Education

The University at Buffalo has concluded successfully "The Campaign for UB: Generation to Generation," becoming the first State University of New York (SUNY) institution to set such an ambitious goal -- $250 million -- and then surpass it, raising $291,602,262, more than five times the amount raised in the university's previous campaign.

However grave the budget crisis that afflicts the Buffalo Public Schools this year, its teachers will get a technological leg up on their computer-savvy students. The University at Buffalo's Center for Applied Technologies in Education (CATE) will provide on-site, in-service training in a variety of educational technologies to more than 3,500 Buffalo school teachers during the 2003-04 school year through its "Push-In Technology Training Program."

At the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, all medical students have added something new -- and high-tech -- to their list of must-have school supplies: a personal digital assistant, more commonly known as a PDA.

When Jim D. Atwood became the chair of the Department of Chemistry at the University at Buffalo in 1998, he said he wanted to make freshman chemistry "a little less hated." And with about 30 percent of freshmen flunking out of General Chemistry 101, he had a tough job ahead of him. Now, five years later, having instituted major changes in the freshman chemistry courses, Atwood and his faculty have succeeded beyond their most ambitious dreams.

The University at Buffalo School of Informatics is testing a revolutionary freeware integrated library-automation system that can be used to automate all of the daily functions of libraries, from recording the purchase of materials and helping patrons to find them, to billing them for overdue books or rentals.

What can Tickle Me Elmo, the interactive toy for toddlers, teach high school students about robotics? Quite a lot, according to the instructors for a University at Buffalo workshop for high school students that runs July 7-11.

A decade ago, high school students who aspired to life sciences careers foresaw a future full of pipettes and beakers; today, high school students with similar aspirations are honing their skills at the computer as much as at the lab bench. Toward that end, nine high school students will learn the basics of bioinformatics -- the interface where life science meets computational science -- at the University at Buffalo's Summer High School Workshop in Computational Science.

The University at Buffalo will continue to admit and enroll students from SARS-affected countries and will not restrict travel by faculty and staff to these countries by withholding university funding, according to new policies developed by the Task Force on SARS and approved on Monday by Provost Elizabeth D. Capaldi.

An education researcher in the University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education working with disaffected urban students says a project involving students in the Buffalo Public Schools shows that digital video technology is a teaching and learning "super tool" that can transform urban teaching and have enormous positive effects for poor and minority children in urban schools.

When the economy turns sluggish, where are the job opportunities? All over the map, if you've got a graduate degree in geography. That's been the experience of graduate students who completed their master's or doctoral degrees in the University at Buffalo's Department of Geography this month, all of whom have found good jobs that take full advantage of their degrees.