UAlbany Graduate Students Tackle Issues Facing Africa
ByCarol Olechowski
For the people of Africa, the challenges of social justice, health care, the economy, the environment, and the use of natural resources are facts of daily life. A recent conference in Washington, D.C., brought those realities home to a group of UAlbany graduate students.

The annual Model Organization of African Unity conference, held at Howard University March 7-10, brought together about 250 representatives of 40 colleges and universities across the United States to consider the problems African nations face, and to propose and debate solutions. Modeled after the actual Organization of African Unity, the conference began with a visit by UAlbany delegates J.J. Brondum, Danny Hoey, Nathi Ngcobo, Kwabena Sekyere, and Annelies Verdoolaege, and their faculty adviser, Department of Africana Studies Associate Professor Kwadwo A. Sarfoh, to the Kenyan Embassy.

Albany’s delegation represented the nation of Kenya, with each of the students assigned to one of five commissions (Conflict Prevention, Social, Economic Community, Economic, and the Council of Ministers). In response to the concerns raised within the committees, the UAlbany participants were responsible for formulating resolutions beneficial not only to Kenya, but to all of Africa.

Three of the four resolutions submitted by UAlbany were debated at the commission level, then referred to the Assembly Heads of State for review. Of the 16 resolutions thus referred, only five were passed - among them, Ngcobo’s Economic Community Commission submission calling for OAU members to develop the continent’s economy by exploring ways to increase trade between nations and regions. Ngcobo, who plans to return to his native South Africa to work with the government there after earning his doctorate in humanistic studies, said: “Africa is very diverse, so there are a lot of controversial issues in every country. A country’s leaders often do not agree on many of the issues - mainly economic and border conflict issues - that affect the national interest.”

As a member of the Social Commission, Hoey helped to draft a resolution urging the OAU nations to join in an education-based effort to prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS. “When it came up for a vote, however,” noted the Ohio native, “it was very controversial.”

In fact, Verdoolaege, a Belgian who will receive her master’s degree in May, acknowledged that the proceedings were “sometimes frustrating.” It was difficult for her and her colleagues on the Council of Ministers to reach a solution to a hypothetical crisis engendered by the news that Democratic Republic of the Congo President Joseph Kabila was missing. “Everyone has his own interests,” commented Verdoolaege. Brondum was on the Conflict Prevention and Resolution Commission. The group addressed the issue of the import and use of foreign weapons and munitions with the intent to exploit African resources, particularly in regard to the diamond trade. The resolution lamented the killings and maimings resulting from a conflict perpetuated for the benefit of governments and corporations - particularly DeBeers - as well as the use of young children as “foot soldiers to do a lot of the dirty work,” said Brondum.

Sekyere worked with the Economic Commission. That action gave the Ghana native an opportunity to “encourage cooperation among these countries, which would benefit them economically.”

For all of the students, the OAU experience was a valuable one. The conference, said Sekyere, who plans to return to Ghana after earning his degree next year, should reinforce for attendees the notion that “Africa is not just some distant planet. I learned a lot about politics, I got to meet people, and I learned to speak in public.”

Brondum, who will work at the U.S. Embassy in Senegal, treasured the “cultural, historical, and political exposure,” which allowed him to “learn parliamentary procedure,” and visit “some fun Ghanaian and Ethiopian restaurants.”

Sarfoh sees the OAU conference as “part of the University’s mission. We are also able to highlight UAlbany. The last two years, a student who got to know about our Africana Studies program [through the conference] has ended up enrolling here. This is a way to draw students to our graduate program. And our graduate students always do well. For this, we must express our thanks to President Karen Hitchcock, to Provost Carlos Santiago, to Vice President for Student Affairs James Doellefeld, and to the New York African-American Research Foundation. They have made these successes possible by providing their support.”

Vice President for Student Affairs James Doellefeld said, “Professor Sarfoh is a leader in coordinating and advocating rich, ‘hands-on,’ experiences for students.”

Another Call for Commencement Volunteers
By Greta Petry
Since Commencement planning is in full swing, volunteers are still needed for that all-important weekend of May 19 and 20. There is still time to sign up, by calling Christy DeLaMater at 591-8626. Please note: This is a correction from the April 5 issue, and the 591 exchange is new on campus. DeLaMater can also be reached by fax at 442-5839, or by e-mail at: cdelamater@uamail.albany.edu.

