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CDS donates gingerbread houses
Clients of five charitable agencies in Erie County are enjoying the labors of bakers in Campus Dining & Shops, thanks to the CDS' donation of five gingerbread houses created by the unit's Bakery Department.
Four of the houses were used as decoration at the special holiday dinners served by the dining centers in Governors, Red Jacket and Richmond on the North Campus and the Main Street Market in Goodyear Hall, South Campus. The fifth house was featured during holiday events held in the President's Residence on Lebrun Road.
CDS every year donates the houses to charitable groups once the UB holiday activities are over, said Karen Duysters, bakery manager. This year's recipients are Haven House, the after-school program at the Delevan-Grider Community Center, Cornerstone Manor, the UB Child Care Center and Beechwood Nursing Home.
It took two bakers approximately 75 hours to create the five houses, Duysters said.
"This year's gingerbread houses are patterned after an old-time village sweet shop," she said, noting the houses are made completely from scratch and are totally edible. "We mixed 40 batches of gingerbread dough and rolled and cut each piece by hand. All of the windows were cut out with Exacto knives to ensure that each window was evenly cut."
Once all of the pieces were baked, the construction process began.
"This is a bit time-consuming because we could only do the outside walls one day and then we had to wait a full day before we could put each roof on," she said, explaining that this process ensures that the frames are solid before the heavy roof pieces are added.
The decorating process "was where we really enjoyed ourselves," Duysters said.
"The Necco-wafer roof and path were quite time-consuming (to install), but rewarding. "We tried to make our village sweet shop a very fun place to be," she said. "We hope that everyone enjoys looking at the sweet shop as much as we enjoyed making it."
UB team places fourth in Chem-E-Car contest
"Mr. Freeze," the Chem-E-Car designed by UB chemical engineering students, finished fourth in the seventh annual Chem-E-Car competition held recently in Cincinnati.
Mr. Freeze, UB's entry in the national Chem-E-Car competition, took fourth place.
The competition, which kicked off the annual meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), attracted students from 31 universities across the country, The institutions that participated in the competition had placed in first, second or third in their regional competitions to qualify for the national competition.
UB's team placed second at the regional conference in Easton, Pa., in April.
The competition requires students to power shoebox-sized cars via a chemical reaction and carry a specified payload for a given distance. Students are not given the payload or distance until one hour before the competition.
The UB students met regularly from the start of the semester, said Lindsay Mroz, president of UB's AIChE student chapter and a member of the Chem-E-Car team.
"The team collectively came up with the design we used in the competition," she said. "The car was powered by a sodium borohydride electrolyte fuel cell and was stopped by dissolving magnesium ribbon in hydrochloric acid. As the magnesium was connected in series with the fuel cells, the car stopped when the ribbon broke, due to an incomplete circuit."
"Other reactions for the propulsion mechanism include aluminum air cells and the water-gas shift reaction," Mroz added.
In this year's event, students were challenged to transport a 300 ml of water 79 feet. The teams got two chances to run their cars, with their final score being their best attempt at exactly meeting the specified distance.
While each team has a faculty advisor to offer guidance, the final products are conceptualized and developed by the students.
"The Chem-E-Car team did an excellent job in preparing for this competition," said Emmanouhl (Manolis) Tzanakakis, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering who served as advisor to the UB team. "Besides teamwork, the students had the opportunity to experience in practice some of the difficulties associated with applying what they are taught in class. Such an experience will be a valuable asset as they are preparing for their professional careers."
Emerging entrepreneurs honored
Alexa Wajed has been named "Protégé of the Year" by the Allstate Minority and Women Emerging Entrepreneurs Program, a joint venture of the School of Management's Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL) and the Center for Urban Studies in the School of Architecture and Planning.
Wajed, of Emani Kemet Enterprises and Gallery 51, received a $1,500 prize for the honor. Awards for second and third place went to Harriett Black of Hair Concepts by Duchess and Carrie DeGeorge of The Laundry Basket Too. They received $1,000 and $500, respectively.
The year-long program, sponsored by The Allstate Foundation, a charitable organization funded by subsidiaries of Allstate Insurance Corp., drew to a close with the presentation of the awards at a banquet held last week in the Jacobs Executive Development Center, 672 Delaware Ave.
The participants, who entered the program as protégés last January, each were assigned two mentors who are successful entrepreneurs from the local business community and who met regularly with them to help them evaluate and improve their business plans.
"Mentor of the Year" awards were given to Wajed's mentors, Donald J. Hahn of Hahn and Associates and Conway Porter of Conway Porter, CPA.
Althea Luehrsen, executive director of CEL, said the mission of the Allstate Minority and Women Emerging Entrepreneurs Program "is to create a pathway that enables minority and women emerging entrepreneurs to move their companies to the next stage of development."
"Now in its second year, the program has again exceeded our expectations and we look forward to another great year in 2006," she added.
Mentors provided protégés with technical advice on varied aspects of running a small business, such as strategic and tactical thinking, marketing, merchandising, pricing, inventory control, accounting, long-range financial planning and basic legal advice to help protégés formulate realistic business goals and to develop timetables and strategies for achieving them.
The culminating activity in the program was creation of a new or revised business plan. One year after completing the program, protégés will be invited back to assess the program's impact on the development of their businesses.
Applications for the 2006 program are due by Jan. 20. To be eligible to apply, an entrepreneur must be a woman or a member of a recognized minority group (African American, Latino, Native American or Asian) and must own a business in the Buffalo-Niagara region.
For more information on the Allstate Minority and Women Emerging Entrepreneurs Program, call CEL at 885-5715 or visit http://mgt.buffalo.edu/ced /cel.