University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: May 8, 2008

By KEVIN FRYLING
Reporter Staff Writer

Ten UB faculty members, five professional staff members and three librarians have received 2008 SUNY Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence.

The Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities recognizes the work of those who engage actively in scholarly and creative pursuits beyond their teaching responsibilities. Recipients are Mary Ann Jezewski, professor, School of Nursing; Frank Scannapieco, professor and chair, Department of Oral Biology, School of Dental Medicine; and

Robert Straubinger, professor, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

The Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching honors those who consistently demonstrate superb teaching at the undergraduate, graduate or professional level. Recipients are Sampson Blair, associate professor and undergraduate program director, Department of Sociology, College of Arts and Sciences (CAS); Robert Cohen, professor and program director, Department of Periodontics and Endodontics, School of Dental Medicine; Kenneth Kim, associate professor, Department of Finance and Managerial Economics, School of Management; Kate Rittenhouse-Olson, associate professor and director of the biotechnology program, Department of Biotechnical and Clinical Laboratory Sciences, School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences; Yvonne Krall Scherer, associate professor and adjunct associate professor of rehabilitation sciences, School of Nursing; and Troy Wood, associate professor, Department of Chemistry, CAS.

The Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Faculty Service recognizes consistently superior service sustained over a multiple-year period to the local campus, the State University or the community, or the award winner's service contributions to discipline-related professional organizations or to faculty governance. This year's recipient is Gayle Brazeau, associate dean for academic affairs, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

The Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Professional Service honors performance excellence “both within and beyond the position.” Recipients are Randall Borst, director of disability services; Priscilla Clarke, laboratory director, Department of Chemistry; Andrea Costantino, director of student life; Ellen Dussourd, director of international student and scholar services; and Walter Simpson, UB energy officer.

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.” Recipients are Cynthia Bertuca, associate director of access services for document delivery, University Libraries; Cynthia Tysick, associate librarian, University Libraries; and Daisy Waters, electronic periodicals management specialist, University Libraries.

Promoted to her current position in 2007, Cynthia Bertuca previously served 22 years within the Health Sciences Library. As head of information delivery and access services during her last 13 years at the HSL, she was instrumental in the library’s transition toward automated systems of document transfer within and outside the institution.

For nearly 10 years, Bertuca has been a trustee of the Western New York Library Resources Council, including terms as vice president and president of the council, and is a member of the Electronic Funds Transfer System National Advisory Committee. She has been recognized since 1995 as a Distinguished Member of the National Academy of Health Information Professionals.

An authority on the sociology of the family, Sampson Blair has published articles on the gendered division of labor within families and social relations between parents and children in some of the field’s most respected journals. He serves on the editorial boards of several major journals, including Sociological Inquiry, Social Justice Research, the Journal of Family Issues and Marriage and Family Review, as well as the committees of several national organizations, including the American Sociological Association and the National Council on Family Relations.

Blair also has played a key role in attracting and retaining students in the Department of Sociology, partly through his service as director of undergraduate studies, but also through their experience in his classroom. Both undergraduate and graduate students praise him as a teacher, mentor and adviser, and many credit him with their own decision to become teachers and scholars in the field.

As UB’s director of disability services, Randall Borst responds to the needs of approximately 500 individuals with disabilities each year and oversees disability awareness training and education efforts campus-wide. He has introduced a number of highly effective initiatives to enhance access to university resources and better accommodate the needs of the disabled, including a collaborative project with the Center for Assistive Technology to better serve disabled patrons in public computing labs.

The former president of the Association for Higher Education and Disability and a current member of its curriculum advisory committee, Borst is a member of the board of directors of the Independent Living Project of Western New York, and has served on the New York State Task Force on People with Disabilities in Higher Education and as co-chair of the SUNY-wide Task Force on Students with Disabilities.

In addition to serving as faculty advisor to a number of student organizations, Gayle Brazeau has spearheaded the expansion and revitalization of many student professional organizations on campus, particularly those focusing on the promotion of women in the pharmacy profession, as well as chartering a new local chapter of Phi Lambda Sigma, the national pharmacy leadership society.

A member of numerous time-intensive university service committees, she also serves as an officer and member of the board of directors of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy and chairs numerous committees in the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists.

Brazeau’s research has garnered numerous fellowships and grants, including the Gustavus A. Pfeiffer Faculty Development Research Fellowship from the American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education.

