Former UAlbany President H. Patrick Swygert Returns to Campus
By Lisa James Goldsberry
H. Patrick Swygert, president of the University at Albany from 1990 to 1995 and now president of Howard University, is the keynote speaker at UAlbany’s 23rd Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Luncheon. The event, held today at noon in the Campus Center Ballroom on the University’s Uptown Campus, is a part of UAlbany’s Black History Month celebrations.

“It is a pleasure to welcome H. Patrick Swygert back to the campus for this very special event,” said UAlbany President Karen R. Hitchcock. “As president of the University at Albany, he made extraordinary contributions to the rich legacy of this institution. Now, as president of one of the nation’s most renowned historically black universities, his contributions to higher education in America continue to advance the academy and it is an honor to have him deliver the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lecture.”

During the luncheon, the official portrait of Swygert is to be unveiled. The artist, Simmie Knox, a Washington, D.C artist, has also been selected to paint the White House portrait of former President Bill Clinton. Knox has built his reputation painting such notable figures as the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, boxer Muhammad Ali and entertainer Bill Cosby.

The Swygert portrait will be installed with those of other UAlbany presidents on the second floor of the University Library, according to Art Museum Director Marijo Dougherty, who made the arrangements with Knox.

At the luncheon, Hitchcock will present Swygert with the Medallion of the University, which is the highest award for distinguished service that the University at Albany bestows. Honorees must demonstrate profound commitment to the most fundamental values of American society and excellence at every level of education. In word and deed, recipients, who have included Daniel Patrick Moynihan and state Sen. Joseph Bruno, have shown they appreciate the symbiotic relationships among academic quality, economic vitality, and cultural richness.

Prior to his tenure at Albany, Swygert was executive vice president of Temple University. He has served as a visiting professor at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law, and the Faculty of Law of the University of Ghana. He is the author of numerous articles and publications in higher education and law. In addition to his academic career, Swygert has held several government positions, such as administrative assistant to Charles Rangel (D-NY), and law clerk to Chief Judge William H. Hastie.

A native of Philadelphia, he earned his undergraduate and law degrees from Howard University.

UAlbany Joins Fight against Bioterrorism
By Karl Luntta
The University at Albany School of Public Health has been designated a regional Center for Public Health Preparedness, one of 15 named by Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson and endorsed by Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge.

The school’s preparedness center, which serves the Northeast, will receive a portion of $20 million in 2002 funding for a nationwide network of such centers. The funding is part of the $2.9 billion bioterrorism appropriations signed by President Bush on January 10.

The center’s primary mission is to work with communities and local health departments to prepare the nation’s public health and healthcare workforce to respond to terrorist incidents and other emerging health threats. UAlbany’s $1 million award will be used to bolster the area’s public health infrastructure and provide training for the public health workforce to deal with health catastrophes.

“The University and the state’s health department envisioned our Center for Health Preparedness long before recent events in the country caused many to focus on responses to potential widespread health disasters,” said President Karen R. Hitchcock. “This long-term planning has prepared us to meet a great challenge, and with it we are reaching out to serve and support not only our community, but the nation.”

In September 2000, the University and the Association of Schools of Public Health, as well as state and local public health agencies and other academic and community institutions, partnered with the Centers for Disease Control (part of HHS) to begin developing a national system of Centers for Public Health Preparedness.

“This is a great step forward for training and improving the capacity of the public health infrastructure to deal with disaster and possible bioterrorism,” said School of Public Health Dean Peter J. Levin. “One of our goals is to have an expert on bioterrorism in every county in the state.”

In addition to the University at Albany, 14 university schools of public health will share this year’s funding. Among them are Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and Harvard University School of Public Health, Boston.

Harrison Heads Communication, Griffiths Named English Dept. Chair
By Carol Olechowski
Teresa Harrison and Gareth Griffiths have been appointed to chair the departments of Communication and English, respectively.

V. Mark Durand, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, observed: “The University is incredibly fortunate to have been able to attract these two individuals. Professor Harrison and Professor Griffiths combine excellence in research and scholarship as well as proven leadership skills. Both also ‘hit the ground running’ and have begun to work closely with their faculties to move their departments’ research and teaching agendas to the next level. The College of Arts and Sciences is improved immeasurably by their presence.”

