FACULTY & STAFF BILLBOARD ­

CEDAR, SRIHARI FEATURED ON ABC-TV

The Center of Excellence for Document Analysis and Recognition (CEDAR) was featured June 18 on ABC-TV's "World News Tonight With Peter Jennings." An ABC News crew was on campus to interview Sargur Srihari, professor of computer science and director of CEDAR, and to film a demonstration of a system that reads handwriting and utilizes computer software developed by the center under funding by the U.S. Postal Service.

The work of CEDAR came to ABC's attention as a result of the center being a finalist in the Eighth Annual Discover Awards for Technical Achievement sponsored by Discover magazine.

ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT SPONSORS BIKE RIDE

The Architectural Awareness Project (TAAP) of the School of Architecture and Planning will sponsor a five-mile bike ride through the historic Buffalo waterfront and some of the city's early industrial neighborhoods on Saturday, June 28.

The $6 fee per rider can be paid day-of-the-ride. Children in bicycle seats are free; those pedaling their own bikes must be over age 10. Rain date is July 5. The ride will begin at 10 a.m. in the parking lot of Craw-daddy's at the Erie Basin Marina. Parking is free.

The tour, led by docent Mac McCaffery, will continue along the waterfront through the Cobblestone District, past Buffalo's oldest working blacksmith shop and traversing the Old First Ward, where original workman cottages are dwarfed by grain elevators on the Buffalo River.

Riders will swing up Ganson Street, first in the nation to be lit by electricity, and take a look at the only box elevator still standing in the country.

Doubling back toward downtown, the ride will come upon Buffalo's firefighting tugboat, the Edward M. Cotter, at the Michigan Street Bridge. Riders also will see the old D&L Railroad Station and the south terminus of the riverwalk.

Last leg of the tour will head for the rocky hook of land that swings out into Buffalo Harbor, past Crawdaddy's, stopping at land's end, where riders can lunch.

BORST NAMED DIRECTOR OF DISABILITY SERVICES

Randall E. Borst, who has served as director of Services for Students with Disabilities and ADA coordinator at Indiana University-Purdue University, Ft. Wayne, Ind. since 1990, has been named director of the Office of Disability Services at UB.

In 1995 he received the school's Administrative Excellence Award, presented to one administrator annually by a consensus of a diverse ad hoc committee of faculty and staff. He was a member of the associate faculty in the Department of English and Linguistics.

Borst is a graduate of Purdue University Calumet and received a master's degree in education from the Purdue Graduate School in counseling and student personnel.

He served as president of the Indiana Association on Higher Education and Disability from 1992-96 and co-chair of the Blindness and Visual impairments group of the Association on Higher Education and Disability, the international association of disability providers.

Chair of the Indiana Rehabilitation Services Commission in 1995-96, Borst was also president of the League for the Blind and Disabled in Ft. Wayne from 1994-97 and president of the Still Water Place Community Association in Ft. Wayne.

FACULTY, STAFF HONORED AT DENTAL SCHOOL

Two faculty members and two staff members were honored recently when the School of Dental Medicine held its 1997 commencement.

Earl Bergey, associate professor of oral biology, received the Society for the Advancement of Dental Research Award, which honors the faculty member whose contributions and support have been invaluable in fostering principles of student research.

Michael Meenaghan, professor of oral diagnostic sciences, received The William M. Feagans Award, named after the dean of the school from 1979-93. The award is presented infrequently by the Dental Student Association to distinguished members of the faculty, staff or administration who "have shown to students a concern that encompasses the finest aspects of academic dentistry, tempered with an appreciation of the demands of 'real life' dentistry and the inherent challenges of student life."

Donna Schmidt, a secretary in clinical dentistry, and Patrice Jordan, a senior stenographer in clinical dentistry, received the Florence Kronson Award recognizing "the individual who has executed his or her responsibility in an outstanding manner and has contributed significantly to the welfare of students." The award is named for a long-time member of the dental school staff.

MEDICAL STUDENT RECEIVES FELLOWSHIP GRANT

Andre Dick, a medical student in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, has been selected as a 1997 Academic Medicine Fellow by the Fellowship Program in Academic Medicine, sponsored by Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. The program is run by the National Medical Fellowships, Inc., a nonprofit organization providing assistance to minority medical students. The $6,000 fellowship recognizes his potential for a career in research and academic medicine. He was one of 35 fellows selected from among 80 nominees representing 54 medical schools across the country.

He will study the consequences of congenital diaphragmatic hernia, a disease that prevents the proper development of the diaphragm. He also won the Pediatric Award at the 1997 National Student Research Forum for his work on prophylactic vs. rescue surfactant therapy in the neonatal lab.

