Multidisciplinary Research to be Symposium Topic

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- How do institutions of higher education reposition and market themselves in today's world economy? What research methods can college professors use to address issues of family violence that are a real part of life for many of their students? What has been the impact of globalization on health?

These are some of the questions to be addressed during a multidisciplinary research symposium focusing on the methods that University at Buffalo faculty from several areas have developed in response to such concerns.

"Working Methods, Shifting Contexts: Crossing Disciplinary, Cultural and Geographic Borders in Social Research" will be held Oct. 4 and 5 in the Baldy Center conference room, 509 O'Brian Hall on the UB North (Amherst) Campus. The event will bring together faculty from the UB Law School, the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, the Graduate School of Education (GSE) and more to examine "border-crossing issues" while also detailing methodologies that undergird their work, according to Catherine Cornbleth, professor of learning and instruction, who is coordinating the symposium along with her GSE colleague, Greg Dimitriadis, associate professor of educational leadership and policy.

"Students don't leave their lives outside the school door," Cornbleth said. "What happens outside of schools affects what happens inside of schools. Too many people in academics are either inside schools and ignoring what goes on outside and vice versa. We think there needs to be more interaction between academic areas of study and this symposium is a way of doing it."

Michelle Fine, Distinguished Professor of Social-Personality Psychology at the City University of New York Graduate Center, will open the symposium at 6 p.m. Oct. 4, speaking on "Transnational Activism: The Racialized and Classed Geography of Anger, Despair and Possibility Among Youth."

Sheila Slaughter, the Louise McBee Professor of Higher Education at the University of Georgia, will speak at 9 a.m. Oct. 5 on "Redefining Research Universities in a Global Knowledge Economy."

UB Law School faculty will join Catherine Cerulli of the University at Rochester Medical Center for a panel discussing legal research on family violence at 11 a.m. Oct. 5, while Richard V. Lee, M.D., professor of medicine, obstetrics and pediatrics in the UB medical school, and K. Michael Cummings, chair of the Department of Health Behavior at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, will be part of the panel on "Globalization: Impact on Health" at 2 p.m.

Lois Weis, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the GSE, will speak on "Working Methods in Changing Times" at 4:30 p.m. A closing reception will follow at 5:30 p.m.

The symposium was organized by the GSE with support from the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy in the UB Law School. The Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender and the Department of American Studies are co-sponsors.

For more information, contact Dimitriadis at gjd3@buffalo.edu or Cornbleth at ccorn@buffalo.edu.