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Published: August 28, 2003

Tamar Jacobson, director of the UB Child Care Center, Inc., has published a new book, "Clearing the Way for Anti-Bias in Early Childhood." The book offers a framework for early childhood teachers and education professors to confront the issue of anti-bias in the classroom.

Thomas P. Ralabate, associate professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance, received the 2003 Distinguished Educators Award from Dance Masters of America, Inc. (DMA) at the National DMA Teacher's Training School, held earlier this month in the Center for the Arts. Ralabate was recognized for his contributions to dance and service to DMA. As national education chairperson for DMA, Ralabate founded and designed the curriculum for the first DMA Student Honors Intensive Program.

William J. Rapaport, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, adjunct professor in the Department of Philosophy, and a member of the Center for Cognitive Science, recently presented a paper entitled "What Is the 'Context' for Contextual Vocabulary Acquisition" at the joint meeting of the 4th International Conference on Cognitive Science and the 7th Australasian Society for Cognitive Science Conference, held at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. The paper reports on work funded by Rapaport's National Science Foundation grant with Michael W. Kibby, professor in the Department of Learning and Instruction in the Graduate School of Education on "Contextual Vocabulary Acquisition: Computational Theory and Educational Curriculum." In addition, Rapaport's article, "What Did You Mean by That? Misunderstanding, Negotiation and Syntactic Semantics," has been published in Minds and Machines: Journal for Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy and Cognitive Science.

Albert J. Ermanovics, associate director of student life, has been re-elected to the statewide Executive Board of United University Professions (UUP). UUP represents some 28,000 faculty and staff throughout the SUNY system. and is the nation's largest higher education union. An authority in labor relations in public higher education in New York, Ermanovics is chair of UUP's statewide Grievance Committee and also serves on its Legislation Committee. He recently was elected treasurer of UB's Center chapter of UUP. He also serves as an assembly representative to New York State United Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers.

Stuart C. Shapiro, professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) and a member of the Center for Cognitive Science, and John F. Santore, a Ph.D. candidate in CSE and a student member of the cognitive science center, presented a paper titled "Crystal Cassie: Use of a 3-D Gaming Environment for a Cognitive Agent" at the Workshop on Cognitive Modeling of Agents and Multi-Agent Interactions, part of the 18th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, held earlier this month in Acapulco.