As laboratory director for the Department of Chemistry for the past 30 years, Priscilla Clarke serves more than 2,000 students each semester, including those enrolled in nine different lecture sections and more than 70 separate laboratory and recitation sections. Her duties include administering a $100,000 operating budget; supervising approximately 50 graduate teaching assistants, as well as a number of undergraduate student assistants; managing a rigorous laboratory safety program; and overseeing an extensive program of laboratory experiments, training sessions and recitations.

In addition, Clarke was principal investigator on a grant that was used to introduce a classroom response system—in which students can respond immediately to questions asked during lectures via personal remote controls or “clickers”—in the general chemistry program.

A nationally recognized expert on salivary immunochemistry, Robert Cohen is the director of the Advanced Education Program in Periodontics in the School of Dental Medicine.

Selected as a diplomate of the American Board of Periodontology, Cohen is the recipient of a 2005 Educator Award from the American Academy of Periodontology for outstanding teaching and mentoring, and one of only a few dentists to have been recognized by the Dental Society of the State of New York with its 1,000 Hour Continuing Education Award.

Cohen also has served as a scientist consultant to the Scientific Review Office of the National Institute of Dental Research since 1994; as a peer reviewer on the Research, Science and Therapy Committee of the American Academy of Periodontology; and on the editorial boards of several of the top-flight journals in his field.

As director of student life, Andrea Costantino is responsible for a broad range of student services and activities, including student government, student outreach activities, student organizations and student relations.

Her accomplishments at UB include the expansion of the Office of Student Multicultural Affairs into the Intercultural and Diversity Center and the transformation of student leadership and outreach services into a comprehensive Center for Student Leadership and Community Engagement that offers a rich array of resources, training programs, internship and workshop opportunities, and peer-mentoring programs. She frequently plays a leadership role in major university initiatives that lie outside the scope of her assigned duties, including recruiting and helping to train more than 800 volunteers for the three-day campus visit in 2006 by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

As the university officer with chief responsibility for serving the needs of UB’s large and diverse international community, Ellen Dussourd plays a vital role in maintaining the university’s leadership position in the international education arena. Her responsibilities include oversight of immigration services for international students, visiting scholars, and employees; ensuring the university’s implementation of federal and international regulations regarding visa processing and border-crossing; and assisting international faculty and researchers in obtaining work authorization and permanent residency status.

Under her leadership, UB became one of the first U.S. universities with a large international enrollment to achieve full compliance with the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), a federally mandated system implemented after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. She also established and oversees UB’s annual campus celebration of “International Education Week,” a rich program of exhibits, performances, films and other cultural experiences.

Associate dean for research and director of the Center for Nursing Research, Mary Ann Jezewski is an expert on the culture of patient-care and patient-provider interactions during end-of-life decision-making and rehabilitation. She is best known for her development of the “culture brokering model,” a theoretical framework for understanding the health care system “as a unique culture in which the uninitiated patient/consumer needs the help of a broker/advocate to effectively manage cultural intricacies.”

Her work has served as the basis for numerous research projects, including providing a platform for the UB Center for International Rehabilitation Research Information and Exchange in the School of Public Health and Health Professions, a major project funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research.

An authority on foreign financial markets with a particular expertise in Pacific-basin capital markets, Kenneth Kim is coordinator of the Ph.D. program in finance and managerial economics in the School of Management and academic director of a certificate program in international finance organized jointly by UB and the Levin Institute. He also is a member of UB’s Asian Studies faculty.

A research associate at the Pacific-Basin Capital Markets Research Center in Kingston, R.I., Kim serves in a number of prominent consulting roles with capital management groups and banking organizations across the U.S. and Malaysia. In addition to being on the editorial boards of several leading business and management journals, he is the author of two widely used textbooks on corporate finance and corporate governance.

Kate Rittenhouse-Olson helped to found the undergraduate biotechnology program, earning a Dean’s Award for her pivotal contributions during the planning and implementation stages.

Certified by the American Society of Clinical Pathology as a specialist in immunology research, Rittenhouse-Olsen is a distinguished scholar known for her work on carbohydrate antigens, foreign substances that produce antibodies when introduced in a living organism that have important implications for the treatment of cancer and infectious disease. She is the recipient of the Teaching Award from the 2006 graduating class of the Biotechnology Program and a Certificate of Excellence from the class of 2005.

