Phillips Named Interim Dean of Education
Professor Susan D. Phillips has accepted the position of interim dean of the School of Education, effective March 1. Her appointment is based on a recommendation from Provost Carlos E. Santiago, following consultation with the school’s senior faculty.

Phillips received her Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Columbia University in 1979. She brings to this assignment more than 20 years’ experience as a faculty member and administrator at the University at Albany. She has been a full professor since 1997, and chair of the Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology since 1998. She is the recipient of both the University’s and the Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence in Teaching. Professor Phillips recently completed a six-year term working with program consultation and accreditation at the American Psychological Association, and was just selected to be an ACE Fellow for the upcoming year, an opportunity she will postpone to serve as interim dean. As a core member of the school’s leadership group, she is thoroughly familiar with the school’s operation and with the challenges and opportunities that need to be engaged immediately and in the near future.

President Karen R. Hitchcock said: “We are very fortunate to have an individual like Dr. Phillips to turn to in such a moment. Both Provost Santiago and I look forward to working with her to sustain and advance the school’s many fine programs and initiatives. We will commence the necessary preliminary consultations for organizing and launching a search for the next dean later this semester.

“This appointment follows, sadly, the sudden and very unexpected death of Dean Ralph Harbison. All of us at the University remain in deep shock over Ralph’s death. Everyone remembers him with tremendous admiration, affection, and respect. I am particularly impressed with how deeply he touched so many lives during his very short time with us.”

There will be a memorial event sometime in April.

Berkin Presents Fossieck Lecture
The Janice D. and Theodore H. Fossieck Lecture on early American history will be presented by Professor Carol Berkin of the City University of New York on March 19 at 3:30 p.m. in HU 354. The Fossieck lecture, given annually by the Department of History, is open to the public.

The title of Professor Berkin’s lecture is “A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution.” She is expected to offer a more realistic history of how the “founding fathers” produced that document - that is, with human uncertainty, rather than with the fully realized intent so often ascribed to them.

Berkin won the Bancroft Prize for her dissertation on American loyalist Jonathan Sewall, which was revised and published in a book nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She then concentrated on American women’s history, publishing the groundbreaking First Generations: Women in Colonial America (New York: 1996); two collections of essays, Women of America (Boston: 1980); and Women, War, and Revolution (New York: 1980); and Women’s Voices, Women’s Lives: Documents in Early American History (Boston: 1998). Recently, she has written An Encyclopedia of Early American Culture, to be published later this year, as well as on the subject of her Fossieck lecture, Hail to the Chief: The Founding Fathers and the Presidency (New York: 2002). She has also published well-received textbooks on American history, and many chapters and articles, and she has presented numerous papers.

Berkin’s scholarship has won her many awards, prizes, and fellowships. She has been a leader in her university as well as in professional organizations, and she has lent her expertise to a range of national efforts aimed at improving the teaching of history.

Berkin, has been featured on PBS and the History Channel.

Thornberry Lecture March 22
Professor of Criminal Justice Terence P. Thornberry will give a lecture on Friday, March 22, in the Recital Hall of the Performing Arts Center, in honor of his appointment as distinguished professor. The subject of the lecture is “Patterns of Delinquency and the Development of Prevention Programs: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”

Thornberry is nationally known for his work on juvenile delinquency and its relationship to adult crime. His scholarly focus is in two areas: theory, by advancing the understanding of the causes of juvenile delinquency by means of a coherent theoretical framework; and methodology, by advancing the measures and procedures for conducting longitudinal, developmental research on delinquency and its relationship to adult crime, drug use, violence, and gun use.

Thornberry has been the principal investigator of the Rochester Youth Development Study, a study of youths who are at high risk for developing serious delinquent behavior. This study has made enormous contributions to the field, and has served as an important vehicle for the academic training of future generations of delinquency researchers.

Thornberry joined the University at Albany in 1984.

Leave No Child Behind
Leave No Child Behind: Improving Under-Performing Urban Schools, a conference offered by the SUNY Conversations Across the Disciplines Program, will be presented March 14-16 in the Campus Center.

The conference opens this afternoon with a keynote address by Henry Louis Taylor, Jr., a professor at the University at Buffalo, on “Linking School Reform to the Neighborhood Revitalization Movement.”

Friday, UAlbany Distinguished Professor of Criminal Justice Terence Thornberry will give the luncheon keynote. Thornberry is well known for testing theories of delinquency, crime, and violence. Other UAlbany speakers include Katharine Briar-Lawson; James Wyckoff; Hamilton Lankford; Kevin Quinn; Alan Wagner; John Logan; Sandra Vergari; Joseph Bowman; Sean Walmsley; Marcia Sutherland; Kathryn Schiller; Dawn Knight-Thomas; and Ray Bromley.

For more information, contact Hal Lawson at hlawson@albany.edu.

UAlbany In The News
By Lisa James Goldsberry

The December 24 issue of Business Week featured Bill Danko, chair of the marketing department and co-author of the best-selling book The Millionaire Next Door. The article, titled “Getting Help with Your Giving,” focused on how donor-advised funds add convenience to charity. It listed Danko as one of thousands of charity-givers who have fueled a move into the philanthropic world by giant Wall Street investment houses.

The January 21 edition of Publishers Weekly listed a book by Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of English and Africana Studies, in its “Nonfiction Notes” section. The book, Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture in the Post-Soul Aesthetic, looks at the last three decades of black images and representations. It focuses on the way music, film, and television were altered by integration, pessimism, and social unrest among black Americans in the 1970s and 1980s.

The February 18 edition of The New York Times mentioned that UAlbany has received $1 million to help prepare surrounding communities and health departments for terrorist attacks. The article, “School Gets Bioterror Grant,” discussed how our School of Public Health was named one of 15 Centers for Health Preparedness by Tommy G. Thompson, the federal Health and Human Services secretary. Financing for the nationwide network of centers comes from the $2.9 billion bioterrorism appropriation signed by President Bush.

The February 28 issue of Newsday featured a profile of UAlbany alum Scott Martin McGovern (B.S. ’87), who died with thousands of others in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The article, “The Lost,” stated that McGovern, who worked as a Euro Brokers bond trader, stayed on the phone to check if his former co-workers at Cantor Fitzgerald in the other tower were safe. He worked on the 84th floor of Tower Two.