12 at UB Receive SUNY Chancellor's Awards

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Eight faculty members, one librarian and three professional staff members at the University at Buffalo have received 2003 SUNY Chancellor's Awards for Excellence from 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 this year are Jim D. Atwood of Amherst, professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS); Suzanne S. Dickerson of Williamsville, professor in the School of Nursing; Maria S. Horne of Williamsville, professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance in CAS, and L. Vance Watrous of Buffalo, professor in the Department of Art History in CAS.

The Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities recognizes the work of those who engage actively in scholarly and creative pursuit beyond their teaching responsibilities. UB recipients are Deborah D. L. Chung of East Amherst, professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Huw M. L. Davies of Clarence Center, professor in the Department of Chemistry in CAS; William J. Jusko of Amherst, professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Richard J. Salvi of Amherst, professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences in CAS.

The Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Professional Service honors performance excellence "both within and beyond the position." Recipients are Marguerite Knowles of Buffalo, instructional support associate in the Department of Media Study in CAS; Timothy J. Rutenber of Clarence Center, associate vice provost in the Office of International Education, and John B. Sheffer II of Buffalo, director of the Institute for Local Governance and Regional Growth.

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." This year's winner is Mary F. Miller of Youngstown, associate director and head of acquisitions of the Charles B. Sears Law Library.

Jim D. Atwood is an internationally recognized scholar whose research focuses on synthesis of organometallic compounds, kinetics and mechanisms of organometallic reactions and homogenous catalysts. A UB faculty member since 1977, Atwood has been chemistry department chair since 1998. He is credited with being a key leader in the department's rise to national prominence. As chair, Atwood has overseen a 50 percent increase in the department's extramural funding. Previously the department's director of graduate studies, he oversaw the education of hundreds of doctoral students and effected a substantial improvement in the quality of the entering graduate classes. He also has maintained a continuously funded research group, with grants totaling $2.2 million, primarily from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy. He received the College of Arts and Sciences' Excellence in Teaching Award last year and has been an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow and Humboldt Research Fellow.

Atwood has published more than 120 peer-reviewed research papers, attracting nearly 850 citations; published the definitive textbook in his sub-discipline, entitled "Inorganic and Organometallic Reaction Mechanisms," already in its second edition, and has delivered nearly 100 lectures in a variety of forums around the world. A graduate of Southwest Missouri State University with a bachelor's degree in chemistry, magna cum laude, he received a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Suzanne S. Dickerson has been a UB faculty member since 1987 and was awarded the nursing school's first annual Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1997. She has published extensively on such topics as "help seeking" for cardiac-care patients and their loved ones, the role and use of the Internet for nurses and patients in seeking information on a variety of health-related topics, patient experiences in using augmentative communication devices and the experiences of nurses who have served during wartime. Dickerson also has presented nationally and internationally on similar issues.

She has received research funding from the School of Nursing, the Oncology Nursing Society, the Rehabilitation Nursing Foundation, Kaleida Foundation and Sigma Theta Tau International. A member of UB's Medical Informatics Curriculum Planning Committee, Dickerson also is a member of the editorial board for the journal of the New York State Nursing Association and a past member of Western New York's Integrated Advanced Information Management Systems Project (1999-2001), as well as several other professional committees. She received master's and doctoral degrees in nursing from UB. She has twice served as president of Sigma Theta Tau International's Gamma Kappa Chapter.

An international master teacher and director, Maria S. Horne joined the UB faculty in 1994. Her primary areas of research are method acting and international performing arts. She is the recipient of numerous awards, among them the Milton Plesur Excellence in Teaching Award from the UB Student Association, "The Positive Influence on Students" award from the UB Office of Career Services, the Excellence in Teaching and Distinguished International Career Honor Award of Universidad de Costa Rica and UNESCO's ASSITEJ Argentina Award. She also has received the Theatre Fellowship of the Organization of American States.

Horne is founder/director of the International Artistic & Cultural Exchange Program (IACE), American cultural specialist for the U.S. Department of State, vice president of the International University Theatre Association (AITU/IUTA), editor for AITU Press and co-chair of the Academic Committee of AITU's fifth World Congress, to be held in Greece in August. She has co-edited the trilingual (English/French/Spanish) academic volumes "Studying the Theatre" and "Theatre Without Frontiers." Her articles have been published in English, Spanish and Arabic by refereed and leading journals in Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States.

