Faculty&StaffBillboard

Wright spent 15 years at UB as assistant dean for student affairs and director of minority programs for the medical school before assuming her current position in order to concentrate on her work with underrepresented students.

One of the goals of UB's Primary Care Initiative is to recruit more medical students from underserved populations in hopes they will return to practice in their communities. Wright has played a major role in increasing the percentage of minority medical students at UB to 12 percent, one of the highest in the nation.

Wright earned master's and doctoral degrees in counseling from UB, and worked at the University Counseling Center before taking her position at the medical school. She has been director of the Minority High School Research Apprentice Program, the Science and Technology Enrichment Program for talented minority college students and the Health Careers Opportunity Program.

Her recent honors include the Sojourner Truth Award from the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women's Clubs; award for leadership in meeting the challenge of children with special needs from the Robert Warner Rehabilitation Center Division of Human Genetics; award from the Buffalo chapter of the National Medical Association for leadership, commitment and service, and award for outstanding contributions to medical minority education from the Northeast region of the National Association of Minority Medical Education.

GIFTED MATH PROGRAM SEEKS STUDENTS
The Gifted Math Program at UB is accepting nominations of outstanding sixth-grade mathematics students from schools and parents for participation in its Fall 1997 entering class.

Informational meetings for the families of nominated students and others interested in the program will be held at UB during February. In March, approximately 200 students will take a three-hour battery of four tests to obtain one of the 60 available places in the new class.

Now in its 17th year, the Gifted Math Program enrolls about 250 students from secondary schools in Erie, Niagara and Orleans counties. Classes meet on the UB North Campus twice a week during the school year. Seventh- and eighth-grade students attend from 3:30-5:35 p.m.; senior-high-school students attend from 6:30-8:35 p.m.

The program for participating students in grades seven through 12 replaces their regular school mathematics curricula. Students will complete more than four semesters of university-level mathematics during their six years in the program.

The Gifted Math Program recently was honored by a review group established by the National Science Teachers Association, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the American Association of School Administrators as one of 10 outstanding math-science activities across the country.

Program directors are Gerald R. Rising, UB Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus, and Betty J. Kirst, professor and chair of the mathematics department at Buffalo State College. Other faculty are outstanding teachers drawn from area schools and colleges.

Deadline for nominations is Friday, Jan. 24. To obtain initial information about the program, the schedule of informational meetings and directions to meeting and testing sites, students or their parents should call Anne M. Szczesny, Gifted Math Program administrator, at 645-3175.

UB TO OFFER COURSE ON COPING WITH DEPRESSION
A course to help individuals learn how to recognize and cope with depression will be offered next month at the UB North Campus.

Designed for adults ages 18 and older, classes are set to begin in mid-to-late February. Enrollment is limited to 60. Registration deadline is Feb. 3. Classes, which will meet once a week for 12 weeks, will be available afternoons and evenings during the work week, according to participants' schedules.

Goal of the course is to teach

individuals how to identify and change negative thought and behavior patterns that can contribute to depression, says John Roberts, assistant professor of psychology and course instructor.

Changes in appetite and sleep habits and a sense of worthlessness or guilt can be signs of depression, Roberts says. While "everyone has problems or situations which make them occasionally feel 'down'," the course can be helpful for those who find these feelings or signs occur more often and interfere with normal interest in life activities, he says.

Although there is a tuition charge, potential enrollees will receive a free evaluation to determine if they would benefit from the course.

For more information, or to register for the course, call 645-3697.

FRESCHI APPOINTED PRINCIPAL AT CANNON
Bruno Freschi, dean of the UB School of Architecture and Planning, is joining Cannon, a national design firm, as a principal. Cannon notes that "Freschi will provide

design leadership on a variety of projects while maintaining his current position as professor and dean at the university."

With more than 30 years of professional practice in urban planning and architecture, Freschi has received numerous awards including the Order of Canada, highest honor the Canadian government can bestow on an individual. A Canadian citizen, Freschi received this award for his national and international contributions to scholarship, architecture and education.

Freschi's project experience includes developing a master plan for the World Exposition in Vancouver in 1986 and more recent involvement in the master planning for waterfronts in Buffalo and Tacoma, Wash.

MEDICAL SCHOOL RECEIVES GOLDEN HARTZ AWARD
UB's medical school is on the top-10 list of winners for the 1996 Golden Hartz Awards, annual awards given by the Hartz Mountain Corp. for reaffirming "the loving, life-enhancing and interdependent relationship between humans and their pet animals."