An internationally renowned authority on the mechanisms for dental plaque formation, Frank Scannapieco is a leader in translational research whose achievements are relevant within the laboratory, the classroom and the clinic. His groundbreaking research has had a significant and direct impact on public health, oral health care, and business and industry. He is perhaps best known for demonstrating that amylase—the most common enzyme found in saliva—often binds to a protein that indicates the presence of the bacteria that causes periodontal disease.

Scannapieco has been among UB’s top 100 federal grant recipients since 2003, and his research currently attracts more than $1.6 million annually in external support.

A faculty member in the School of Nursing for nearly 30 years, Yvonne Krall Scherer is an expert in adult and critical patient care, with a particular focus on respiratory care of patients with pulmonary disease.

During the past decade, Scherer has led a school-wide initiative to incorporate a computer-assisted simulation component into the Adult Nurse Practitioner and Acute Care Practitioner programs, making UB one of the first universities in the nation to introduce full-body simulation in its advanced practice curriculum. She recently was appointed chair of UB’s Simulation Center Committee, which is charged with designing a multidisciplinary simulation center that focuses on teaching and research.

The recipient of 2007 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, Scherer has published significantly on the pedagogical and clinical implications of technology and secured considerable support to advance educational technology within the nursing curriculum, an endeavor that has brought in millions of dollars in funding to the university.

Appointed UB energy officer in 1982, Walter Simpson has played a leading role in UB’s history of environmental leadership through his development and oversight of an extensive campus energy-conservation program that has become a model of “green” campus building and operations for colleges and universities across the country.

Under his leadership, the UB Green office has engaged in energy saving and alternative energy programs that have saved the campus $10 million a year. He helped to negotiate wind-energy purchases that have made UB the largest purchaser of wind power in New York state, developed SUNY’s first campus recycling program, created a “green” computing program that is a model for campuses across the nation and spearheaded an innovative project that uses energy cost savings to pay for capital improvements—a project recognized by the American Association of Energy Engineers as the best of the year.

Among his accolades are recognition as Energy Manager of the Year by the New York chapter of the Association of Energy Engineers; the Harry Jay Kord Recognition Award from the regional chapter of the Audubon Society; three awards from the Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers; and numerous UB Service Excellence awards throughout the course of his career.

Robert Straubinger, director of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Instrumentation Facility and the Proteomics/Mass Spectrometry Facility at UB’a New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences, is internationally recognized for his research in the area of proteomics—the study of the role of proteins in various physiological and pathological processes—and of protein-based drug-delivery systems.

Through the innovative use of mass spectrometry, Straubinger has been able to quantify the interaction between proteins and peptide drugs in complex biological environments, leading to the creation of a core mass spectrometry facility at UB, the first in Western New York.

A fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, Straubinger has received external funding on 17 research projects during his tenure at UB and holds multiple patents and disclosures, one of which earned him the title of 2002 Niagara Frontier Inventor of the Year. He also has held a faculty position at Roswell Park Cancer Institute since 1994.

An associate librarian specializing in the social sciences and an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Library and Information Studies, Cynthia Tysick is the primary liaison for the UB Libraries to the departments of Anthropology, Classics, Communication and Library and Information Studies.

A member of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, Tysick has contributed to several major university initiatives, including the 21st Century Library Committee formed in conjunction with the Building UB comprehensive physical planning process. Nationally, she has served as chair of the American Libraries Association’s (ALA) Asian, African and Middle Eastern Section and contributed to the ALA’s Office of Diversity Spectrum Initiative Longitudinal Study.

As an electronic periodicals management specialist with Central Technical Services, Daisy Waters serves as a liaison to publishers and vendors of electronic scholarly materials and clarifies licensing issues related to electronic resources employed by UB’s libraries.

She is a member of the advisory board and the planning steering committee of the Department of Library and Information Studies, and helps mentor and recruit new students to the program, including underrepresented candidates as part of a federally funded initiative conducted in partnership with the school districts of the cities of Buffalo and Rochester. She also chairs the serials section of the ALA’s Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, and has served on the ALA’s Committee on the Status of Women in Librarianship.

An authority in bioanalytical mass spectrometry, Troy Wood has received substantial funding from the National Science Foundation, the NIH and NASA.

The recipient of SUNY’s Entrepreneur Award and the American Society for Mass Spectrometry Research Award, Troy holds two patents for developing nano-electrospray ionization mass spectrometry. He serves on the editorial boards and as a peer reviewer for some of the top journals in his field, among them Analytical Chemistry, Analytical Biochemistry and Environmental Science and Technology.