O'Neill to head Theatre and Dance

In a move that bolsters both institutions, Kerry Grant, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, has appointed Vincent O'Neill, founder and artistic director of the Irish Classical Theater Company (ICTC), as chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance.

	O'Neill

O'Neill will continue as artistic director with ICTC.

An honors graduate of University College, Dublin, and Trinity College, Dublin, O'Neill trained as an actor at the internationally regarded Abbey Theatre School of Acting, an affiliate of Ireland's National Theatre. He subsequently trained with legendary performance artist Marcel Marceau.

O'Neill was a member of the Abbey Theatre acting company, a lecturer at Dublin University and served as director of the Dublin Theatre School, a professional conservatory for actors.

He has been a lecturer in the Department of Theatre and Dance for 10 years.

SUNY honors Bloebaum, Holm

	Bloebaum
	Holm

Two UB faculty members were honored by SUNY on Monday night at a dinner in Albany recognizing some of the system's top research scientists.

Christina L. Bloebaum, professor and chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and Bruce A. Holm, professor of pediatrics; pharmacology and toxicology, and obstetrics and gynecology, and senior associate dean in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, were among 21 researchers in science and medicine honored at the dinner. Another dinner will be held to honor researchers in the arts and letters.

"Each of you has distinguished yourselves and our university by the body of your work," Chancellor Robert L. King told the honorees. "Learning of the specifics of your work has validated all of my beliefs and my vision for where we as a great research institution can go. Your achievements have proven that the State University plays host to tremendous research initiatives and has, and will continue to make great contributions to our state, our economy and our society."

King has set a goal of doubling the amount of sponsored research conducted by SUNY researchers within five years to $1 billion annually.

Miles Davis to be topic of WBFO reading

Author Ashley Kahn, author of “Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece,” will give a reading at 8 p.m. on Tuesday in the auditorium of Allen Hall on the South Campus.

The event, to be broadcast live on WBFO 88.7 FM, UB’s National Public Radio affiliate, will be free and open to the public.

The reading is presented by WBFO in co-operation with Talking Leaves Books and just buffalo Literary Center. A book-signing will take place after the reading.

Forty-one years since its recording in 1959, “Kind of Blue” has sold millions worldwide and is considered the one jazz album every fan must own.

In his book, Kahn takes the reader into the studio to witness the creation of the album. Using eyewitness accounts and newly discovered documents, he traces Davis’ move from bop to modal jazz, re-creates the recording sessions using master tapes and follows the rise of the album from its contemporary reception to its transformation into a cultural landmark.

Grafton to lecture

Princeton historian Anthony Grafton will discuss “Doctor Faustus and His Friends: The Renaissance Magus in Context,” at 4 p.m. today in 120 Clemens Hall, North Campus.

The lecture, which will be free of charge and open to the public, is part of a three-day visit to UB by Grafton sponsored by the UB Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa (PBK)—Omicron of New York—and the departments of Classics, English and History through PBK’s Visiting Scholars Program.

Barbara Bono, chair of the Department of English and president of the UB Chapter of PBK, calls Grafton “one of the most famous scholars of early modern textuality, the history of editing and the book, Renaissance culture in general, and particularly the meaning of magic in that period, and the Euro-American encounter of the 16th century.”

He lectured on “The Impact of Printing and the Origins of the Renaissance” yesterday in the Department of Classics and will speak on “How to Do History: Lessons from the Holocaust” at 11 a.m. today in the Department of History, 532 Park Hall, North Campus.

Emeritus faculty member establishes student fellowship

The School of Architecture and Planning has announced a new fellowship grant program established by Ibrahim Jammal, professor emeritus in the Department of Planning, and his wife, Viviane.

The Jammal Fellowship will provide $4,000 per year over the next 10 years to broaden the vision of, and opportunities for, the school’s American students beyond their domestic knowledge, and of the school’s foreign students beyond their concern for the specific cultures of their mother countries.

Ernest Sternberg, department chair, says the grants will help the department fund research proposals, student research assistantships, scholarly visits, colloquia and conferences geared toward graduate students. It also will provide for an annual Jammal Best Thesis Award. Sternberg says these activities will be related to issues of globalization, international studies and futures studies.

Jammal is the founder of the Department of Planning and served on its faculty for more than 30 years. Sternberg says the faculty and students “are thrilled at this sign of Professor Jammal’s continuing commitment to, and involvement in, the program.

“As if all of his former students and advisees were not already a wonderful legacy,” he adds, “this generous award will be a continuing reminder of his accomplishments as an educator and a scholar.”

Jammal’s teaching and research has focused on long-range planning, forecasting methods, international-development planning and complex problem-solving. He is the former director of the UB Center for Comparative Studies in Development Planning, a consultant for USAID and UNICEF, chair of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning Commission on Global Approaches to Planning Education and vice president of Buffalo’s French Cultural Center.

He holds a master’s degree in architecture and a master’s degree in city planning from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Cairo University, Egypt.

Gift honors late engineering prof

John Zahorjan, a Fisher-Price industrial engineering executive who “retired” to his first love of teaching at UB, has been remembered by his family through a $260,000 pledge to the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

His son, John Zahorjan, has established the Dr. John Zahorjan Student Scholarship Fund to support students in the master’s degree program in engineering management with a concentration in production management.

“My father’s enjoyment of life came from helping others,” a feeling reciprocated by “the scores of former students, fellow faculty, professional associates and friends who offered condolences and contributions” following his father’s death, Zahorjan said.