Horne received a bachelor's of fine arts in acting, with honors, from Argentina's National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts and a master's degree in theater with a concentration in directing from Florida Atlantic University. She also attended the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in New York.

The research of Livingston Vance Watrous, a member of the UB faculty since 1975, focuses on Aegean and Greek art and archaeology, iconography as it relates to Greek poetry, and the relationship between society, social institutions and art.

Watrous recently has published articles on the archaeology of Crete and on the earliest architectural sculpture known in Greece. Among his other publications are "The Cave Sanctuary of Zeus at Psychro: A Study of Extra-Urban Sanctuaries in Minoan and Early Iron Age Crete," University of Texas at Austin, Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory, 1996, and Kommos III, The Late Bronze Age Pottery, Princeton University Press, 1992.

Watrous served as director of the Gournia Survey Project, a significant excavation of an Aegean town of the Late Bronze Age. He has received grants from the Archaeological Institute of America, the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Geographic Society, the Fulbright Foundation and the Institute for Aegean Studies to support his archaeological fieldwork and studies on Minoan Crete. In 1993-94, he was Elizabeth A. Whitehead Professor at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.

He received his undergraduate degree, cum laude, in art and archeology from Princeton University and a doctorate in classical anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Niagara Mohawk Chair of Research Materials and director of the Composite Materials Research Laboratory, Deborah D. L. Chung has been a member of the UB faculty since 1986. Her research interests include materials science and engineering, composites processing and interfaces, electronic packaging materials and metal-matrix composites. Under her direction, the Composite Materials Research Laboratory conducts research on composite materials for aerospace, automotive, construction and electronic applications.

She has been honored for outstanding contributions to the development of structural composite materials and their mechanical testing. She was named a fellow of the American Carbon Society in 2001 for contributions to carbon science that span a quarter of a century. She is a member of the honorary editorial advisory board for the journal Carbon and an elected member of the advisory board of American Carbon Society. She has been an invited lecturer at many national and international conferences. Her research has been funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the New York State Science and Technology Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Cooperative Highway Research Program.

She received a bachelor's degree in engineering from the California Institute of Technology and a doctorate in materials science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Larkin Professor of Organic Chemistry and director of the chemistry department's graduate program, Huw M. L. Davies has been a UB faculty member since 1995. He received the Sustained Achievement Award from UB last year, as well as a SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. He also received an Excellence in Teaching Award from the College of Arts and Sciences in 2001.

Davies holds more than 10 drug-related patents and has published widely in journals and books, as well as being a frequent presenter at national and international meetings. His current research is funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and Johnson and Johnson. He leads a team of UB organic chemists that made an important advance that greatly facilitates the use of combinatorial chemistry and its commercial potential as a method for drug discovery and development.

Davies received an undergraduate degree with honors in chemistry from the University College Cardiff, Cardiff, Wales, and a doctorate in chemistry from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, England.

William J. Jusko serves as director of UB's Clinical Pharmacokinetics Laboratory. A faculty member since 1972, Jusko was a Fulbright Scholar at The Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacology in Italy in 1978-79. He has received numerous awards, among them the Rawls-Palmer Award in 1987 from the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (ASCPT), the Doctor Honoris Causae from Jagellonian University of Cracow in 1987, the Russell R. Miller Award from the American College of Clinical Pharmacology (ACCP) in 1988, the Distinguished Service Award from the ACCP in 1989 and the Research Achievement Award in Pharmacokinetics, Pharmacodynamics and Drug Metabolism from the American Association of Pharmaceutical Sciences in 1998.

Jusko is a fellow of AAPS, ACCP and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and serves on the editorial boards of seven journals. His research focuses on clinical, basic and theoretical pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of diverse drugs, particularly corticosteroids and immunosuppressants. Jusko has more than 420 publications.

He received bachelor's and doctoral degrees in pharmacy from UB.

Considered a research pioneer in hearing and deafness, Richard J. Salvi, a UB faculty member since 1987, is co-founder of UB's Center for Hearing and Deafness, one of the nation's foremost hearing research groups. Salvi's research is funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institute of Health, William G. McGowan Charitable Fund Inc., National Organization for Hearing Research, American Tinnitus Association and Oishei Foundation, and he has a planning grant from the UB College of Arts and Sciences.

