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Correction
Due to incorrect information supplied to the Reporter, the dates of some of the UB 2020 envisioning retreats were incorrect in the March 3 issue.
The time and date of the computing and information technology retreat has been changed to 2-7 p.m. March 31 in 120 Clemens Hall, North Campus. The time and date originally had been reported to be 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on March 21.
The clinical sciences and experimental medicine retreat will be held on April 23 (Saturday), not April 24 (Sunday) as originally reported. It will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in 280 Park Hall, North Campus.
CFA to present Irish dance company
The Center for the Arts will present Trinity Irish Dance Company at 8 p.m. April 8 in the Mainstage theater in the CFA, North Campus.
A pre-performance talk will be held at 7 p.m. The performance is sponsored by KeyBank.
Artistic Director Mark Howard founded Trinity Irish Dance Company in 1991 to provide professional career opportunities to students who had no outlet for Irish dancing beyond the competitive circuit. This innovative, nonprofit company constantly searches for original means of expression, while maintaining a high regard for old traditions. A uniquely Irish-American company, Trinity was the birthplace of progressive Irish dance, which opened new avenues of artistic expression leading directly to such commercial productions as "Riverdance."
Founding company members were trained at the prestigious Trinity Academy of Irish Dance (Chicago/Milwaukee). Dancers from this school have won an unprecedented 18 world titles for the United States at the annual World Irish Dance Championships in Ireland.
Trinity has met with great critical acclaim throughout the world, with sold-out tours in Europe and Asia, and appearances in such distinguished U.S. venues as the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the Joyce and New Victory theaters in New York City.
Tickets for Trinity Irish Dance Company are $25 for the general public and $19 for students. Discount coupons are available at all KeyBank locations. Tickets are available at the CFA box office from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and at all Ticketmaster locations.
For more information, call 645-ARTS.
O'Brian Hall reopens after fire
Classes in the UB Law School were canceled on Monday and Tuesday, and O'Brian Hall was closed to students, faculty and staff after a three-alarm fire on Saturday caused smoke damage throughout the building and destroyed the second-floor food court.
The building reopened yesterday, but some classes were relocated ot other buildings on campus. go to http://www.src.buffalo.edu for a list of classes that have been relocated.
Fire officials believe the building was empty at the time of the fire. There were no injuries. The blaze caused an estimated $200,000 in damage, according to Getzville Fire Company officials.
The second-floor food court, where the fire began, is considered a total loss. Three nearby rooms suffered severe water, heat and smoke damage, fire officials said. Other rooms throughout the building, including the Law Library, were damaged by smoke, and some rooms on the first floor sustained water damage.
Fire officials are investigating the cause of the fire.
Pharmacy ranks second in NIH funding category
The School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences has advanced to second place in terms of individual grant funding awarded per Ph.D. faculty member from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) released the report showing UB has moved from fourth place in the category in fiscal year 2002-03 to second in fiscal year 2003-04.
The AACP, a national organization that represents pharmaceutical education and educators, ranks NIH funding in several categories at the nation's 64 schools of pharmacy with active research programs.
With NIH funding to faculty members totaling $4,043,474 in 2003-04, the average award per UB faculty member was $258,544, according to the AACP report. That's a 32.64 percent increase over 2002-03, when the average award per faculty member in the UB pharmacy school was $194,916.
The School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences has 13 full-time Ph.D. faculty members, or about half the number found in many U.S. schools of pharmacy.
Wayne K. Anderson, professor and dean of the school, said he was especially pleased that only the University of California at San Francisco ranked higher in the survey category this year.
"It's gratifying to move up in the rankings because we are smaller than the other schools in the survey," Anderson said. "Our faculty works efficiently and effectively with the grants they receive and, as a result, we had a strong showing on the per-faculty basis."
The School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences is the second-oldest component of the university and the only pharmacy school in the SUNY system. The school, which includes a Department of Pharmacy Practice and a Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, offers a number of professional, undergraduate and graduate programs directed at several areas of the pharmaceutical sciences.
The school—part of UB's academic health center that includes the schools of Dental Medicine, Public Health and Health Professions, Nursing, and Medicine and Biomedical Sciences—has worked to transform the role of pharmacy from a professional-practice orientation to one that includes major basic and clinical research activities.
"Good Woman of Setzuan" to be performed
The Department of Theatre and Dance in the College of Arts and Sciences will present "The Good Woman of Setzuan" April 7-10 and April 14-17 in the Drama Theatre in the Center for the Arts, North Campus.
Performances will be at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and at 2 p.m. on Sunday.
"The Good Woman of Setzuan" is one of the best-known works of Bertolt Brecht, widely considered to be the most influential European playwright of the 20th century. Written in 1939-40 and set in a remote Chinese province, the play tells the story of Shen Te, a young prostitute who is given the opportunity to pursue a new way of life by three visiting deities. In order to succeed at living a life of goodness, she must create a male alter ego who can protect her interests. Brecht gives us a modern parable about the nature of morality in a competitive, capitalist world.
Saul Elkin, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance, will direct the version of the play translated and published by Eric Bentley in 1947 and several times since, most recently by the University of Minnesota Press. Bentley, considered to be one of the most important theater critics and translators of our time, was professor of theatre at UB from 1974-82. In 1950, he worked with Brecht on a production of Brecht's play "Mother Courage." An old friend and colleague of Elkin, Bentley will serve as literary advisor, or dramaturg, for this production.
