University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: July 15, 2004

By SUE WUETCHER
Reporter Editor

Twelve faculty members, one librarian and two professional staff members have received 2004 SUNY Chancellor Awards for Excellence from Chancellor Robert L. King.

The Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities recognizes the work of those who engage actively in scholarly and creative pursuit beyond their teaching responsibilities. UB recipients are Anthony S. Conrad, professor in the Department of Media Study in the College of Arts and Sciences; Michael C. Constantinou, professor and chair of the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; David A. Kofke, professor in the Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering in SEAS; Gene D. Morse, professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacy Practice in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Alan L. Selman, professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering in SEAS.

The Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching honors those who consistently have demonstrated superb teaching at the undergraduate, graduate or professional level. Recipients this year are Kathleen M.K. Boje, associate professor in the Department of Pharmaceutics in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences; Jean D. Brown, associate professor in the School of Nursing; Michael R. Detty, associate professor in the Department of Chemistry in CAS; Sarah M. Elder, professor in the Department of Media Study, and D. Joseph Mook, professor in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering in SEAS.

The Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Faculty Service—a new award created this year—recognizes consistently superior service sustained over a multiple-year period to the local campus, the State University or the community, or the awardee's service contributions to discipline-related professional organizations or to faculty governance. Recipients are Joseph A. Gardella, Jr., professor in the Department of Chemistry, and D. Bruce Johnstone, University Professor of Higher and Comparative Education in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy in the Graduate School of Education.

The Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Professional Service honors performance excellence "both within and beyond the position." Recipients are Dean C. Millar, assistant dean for corporate relations, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Bruce R. Majkowski, associate dean for computing and information systems, School of Architecture and Planning.

The Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Librarianship recognizes "skill in librarianship; service to the campus, the university and to the field; scholarship and professional growth, and major professional achievements." This year's winner is Karen L. Spencer, archives and special collections librarian in the Charles B. Sears Law Library.

Kathleen Boje joined the UB faculty in 1992 after serving as a staff fellow for the Laboratory of Neurosciences of the National Institutes of Health. Her research interests include mechanisms and therapy of neuroinflammatory diseases, blood-brain barrier transport of drugs and the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of drugs acting on the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor complex in the central nervous system.

A recipient of a FIRST (First Independent Research Support and Transition) grant from the National Institutes of Health in 1994 recognizing young investigators who show promise for future scientific achievement in the biomedical sciences, she received a bachelor's degree in pharmacy from Duquesne University and a doctorate in pharmaceutics from UB.

A Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, Jean Brown studies nutrition-related cancer-symptom management. She was a member of a panel established by the American Cancer Society to assess the scientific evidence and best clinical practices relating to nutrition and physical activity after a cancer diagnosis.

Brown has received numerous awards, among them the Sustained Achievement Award from the Exceptional Scholar Program at UB, the Susan Baird Excellence in Writing Award in Clinical Practice from the Oncology Nursing Society's (ONS) Publishing Division, the Distinguished Nurse Researcher Award from the Foundation of the New York State Nurses Association and the Dean's Excellence in Teaching Award from the UB School of Nursing.

She received bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in nursing from the University of Rochester.

Multidisciplinary artist Tony Conrad serves as director of graduate studies in the Department of Media Study. He joined the UB faculty as an assistant professor in 1979 after serving for several years as a visiting faculty member.

He teaches "Video Analysis," a survey of historical and contemporary practices in video with an emphasis on the work of independent media artists, and "Media Art Production Today," a symposium that explores contemporary premises for making media artworks.

Conrad's recent artistic production has been in audio performance or installation, often with a strong visual complement.

He earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Harvard College.

A UB faculty member since 1987, Michael Constantinou also is co-director of the Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory (SEESL) in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering. His research interests include structural engineering, earthquake engineering, seismic isolation, seismic-energy dissipation, large-scale testing and performance-based design.

He has served as a consultant on analysis and design of seismic-isolation and energy-dissipation systems for such projects as the Corinth Canal Bridges in Greece, the U.S. Court of Appeals building in San Francisco and the Queensboro Bridge in New York.

