice—and watch for the announcements for the 2026 Science After Dark event this fall! |
