Accepted students to learn about UB at Preview Day
Freshmen and transfer students accepted by UB for enrollment in the fall will have a chance to have their questions about life at the university answered on Saturday during Preview Day, to be held from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the North Campus.

Coordinated by the Office of Admissions, the annual, university-wide event will introduce accepted students and their families to the wealth of academic programs, variety of student services and numerous state-of-the-art learning resources available at UB.

Preview Day will feature academic presentations, exhibits, demonstrations, campus tours, financial-aid information, residence-hall tours and a reception "In Celebration of Diversity."

Lasorda to appear in Distinguished Speakers Series

Lasorda

Tommy Lasorda, former manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers for 20 seasons and a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, will speak at 8 p.m. April 22 in the Mainstage theater in the Center for the Arts on the North Campus in the final installment of the 1998-99 Distinguished Speakers Series presented by UB and the Don Davis Auto World Lectureship Fund.

The School of Management Alumni Association is lecture sponsor. Series sponsor is the undergraduate Student Association. For information and tickets, call the Center for the Arts box office at 645-ARTS. Tickets also are available at TicketMaster locations or by calling TicketMaster at 852-5000.

Graduation, student honors for Reporter Commencement Extra
The Reporter will publish its annual "Commencement Extra" edition on May 13. Please send lists of students receiving graduation or other honors, identifying honors concisely. Information must be received no later than April 30.

Because of production requirements, the Reporter can only accept lists electronically. No fax submissions will be accepted. Information may be submitted on disk, specifying the program in which it is written and including a printout of all information contained on the disk, or by email to wuetcher@buffalo.edu.

All submissions must include a contact name, department, campus address and daytime phone number. Disks may be delivered to 136 Crofts Hall, North Campus. For more information, call Sue Wuetcher, Reporter editor, at 645-2626.

Meeting set for faculty to discuss PRB promotion procedures

Nyberg

The Office of the Provost and the Faculty Senate will sponsor a meeting for all interested faculty April 22 at 3 p.m. in the Student Union Assembly Hall, Room 330, to discuss the criteria and procedures used by the President's Review Board (PRB) when recommending promotion.

David Nyberg, professor of education and chair of the PRB, and Senior Vice Provost Kenneth Levy will address the faculty and answer questions.

The meeting is the result of a Faculty Senate resolution passed six years ago asking for an annual meeting of interested faculty with the chair of the PRB. Officers of United University Professions (UUP) will be present and encourage faculty to attend.

Workshop to be offered on permanent appointment April 21
A workshop on procedures to be followed for professional staff applying for permanent appointment and for supervisors of professional staff will be held from 9-11 a.m. Wednesday in 330 Student Union, North Campus. The workshop is sponsored by the UUP Buffalo Center Chapter and the Health Sciences Chapter, the Department of Human Resources, New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), the Professional Staff Senate and the Faculty Senate. A panel of experts will provide information and answer questions on permanent appointment for employees represented by UUP. Individual guidance will be given on preparing a dossier. To reserve a space, call the UUP office at 645-2013 by tomorrow.

Subjects to be covered include who is eligible for permanent appointment, when a dossier should be started, who should compile it, what is included, when it should be completed, where the dossier should be sent and how an employee can appeal if permanent appointment is denied.

Participants may submit questions before the workshop to jdisalvo@acsu.buffalo.edu or by mail to the UUP office, 105 Porter Quad, Ellicott Complex, North Campus. They need not identify themselves.

Business Alliance aids local firms
The UB Business Alliance, The Center for Industrial Effectiveness (TCIE), assisted four local companies in receiving more than $336,000 in training grants from the Economic Development Fund (EDF) of New York State in the fourth quarter of 1998.

The UB Business Alliance now is the largest recipient of New York State training grants. In the past four years, 95 percent of the applications submitted by the UB Business Alliance on behalf of its customers received funding from the state.

The recent grants were awarded through the Empire State Development Corporation to Buffalo China, Ingram Micro, Protective Closures Company and Life Technologies, Inc., who are using the funds for capital improvements, skill upgrades for existing employees and strengthening the quality of the company's internal trainers and training programs.

The $38,130 training grant awarded to Buffalo China is allowing the company to compete more effectively in the tableware industry by providing training initiatives for management and skilled-trades employees in the wake of an incentive provided by the state that prompted Oneida Ltd. to consolidate its distribution at Buffalo China.

The $169,783 JOBS Now training grant awarded to Ingram Micro is enabling the company to strengthen its internal training program through facilities expansion and trainer certification programs.

Life Technologies, Inc., which recently revolutionized its worldwide distribution system by centralizing its order-entry operations at its Grand Island facility, will be able to successfully implement the new process by using the $49,952 grant to train customer-service and manufacturing employees.

The $78,426 grant awarded to Protective Closures Company, a division of Mark IV Industries, will assist the management team's focus on quality and long-term planning issues as it expands the company's facility on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo.

For more information on the UB Business Alliance's training-grant administration program and other programs designed to assist businesses, call 636-2568, send email to prv-TCIE@buffalo.edu or visit its Web site at http://www.uballiance.buffalo.edu.

Oozfest time-here's mud in your eye and everywhere else
It'll be a down-and-dirty day of mud-play April 24 as hundreds of volleyball players from the U.S. and Canada compete in the 15th annual Oozfest on the North Campus.

The event is sponsored by the University Student Alumni Board (USAB), the student affiliate of the UB Alumni Association.

Touted as the largest, continuous, volleyball-in-the-mud contest on a U.S. college or university campus, some 96 teams will slip, slide and compete for prizes from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the mud pit behind UB Stadium.