Volunteers are needed for the following areas:

• Graduate and undergraduate ceremonies (ushers, escorts for disabled guests, student lineup/procession, faculty robing/lineup, and more)
• Information booths across campus to guide guests to the appropriate areas
• The podium area on both days to provide assistance to guests
• Individual school ceremonies (needs vary by school)

Speakers Named
Commencement ceremonies will be on Saturday, May 19, and Sunday, May 20. The graduate ceremony will begin at 10 a.m. on May 19 in the Recreation and Convocation Center. The undergraduate ceremony will begin at 10 a.m. on May 20 on the lawn behind the new library. In addition, individual schools and departments will hold ceremonies throughout the weekend.

The individual ceremonies are drawing some well-known speakers, including John Zogby at the Political Science ceremony, and Dr. Antonia Novello at the School of Public Health. Nobel Laureate Jerome I. Friedman, a physicist whose research team found evidence for the existence of the quark, is the guest speaker at the graduate ceremony. Terry Mizrahi, the head of a national social work association, will speak at the School of Social Welfare.

Zogby is president and CEO of Zogby International, and has been called the hottest pollster in the United States today.

In the razor-thin 2000 elections, daily national tracking polls conducted by Zogby International in the last weeks before the election foretold a tightening of the race for president while nearly all other polling firms projected an easy victory for Gov. George Bush. In his post- election 2000 review, Godfrey Sperling, columnist for the Christian Science Monitor, called Zogby “Champion Pollster.” Since 1996, Zogby has polled for Reuters News Agency, and in 2000 polled for NBC News.

Commissioner of the New York State Department of Health Dr. Antonia Novello, former Surgeon General of the United States, will be keynote speaker at the School of Public Health ceremony. The ceremony is being held on the East Campus at 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 19.

Novello heads one of the leading public health agencies in the nation. She is responsible for a $30 billion budget, the largest of any New York State agency and over a third of the total state budget. The agency includes four health care facilities (with a fifth under construction), two regional offices and field offices, and nine district offices, as well as the central office in Albany.

The major programs for which Novello is responsible include Medicaid; Child Health Plus; Youth Tobacco Enforcement and Prevention; regulation of nursing homes and home health agencies; Managed Care; and implementation of the Spinal Cord Injury Trust Fund. She also serves as the President of Health Research, Inc.

Terry Mizrahi, Ph.D., professor at Hunter College and president-elect of the National Association of Social Workers, is guest speaker at the School of Social Welfare ceremony, which is being held on Saturday, May 19, at 1 p.m. at Page Hall.

Nobel Laureate Jerome I. Friedman will receive an honorary Doctor of Science degree and is also keynote speaker at the May 19 Graduate Ceremony.

Friedman is a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Director of the Laboratory of Nuclear Sciences at MIT, he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science and, in 1989, was a co-recipient of the American Physical Society’s W.H.K. Panofsky Prize. In 1998, he was elected president of the American Physical Society. Friedman also serves as a member of the High Energy Advisory Panel for the Department of Energy, and Chairman of the Scientific Policy Committee of the Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory.

Friedman and his collaborators were honored for work that revealed an internal structure inside what were thought to be fundamental particles of matter, i.e., the protons and neutrons that make up the nucleus of an atom. The small nuggets of matter they detected matched the theoretical predictions about the existence of the basic building blocks called “quarks,” from which the basic subatomic particles are built. This research gave the first clear evidence for the charged, point-like substructures - quarks - inside atoms.

Friedman was born to an immigrant family, and entered the University of Chicago as a scholarship student because the family did not have the resources to afford tuition. Twenty-five years later, he was a full professor of physics at MIT and was completing the collaborative research that would lead to the Nobel Prize.

UAlbany Hosts Russian Olympiada
By Carol Olechowski
Geographically, New York and Russia haven’t moved. Linguistically, however, they got a bit closer April 5 when the University at Albany hosted the Olympiada, a Russian language competition for high school students.

About 160 students from 11 schools around the state participated in the contest, according to Halina Danchenko, an Arlington High School (LaGrangeville, N.Y.) teacher of Russian. Danchenko, who coordinated the event with Charles Rougle, the Slavic and Eurasian Studies program’s director of undergraduate studies, and Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures secretary Amber Hutchinson, said that New York is one of 11 states nationwide to host the competition. The Olympiada is sponsored by the Washington, D.C.-based American Council of Teachers of Russian.

UAlbany faculty and graduate students serve as judges for the Olympiada, which affords high school students who are at least 16 years old and who have completed a minimum of one year of formal language study the opportunity to display their skills in spoken Russian. Participants compete at five levels in oral language, Russian culture, and reading and recitation.

