University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: March 29, 2007

By BARBARA A. BYERS
Reporter Contributor

The UB Alumni Association will honor 12 individuals with achievement awards at a black-tie gala to be held April 20 in the Adam's Mark Hotel, 120 Church St.

A cocktail reception at 6 p.m. will be followed by dinner and the awards presentations starting at 6:45 p.m.

The awards are presented each spring to alumni and friends of UB for bringing distinction to themselves and the university through outstanding professional and personal achievement, loyal service to UB and exemplary service to their communities. Also that evening, four students will be awarded J. Scott Fleming Scholarships.

President John B. Simpson and Alumni Association President Charles Swanekamp, M.B.A. '80, J.D. '79, will present the awards. Susan Banks, former news anchor for WKBW-TV, will emcee.

Tickets for the Alumni Association Achievement Awards are $100 per person, or $1,000 for a table of 10. Call the Office of Alumni Relations by April 6 to make reservations at 645-3312.

The alumni association's highest honor, the Samuel P. Capen Award, will be presented to Annette Cravens, M.S.W. '68, of Buffalo. For nearly 75 years, Cravens and her family have been involved with the university in the creation of legacies. She has made substantial contributions to architecture, archaeology, the James Joyce Fund and the UB Libraries, and founded the Dr. Edgar R. McGuire Historical Medical Instrument Collection in memory of her father. Housed in the Health Sciences Library, the collection is an assemblage of more than 200 medical instruments dating from the early Roman period to the late 19th century. The collections of art, cultural artifacts and antiquities donated by Cravens, a longtime member of the University Circle, are valued at between $5 million and $10 million.

Four Distinguished Alumni Awards will be presented in recognition of exceptional career accomplishments, community or university service, or research and scholarly activity. The recipients will be Stephen C. Dunnett, B.A. '68, Ph.D. '77, of Williamsville; Barry Glick, B.A. '74 and Ph.D. '81, of Warren, Vt.; Krishna Kolluri, M.S. '88, of Saratoga, Calif.; and Molly Raiser, M.A. '79, of Washington, D.C.

Dunnett is vice provost for international education at UB, professor of foreign language education in the Graduate School of Education and founder of the university's English Language Institute. He was instrumental in securing the three-day visit to UB in September 2006 by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. As vice provost, he has established key study-abroad and exchange programs between UB and universities in a host of countries. He is the chief university officer responsible for relationships with all UB overseas centers, sponsored international development activities in training and research, and study-abroad and exchange programs in more than 20 countries. Dunnett also helped establish a UB Center in Beijing, the first-ever American university center in the People's Republic, created in cooperation with the Beijing Municipal System of Higher Education.

Glick is founder and former CEO of MapQuest.com, the first and most successful consumer and business-to-business mapping and routing Web site. For more than 20 years he has worked with companies built around the theme of location, image and text-based information products and services, including his current position as head of the advisory board of NeighborhoodScout.com, a nationwide neighborhood search engine for home buyers and moving companies.

Kolluri is an entrepreneur and general partner in the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates, with more than $8 billion under management. He focuses on information technology investments, working closely with entrepreneurs to build successful companies in the U.S. and India. His firm has invested in more than 550 companies, of which 150 have gone public and another 220 have been acquired. He is on the board of directors of Determina, Nevis Networks, RingCube Technologies, SnapTell and WeatherBill, and was formerly on the board of Port Authority Technologies. A past member of the School of Engineering and Applied Science's Dean's Advisory Council, Kolluri now serves as an advisor for, and is a member of, the school's Delta Society (Gold Level), a designation for those who donate $5,000 or more per year.

Raiser served as chief of protocol and ambassador during the Clinton Administration, advising on all matters of protocol within the United States and in other countries. She is the immediate past chair of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, United States Committee. She serves on the board of the National Democratic Institute and its Mideast and Women's Programs subcommittees, traveling to Morocco to train women on running for political office, and to pre-Intifada Palestine to work on civic education programs. She served as an official observer for the Palestinian presidential election in January 2004. She is president of the Raiser Foundation in Washington, which makes grants to organizations involved in higher education. Raiser's attachments to UB are significant: her late parents, Eleanor and Robert Millonzi, created an endowed scholarship for UB honor students in the performing arts, her father also served on the UB Council and her late husband, C. Victor Raiser, was a trustee of the UB Foundation for several years.

The Clifford C. Furnas Award, presented to engineering, natural sciences or mathematics alumni who have distinguished themselves in a field of science, will be given to Christopher Scolese, B.S. '78, of Springfield, Va. As chief engineer for NASA, Scolese leads a technical team of approximately 30,000 and is responsible for the direction, oversight and assessment of all NASA programs. He joined NASA to lead the Earth Observing System (EOS) Terra mission, which provides a comprehensive understanding of the Earth system to enable better predictions of weather and climate. He also served as deputy associate administrator for NASA's Office of Space Science, overseeing high-profile projects like the Hubble Space Telescope, two Mars exploration rovers and the Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn. Scolese formerly was deputy director of the Goddard Space Flight Center, where his responsibilities included Earth science, physics, astronomy and communication systems supporting the Space Shuttle, Space Station and scientific space missions. He has received several prestigious awards, including two Presidential Rank Awards of Meritorious Service, the AIAA National Capital Section Young Engineer of the Year Award and two NASA Outstanding Leadership Medals.

