Poitier to speak at UB at King commemoration

	Poitier

Oscar-winning actor Sidney Poitier, who paved the way for greater opportunities for minorities in the movie and television industries, will speak at UB on March 14 at the 24th Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration.

Poitier will speak as part of the 14th annual Distinguished Speakers Series at 8 p.m. in Alumni Arena, North Campus.

Poitier was called "a man who never lost his concern for the least of God's children" by the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Others have asserted that his success has produced ripples in the social fabric far beyond the movie theater.

For some 50 years, Poitier has performed in or directed such socially charged films as "The Defiant Ones," "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," "To Sir With Love" and "A Raisin in the Sun."

UB and the Don Davis Auto World Lectureship Fund will present the lecture. Lecture sponsors are the Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration and The James Fenton Lecture Foundation. Contributing sponsors are the Division of Public Service and Urban Affairs and the Department of African American Studies as part of its 30th anniversary celebration.

Tickets at prices ranging from $12-$26 are available at the Center for the Arts box office on the North Campus from noon to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and at all TicketMaster locations.

Pataki OKs snow day

UB employees will not have to charge leave time for absence on Nov. 21, the day after the Buffalo area was shut down by nearly 2 feet of snow.

Gov. George Pataki approved the closure of all state facilities in the area, including both UB campuses, according to a memo circulated campuswide by Roger R. McGill, interim assistant vice president for human resource services. Employees should note on their time sheets that Nov. 21 was a snow day approved by the governor, McGill said.

Moreover, employees working on the South Campus and at UB-affiliated hospitals or other university offices within the City of Buffalo who left work early on Dec. 6-as the area faced a threatened repeat of the snow emergency of Nov. 20-will not have to charge leave time for absence after 2 p.m. that day, McGill said. Pataki approved closure of all state agencies within the city after 2 p.m. Dec. 6.

For further information, contact Human Resource Services at 645-7777.

“UB Today” sets January lineup

Interviews with UB basketball coaches Cheryl Dozier and Reggie Witherspoon highlight the January edition of “UB Today,” the monthly Adelphia Cable television show showcasing UB faculty, staff, students and programs.

The show is sponsored by the UB Alumni Association.

Dozier, who coaches the women’s team, and Witherspoon, head coach of the men’s team, will recap the teams’ seasons to date.

Other guests are Joseph F. Atkinson, professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering and director of the Great Lakes Program; James Leahy, project coordinator in the Center For Assistive Technology, who will discuss the new “easy pump” device for pumping gas that was developed at the center, and Edward Steinfeld, professor of architecture and director of the Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access (IDEA), and Steven Truesdale, research associate at the center, who will discuss the center and the theory of universal design.

Each new program runs throughout the month at 6:30 p.m. Sundays on Channel 18 International and Channel 10 in Lancaster, Clarence, Orchard Park and Elma, and at 9 p.m. Mondays on Channel 18 International.

Women’s Club to offer “Evening of Beauty”

The UB Women’s Club will present an “Evening of Beauty II” from 6-8 p.m. Monday in Morcelle’s Salon and Day Spa, 6100 Main St. at Youngs Road in Williamsville.

The event, which costs $10 per person and includes a “super sandwich supper,” will benefit the Grace Capen Academic Award Fund.

Volunteers from the audience will participate in demonstrations of haircuts and style, manicure, pedicure, body sugaring, facial, makeup application and personal color analysis.

One attendee will receive a complete makeover.

For further information or to make a reservation, call Meena Rustgi at 632-5768.

RERC begins research project on benefits of universal design

The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) on Universal Design has begun a four-year research project aimed at validating the claimed benefits of universal-design principles.

The RERC on Universal Design, based in the School of Architecture and Planning, is funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) in the U.S. Department of Education.

The project, funded for $200,000, is directed by environmental psychologist Gary Scott Danford, professor of design. Its purpose, he says, is to measure the extent to which users actually realize the benefits claimed for universal-designed buildings.

To accomplish this, the project team will conduct a case study of such buildings currently in use to determine if they actually meet the criteria set forth by the NIDRR and if they function better than buildings designed to be “accessible” to the disabled.

In theory, universally designed buildings and products—like “SureGrip” household products—are those whose use is equitable, flexible, simple, easy to perceive, tolerant of error, less demanding of physical effort than non-universally designed items with the same function, and sized and arranged to accommodate all users, whether or not they have physical impairments.

