5 faculty members receive Fulbrights

Five UB faculty members have received 1999-2000 Fulbright Scholar grants to lecture or conduct research abroad.

UB faculty members receiving grants and their travel destinations are:

- Joseph F. Atkinson, professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.
- John W. Ellison, associate professor, School of Information Studies, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad/Tobago.
- Vladimir J. Hlavacek, professor of chemical engineering, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany.
- Errol E. Meidinger, professor of law, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany.
- Marjorie A. White, professor of nursing, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland.

Faculty, staff asked to participate in SUNY evaluation of Greiner

The Faculty Senate is soliciting written comments from faculty and staff that evaluate President William R. Greiner's stewardship of UB as related to the university's mission.

The request came from Marianna O'Dwyer, SUNY assistant vice chancellor, who indicated that under a procedure established by the SUNY Board of Trustees, the chancellor is required to conduct an evaluation of each campus and its president at regular intervals. She said the evaluation is "routine in nature, but important," adding that it reflects no dissatisfaction with Greiner's leadership at UB.

Signed responses should be sent to Senate Chair Peter Nickerson at the Faculty Senate Office, 543 Capen Hall on the North Campus, no later than Wednesday. All letters will be kept confidential. However, they may be reviewed by a Faculty Senate Executive Committee panel that is preparing a summary evaluation.

Correction

The Reporter last week incorrectly reported the residency requirements for candidates running for the House of Representatives and Senate. While there is a stricter national residency requirement for the House, the requirement for residency for the House and Senate is the same-by the time of election. With the electorate's more parochial interests being focused on the House, there is more political requirement for at least state residency, though representatives are only required to live in the state, not the district.

Auction to raise funds

The Buffalo Public Interest Law Program (BPILP), a nonprofit organization run by students in the Law School, will hold its annual auction to provide financial support for students to participate in summer public-service-law internships on Feb. 25.

The fifth annual BPILP auction will be held from 7-11 p.m. in the Adam's Mark Hotel in Buffalo. Admission is $30-$15 for law students-and includes refreshments and open bar.

Some items to be auctioned include weekend trips, restaurants, theater gift certificates, tickets to sporting events, works of art, household goods, wine-tasting parties and salon visits.

The proceeds from the auction will allow students opportunities to explore, and hopefully pursue, careers in the area of public-service law that otherwise would be impossible, given the inability of such organizations to compensate students.

Organizers hope to break last year's attendance record of 300 people, who together helped the BPILP raise more than $13,000 in donations. Last year's proceeds enabled 15 UB law students to participate in internships at such places as the Volunteer Lawyers Project and Neighborhood Legal Services in Buffalo, the New York Legal Assistance Group, the Nassau County District Attorney's Office and at African organizations.

For more information on the event, call Jana Kosberg at 636-8683. For ticket information, call Suzanne Hill at 645-2056.

"State of the Region" to be topic of TV show

The "State of the Region," a new initiative launched by the Institute for Local Governance and Regional Growth at UB that seeks to measure and report on how well the Buffalo/Niagara region is performing, will be the topic of "Mind Over Myth," a public-affairs television show sponsored by WKBW-TV, Channel 7. It will air at noon on Saturday.

The program is produced by Ilene Fleischmann, assistant dean for alumni, public relations and communications in the UB Law School, who also serves as moderator.

Fleischmann's guests will be SOR project directors Kathryn Foster, director of research for the institute and associate professor of planning, and Barry Boyer, professor of law.

Talk to address IT accessibility

In a recent article on informational gaps by which we measure democracy, Jorge Reina Schement, professor of telecommunications, information science and technology at Pennsylvania State University, raised some disturbing questions. They concerned the fact that certain social and economic groups lag behind the majority in gaining access to the communications technologies that define our age.

He is not only talking about access to the Internet, although commercialization of that process exacerbates that problem. He points as well to a decided gap between "haves" and "have nots" when it comes to access to telephone service, cable television and personal computers.

Co-director of Penn State's Institute for Information Policy, Schement will address these and other issues related to the social and policy consequences of the production and consumption of information from 3:30-5:30 p.m. tomorrow in the Center for the Arts Screening Room on the North Campus.

The talk, titled "Deconstructing the Digital Divide: History, Technology and Demography Place," will be the third of a series of lectures on these topics sponsored by the interdisciplinary graduate concentration, Critical and Cultural Issues in Information Technology. It is free of charge and open to the public and will be preceded by a reception for the speaker at 3 p.m.

Schement is a Latino from South Texas who maintains a special interest in policy as it relates to ethnic minorities. His many books include "Tendencies and Tensions of the Information Age," "Toward an Information Bill of Rights and Responsibilities," "Between Communication and Information" and "Competing Visions, Complex Realities: Social Aspects of the Information Society."