His work on the seismic modernization of the Ataturk Airport Terminal in Istanbul, Turkey, won a Grand Award in the American Consulting Engineers Council's 36th annual Engineering Excellence Award competition and a Diamond Award from the New York Association of Consulting Engineering Companies.

He receive a patent for developing a new energy-dissipation technology that uses an unusual configuration, called Scissor-Jack Energy Dissipation System, to dissipate much of the earthquake-induced energy when installed in structural systems.

Constantinou earned master's and doctoral degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Michael Detty joined the UB faculty in 1995 after a career as a research chemist at Eastman Kodak Co. His research interests include main-group catalysis, synthetic methodology, new sensitizers for photodynamic therapy and dendrimer catalysts.

A recipient of the 2000 Milton Plesur Excellence in Teaching Awards from the undergraduate Student Association, Detty received a doctorate in organic chemistry from Ohio State University.

Sarah Elder is an award-winning documentary film director whose work focuses on the practices of filming across cultural and social boundaries. A UB faculty member since 1989, she teaches courses in non-fiction critical studies, documentary production, experimental documentary, theory and practice of editing, ethnographic film and video, media ethics and story telling.

Her films have won three consecutive first prizes at the American Film Festival, three first-prize Bronze Eagles at the Santa Fe Native Americas International Exposition, a third prize from the IX International Festival of Ethnographic Films (Italy) and three USA Golden Eagles, among others. In addition, she publishes regularly on issues surrounding documentary theory and production.

She received a bachelor's degree from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA from Brandeis University.

Joseph Gardella, also associate dean for external affairs in the College of Arts and Sciences, conducts research that focuses on the solution of molecular and macromolecular structure at surfaces and interfaces, an area that encompasses many aspects of physics, chemistry, materials and engineering.

A member of the UB faculty since 1982, Gardella has received several academic honors, including a SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, a National Science Foundation Award for Special Creativity and an Exxon Educational Foundation Research and Training Program Grant.

He is a member of the Environmental Task Force and chaired the group from 1995-99. Affiliated with the Environment and Society Institute, he is a former member of the organization's Steering Committee.

Gardella has worked with numerous citizens groups, among them the Hickory Woods Concerned Homeowners Association, whose members believe their properties, built on the site of a former steel company, are contaminated. His undergraduate chemistry students have analyzed air and soil samples from the South Buffalo subdivision.

He received the 2002 Jacob F. Schoellkopf Medal from the Western New York Section of the American Chemical Society honoring an individual in the Niagara Frontier for outstanding work and service in the fields of chemistry or chemical engineering,

Gardella received bachelor's degrees in philosophy and chemistry from Oakland University and a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh.

A UB faculty member for a decade, Bruce Johnstone serves as director of the Center for Comparative and Global Studies In Education in the Graduate School of Education. He also directs the International Comparative Higher Education Finance and Accessibility Project, a multi-year, foundation-supported examination into the worldwide shift of higher education costs from governments and taxpayers to parents and students. His professional and research interests include higher education finance, governance and policy formation, and international comparative higher education.

During a 25-year administrative career, Johnstone held positions as vice president for administration at the University of Pennsylvania, president of Buffalo State College, and SUNY chancellor.

He has written more than 70 books, monographs, articles, chapters and book reviews. He is best known for his works on the financial condition of higher education, the concept of learning productivity, student financial assistance policy, system governance and international comparative higher education finance.

Johnstone holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard, a master's degree from Harvard's Graduate School of Education and a doctorate in higher education from the University of Minnesota.

David Kofke earned a bachelor's degree from Carnegie-Mellon University and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. He served as a postdoctoral fellow at Rutgers before joining the UB faculty in 1989. His research interests lie in thermodynamics, statistical physics and molecular simulation.

He has received numerous awards, among them a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation, the Dow Outstanding New Faculty Award from the American Society for Engineering Education and, most recently, the John M. Prausnitz Award for achievement in applied chemical thermodynamics from the International Conference on Properties and Phase Equilibria for Product and Process Design.