Oozfest has grown from a few fun-loving teams that wanted to hit a few over the net in a muddy field to a UB tradition that attracts hundreds of serious players, as well as fans who cheer on their filthy favorites.

There are several returning teams, including the tuxedo-clad crew made up of alumni living in the Washington, D.C., area with the unlikely moniker of Poached Trout in a White Wine Sauce.

The $110 registration fee paid by each team of six to eight players benefits USAB's annual J. Scott Fleming Merit Award scholarship. Fleming was a former executive director of the Office of Alumni Relations.

Players will receive free team photos, commemorative programs, food and tee shirts featuring a referee equipped with a whistle, hat and sunglasses, half buried in mud, designed by Rana Grieco. Hot shower facilities will be provided.

There'll be contests and prizes for the dirtiest and cleanest teams at the end of the event. Music will be provided by the local band Good Fudge and UB's acclaimed singing Buffalo Chips.

Volunteers-including staff, faculty, students, alumni and members of the community-are needed to referee, run scores to the judges and work in the food tent, according to co-chairs Michelle Lord and Jason Majewski.

Anyone interested in receiving more information or in volunteering at the event should call the alumni office at 829-2608.

Those assisting with Oozfest include the Getzville Fire Department; the College Store; Domino's Pizza; WRUB, the UB student radio station; the Alumni Association; Delta Sonic Car Wash, and Lasertron.

In addition, Studio Arena Theater; Amherst Theater; Anderson's Frozen Custard, Inc.; the Buffalo Zoo; Campus Tees and Sweats; the undergraduate Student Association; UB Bookstore; UB Dining Services; UB Residence Hall Association, and First USA Bank.

Also, Tim Horton Donuts, Kaplan Co., Buffalo Blizzard Soccer, Artpark, UB Engineering Alumni Association, UB Print and Mail Service, Bill Marshall and Ed Majchrowicz.

Steeplechase race to benefit Newman Centers
There'll be no equestrian events in the "Steeplechase" sponsored by the Newman Centers at UB. But more than 150 people are expected to participate in the 5K race and 2K walk that will begin at 10 a.m. May 8 at St. Joseph's University Church, 3269 Main St. A party will follow the race at noon, with trophies for the first three finishers in various age and gender divisions, as well as for the first-place winners from among UB male and female students.

The race is named for the church steeples near the South Campus. Starting and ending at the church, the route will continue along Winspear and Bailey avenues to Main Street.

Registration will be held at St. Joseph's from 8:30-9:30 a.m. May 8 ; preregistration will be held there from noon to 4 p.m. May 7. Call 636-7495 for more information. Preregistration fee per person is $12 U.S. funds, $16 Canadian; race day, $15 U.S., $20 Canadian. The cost for UB students is $10. Proceeds will benefit programs of the Newman Centers.

MFC sets teleconference on student services
Student services and support are often the most crucial elements in the success or failure of technology-based education. Students who can't register easily, get materials late or get lost in the system, get turned off and drop out. To address that subject, Millard Fillmore College will host a teleconference on "The Third Element: Student Services for Distance and Distributed Learning" from 3-4:30 p.m. today in 120 Clemens Hall, North Campus.

The teleconference, free and open to UB faculty and staff, will bring together experts in student services and distance learning who will discuss ways to create effective, student-friendly services.

Poetry winners to read from works
Winners of student poetry contests will read from their work at noon tomorrow in the Special Collections Reading Room, 420 Capen Hall on the North Campus.

Those reading include Dayatra Hassan, winner, and Kim Chmielewicz, honorable mention, Academy of American Poets Poetry Prize; Anna Fountis, winner, and Jeffrey L. Burghauser, honorable mention, Friends of the University Libraries Undergraduate Poetry Prize; Rebecca Manley, winner, The Scribblers Prize, and Steven Helmicki and Sarah JM Kolberg, winners, The Arthur Axlerod Memorial Award. The UB community is invited to attend.

Financial aid office wins two national awards
The Office of Financial Aid to Students has received national recognition for projects that enhance service to students. UB received two awards-totaling $15,000-of only eight presented this year by the Sallie Mae Education Institute.

The awards recognize UB's direct loan entrance counseling on the Web, and the university's financial-aid, touch-tone-telephone component.

The entrance-counseling component places the U.S. Department of Education video on the financial-aid Web site http://wings.buffalo.edu/services/fin-aid, where students can view it from their homes and dormitory rooms. An adaptive questionnaire was developed to ensure that students have grasped the information in the video.

The other award-winning program allows students to check on the status of their financial-aid applications and adjust and accept their awards via touch-tone phone. The student's acceptance of an award on the voice-response system updates the Sigma Student Aid Management (SAM) in real time, so staff time and dollars are saved by the reduction in the need for data entry.

The awards are to be used to provide need-based grants or pay down the balance of educational loans for selected students.

Information on UB's award-winning projects will be included in a booklet to be sent to financial-aid professionals across the country.

WLI to offer instruction in Yoruba
The World Languages Institute in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures in the College of Arts and Sciences will offer instruction in Yoruba, the first language of 30 million west Africans living in Benin, Nigeria, Togo and Sierra Leone, beginning in the fall. Mark Ashwill, director of the institute, said that because of U.S. national interests, the language has been recognized by a national panel of language teachers as a "first priority language" among the less commonly taught languages of the world.

The course will be taught by Christian Onikepe, a native speaker from Nigeria and visiting assistant professor of French.