The award was given to UB, citing the efforts of research scientist Karen Allen and John Naughton, who retired in December as dean of the medical school, for "commissioning a survey that confirms the powerfully therapeutic effects companion animals have on reducing stress in human lives." A study conducted by Allen indicated that under stressful conditions, a pet dog was more comfort than a spouse. Hartz will make a donation to a charity selected by the UB medical school.

FINLEY TALK HIGHLIGHTS INQUIRY SPEAKER SERIES
A lecture Jan. 24 by UB law professor Lucinda Finley will highlight the Winter Speaker Series at the Center for Inquiry in Amherst. Finley argued last October before the U.S. Supreme Court to defend limits on the spaces in which anti-abortion demonstrators can accost persons seeking clinic access.

Her lecture at 8 p.m. at the Center for Inquiry, 1310 Sweet Home Rd., will be sponsored by Friends of the Center for Inquiry and the Pro-Choice Network of Western New York. Other speakers include Marilynn Buckham, director of Buffalo GYN Womenservices and Kathleen McGuire, a longtime clinic escort. All events in the speaker series are free.

The Center for Inquiry is joint headquarters for the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and the Council for Secular Humanism, national educational and advocacy organizations chaired by Paul Kurtz, UB professor emeritus of philosophy.

"ART FROM HELL" EXHIBIT WILL OPEN JAN. 23
Students in the UB Art Illustration Program claim that a recent "field trip" designed to expand their cultural and intellectual horizons turned sulfuric and scared the wits out of them. Instead of being taken to a museum or gallery, the students claim to have been plummeted straight into the bowels of hell.

Upon their return, the artists were asked to submit work for an exhibition that would illustrate their horrific experiences. The result may be the hottest show of the season-"Art From Hell-the Evil Works of Illustration Faculty, Students and Alumni."

It will open with a public reception from 5-7 p.m. Jan. 23 and continue through Feb. 11 in the Art Department Gallery on the lower level of the Center for the Arts on the North Campus. For the opening "deception," said the students, visitors are welcome to bring "an offering for the devil" and "dress like hell."

"It should be a fun show," said Kathleen Howell, director of the illustration program. "Alumni and faculty are participating, and I think the audience will have a real good time. It's true that the 'field trip' was brutal," Howell said. "Students were...introduced to the finer points of torment devised by cultures, their religious, philosophical and political systems."

After months of "counseling" and "therapeutic discussion" with instructors-Elka Kazmierczak, assistant professor, and Christine Beetow and Scott Swales, both adjunct professors-the illustrators were able to face the devil and turn their experiences into "Art From Hell-the Evil Works of Illustration Faculty, Students and Alumni."

UB LAW ALUMNI TO HEAR NEW YORK'S CHIEF JUDGE
Judith S. Kaye, New York's chief judge, will be the keynote speaker when the officers and directors of the UB Law Alumni Association host a luncheon at noon on Friday, Jan. 24, in the Union League Club, 38 East 37th St., New York City.

The luncheon is being held in conjunction with the New York State Bar Association's annual meeting.

The Hon. M. Dolores Denman, presiding justice of the Appellate Division, State Supreme Court, Fourth Department, will introduce Kaye. Dean Barry B. Boyer will update alumni and friends of the law school on activities at the school.

Kaye, who was appointed by Gov. Mario Cuomo to the Court of Appeals in 1983 after a 21-year career as a private litigator, was the first woman named to serve on New York's highest court. She was promoted to chief judge in 1993.

An effective reformer, working to bolster public confidence in the legal profession, she has overhauled the state's jury system-from the way jurors are chosen to conditions under which they serve-making it more "user-friendly." Kaye also has taken steps to lift ethical standards in the legal process, defended judicial independence against political encroachment, opened drug courts to help rehabilitate addicts, imposed reforms in the matrimonial practice and called for a wider use of arbitration and alternative dispute resolution.

A Barnard College graduate, Kaye received her law degree from the New York University School of Law.

Luncheon costs are $35 per person, or $20 per person for those graduating in 1992 or later. Non-alumni guests are welcome. Make checks payable to UB Law Alumni Association; mail to 309 John Lord O'Brian Hall, Buffalo, N.Y. 14260.

For more information, call Ilene Fleischmann, 645-2107.

Papers&Presentations

Joan K. Copjec, associate professor of English, conducted two seminars at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna while she was a Fellow at the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University during the 1995-96 academic year. She delivered papers at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, The Messapalatz, and the University of Vienna, at George Washington University, the University of Rochester and the "Legacies of Freud" conference sponsored by Cornell's German Department. The second book in her S series, Radical Evil, was published by Verso and MIT brought out a paperback edition of Read My Desire.