This article is from the archives of the UB Reporter.
News

Briefs

  • Tax prep brings $640,000 back to WNY

    UB accounting students brought nearly $640,000 in tax refunds back into the Buffalo community through the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program.

    The UB chapter of Beta Alpha Psi, the national honor society for accounting and finance students, led the initiative that provided more than 2,000 hours of tax service, preparing 676 tax returns for individuals and families with annual incomes of less than $42,000.

    “We’re especially pleased that more than $120,400 of the total was a result of the Earned Income Credit, which targets low-income families in need of additional financial support,” said Adam Osteryoung, an MBA student in the School of Management and co-chair of Beta Alpha Psi’s VITA committee. “It means that we helped a number of families who needed it most.”

    To increase community accessibility, volunteers offered the free service on the South Campus as well as the North Campus, resulting in a 72 percent increase over last year in the number of returns prepared. The returns were prepared by 126 IRS-certified students over a 10-week period.

    “We could not be more proud of our students and the impact they have made on the community with this initiative,” said Arjang A. Assad, dean of the School of Management. “Despite their class loads and other responsibilities, these students have been working virtually every weekend since January to make this program the outstanding success that it has been.”

  • Media Study to celebrate 35th anniversary

    UB’s Department of Media Study—considered by many to be the birthplace of modern media study—will mark its 35th anniversary this weekend with a three-day celebration that will include lots of reminiscences, as well as screenings and presentations of departmental work.

    The event will begin tomorrow and run through Sunday in 112 Center for the Arts, North Campus.

    Among the participants will be pioneering media artists and founding Media Study faculty members Gerald O’Grady, Tony Conrad, Steina, Woody Vasulka, and Peter Weibel.

    For a full schedule of events, click here.

  • RIA seminar series continues

    The spring seminar series presented by UB’s Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) will continue on May 8 with a lecture by University of Kentucky faculty member Linda Dwoskin titled “Drug Discovery for Nicotine Addiction.”

    The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 10 a.m. on the first floor of the RIA building at 1021 Main St. on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

    Dwoskin is an endowed professor in pharmaceutical education at the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy. Her major research focus is the development of novel therapeutic candidates for the treatment of psychostimulant abuse, specifically for nicotine and methamphetamine abuse.

    For more information, contact RIA at 887-2566.

  • Organic chemist to launch lecture series

    Albert Padwa, a former professor in the Department of Chemistry and currently the William Patterson Timmie Professor of Organic Chemistry at Emory University, will visit UB on May 8 to deliver the inaugural Howard Tieckelmann Memorial Lecture.

    Padwa’s lecture, “Cascade Reactions for Alkaloid Synthesis,” will take place at 3:30 p.m. in 215 Natural Sciences Complex, North Campus. It is free and open to the public.

    The lecture is the first in the chemistry department’s new lecture series in honor of the late Howard Tieckelmann, a highly respected and beloved former faculty member and department chair.

    Padwa was a professor of chemistry at UB from 1966-79, during which time he and Tieckelmann were colleagues in organic chemistry. Throughout his career, Padwa’s research interests have ranged widely over mechanistic and synthetic organic chemistry, and his group has studied the mechanism of metal catalyzed cycloadditions—methods used to make many different heterocyclic ring structures that are found in natural products and pharmaceuticals. His group has applied these new methods to the synthesis of natural products. He has published more than 530 scientific papers.

    For more information about the lecture, contact Pat Cray at 645-6800, ext. 2025, or pacray@buffalo.edu.