An award-winning researcher, he has published widely on hearing loss and has presented his work at national and international meetings. In 1997, he was named a fellow of the Acoustical Society of American for his contributions to the understanding of noise-induced auditory pathology. This year, he was named among the Faculty of 1,000 -- a new, online research tool that highlights important work in biology -- as having one of the most interesting papers published in biology, based on the recommendations of more than 1,400 leading scientists.

He sits on the editorial boards of many of the major journals in the field of hearing and deafness, and is a member of the medical advisory board of the Martha Entenmann Tinnitus Research Center, the American Tinnitis Association Advisory Committee and the International Advisory Board for the University College of London's Centre for Auditory Research.

Salvi earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from North Dakota State University and received a doctorate in experimental psychology from Syracuse University.

Over the past six years, Marguerite (Meg) Knowles has been instrumental in the procurement and installation of and training for more than $1 million worth of media equipment that facilitates media-study faculty and students' work in film, video and digital arts. She oversees staff, maintenance and repair for all media equipment, labs and studios, as well as the department's internship program.

Knowles also is a lecturer in media study and serves on numerous departmental and university committees. These range from the Women's International Film Festival to the College of Arts and Sciences Technology Committee and the Media Study Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, which recently re-designed curricular requirements for the department. Knowles also has received numerous grants and awards, including a National Endowment for the Humanities Youth Grant, Judith Marks Foundation Fellowship, and funding from Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, the Arts Council in Buffalo and Erie County, and the Niagara Council of the Arts.

She has exhibited her work in film nationally and internationally, and is vice president of the board of directors of Squeaky Wheel Media Arts Center.

A graduate of Vassar College with a degree in art history, Knowles recently completed a master's degree in film/media arts at Temple University. She also has earned a master's degree in media study and art history from UB.

As vice provost for international education, Timothy J. Rutenber is responsible for the administration of international education activity at the university. He oversees the offices of International Enrollment Management, Overseas Sponsored Programs, International Student and Scholar Services, and Study Abroad and exchange programs, and is responsible for integrating the operations of all units of the Office of International Education, including personnel administration and fiscal management, and facilitating and supporting externally sponsored international activities.

Rutenber developed the fiscal and personnel policies for the university's overseas programs and managed its Malaysian Cooperative Education Program and the Indonesian English Language Training Center from inception to completion.

As a Peace Corps volunteer and recruiter, he managed a $5.5 million U.S. foreign aid project in Niger, West Africa, for the U.S. Agency for International Development and designed and implemented an experimental agriculture research project in rural Niger for the University of Dayton.

A double major in humanities and history, he earned a bachelor's degree at Clarkson University and a master's degree from Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management, with an emphasis on international development.

John B. Sheffer II oversees a series of projects of the UB's Institute for Local Governance and Regional Growth, including the award-winning State of the Region report, that bring the talent and resources of the university to bear on issues and challenges of the Buffalo-Niagara region and State of New York. Sheffer was named "Public Administrator of the Year" in 1999 by the American Society for Public Administration, Niagara Chapter, and has received numerous awards recognizing his work as an environmentalist, humanitarian, educator and former legislator.

A member of the New York State Senate and Assembly for 15 years, Sheffer also served as mayor of the Village of Williamsville.

He is a graduate of Wheaton College and Syracuse University School of Law, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Syracuse Law Review. Sheffer's work and expertise in governance has been utilized in United States Agency for International Development (USAID) projects in Bulgaria, Lebanon, Zimbabwe and Zambia during the past four years.

As associate director and head of acquisitions for Charles B. Sears Law Library, Mary F. Miller's responsibilities include coordination of collection development and administration of the law library materials and bindery allocations. She oversees the planning, migration and implementation of recent acquisitions databases in the library and serves as a member of the library's reference staff, providing general legal reference assistance.

She also assists in daily operations of the library, including budget and facilities management, collection development, personnel and advisement on policy issues and decisions. Miller is active in several professional organizations, serving as a member of the American Association of Law Libraries' Special Committee on Licensing Principles for Electronic Sources, as well as its Publication Review Committee. She also is a member of the board of directors of the Association of Law Libraries of Upstate New York and its nominating committee. She serves on UB's Individual Development Awards Committee, and has been a member of the Faculty Senate representing the University Libraries.

Miller received a bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, a master's degree in library science and a law degree, all from UB.