Education

Sebastian Ciancio, chair of the UB Department of Periodontology, is quite a collector, with an office that has hundreds of bottles, porcelain and metal tooth-powder containers, an old toothbrush with an ivory head, canisters of dental floss and empty bottles of mouthwash. But lately his collection has taken a different direction: music boxes.

Although he's been in the business for 30 years, Ronald J. Gentile still can recall an experience in class during the 1970s that changed his philosophy about teaching.

Thomas T. Frantz has spent 25 years dealing with people affected by suicide, death, dying and grief, and has witnessed first-hand the pain that leads up to and lingers after a tragedy. That pain can be deadly for teen-agers, he says, and urges parents, teachers and friends to do their part in preventing youth suicide by making a connection with the troubled youth.

The University at Buffalo has teamed up with Squeaky Wheel/Buffalo Media Resources to offer a unique, extracurricular arts-and-technology outreach program for disadvantaged, early-adolescent girls in grades 5-7 that is designed to help them overcome the technological gender gap. UB students majoring in computer art and media study will serve as staff assistants in the program.

The Graduate School of Education (GSE) at the University at Buffalo consistently rated as among the top education schools in the country, has dramatically reorganized and enlarged its program leading to New York State teacher certification in response to rapid changes in the field of teacher education and an expected increase in demand for new teachers.

An Advanced Honors Program designed to draw new students into the honors category, as well as better serve current honors students in their junior and senior years, will begin this fall at the University at Buffalo, administrators with the University Honors Program have announced.

The University at Buffalo this fall will begin a two-year project to design and pilot a course in information technology that is expected to enhance the quality of teaching and increase learning while reducing instructional costs by 46 percent.

The enormous potential of both telemedicine and high-grade distance learning may be one giant step closer to being realized if an experimental, three-way demonstration of advanced Internet videoconferencing technology on July 27 involving the University at Buffalo, Erie County Medical Center (ECMC) in Buffalo, Ohio State University, the Jackson Laboratory and others goes off without a hitch.

Toby Shapiro, University at Buffalo parent-program coordinator, has one major piece of advice for parents of this fall's crop of new college students: "Always keep the lines of communication open."

Although they won't be making movies, a select group of local high-school students attending a summer program at the University at Buffalo Center for Computational Research will be doing their homework on an SGI, Inc. Origin2000 Server, similar to the one used in the creation of "Toy Story" and "Antz."