Education

The scene: A small, well-kept home in a "nice" Buffalo neighborhood. A bright pink, inflatable elephant, a child's toy, lies on its side on the kitchen floor and a small stuffed animal, a white puppy, rests on the living room couch. This is the scene described by a local police detective, an invited speaker for "What Did They Die From," an undergraduate honors class at the University at Buffalo.

The members of the University at Buffalo Presidential Search Advisory Committee, the group responsible for the national search to identify UB's next president, met for the first time on May 13. The purpose of the meeting was to begin work with well-known search firm EMN/Witt/Kieffer, the firm engaged to assist with the presidential selection process.

Workshops, discussions and keynote presentations by three nationally renowned education reformers will distinguish "Reinventing Education," a week-long summer institute to be held July 15-18 by the University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education.

Children are becoming obese as young as 3 years old, and obese 10-year-olds are showing abnormal liver function and abnormally high insulin levels, which may lead to type 2 diabetes, analysis of data from a group of children referred to University at Buffalo pediatric endocrinologists has shown.

Tunde Szecsi of Cheektowaga, a doctoral candidate in early childhood education in the University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education, has been named recipient of an Elizabeth Breathwaite Student Leadership Award from the Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI).

Thirty-three years after the first Earth Day was celebrated in April 1970, the energy officer at a university that has led the move toward sustainable campuses has issued a "to-do list" for institutions of higher education in order to make further progress toward the "green campus."

Specks of dust may have traveled from America's Great Plains all the way to Greenland in the Arctic Region during the Dust Bowl storms of the 1930s, according to new findings by atmospheric physicists at the University at Buffalo.

OK, "Physics for Poets." Move over. In what is perhaps a sign of the times, University at Buffalo students will be able to fulfill their undergraduate science requirement by taking "Physics for CEOs and Other Decision Makers: the Energy Perspective," a new course focusing on energy issues that will debut in the fall.

There are leaders to be found, working at schools in the poorest communities, who have helped students succeed amid the challenges that surround them. Stephen L. Jacobson, Ph.D., of the University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education (GSE), with the support of the Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, hopes to identify such leaders and learn from their strategies, their efforts and their victories.

Lt. Governor Mary Donohue today praised the University at Buffalo for its commitment to become the state's largest purchaser of wind-generated electricity. The university was the first campus in the State University of New York system to purchase a portion of its power from a commercial supplier of wind-generated electricity.