Education

In October, the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning will offer Western New Yorkers an opportunity see and discuss some of the most exciting and beautiful contemporary schools built here and abroad, and to consider the adoption of such inventive architecture by local school districts.

The University at Buffalo has supplemented its crisis communication vehicles with a new text-messaging service designed to disseminate critical information in a timely manner to members of the university community. At the same time, it is actively encouraging faculty, staff and students to identify and report potentially dangerous situations and individuals.

Incoming students at the University at Buffalo this summer are getting a lesson in UB pride and spirit -- as well as an introduction to the university's alumni association -- before they even step into a classroom.

City Voices City Visions is a partnership between UB and the Buffalo Public Schools that provides teachers in grades 6-12 with innovative approaches to using digital video arts as a literacy tool in their classrooms. The goal is to raise the academic achievement -- and thus increase the post-graduate opportunities -- of these students, who attend classes in a variety of urban neighborhoods.

The effort to grow the University at Buffalo and dramatically transform its three campuses has taken a major step forward with the awarding of a master planning contract to a team of internationally renowned architectural, planning, landscape and design firms.

A consortium of theoretical physicists co-founded by a University at Buffalo faculty member has been created to train more U.S. graduate students in theoretical high-energy particle physics calculations to counter "outsourcing" in their field that has allowed the U.S. to lag behind in this area of high-profile, global science.

The American Educational Research Association (AERA) has bestowed one of its top awards to X. Christine Wang, assistant professor of learning and instruction in the University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education.

The University at Buffalo has been recognized by the Women's Sports Foundation as one of four "standout" colleges and universities in the nation for making significant strides in providing equitable athletic opportunities for its female student-athletes.

Monica Ridgeway, a University at Buffalo undergraduate entering her senior year, knows that when people think of a scientist, they usually think of a white male in a lab coat; but not too far in the future, she hopes they will envision someone more like herself, a young African-American woman with a head full of braids who is curious about correlations between frozen mud and global warming.

Research on global warming is drawing scientists in increasing numbers to the world's polar regions. But as scientists make more journeys northward, some of them find that their mission now extends beyond the ice or sediment samples they will bring back to their labs to analyze.