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION CONFERS AWARDS UPON ALUMNI

The Graduate School of Education conferred awards upon one of its outstanding graduating doctoral students and several alumni at the school's May 17 commencement.

The 1997 Delbert Mullens "Thinking Outside the Box" Award was presented to Adair White-Johnson, who received a doctorate in social foundations of education from the Department of Educational Organization, Administration and Policy.

White-Johnson was honored for the quality of her doctoral dissertation, which focused on the identification and analysis of school-related factors that contribute to decisions by young African-American men to leave high school before graduation. Her findings led her to participate on a task force for the school district in which she conducted her research as it developed approaches to address needs of under-served students.

She wrote a proposal for a new course at the high school that has received state funding and approval for implementation.

She was nominated for the award by the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Teaching Africana Studies in Schools, a joint project of the Graduate School of Education and the Faculty of Arts and Letters.

The school also presented its Dean's Service Award to Samuel Alessi, assistant superintendent for curriculum evaluation and development in the Buffalo Public Schools.

Distinguished Alumni Awards were presented to three graduates of the school's doctoral program:

- Anne L. Deming, president of Notre Dame College of South Euclid, Ohio. Deming received the award from the Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology, from which she earned a doctorate in counseling psychology in 1977.

- Robert L. Palmer Jr., vice president for student affairs. Palmer received the award from the Department of Educational Organization, Administration and Policy, from which he received doctorate in higher education in 1979.

- Jill Fitzgerald, professor of education at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Fitzgerald received the award from the Department of Learning and Instruction, from which she received a doctorate in educational research and evaluation in 1979.

PROFESSOR HONORED FOR HELPING STUDENTS UNDERSTAND HOLOCAUST

William Sheridan Allen, professor of history, is the recipient of the 1997 Toby Ticktin Back Award, it was announced by Beneta B. Silberstern, president of The Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo.

The award is given to a local educator "in recognition of outstanding and dedicated efforts that have resulted in conveying to students a stronger understanding of the Holocaust."

UB TO CO-SPONSOR CONFERENCE ON MEDICAL REHABILITATION

A conference on "Medical Rehabilitation: Managing Managed Care Through Outcomes Research," will be held on July 13-14 in the Sheraton Inn Buffalo Airport, Walden Avenue, Cheektowaga. Three pre-conference workshops will be held on Saturday, July 12, also in the Sheraton Inn.

The conference is sponsored by the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, the Center for Functional Assessment Research in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Functional Assessment and Evaluation of Rehabilitation Outcomes, the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research and the U.S. Department of Education.

Topics to be addressed include characteristics of effective and efficient medical rehabilitation programs, measuring satisfaction, prospective payment systems, rehabilitation engineering adaptive devices and work-site disability management and industrial rehabilitation.

For more information call Carol M. Brownscheidle, 859-7575.

SYMPOSIUM TO FOCUS ON GERMAN COMPOSER

Scholars of music theory from major universities will gather at UB on July 18 and 19 for a symposium on the musical and mathematical theories of influential German musicologist and composer Hugo Riemann (1849-1919), whose work is enjoying a rebirth of international attention.

The symposium, "Neo-Riemannian Transformations: Mathematics and Applications," will be held on the North Campus. It will consider contemporary applications of recently revived observations of Riemann, whose theory of harmonic dualism treated major and minor chords as mirror images of one another.

Riemann was long held in disfavor among English-speaking scholars, but his theories have recently been strengthened and generalized through the application of mathematical group theory.

"These new formulations have provided a fresh perspective on 19th- and 20th-century harmony and counterpoint," said John Clough, Slee Professor of Music, who headed the organizing committee for the event.

Scholars will come from Harvard University, Cornell University, the University of Chicago, the University of New Mexico, the University of Alberta and the Library of Congress. Martha Hyde and Charles J. Smith, professors of music, and UB graduate students David Clampitt, Nora Engebretsen and Erik Oņa also will participate. For more information, call 645-2765, ext. 1271.

STUDENTS WINNERS OF NEW CHANCELLOR'S AWARD

Three UB students received the Chancellor's Award for Student Excellence at ceremonies held May 27 at State University Plaza in Albany. They were among the first recipients of the new award, created by Chancellor John W. Ryan to recognize students who demonstrated outstanding academic achievement and received significant recognition and acclaim during the past academic year.

Winners were Srinivas Raghu and Cynthia D. Rudin, both recipients of national Goldwater Scholarships, and Amy C. Williams, winner of the Thayer Prize in the Arts. Twenty students at 14 SUNY campuses were recognized by the chancellor in a wide variety of areas.