Each case study will involve several indicators of the building’s usability: a guided tour, interviews and observation to assess the perceptions of individual consumers, as well as an assessment of functional performance.

The first building to be studied will be Lighthouse International’s headquarters building in New York City (Mitchell/Giurgola Architects), whose assessment is scheduled to begin in May.

Danford says researchers anticipate that the study will validate the claimed benefits of universally designed buildings relative to equivalent non-universally designed but “accessible” buildings.

The data should prove very useful in promoting the concept of “universal design” as a preferable alternative to “accessible design,’” he says, “and contribute to the development of research-based standards and guidelines for universal design.”

Gift to improve early literacy

	Mary Gresham and Don Jacobs
	photo: S. Hamberger

Reading made easy through technology—that’s the plan behind a $100,000 gift from Verizon to a collaborative literacy project of the Center for Applied Technologies in Education (CATE) at UB, the Buffalo Public Schools, Computers for Children and EPIC (Every Person Influences Children).

Mary Gresham, vice president for public service and urban affairs, whose office houses CATE, and Donald Jacobs, director of CATE, were among those accepting the gift during a ceremony on Dec. 20.

The project aims to improve the early literacy of Buffalo Public School students by providing them with computers in their homes and DSL Internet access, and building an online support system for parents and teachers, said Verizon Group President Paul Crotty.

The pilot project will provide up to 70 desktop computers for the teachers and students in four classrooms at School 27—Hillary Park Academy—to use at home. Students will keep the computers while enrolled at Hillary Park.

The not-for-profit Computers for Children will help refurbish the computers for home use. Buffalo high school students learning computer skills at Cisco Regional Training Academy will help maintain the computers. In addition, the U.S. Department of Education will donate extra computers for the selected classrooms.

CATE will provide training to all students, parents and teachers.

Buffalo currently has the lowest level of literacy in New York State as measured by scores on the fourth-grade English Language Arts (ELA) assessment and that’s something Buffalo Schools Superintendent Marion Canedo wants to change.

“We are so pleased with Verizon’s investment in Buffalo,” said Canedo, “because it allows us to accomplish three things at once: increase student access to computers, provide community-wide support teaching reading and improve parent involvement with their children’s teachers.”

Jacobs said more gifts like Verizon’s are needed to help the literacy project reach its goal—providing high-quality support materials on a continuous basis in the home, libraries and community centers—so parents can play a more active and informed role in their children’s early literacy development.

“The overarching goal of this project is to develop and implement technologies that can deliver critically important literacy information to teachers, students and families anywhere, anytime.”

Plans are to reach all teachers in kindergarten through fourth grade in Buffalo and other area schools by creating an online support system for teaching literacy with Internet-based resources.

Creative Craft Center to offer workshops

The Creative Craft Center in the Ellicott Complex is offering winter workshops beginning the week of Jan. 29.

Workshops are scheduled in photography, pottery, weaving, quilting, around-the-world embroidery, knitting and crocheting, beginning and advanced stained glass, jewelry construction and basic drawing.

Workshops will run from 7-10 p.m. one night a week for six weeks. Workshops for children will be held on Saturday.

For more information, call the craft center at 645-2434.

Noble to kick off CAS lecture series

Bernice Noble, professor of microbiology, will address “Gender and Autoimmunity: Past Frustrations and Future Prospects” during the first lecture in the Spring 2001 edition of the College of Arts and Sciences Lecture Series, to be held at 7:30 p.m. Monday in the Center for the Arts Screening Room, North Campus.

Noble will discuss the ways in which U.S. medical and academic institutions were able to marginalize studies on autoimmunity and to analyze the impact of that marginalization on personal and public health. Autoimmune diseases—which include diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, lupus, vitiligo, Crohn’s disease, hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism—affect more than 8 million people, 80 percent of them women.

Other lecturers in the series will be Bruce Jackson, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel P. Capen Professor of American Culture in the Department of English, who will speak Feb. 26 on “The Fate of Stories;” Kerry S. Grant, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and professor of music history, who will speak March 19 on “The Pan-American Exposition of 1901: Success or Failure?” and Susan Cahn, associate professor of history, who will speak April 23 on “The Sex of Sport: Women Athletes, Sexuality and Power.”

