Education

Information-technology specialists at the University at Buffalo have developed a revolutionary production-grade, PC-based, high-performance, video-conferencing system that is portable and available at a much lower price than was previously possible.

A University at Buffalo professor who says his mission in life is to revolutionize the teaching of science has received an $800,000 grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts to do just that.

The so-called "digital divide" between the "haves" -- those who can afford computer access -- and the "have nots" has been erased, at least in the freshman class at the University at Buffalo. Thanks to the university's Students Needing Assistance Program (SNAP) and its corporate partners financial hardship simply is not an issue for 264 freshmen, at least where computers are concerned.

Students in the Graduate School of Social Work at the University at Buffalo are hitting the streets of several urban neighborhoods this semester as they take a close look at issues faced by Buffalo communities. And they'll only have to look as far as their PCs to do it.

Even in 2000, African-Americans who are studying to be -- or already are -- mathematicians face a lonely proposition: only about one-quarter of 1 percent of all mathematicians in the United States are black. But many of them are finding a thriving community at the unique Web site created and maintained by a professor of mathematics at the University at Buffalo.

When members of the University at Buffalo's School of Dental Medicine's Class of 2004 arrive on campus this August, they will purchase no textbooks, no laboratory manuals, no workbooks. They will pick up no course outlines or lists of recommended reading. They will receive instead one inauspicious-looking compact disc, which will contain the full content of 90 textbooks in 28 topic and the curriculum for all four years of dental school, including course syllabi, class notes, laboratory manuals and lecture slides.

J. Grant Hauber, an alumnus of the University at Buffalo School of Management, has given $500,000 to the school for construction of a state-of-the-art student center.

The first major national conference held to explore the lives, strengths, problems and needs of young urban women will be held in Buffalo April 14-15. The keynote speaker will be Lani Guinier, professor of law at Harvard University.

An extremely enthusiastic response by University at Buffalo faculty to the year-old, high-performance computing facilities in the Center for Computational Research (CCR) has prompted the center to double the capacity of its most powerful machine, a 64-processor SGI Origin2000 supercomputer. By acquiring 64 additional processors and a high-speed interconnect, the CCR now has a 128-processor Origin2000 supercomputer.

Despite the terror of "Jim Crow" and the backlash of white plantation owners, African Americans had managed to accumulate nearly 15 million acres of land by 1910. Today, that number has declined to less than 1 million acres. Although their numbers have decreased significantly, there are still a handful of black farmers who continue to hold onto their family farms.