Archives
People etc.
Correction
A story in last week’s Reporter about the winners of the SUNY Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence omitted a faculty member from the School of Nursing who had won an award and incorrectly reported that another nursing faculty member had won two awards.
Yvonne Krall Scherer, an associate professor in the School of Nursing, received a Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. Mary Ann Jezewski, a professor in the nursing school, received a Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities.
Clarification
A story in last week’s Reporter about UB students’ success in recent engineering competitions inadvertently omitted two high-performing teams. Students designed a seismically protected building model that took third place nationally in a competition held in New Orleans, while another team designed and built a wooden bridge that had a strong showing in the 2008 National Timber Bridge Design Competition.
This week is last print issue of semester
This week's issue of the Reporter is the final print issue for the spring semester. Online issues will be published weekly through the summer. Print publication of the newspaper for the fall 2008 semester will resume on Aug. 28.
Burrows, Rose receive PSS awards
Thomas Burrows, executive director of the Center for the Arts, and Pamela Rose, Web services and library promotion coordinator for the Health Sciences Library, received Outstanding Service Awards from the Professional Staff Senate at the PSS’ annual Awards Luncheon held yesterday.
Also recognized at the luncheon were the winners of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Professional Service: 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 PSS Outstanding Service Awards are given each year to members of UB's professional staff who make outstanding community service contributions.
As executive director of the Center for the Arts since 1996, Burrows has implemented numerous programs that support underserved art forms in the community. He has worked to bring national and international dance troupes to the Center for the Arts, and also began a dance residency program in which visiting companies work not only with UB students, but with thousands of children in local primary and secondary schools to introduce young people to dance. In addition, he has introduced thousands of local children to the performing arts through the CFA’s School Time Adventure Series.
He recently was elected to the Board of Directors of the Society for the Arts in Healthcare and received the 2008 Arts Administrator Award from the Arts Council in Buffalo & Erie County
A member of the PSS and chair of its Web Site and Quality of Work Life committees, Rose has been involved in numerous community activities, many of which involve animals. They range from working as a docent at the Buffalo Zoo and as a rescue transport volunteer to serving on the board of the Buffalo Humane Society and as a member-at-large of the Buffalo Companion Animal Network.
She has been involved in facilitating the rescue and adoption of dogs and cats for more than 20 years, and has served as a counselor and expert on cat health and behavior problems.
She also coordinated the Medical Books for Afghanistan initiative in which more than 100 boxes of medical and veterinary books were shipped to Afghanistan from 2002-04.
Book serves as ‘green’ how-to guide
“The Green Campus: Meeting the Challenge of Environmental Sustainability,” a book edited by Walter Simpson, UB energy officer, offers advice for universities and other groups trying to reduce their carbon footprints.
Published this month by APPA (formerly the Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers), the book is a comprehensive anthology of articles by movers and shakers in the green movement, both on and off campus.
From energy conservation and buying green cleaning products to generating renewable energy on campus and going pesticide-free, the book provides a detailed reference for campus administrative leaders, as well as for teachers of “green campus” courses at the college level.
In addition to Simpson, featured authors include Jim Hanson, leading climatologist and director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies; David W. Orr, Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics at Oberlin College; and Judy Walton, co-founder of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.
The book has been published at a time when both news about the dangers of climate change and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are accelerating at an astonishing clip, says Simpson, who has led UB’s energy conservation and environmental program for 26 years.
To significantly improve energy conservation and efficiency, he advocates that campuses take advantage of energy service companies that develop, design, install and even finance comprehensive campus energy conservation projects. UB has done this successfully, resulting in millions of dollars in annual savings.
Raising awareness and getting all sectors of a campus to conserve requires a broad range of communication strategies, Simpson adds.
UB Green, the university’s environmental stewardship office, has held widely publicized “dumpster dives,” in which students wearing hazardous materials suits, masks and gloves “dive” into a dumpster to examine a day’s worth of the university’s trash. In another case, an undergraduate student study of the energy cost of running soda machines led to UB becoming one of the first campuses to require Energy-Star compliant vending machines, producing energy savings of $20,000 per year.
The book also details how UB Green developed such campus-wide conservation campaigns as “You have the Power (to turn it off)” and “Do It in the Dark.” Posters in individual buildings specify to the dollar the cost of that building’s energy consumption.
The book also is chock-full of green breakthroughs occurring at other campuses across the nation.
The book is available for purchase.
Sociology offers statistics institute
Researchers from a variety of fields are receiving hands-on experience applying the latest programs in data analysis at the 7th Summer Institute in Advanced Statistics and Methods, being held this week and through the end of the month.
The institute, presented by the Department of Sociology, College of Arts and Sciences, has been envisioned as an East Coast alternative to the Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research at the University of Michigan—considered to be the gold standard in advanced statistics education.
