Eight at UB Win SUNY Chancellor's Awards for Excellence

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Three faculty members, four professional staff members and one librarian at the University at Buffalo have received 2001 SUNY Chancellor's Awards for Excellence from State University of New York Chancellor Robert L. King.

The Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching honors those who consistently have demonstrated superb teaching at the undergraduate, graduate or professional level. Recipients are Kemper E. Lewis, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering; Mirdza E. Neiders, professor of oral diagnostic sciences, and Athos Petrou, professor of physics.

The Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Professional Service honors performance excellence, "both within and beyond the position." Recipients are Josephine Capuana, administrative director of the University Honors Program; Shelley Frederick, assistant to the vice provost for undergraduate education; Albert "Budd" Termin, head men's swimming and diving coach, and James O. Whitlock, associate director of computing services for operational support services.

The Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Librarianship recognizes "skill in librarianship; service to the campus, the university and to the field; scholarship and professional growth, and major professional achievements." The recipient is Nancy Bren Nuzzo, director of the Music Library.

A UB faculty member since 1996, Kemper Lewis is director of the Design of Open Engineering Systems (DOES) Research Lab in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, which promotes and advances the state-of-the-art in multidisciplinary design optimization and modern design theory. Lewis has received a prestigious National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development grant to apply game theory -- the same theory military strategists use -- to improve the manufacturing-design process.

He received a 2001 Milton Plesur Excellence in Teaching Award from the undergraduate Student Association recognizing his teaching excellence and commitment to students. He earned

two bachelor's degrees from Duke University and master's and doctoral degrees from Georgia Institute of Technology.

Lewis lives in Amherst.

Mirdza Neiders has been a UB faculty member since 1962. She served twice as acting chair of the Department of Oral Biology in the School of Dental Medicine, and was a member of the Biomedical Sciences Study Section for the National Institutes of Health for eight years. She directed UB's Oral Pathology Graduate Training program for four years.

She is director of the Breath Disorders Clinic -- one of five special-care clinics in the dental school -- and also serves as a primary consultant to the Salivary Gland Dysfunction Clinic and the Oral Medicine Clinic. She recently was named Alpha Omega dental fraternity's Teacher of the Year.

Neiders received a bachelor's degree from The Ohio State University, a master's degree in general pathology from The University of Chicago and a dental degree from the University of Michigan. She served her residency in periodontics at UB.

She resides in Snyder.

A fellow of the American Physical Society, Athos Petrou joined the UB faculty in 1985. His current research focuses on nanostructures based on III-V and II-VI compound semiconductors grown by epitaxial techniques. His most recent work is on electrical injection of spin polarized carriers in GaAs/AlGaAs light-emitting diodes.

He has published numerous articles in scholarly papers, and has supervised more than 25 master's and doctoral theses and projects. Petrou is involved extensively in a $10 million consortium effort -- of which UB is the lead institution -- to develop specific ferromagnetic materials for use in "spintronics," the emerging research field in physics focused on spin-dependent phenomena applied to electronic devices. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Athens in Greece and master's and doctoral degrees from Purdue University.

He resides in Williamsville

Josephine Capuana has been a member of the UB professional staff since 1970, serving as an academic advisor, assistant dean for undergraduate education and associate director of the honors program before being named the program's administrative director in 1985. She has served as vice president and president of the Northeast Region of the National Collegiate Honors Council, and represents UB as a member of a SUNY-wide group of honors-program directors.

She received the Distinguished Service Award from the UB Foundation Inc. for outstanding service to both the university and the community. Capuana received a bachelor's degree in education from Buffalo State College, a master's degree in student personnel and guidance in higher education from the University at Albany and a doctorate in educational organization, administration and policy studies from UB.

She resides in Tonawanda.

A UB professional staff member since 1982, Shelley Frederick also has served as a senior academic advisor and director of the Preprofessional Health Program during her tenure at UB. As assistant to the vice provost, she also is team leader of the university's degree auditing reporting system (UB DARS) and a member of the Academic Standards Committee.

Frederick is a former president and executive board member of the Buffalo Swimkins, an international synchronized swim team, and chaired the team's 40th anniversary celebration. She received a bachelor's degree in education and a master's degree in college student personnel administration, both from Buffalo State College.

She resides in Williamsville.

Budd Termin has been coaching the men's swimming and diving team since 1987. While at UB, he has coached six athletic conference "Swimmers of the Year," and his teams have won seven conference championships. He has been recognized as conference Coach of the Year five times, and has earned the Outstanding Coaching Achievement Award from the American Swimming Coaches Association three times, most recently in 2000.

A clinical instructor in the Department of Physical Therapy, Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Termin has collaborated with David Pendergast, professor of physiology and biophysics, to develop a training system that results in performance improvements two to three times greater that those achieved by Division I men's swim teams using traditional training methods. He received a bachelor's degree in elementary education from Clarion University and a master's degree in sports administration/academic advising and counseling from the University of Kansas.

Termin resides in Kenmore.

A UB professional staff member since 1973, James Whitlock has managed and worked on the development of mainframe operating systems; the design and production of early high-speed modems and microcomputer-based RJE terminals; the first campus fiber-optic and microwave transmissions systems; the first institutional telecommunications master plan, and the first campus ISDN voice and data deployments. Most recently, he has worked on the development and deployment of high-performance videoconferencing and multicast streaming video systems.

For the past five years, he has worked to establish an Advanced Educational Skunkworks at the university to support regional early adopters of emerging high-performance, Internet-based collaboration, serving as director of the Western New York High Performance Networked Video Initiative. Whitlock attended Carnegie Mellon University.

He resides in the Parkside neighborhood of Buffalo.

Nancy B. Nuzzo has been a member of the UB Libraries' staff since 1980. She was named director of the Music Library earlier this year after serving as interim director since the 1999. She continues to direct the double master's degree program in music librarianship.

One of her principal academic interests is codicology, the study of the physical structure of manuscripts. She also is a musician in her own right, and has performed as a violist da gamba in many music department concerts.

Nuzzo has published or presented more than a dozen papers and monographs in her field and is an active member of the national Music Library Association, which she has served in many capacities, including four years as editor of the association's newsletter. She is a summa cum laude graduate in music of Minnesota's Bemidji State University. She holds a master's degree in library science from Case Western Reserve University and a master's degree in music history from UB.

Nuzzo resides in Williamsville.