All lectures will be held at 7:30 p.m. in the Center for the Arts Screening Room and are free and open to the public.

For more information, call 645-2711.

Freshman awarded Broughton scholarship

Natalie Foreman, a freshman in the School of Architecture and Planning, is the recipient of the Denise J. Broughton Memorial Scholarship for 2000-01.

The $2,000 scholarship provides academically talented students of color assistance in funding their UB education.

The scholarship was established by the Office of Admissions in memory of Denise J. Broughton, a senior admissions advisor dedicated to the recruitment and advancement of multicultural students.

Gift honors alum and pilot

It’s a matter of honor for the family of Yong H. Lee, which has remembered the 1981 UB graduate with an endowed scholarship in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

The Lee family has given more than $43,000, bringing the total in the fund to $50,000 and completing what classmates and friends began as a memorial fund for the helicopter pilot who died in 1996 in a crash during the initial test flight of a military helicopter.

Mark H. Karwan, dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, thanked the family, noting that its gift “demonstrates a confidence in our school and a level of financial support that is vital to our program, providing us with the ability to increase our margin of excellence by attracting or retaining students with superior qualifications.”

The Yong H. Lee Endowed Scholarship Fund will assist a student in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering during his or her junior and senior years. The two-year scholarship will be given every two years to a student based on factors including financial need.

The first Yong H. Lee Scholar will be selected by September 2001.

After graduation from UB, Lee became a Marine and went through flight school, eventually receiving the rank of captain before transferring to the U.S. Navy in 1989 and becoming a lieutenant commander.

During his time in the Navy, Lee served in the Gulf War and later flew helicopter-relief missions for Kurdish refugees.

In 1994, he was stationed in Italy when Sikorsky, a company that manufactures and tests helicopters for the U.S. Armed Forces, identified him as a perfect candidate to become a prestigious test pilot. Gina Lee-Glauser, Lee’s sister, said her brother took the job because “it gave him the opportunity to assist the designers in making the aircraft safer and more efficient for military use, and it would bring him closer to home and parents.”

Yong was one of four persons killed when a brand-new CH-53E crashed during its test flight on May 9, 1996, in Connecticut.

Classmates and friends wishing to donate to the Lee endowment fund can call the SEAS Development Office at 645-2133, ext. 1122, or contact Jim Seng at seng@buffalo.edu.

Myers heads engineering alumni

Theodore A. Myers, a 1981 graduate of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), has been elected president of the UB Engineering Alumni Association.

An environmental engineer with the New York State Department of Energy Conservation, Division of Water, Myers received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering.

Other officers are Andy Sarantapoulas, B.S. ’98, an engineer with Praxair Inc., vice president; Stephen Buechi, B.S. ’93, M.Eng. ’95, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, treasurer; Louis A. Picciano, B.S. ’65, secretary, and Robert E. Barnes, M.S. ’76, Ph.D. ’84, associate dean, SEAS, school liaison.

Kervin P. Lajoie, B.S. ‘01, president of the UB Engineering Student Association, was named to the engineering alumni board.

Also elected to the board were Craig M. Forget, B.S. ’92, M.S. ’96, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; Ronald D. Koczaja, B.S. ’70, Erie County Health Department; John J. Jondle, M.S. ’69; Anthony Markut, B.S. ’79, U.S. Postal Service; Richard Rink, B.S. ’80, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Division of Water; James J. Devald, B.S. ’70, Niagara County Health Department, and Michelle Rhodes, B.S. ’99, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Also, Stephen J. Golyski, B.S. ’73, M.S. ’81, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; Alan J. Zylinski, B.S. ’89, M.Eng. ’94, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Division of Air; Jonathan E. Kolber, B.S. ’72, M.S. ’74, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; Fred Meli, B.S. ’76; James D. Boyle, B.S. ’78, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Joseph S. Testa, B.S. ’57.

Art department to offer workshops

The Department of Art will offer a series of workshops, many beginning later this month, for members of the public.

The workshops, offered by the art department’s Enrichment Program in Art, are designed to provide serious high school students, teachers (of any discipline), amateurs and artists of all ages the opportunity to interact with professionals from UB.

The workshops will be offered in a variety of media, including computer graphics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking and photography.

Sessions will take place in the Center for the Arts, North Campus.

For further information or to register, contact Nancy Thayer at 645-6878, ext. 1236.