Judit Szente, Ed.M. '98, Ph.D. '01, will receive the George W. Thorn Award, which is given to alumni under 40 in recognition of outstanding national or international contributions to their career field or academic area. A native of Hungary, Szente completed her master's and doctoral degrees at UB in less than five years, and is assistant professor of early childhood education at the University of Central Florida. She has participated in exchange programs in Bulgaria, England and Ethiopia, completed the United Nations Summer Study program and has earned international recognition in the area of improving primary education through technology. Szente lives in Casselberry, Fla.

Reserved for non-alumni who have made notable and meritorious contributions to UB, the Walter P. Cooke Award will be presented to Glen Gresham of Sanibel, Fla. Gresham, who received his undergraduate degree from Harvard and his medical degree from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, was recruited to UB in 1978 as professor and chair of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Over the course of his 20-year career, he helped make the Erie County Medical Center the teaching hospital affiliate of the university and a leader in cardiovascular, spinal-cord-injury and head-trauma services. His administrative acumen not only helped to establish ECMC as a valuable clinical learning facility for countless UB students and a rich training ground for residents, but also as a top-rated patient-care facility for the area's most seriously ill and injured. In retirement Gresham continues to make a difference to UB as a key volunteer, serving on both the Dean's Advisory Council and the steering committee of the Medical Emeritus Faculty Group in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

The Dr. Richard T. Sarkin Award for Excellence in Teaching will be presented to David Lazerson, B.A. '72, M.S. '77 and Ph.D. '86. Lazerson has been involved in educational research and teaching for special needs individuals for more than 25 years. His cutting-edge teaching style, including the use of adaptive technology for people with profound special needs, have inspired other educators to follow his lead and help provide for more direct and meaningful remedial programs for disadvantaged youth. At the Quest Center, a special education school in the Broward County (Fla.) Public School System, Lazerson has formed a choir called the Quest Sign & Sign choir. Although the students are essentially nonverbal, he teaches them how to use sign language to express music. Also a conflict-resolution specialist, Lazerson has written several books, including "Sharing Turf: Race Relations," which chronicles the 1991 Crown Heights race riots in Brooklyn. The book was made into a Showtime movie in 2004. Lazerson lives in North Miami Beach, Fla.

Jack Quinn, Ed.M. '78, of Hamburg and Alexandria, Va., will be given the Community Leadership Medal. President of the government relations firm Cassidy & Associates in Washington, D.C., Quinn served six terms as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and participated in various capacities on a number of committees. During his tenure, Quinn secured $12 million in funding for the UB Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research, $1.3 million for the creation of the Center for the Study of Intestinal Dysmotility in Infants in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, and was instrumental in obtaining $27.75 million in federal funding for UB's New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences. In addition, his office processed more than 12,000 constituent cases of benefit claims and provided housing for homeless veterans, as well as a myriad of other services.

Richard Garman and Patricia Garman, M.S. '79, of Bonita Springs, Fla. and East Aurora, will receive the Dr. Philip B. Wels Award, which recognizes achievements that have greatly enhanced the quality of life of the entire UB community. The couple has affiliations with UB's schools of Nursing and Engineering and Applied Sciences, the College of Arts and Sciences and the Division of Athletics. Former president of Counseling Specialists, a private psychiatric nursing practice, Patricia Garman is also a founder of Compeer West, an organization that assists those struggling with mental health concerns. She is also a former nursing instructor at D'Youville College. Richard Garman is former president of the real estate company R&P Oak Hill, LLC; former president of Newbery Alaska Inc., an electrical contractor; and former managing partner of the private investment company R.E.G., LLC. Their significant gift to UB in 2002 will fund the Patricia H. Garman Behavioral Health Nursing Endowment to promote the advancement of education, research and practice in the area of behavioral health nursing, and the Richard E. Garman Endowment, which supports scholarships for students in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering.

Four students will receive the J. Scott Fleming Scholarship. Adam Bavifard, B.A. '05 and second year M.B.A. student, is from Clarence. As an undergraduate, Adam served as both the secretary and social chair for Sigma Chi Omega and also co-founded the first men's soccer club.

Jenna Chrisphonte, B.A. '02, a third-year law student from Deer Park, serves as the student representative to the UB Council. She is a graduate assistant for the Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program, where she advises more than 200 minority students in the fields of science and technology, and as a graduate student employee liaison she is responsible for disseminating information to the university's 1,200 teaching assistants and graduate assistants.

Junior mathematics and economics major Angela Peters is actively involved with the Residence Hall Association on campus, and for two years has served as UB's liaison to other RHAs at major universities in the northeast region. A Hamburg resident, she was selected as a member of the National Residence Hall Honorary, which accepts the top 1 percent of residents on campus for their dedication and efforts.

The youngest recipient of the J. Scott Fleming Scholarship, sophomore Adriana Viverette, is a communication major. As activities director for the Student Association, she is responsible for coordinating all SA activities and programs, and she successfully planned and implemented UB's first pep rally during Homecoming weekend last October. The Buffalo resident also is the community outreach coordinator for intramurals in the Division of Athletics.