Each student is “graded on the basis of gold, silver, bronze, and honorable mention,” and receives a prize, Danchenko explained. The University in High School Program and Dean of Undergraduate Studies Sue Faerman each provided $150 for prizes. Gift certificates valued at $25 apiece were awarded to the top two winners at each level.

At Albany, there are slots for two first-place winners. Nationally, 15 students in each division will be chosen to represent the United States at the Olympiada in Moscow in June. Held once every three years, the international competition brings young people from 130 countries together to compete for such prizes as scholarships to Russian universities.

For the UAlbany version of the Olympiada, rooms were set aside along a third-floor corridor in the Campus Center for the various competition levels. Outside one of the rooms stood Tara Silk, a junior from Emma Willard School in Troy; and Arlington High students Nicole Brusco and Brandon Balkind, who returned in February from an exchange program in Moscow.

Tara, who has been studying Russian for five years, became interested in the language because “I found it interesting. It was something different.” A competitor in last year’s Olympiada, she professed to being both excited and “very nervous” about the contest.

Sixteen-year-old Nicole gravitated toward the study of Russian because “I thought that it was unique, and that it might give me an advantage when I get out of college and begin looking for a job.” She has studied the language for five years and hopes to spend a semester of college studying in Russia. Her long-term plans include a career in international law and business.

Level 5 competitor Brandon will enroll at Tufts University next fall. For the 17-year-old senior, the decision to pursue a course of Russian language study six years ago was inspired, in part, by family history: “My ancestors were Russian.”

Clearly, Brandon’s expertise - and his genealogy - served him well during the Olympiada: He was one of the first-prize winners. Catherine Provost of Tamarac High School was the other. They now have the chance to compete for the two slots allocated to New York for representation at the international Olympiad, which will be held at Moscow’s Pushkin Institute. Piali Mukhopadhyay of Shaker High School was named alternate.

John Callahan, who received his master’s in Russian language and literature at UAlbany in 1991, accompanied a group of his Staten Island Technical High School students to the Olympiada. While he pointed out that there’s “a whole list of reasons” why a knowledge of Russian is a valuable asset for young people, he mentioned two, specifically. “When kids apply to college, it’s impressive on a transcript. Processors going through applications are, many times, going to look closely at a student who took Russian. It’s a very challenging language.

“And down our way,” Callahan continued, “there’s a chance to apply it. There are a lot of Russian people in Staten Island. Students have told me, ‘I was at work today, and I was able to help someone because I can speak Russian.’ The language is useful.”

UAlbany Business Club Takes a Ride for Kozy Shack
By Carol Olechowski
What do pudding and the Albany Business Computing Association (ABCA) have in common? An auto racing team. Or rather, the search for one.

When ABCA president D.J. Plante, who is the Webmaster for Kozy Shack Racing, learned that the Long Island pudding manufacturer was planning to discontinue sponsorship of its racing team and seeking a new sponsor to take over, his entrepreneurial instincts went into high gear. Team owner Skip Travaglin “asked if I would help him find a sponsor and offered me 10 percent of any major sponsor contract that was signed,” remembered Plante, a senior information science and policy major with an interest in E-business. “These contracts can be signed for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Because of classes and ABCA, I did not personally have time to search for a sponsor, but I had an idea.”

Plante’s idea was to propose that team manager Paul Amenta give ABCA $100 for distribution to five association members who would search for 25 firms with a possible interest in sponsoring the team. “We looked for potential ‘.com’ sponsors, because we felt those companies would most likely support a racing team,” Plante explained. A $500 bonus would be paid to the UAlbany student who finds the firm that would eventually take over the Kozy Shack Racing sponsorship. There was another incentive: “If ABCA succeeds in finding the racing team a new ma-jor sponsor, we will earn 5 percent of the value of the contract. These contracts can range from a minimum of $150,000, so if a $200,000 contract is signed, ABCA would receive $10,000.”

Because the association could use the money, Plante revved up to attract “students interested in marketing or advertising” to carry out his plan. He and his ABCA colleagues Tina Benjamin, Jason Friedman, Paul Bruno, and Elaine Finello put the pedal to the metal, working on the project for 23 days. Benjamin’s list of potential sponsors included Connecticut Screen Works, which has expressed interest in, and requested more information about, the sponsorship. Kozy Shack has until “a few months after the racing season ends in late August to locate a major sponsor,” Plante said.