The extensive musical score is by the late Stefan Wolpe, who was a friend and colleague of the late Morton Feldman, a former professor at the UB Department of Music. The music was assembled for this production by Austin Clarkson of York University. The scenery was designed by Craig Chapman, instructional support assistant for the Center for the Arts. The costumes were designed by Chantal Calato, a student in the Department of Art. The choreography is by Lynn Kurdziel Formato, assistant professor, and the musical direction by Nathan Matthews, assistant professor, both in the Department of Theatre and Dance.
Tickets for "The Good Woman of Setzuan" are $15 for general admission, and $6 for students and seniors. Tickets are available at the CFA box office from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and at all Ticketmaster locations.
For more information, call 645-ARTS.
Columbia faculty members to speak at UB
Two members of the Columbia University Law School faculty will speak at UB this spring as part of the Faculty Seminar Series on Institutional Analysis of Law, Politics and Society presented by the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy.
John Fabian Witt, who currently is a visiting faculty member at Harvard Law School, will deliver a paper on "The Inevitability of Aggregate Settlement: An Institutional Account of American Tort Law" from 12:30-2:30 p.m. tomorrow in 545 O'Brian Hall, North Campus.
Lucinda Finley, a UB law professor, expert on tort reform and vice provost for faculty affairs, will serve as commentator.
Witt's paper is coauthored by Samuel Issacharoff, Harold R. Medina Professor of Procedural Jurisprudence at Columbia Law School.
Another of Witt's colleagues at Columbia, William H. Simon, will present a paper titled "Toyota Jurisprudence: Legal Theory and Rolling Rule Regimes" from 12:30-2:30 p.m. April 22 in 545 O'Brian.
Ken Ehrenberg, a member of the Department of Philosophy at Columbia's Barnard College who will join the UB philosophy faculty in August, will serve as commentator.
The seminars are free of charge and open to all UB faculty, graduate students and law students. Lunch will be available before the seminars for those who RSVP to the Baldy Center at 645-2102.
Wellness Awareness Day set
With winter officially at an end, UB faculty and staff can reinvigorate for spring at the sixth annual Wellness Awareness Day, to be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. April 6 in Alumni Arena, North Campus.
The aim of the event, sponsored by the Professional Staff Senate, is to promote "physical and psychological well-being."
Among the numerous activities planned are informational displays and booths, presentations, exercise demonstrations, cooking demonstrations, health screenings, and raffles and giveaways.
Presentations will include a talk by Paul Moskal of the FBI on identity theft, information on depression by representatives of the Department of Psychiatry, a "spiritual healing" session with Laurie Krupski of Wellness Education Services, and lectures on eye health and healthy eating.
Participants also can learn the basics of yoga and Pilates, and the correct way to use certain types of exercise equipment. The fitness area will also feature information on walking for physical and mental well-being.
Many notable restaurants, including Fanny's and Lebro's, as well as local grocers like Tops, Feel-Rite Market and Wegman's "Nature Marketplace," will feature cooking demonstrations and samplings.
Participants also can register for a UB Fit health screening, which includes tests for cholesterol, triglycerides, glucose, colorectal cancer, PSA, thyroid, blood pressure, heart rate, cardiovascular risk analysis, body fat percentage and body mass index. Those interested can register by calling Recreation and Intramural Services at 645-2286 between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.
The pre-event blood draw for the health screening will be held from 7-9:30 a.m. March 29 and April 1 in 172 Farber Hall, South Campus, and from 7:30-9:30 a.m. March 30 and 31 and April 4 in 145A Student Union, North Campus. The co-pay is $5 for CSEA members and $10 for all others. Appointments can be made by calling 866-890-5346 Monday through Friday during normal business hours.
Employees will be given release time to attend the event. A shuttle bus will be available to ferry participants to and from the South Campus.
For more information, go to http://www.pss.buffalo.edu.
Web site touts the other March Madness
Maple syrup is delicious on Cream of Wheat and its gathering is the stuff of cozy legends of northern spring times and boiling tubs of sap.
As you pour that sweet sticky brown goo over your waffles and smack your lips, however, consider that it came from starch accumulated during the previous summer and stored over the winter in the zylem parenchyma of a maple tree, where it was hydrolyzed by special "contact cells."
Consider, too, that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup and you will come to a new respect for the maple and the sugar makers.
If you didn't know this already, you may not know that March is maple sugaring month across the northern U.S, either, and perhaps it's time you tuned in to librarian David Bertuca in the Arts and Sciences Libraries.
He knows more about maple trees than most squirrels do and shares all on a Web site he created for the Science and Engineering Library. It's called "Tapping into Spring: The Art & Science of Maple Sugaring" and may be viewed at http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/asl/guides/maple.html.
The site presents the background, history and science of sugaring, and gives visitors the locations of regional "sugarbushes" (most in New York State), where they can see, smell and gobble up the products of sugaring, from golden syrups to candies, cookies and eggnogs.
If your bloodstream can handle another jolt of sugar, the site will direct you to recipes for cakes, hams, cookies, fritters, ribs and even milkshakes and caramelized bananas, all culled from the files of New York, New England and Michigan cooks and epicurious.com.
"Come online and learn about sap flow and the physics of sugar making, Bertuca says. "Visit the disturbing world in which hydrolyzed starch can reach concentrations of 3 to 5 percent and prime the maple tree's amazing plumbing system."