Kofke is a two-time SUNY Chancellor's Award winner, having received the award for excellence in teaching in 1994.

Bruce Majkowski joined the UB professional staff in 1984 as a research assistant/systems administrator in the Computer-Aided Design/Graphics Laboratory in the School of Architecture and Planning, then known as the School of Architecture & Environmental Design. He also served as facilities manager, associate director and acting director of the CAD lab, director of the Computing Resource Labs and assistant dean for computing and information systems in the architecture school before assuming his current position as associate dean in 2001.

Majkowski, who also holds a faculty appointment as an adjunct associate professor in the architecture school, earned bachelor's and master's degrees in architecture and a master's degree in computer science, all from UB.

A member of numerous university-wide and architecture school committees, he also has consulted as computer systems and CAD specialist for various units at UB and for such outside agencies as the YWCA of Buffalo.

Dean Millar enjoyed a 28-year career with Union Carbide, Linde Division—which later became Praxair. After retiring as human resource manager for Praxair Technology Center in 1994, he joined the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences' staff—at the invitation of then-Dean George Lee—to establish the school's Engineering Career Institute. The institute, which he continues to coordinate, offers post-junior-year students in the school career-success classes, followed by paid summer technical-employment opportunities. He also is educational coordinator of Strategic Partnership for Industrial Resurgence, a joint effort of the SUNY engineering schools to provide advanced engineering and technology assistance to New York State industries, particularly the manufacturing sector.

A UB faculty member since 1986, Joseph Mook also serves as assistant dean for international education for the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. His research interests include controls, dynamics, system identification, estimation theory, modeling and nonlinear and chaotic dynamic systems.

He has received numerous awards for his teaching, including a 2000 Milton Plesur Excellence in Teaching Award from the undergraduate Student Association and the Ralph R. Teetor Outstanding Educator Award form the Society of Automotive Engineers. He also was named a University Teaching Fellow at UB in 1991.

He earned bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in engineering mechanics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University,

Gene Morse is associate dean for clinical education and research in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. His research interests include HIV pharmacotherapy, antiretroviral pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics and clinical trials.

He is primary investigator for the National Institutes of Health-sponsored AIDS Clinical Trials Group Pharmacology Laboratory, which focuses on the measurement of antivirals and surrogate markers in patients with HIV and other viral diseases, and a National Institute on Drug Abuse-sponsored grant in drug interactions and TDM of antiretrovirals.

Morse directs an ACCP-accredited fellowship in antiviral pharmacology, directs the Novartis Fellowship and is a member of the UB Health Sciences Institutional Review Board.

A UB faculty member since 1983, Morse received a bachelor's degree from the University at Albany and bachelor's and doctoral degrees in pharmacy from UB.

Alan Selman joined the UB faculty in 1990 as chair of the Department of Computer Science. He previously was professor of computer science and acting dean of the College of Computer Science at Northeastern University.

A specialist in computational complexity theory, he serves as editor-in-chief of the journal Theory of Computing Systems and is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Computer and System Sciences and the Chicago Journal of Theoretical Computer Science.

A recipient of the Exceptional Scholar Award from UB in 2002, Selman is a Fellow of the Association for Computer Machinery, which awarded him its ACM-SIGACT Distinguished Service Award in 2001.

He received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from City College of CUNY, a master's degree in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a doctorate in mathematics from Pennsylvania State University.

A member of the UB Libraries staff since 1974, Karen Spencer briefly worked as a cataloging librarian in Central Technical Services before moving to the Law Library as an audiovisual librarian. She also worked as a reference librarian before assuming her current position as archives and special collections librarian in 2000.

In addition, she has held posts as instructor, clinical instructor and adjunct instructor in the Law School, most recently teaching "Asylum Law."

She received a UB Service Excellence Award in 2003 for "Iraq Crisis," a "webliography" that helps answer questions about why the U.S. invaded Iraq and presents information about the region's history, geopolitics and what is occurring there now.

Spencer received a bachelor's degree in computer science, a master's degree in library studies and a law degree, all from UB.