Founded in 1996, ABCA is a professional organization devoted to keeping its 95 members informed about the latest business and computing technologies. Plante, Fi-nello, and four other “hard-working students” - Oliver Chow, Rebecca Hauer, Matt Calsada, and Jaya Joshi - also seek to hone members’ business and communication skills, and provide networking opportunities between students and professionals in the field. To achieve its goals, ABCA holds office hours six days a week, as well as monthly meetings; sponsors workshops and lectures; and maintains a Web site (http://abca.cs.albany.edu) complete with information about upcoming events, links to the Career Development Center and other University resources, and a message board.

ABCA’s previous fundraising efforts - primarily raffles, bagel sales, and letter-writing campaigns - have allowed its members to “provide food and beverages at our events; purchase things for our office; make copies of fliers; and sometimes pay speakers coming in to make presentations,” noted Plante. If the association succeeds in finding a new sponsor for the racing team and driver Donny Travaglin, who races the team’s red Pontiac Grand Prix in the Late Model division at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway, the commission will give ABCA “an extreme financial boost.” The funding, Plante added, “will probably go toward some computer equipment - we are in dire need of a new laptop - and possibly toward a portable projection system. Some of the money would go to speakers or to those who teach a workshop for ABCA. We would appreciate nothing more than to show our appreciation to those helping to make ABCA a great organization.”

Plante, who plans to return to his home state of Connecticut to pursue a career in information technology after he graduates in May, is grateful to ABCA for “teaching me a lot and helping me to prepare for a career. ABCA is proud of its professional, responsible, and intellectual image. These qualities are extremely important for an individual pursuing a career.”

And for ABCA and its members’ hard-driving efforts to find a new racing team sponsor.

Rita Severis to Present Travelling Artists in Cyprus: 1700-1960 on April 23
By Carol Olechowski
Philosopher, journalist, and art historian Rita C. Severis will visit UAlbany April 23 to present “Travelling Artists in Cyprus: 1700-1960.” The lecture, which will begin at 7 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center’s Recital Hall, is co-sponsored by the Institute of Cypriot Studies and The University at Albany Foundation.

For her talk, Severis will draw upon the research she culled for her recently published book, Travelling Artists in Cyprus: 1700-1960 (Philip Wilson Publishers, London). A lively narrative by Severis, and beautiful reproductions of numerous drawings and paintings dating from the beginning of the 18th century through the middle of the 20th, provide a detailed look at how visitors from the West viewed the people, landscape, and culture of the island nation.

A reception will follow the Severis lecture. During the reception, Taylor Belcher III will present two paintings to the Belcher Collection of Cypriot Antiquities, which is housed in the University Library on the Uptown Campus. Belcher’s parents, Taylor and Edith, donated the collection to the University. The senior Taylor Belcher was the first United States ambassador to Cyprus after the country achieved independence in 1960.

Severis, who was born and grew up in Cyprus, studied philosophy at London’s University College and journalism at the London School of Journalism. She earned her doctorate in art history at Bristol University in England.

The lecture will be the first for Severis in the U.S., according to Institute of Cypriot Studies Director Stuart Swiny, who invited her to visit UAlbany. He and his wife, Helena Wylde Swiny, met Severis years ago while working in Cyprus and encouraged her to pursue doctoral studies when her three sons were grown. The Swinys will host Severis and her husband, Costas, while they are in the Capital Region.

The Severises have just established a museum of visual arts in Cyprus. Rita Severis has also co-edited several publications; they include In the Footsteps of Women: Peregrinations in Cyprus (Cyprus Popular Bank and Leventis Museum Publications) and Along the Most Beautiful Path of the World: Edmond Duthoit and Cyprus (Bank of Cyprus Publications). During her visit to the United States, Severis will spend time at New York’s Union Theological Seminary, researching the diaries of 19th-century missionary Lorenzo Warriner Pease. Pease, who spent five years in Cyprus, died of typhoid there in 1839. His diaries, said Swiny, are “a mine of information on the island at a time when not many people in the West knew about it.” (One of Pease’s illustrations - a simple pen-and-ink drawing of a priest’s house, drawn in approximately 1836 - appears on page 106 of Severis’s book, along with an entry from his diaries.)

Swiny believes Severis’s lecture topic “will appeal to people with an interest in art, in politics, and in the relationship between Western nations and that very important part of the world once known as the Orient. I hope it will appeal, too, to members of the Greek and Greek Cypriot community.” The lecture is free and open to the public.

Home Page/ Front Page/ Campus News/ Features/ Sports/ Date Book