The UB program’s reach has expanded over the years from mostly local participants, and now attracts interest from researchers from as far away as Toronto and Virginia, organizers say.
The three workshops being offered this month provide instruction in data analysis methods that can be transferred to widely different data from a variety of disciplines—from the biomedical sciences and social work to the social sciences and even the humanities, says Tai Kang, associate professor of sociology, who runs the institute with Michael Farrell, professor and chair of the Department of Sociology.
The UB institute does not overly emphasize the mathematical underpinnings of statistics and research methods, Kang notes, but instead focuses on providing hands-on experience using new computer programs. Qualitative methods, as well as quantitative methods, are explored during the sessions, he says, adding that once participants learn the methods, instructors are available to consult on the participants’ own data sets.
This year’s institute is offering three modules: Hierarchical Linear Modeling, being taught by Jaekyung Lee, associate professor of counseling, school and educational psychology, Graduate School of Education; Structural Equation Modeling, being taught by Craig Colder, associate professor of psychology, CAS; and Meta-Analysis of Social Sciences, with Thomas Feeley, associate professor of communication, CAS, as the instructor.
The institute is sponsored by the Department of Sociology, the College of Arts and Sciences and the CAS Survey Research Lab.
Click here for more information.
MCEER offers latest on disasters
The latest news, images, videos and statistics on the recent cyclone in Myanmar and the magnitude 7.9 earthquake in China are updated daily on Web pages developed this week by MCEER’s online Information Service.
Click here for information on the earthquake in Sichuan province, China, and click here for information on the cyclone Nargis.
The MCEER Information Service also regularly updates information on disasters elsewhere in the world, such as last weekend’s tornadoes in the south-central states, the Florida wildfires and the volcanic eruption in Chile. For this information, click here and scroll down to “Current Global Disaster News.”
Golove part of ‘A Musical Feast’
UB faculty member Jonathan Golove will be among the musicians performing in the final concert of the season of “A Musical Feast,” to be held at 8 p.m. May 27 in the Kavinoky Theater at D'Youville College.
The series is co-sponsored by the Robert G. and Carol L. Morris Center for 21st Century Music at UB. It was founded by violinist Charles Haupt, retired concertmaster of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, and includes chamber music, solo performances and chamber orchestra.
In his first appearance at “A Musical Feast,” cellist Golove will join Haupt in a performance of the Passacaglia for violin and cello by Handel in the well-known arrangement by Norwegian composer Johan Halvorsen.
Golove also will be featured in a performance of Mozart’s Piano Trio No. 5, in C major K. 548 with Haupt and pianist Claudia Hoca.
Also performing in the concert will be bass-trombone virtuoso David Taylor, who will offer his interpretation of “Nexus,” a work composed in 1976 by David Felder, Birge-Cary Chair in the UB Department of Music, and violinist Charles Castleman.
For tickets to “A Musical Feast,” call the Kavinoky Theater at 829-7668.
AAUW book sale set
The Buffalo branch of the American Association of University Women will hold its 54th annual Scholarship Book Sale June 4-8 in the Crawford Furniture Plaza, 3386 Sheridan Drive at the corner of Sweet Home Road in Amherst.
Sale hours will be 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. June 4-7 and noon to 5 p.m. on June 8.
Proceeds from the sale support the branch's scholarships, grants and interest-free loans to Western New York college students; grants and programs for local high school students; and community projects. The branch annually distributes more than $40,000 in student awards.
Admission to the sale on June 4 will be $10 from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. and $5 from 1-5 p.m. Admission is $1 all day on June 5 and free June 6-8.
Most hard-covered books, trade paperbacks, spiral-bound and other large soft-covered books are $1; standard-sized paperbacks are 50 cents.
An entirely volunteer effort, the book sale is one of the largest of its kind in the country.
Branch members and friends work year-round collecting and sorting books. Donations of videos, compact discs, DVDs and tapes also are accepted. Nearly 200,000 items are collected each year and the five-day event attracts more than 5,000 visitors, including dealers from New England to the Midwest
Click here for more information.
Cookbook sales to benefit SEFA
The staff in the Office of Facilities Planning and Design has assembled a cookbook to benefit the SEFA campaign.
“Masterpieces from Our Kitchen” includes recipes for such tantalizing dishes as “Architect Style Macaroni & Cheese,” “Voltage Veggies” and “Stuffed Mushroom Specs.”
Patti Thomann, contract coordinator for Facilities Planning and Design, says the idea for the cookbook came from the “Great Places to Work” initiative.
“One of the goals of this project was to promote camaraderie within the unit and to create a family atmosphere at work,” Thomann says. “This project took us out of our normal work mode and provided everyone with an opportunity to share a couple of their family recipes.
The cost of the cookbook is $6; proceeds will benefit the SEFA campaign.
To order a cookbook, stop by 119 Beane Center, North Campus, or contact Thomann at 645-3703 or pthomann@facilities. buffalo.edu.