Many UB Undergraduate History Department Awards Go To Local Students

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The University at Buffalo's Department of History awarded scholarships and grants in the amount of more than $54,000 to 17 undergraduate history majors this spring, 10 of them from the Buffalo area.

The students received the awards for academic excellence, leadership and other personal qualities, as well as to help fund their plans to study abroad. Two of them, Osiris Gomez of Williamsville, N.Y., and Mark Pawlowski of Buffalo, N.Y., won two scholarships apiece.

Jeremiah Smith of Buffalo, received the $3,000 Brian Argo Memorial Scholarship, awarded annually through the generosity of the family and friends of Bryan Argo, a UB history student who died in 2003. The award is given to an undergraduate history student who best embodies the ideals held by Argo, among them integrity, hard work and a love for history and continuing education.

The Milton Plesur Merit Scholarships, made possible though the generosity of the late Plesur, a long-time professor of history at UB, recognize academic excellence with grants of $1,000 to $3,000 each. This year's recipients are Joshua Adams of Kenmore, N.Y.; Kyle Cox of Wyoming, N.Y.; Osiris Gomez of Williamsville, N.Y.; Chase Harvey of Cattaraugus, N.Y.; Jacob Laurenti of Brooklyn, N.Y.; Kelly Sallander of Machias, N.Y., and Haley Walton of West Falls, N.Y.

Plesur's generosity also underwrites the Milton Plesur Study Abroad Awards, which carry grants of $1,250 to $3,000 each. This year's winners are Dorina Agostinelli of Rochester, N.Y., who will spend the fall 2010 semester at the University of Kent in England; Vanessa Frith of Glen Rock, N.J., who will study this summer at University College Cork, Ireland; Brendan McCarthy of Buffalo, N.Y., who will spend the fall 2010 semester at the University of Leicester, England; John Michael Mulderig of Buffalo, N.Y., who spent the spring 2010 semester at the Univerdade Complutense, Madrid, Spain; and Eric Waples of Spencerport, N.Y., who will spend the fall 2010 semester at King's College London, England.

A new Plesur scholarship was endowed by UB History Department alumnus John P. Walker, CEO of iPierian Inc., a pioneering biopharmaceutical company. It was awarded to Mark Pawlowski of Buffalo, N.Y., for his academic excellence and to help fund his work at an archeological site in Portugal this summer.

The Joyce J. and John D. Milligan and Family Scholarships for $5,600 each were awarded this year to Osiris Gomez of Williamsville, N.Y.; Tamario Pettigrew of Buffalo, N.Y., and Brandon Long of Bradford, N.Y. These scholarships are given to under-represented minority students dedicated to the study of history who exhibit positive personal characteristics.

Graduating senior Mark Boonshoft of White Plains, N.Y., received the department's $500 Horton Essay Prize for his senior honors thesis, "'The Ignorant Tho' No Less Virtuous Part of the Community': New York Anti-Federalists and Popular Democracy, 1787-88."

James J. Bono, professor and chair of the UB Department of History, expressed profound gratitude for the generosity of alumni and former faculty members whose long careers at UB shaped generations of students.

"UB's History Department has been truly fortunate in earning the loyalty of generations of alumni, which itself testifies to the department's success in educating its undergraduates," he said.

"Our ability to provide support for outstanding undergraduate students," he said, "can be attributed only to the continuing tradition of gift-giving among such friends of the department who, collectively, have established a solid base for our endowments.

"The existence of such resources for supporting worthy students is both humbling and remarkable. It's humbling for us as a department to recognize the legacy of past excellence in teaching that we now have a responsibility to maintain and improve upon; and, as a public university, it is remarkable to contemplate the level of generosity bestowed upon us even when compared with wealthy private universities," Bono said.

"In difficult times like these," he said, "we depend more than ever on the loyal support of our graduates and friends to continue our department's mission of excellence in undergraduate teaching, in the training of master's and doctoral students, and in faculty research and publication."

The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public university, a flagship institution in the State University of New York system and its largest and most comprehensive campus. UB's more than 28,000 students pursue their academic interests through more than 300 undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs. Founded in 1846, the University at Buffalo is a member of the Association of American Universities.