“That I have the great and unusual fortune to possess the means and the desire to create this lasting shadow of my father is due entirely to the man he was, and so in a very real sense it is he himself reaching out.”

The Department of Industrial Engineering expects to name the first Zahorjan scholarship recipient this year. The endowment will provide $12,000 per year to help with tuition and fees for the master’s program, enough to fund more than one scholarship winner annually.

Mark H. Karwan, dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, called the scholarship “a wonderful way to honor a much-beloved teacher.

“While a gift like this certainly can’t replace the leadership, faculty and student mentorship, and humor of our colleague, it can help us carry on his legacy of excellence and his patient pursuit of making engineering a practical and daily part of manufacturing management.”

Zahorjan, an adjunct professor of industrial engineering at the time of his death in 1999, received the Dean’s Award for Engineering Achievement that same year, being recognized for his career, teaching and dedication to advising students in the practice of engineering.

Zahorjan began his career in 1950 at RCA, and subsequently moved on to Magnavox, F.W. Sickles Co., Phillips Control Corp. and the John Oster Co., part of Sunbeam Corp. In 1964, he joined Fisher-Price Toys as the company’s first licensed professional engineer and was responsible for modernizing quality control. Rising through the executive ranks to oversee major expansions in plant operations, Zahorjan still found time to earn his doctorate from UB in 1979.

In 1983, he retired as vice president of operations at Fisher-Price and began an extensive career as a consultant and a faculty member at UB.

In addition to teaching, Zahorjan ran the internship program for undergraduates in industrial engineering, soliciting projects, matching projects to student needs and mentoring the progress of the students.

He also used his management and consulting expertise to help create The Center for Industrial Effectiveness (TCIE) at UB. Under his guidance, TCIE received “Project of the Year” awards in 1989 and 1991 from the National Association of Management and Technical Assistance Centers.

Friends and former students of John Zahorjan who wish to contribute to the scholarship fund may contact the SEAS Development Office at 645-2133, ext. 1122, or Jim Seng at .

GSE sets open house

The Graduate School of Education will hold an open house from 5-7 p.m. Feb. 1 in Baldy Hall on the North Campus to provide information to those thinking of pursing a career in education or an advanced degree in the field.

Current students and faculty members will be available to answer questions. Information about part-time and full-time study, as well as financial aid, will be provided.

The Graduate School of Education offers master’s and doctoral programs in elementary and secondary school teaching, counseling and educational psychology, and school and higher-education administration.

Additional information is available at the school’s Web site at http://www.gse.buffalo.edu or by calling the school at 645-2491.

Wölck to address Campus Club

Wolfgang Wölck, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Department of Linguistics, will enlighten his audience on the “Sounds of Our City: Buffalo’s People and Their Speech,” at 4 p.m. Feb. 6 in 141 Goodyear Hall, South Campus.

The presentation, part of UB’s Campus Club events for 2000-01, will uncover the results of Wölck’s first survey of Buffalo “ethnolects”—or the phenomenon of an ethnic accent in the contemporary English of former immigrant families, as coined by Wölck—whose features in speech, such as the flat “As” of the Italians or the hard endings of the Poles, set them apart.

Wölck will demonstrate how these features and others gradually have been amalgamated into general “Buffalo English.” He will explain how this is representative of the integration of immigrant groups into mainstream middle-class Buffalo, as well as the destigmatization and acceptance of these features as part of the city’s heritage.

While not a unique phenomenon to Buffalo, Wölck’s ethnolect classification originated here after he arrived in 1970 and has become an established part of international linguistic terminology.

Dental alumni elect officers for 2001

David R. Rice, DDS ‘94, has been elected president of the UB Dental Alumni Association for 2001.

Rice practices in East Amherst.

Charles A. Matlach, DDS ‘76, who practices in Boston, N.Y., has been selected president-elect.

Richard J. Lynch, DDS ‘83, has been named treasurer. Lynch has an office in Williamsville.

Recycling of disks, CDs urged

As part of the university’s “Think Green” campaign, the UB Green Office—in conjunction with Computing and Information Technology—is asking students, faculty and staff to recycle—rather than throw out—their floppy and zip disks, and CDs.

Designated locked containers placed throughout the North and South campuses will serve as recycling bins. Once collected, the software media recycling company GreenDisk will erase all media and issue a “certificate of destruction” to the university. The diskettes and CDs then will be disassembled and the plastic recycled to make new disks and other items.

Anyone worried about confidential information remaining on CDs and diskettes can bring them to Information Resources in Human Resource Services in Crofts Hall, which will ensure than any sensitive material is properly deleted prior to recycling.

The program is made possible by the UB technology fee.

Erin Cala, environmental educator in the UB Green Office, said the university seized upon the recycling initiative as part of its ongoing “Think Green” campaign, begun in fall 1999, which aims to thwart the depletion of natural resources.

Recycle containers are located at the following sites on the North Campus: Capen Cybrary in the Undergraduate Library; Capen Cybrary in the Science and Engineering Library; Lockwood Cybrary in Lockwood Library, 2nd and 3rd floors; 216 Computing Center; 201 Capen Library; 101 Bell; Law Library in O’Brian Hall; 210 Jacobs; 1019 Furnas; 139 Hochstetter; 110 Natural Sciences Complex; Crofts Hall; 215 MFAC and 220 Red Jacket, both in the Ellicott Complex, and Clinton Hall in the Governors residence halls.