Harrison, who joined the University at Albany faculty last September, specializes in computer-mediated communication, community computer networking, and community and government information systems. Her teaching and research interests also include relationships between communication technology and democracy, electronic scholarly communication, communication theory, and organizational communication. This semester, she is teaching an undergraduate course, Computer-Mediated Communication.

After earning her Ph.D. in communication at Bowling Green State University, Harrison taught for nearly 20 years at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she most recently served as associate dean of the School for Humanities and Social Sciences. Widely published in her field, she has edited, with T. Stephen, Computer Networking and Scholarly Communication in the 21st Century (1996); she has also written or co-written articles for numerous publications, including the Journal of Communication, Communication Yearbook, the Journal of the American Society for Information Science, and the Australian Journal of Communication. In addition, Harrison has contributed chapters to such books as Communication and Community and Community Media in the Information Age: Perspectives and Prospects.

Over the years, Harrison has received research funding from various sources. In 2001, the National Science Foundation awarded her and her research partners, S. Adali and J. Zappen, a three-year, $900,000 grant for their Connected Kids project, a collaboration among social scientists, computer scientists, and more than 20 community and government organizations in Troy and Rensselaer County to design and implement a Web-accessible database that can be used for distributing information about youth-oriented activities and services.

She is active with a number of professional organizations. Currently, Harrison is vice chair of the International Communication Association’s Com-munication and Technology Division. She also serves as associate editor for Communication Quarterly, New Media and Society, the Journal of Online Behavior, and the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. In addition, she and her collaborator T. Stephen have created the Communication Institute for Online Scholarship, a 501 (3)(c) not-for-profit organization that provides Web-accessible research services to communication faculty and students at nearly 400 academic institutions worldwide.

Harrison’s appointment as Department of Communication chair was effective September 1, 2001.

Griffiths, a graduate of the University of Wales, assumed the English department chairmanship in January. He came to UAlbany from the University of Western Australia, where he chaired the English literature department. Previously, the Wales native was a faculty member at Sydney’s Macquarie University and the University of East Anglia in England.

A visiting lecturer for the past 20 years, Griffiths has spoken at the universities of London, Paris, and Indonesia; Graz University in Austria; Bayreuth University, Germany; South Africa’s University of the Western Cape; Lagos University, Nigeria; and numerous other universities. He has also held external academic appointments with such institutions as Australia’s Newcastle University and University of New England; the University of Liege, Belgium; the University of Aarhus, Denmark; Guelph University, Ontario, Canada; and Pemberton Science and Humanities Research and Study Centre, Sri Lanka.

Griffiths’ areas of teaching expertise include undergraduate and honors courses. Throughout his career, he has also supervised numerous graduate students during the preparation of their honors, master’s, and doctoral theses. Many of his former students are now faculty members at colleges and universities in Australia, England, and Africa.

Griffiths is the author or editor of several books, including A Double Exile: African and West Indian Writing Between Two Cultures (1978) and African Literatures in English: East and West (2000).

UAlbany Honors Carl Rosner with Entrepreneurship Award
By Karl Luntta
The University at Albany has recognized CardioMag Imaging CEO Carl H. Rosner as the region’s entrepreneur of the year.

UAlbany President Karen R. Hitchcock presented the 2002 Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award at a reception February 6 for the annual Technology Symposium, the educational forum co-sponsored by the University’s Council for Economic Outreach and the Capital Region chapter of the American Marketing Association. The award ceremony was held at UAlbany’s Center for Environmental Sciences and Technology Management (CESTM), Fuller Road in Albany.

The award recognizes the extraordinary accomplishments of an individual who has contributed to the University, region, and economy by demonstrating the spirit and personal drive of the entrepreneur. In addition to his CardioMag stewardship, Rosner is chairman of the board of directors for Intermagnetics General Corp. (IGC), a high field superconductivity firm with annual sales approaching $150 million. Before founding IGC in 1971, Rosner earned degrees from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and later managed General Electric’s Super-conductive Products Opera-tion. Rosner sits on the board of directors of The University at Albany Foundation, and serves the University in several volunteer roles.

Past recipients of the Excellence in Entrepreneurship honor include CommerceHub CEO Frank Poore; Larry Davis, founder of Tech Valley Communications; and David Gibson, president of X-ray Optical Systems.

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