He points out that as we enter the information age, Americans-unlike Europeans-carry with them new world convictions that, "new era" or not, access to such communications technologies as telephones, cable, PCs and the Internet must be available to all citizens.

In fact, says Schement, an accessible national information infrastructure is understood by Americans to be the essential ingredient for overcoming social fragmentation.

In his talk, Schement will look at the causes and consequences of historical gaps of this kind and ways in which accessibility will advance an information age commonwealth and invigorate American democracy for the 21st century.

NIH funds RIA gambling study

Most people are ill-prepared to deal with the hardships brought on by a loved one's gambling problem. Researchers at the Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) have begun a new project-funded with a $649,283 grant from the National Institutes of Health-that is aimed at studying the stress these people may be experiencing and the ways they've tried to deal with it.

During the study, interviewers at RIA will talk with study participants about their loved one's gambling and what it's doing to their lives-the financial repercussions, health consequences of stress, the burden of keeping secrets from friends and family. The project, in addition to possibly providing the participant some relief, also will offer information on where to seek help locally for the study participant and their loved one.

"Individuals living with a problem gambler often experience a high amount of stress and emotional strain as a result of problems arising from the gambling," says Robert Rychtarik, a principal investigator at RIA and lead researcher on the project. "This study is concerned with systematically assessing these problems with the hope of eventually developing better ways of helping family members deal with them.

"Previous research has found high levels of depression and psychological distress among individuals with a problem-gambling partner," Rychtarik explained. "After repeated, frustrated efforts to cope with the situation, these individuals often end up experiencing much anger, anxiety and even physical pain, such as frequent headaches and intestinal distress. In addition, they may find themselves overeating or undereating, drinking or smoking more than usual in an effort to relieve distress."

WTO teach-in to be held at UB

The first of a series of an action-oriented teach-ins will be held Monday at UB to promote what organizers hope to be a "reorientation of the concept of globalization that is more in line with a sustainable environment, the rights of working people and economic justice."

The UB-based teach-in, to be held from 6:30-8:30 p.m. in 145B of the Student Union on the North Campus, is one of several such events scheduled for next week at various colleges and universities in Western New York in response to the recent meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle.

The event is sponsored by the Western New York Coalition for Worldwide Economic Justice, which includes as members UB's Environmental Network, student chapter of Amnesty International and Women's Center.

The teach-in will include a brief history of the WTO, a video on the recent WTO meeting in Seattle and a mock tribunal based on hypothetical cases involving the violation of human rights and neglect or destruction of the environment. Presenters will be students Michael Schade and Eric Bebernitz from the Environmental Network.

The week-long education campaign will culminate Feb. 25 with a town meeting at 6:30 p.m. in the Georgian Room of the Statler Towers, 107 Delaware Ave., Buffalo. The campaign is the beginning of a local organizing drive for a national demonstration against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, set for April 16 in Washington, D.C.

Club announces scholarship program

The Board of Directors of the Campus Club has announced a new scholarship program for club members and their immediate family members who currently are enrolled as undergraduate or graduate/professional students at any unit of SUNY, including a community college.

Applicants for the two, one-time $200 scholarships must have completed at least three credits of coursework with a 2.0 undergraduate QPA or a 3.0 graduate QPA at a unit of SUNY during the Fall 1999 semester, and currently be registered as a student.

The application deadline for the scholarship is March 1.

For additional information on the scholarship, to obtain an application or to become a member of the Campus Club ($20 annual dues), contact Jane DiSalvo at 645-2245, ext. 743, or via email at jdisalvo@acsu.buffalo.edu.

Creative Craft Center sets spring workshops

The early-spring session of workshops presented by the Creative Craft Center will offer six-week courses for adults beginning March 20 in basic and intermediate pottery and stained glass, creative and color photography, knitting, crocheting, quilting and jewelry crafting.

For information and registration, call 645-2434 between 9 a.m. and noon Tuesdays and Thursdays; l-5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays or 7-10 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays.

Submissions sought for poetry contests

The Undergraduate Library is soliciting submissions for two poetry contests it sponsors in cooperation with the Department of English and the Friends of the University Libraries.

Two prizes of $100 each will be awarded to the best poems submitted by UB students.

The Academy of American Poets contest is open to graduate and undergraduate students. The Friends of the University Libraries contest is open to graduate students only.

Entries for both contests should consist of one or more typewritten, double-spaced poems, not to exceed a total of six pages. The writer's name should not appear on the poems, but a cover sheet attached to the poems should include the name of the prize, the writer's name, class, address, email address and phone number.

Entries should be submitted to Margaret R. Wells, director of the UGL, 107 Capen Hall.

The deadline is March 17.