UAlbany Enrolls Record Number of International Students
By Lisa James Goldsberry
Nine hundred and twenty-three international students enrolled at UAlbany this fall, setting a new record. This surpasses last year’s number of 889, also a record. According to Steve Thomson, interim director of the Office of International Education, the past decade has been one of almost steady growth in this area.

Asia accounts for more than 67 percent of UAlbany’s international students, with students from China representing a significant portion of that number. Students from 83 countries around the world are studying at UAlbany, creating a diverse student body that is enhanced by the unique languages and cultures they bring to campus.

“International students find out about Albany in many different ways. The Internet has made information about our rich curricular offerings available to students who otherwise might not have heard of the University at Albany,” Thomson said. “Perhaps the most gratifying way that international students discover UAlbany is from a recommendation of a friend or family member who studied at Albany previously. The quality education and concerned service received by Albany’s international alumni serve to cultivate and perpetuate our international dimension.”

Of the total number of international students, 857 are matriculated in credit-bearing coursework as undergraduate, graduate, or non-degree students. The other 66 are enrolled in the University’s Intensive English Language Program (IELP), a special program devoted just to instruction in English for speakers of other languages.

International students are non-immigrant students who are authorized temporary visas for the duration of their full-time study in the United States. After completing their studies, qualified students may be eligible for “practical training” employment authorization to work in their field for up to one year in the U.S. in order to gain some work experience to supplement the academic degree.

The Office of International Education has responsibility for international student services, study abroad and exchange programs, and the Intensive English Language Program. The office is responsible for assisting international students in adhering to the strict rules and regulations of the United States and in pursuing their educational objectives in an encouraging and stimulating environment.

Throughout the year, the office conducts workshops, sponsors events and activities, and provides a stream of information to international students to support them before, during, and after their stay at Albany. One way this is achieved is through cooperation with Horizons International, a program started ten years ago by a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute student. The program pairs international students with local host families so they can get together for activities such as seeing a play or enjoying a sporting event.

International students can also take advantage of IELP, started at UAlbany in 1978. Since that time, nearly 2,500 students from approximately 65 countries around the world have studied English in the IELP’s classrooms. During the semester, IELP offers activities and excursions designed to help students learn English and experience American culture. In past semesters IELP has sponsored day trips to Boston, Saratoga Springs, Lake George and Howe Caverns. IELP offers activities for each of the four seasons, such as apple-picking in the fall and outdoor theater in the summer. Other activities include picnics, parties, an English Olympics, a trolley tour of historic Albany and a visit to the New York State Museum.

For American students, the office provides opportunities to see some of the home countries from which many international students originate. UAlbany’s study abroad program boasts 23 countries that students can experience, among them Brazil, Germany, Korea, Russia, South Africa, China, and Iceland.

NYS Writers Institute at UAlbany Names State Author, Poet
By Suzanne Lance
Kurt Vonnegut has been named the new State Author for New York and John Ashbery, the new State Poet, the New York State Writers Institute announced recently. Vonnegut will receive the New York State Edith Wharton Citation of Merit for fiction writers and Ashbery will receive the New York State Walt Whitman Citation of Merit for po-ets. Governor George Pataki is expected to present the awards at a ceremony early next year.

The citations, established in 1985 by the governor and state Legislature to promote creative writing within the state, are awarded biennially under the aegis of the New York State Writers Institute, which is located at the University. Awardees serve two years in their honorary positions and each receives a $10,000 hon-orarium.

Previous State Authors include Grace Paley, E.L. Doctorow, Norman Mailer, and William Gaddis. Previous State Poets include Stanley Kuniz, Robert Creeley, Audrey Lorde, and Richard Howard.

A resident of New York City, Vonnegut is widely regarded as one of the great satirists of American literature. He is the author of more than two dozen novels, including The Sirens of Titan (1959), Breakfast of Champions (1973), and Timequake (1997). He has also written several collections of non-fiction, including Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons (1975), and the play Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971). Vonnegut is perhaps best known for the novel Slaughterhouse Five (1969), which was recently ranked at No. 18 on the Modern Library’s list of the top 100 novels of the 20th century.

“It is a most agreeable honor, with my 78th birthday only a few days away, that New York State should declare so publicly that I, although born in Indianapo-lis, am one of its own,” Vonnegut said when notified of his award. “And it is a fact that most of my published works have been created within its borders, beginning with columns I wrote for The Cornell Daily Sun in Ithaca, where I was a member of the class of 1944.” He added, “After my service in WWII, I went to work as a publicity man for General Electric in Schenectady and was also a volunteer fireman in the nearby village of Alplaus. GE was the inspiration for my first novel, Player Piano and Alplaus for my fifth, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.”

The advisory panel that recommended Vonnegut as State Author included George Plimpton, NYS Writers Institute Director William Kennedy, and outgoing laureate James Salter.

A resident of Hudson, N.Y., Ashbery is one of America’s preeminent poets. Perhaps the most honored poet of his generation, the volume Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) marked a rare achievement in American poetry, earning him the Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Critics Circle Award, and a National Book Award in poetry. His 20 volumes of verse include Some Trees (1956), Houseboat Days (1977), and Your Name Here (2000).

“It’s a great pleasure to be named the State Poet of New York,” Ashbery said. “I’ve spent most of my life here, having been born in Rochester and raised on a farm near Lake Ontario. Most of the last 50 years I’ve lived in New York City, and spent time as well in the upper Hudson Valley. So I guess New York has always been home, all along, and now that it’s official it feels even more so.”

The advisory panel that recommended Ashbery as State Poet included Lucille Clifton, Writers Institute Associate Director Donald Faulkner, and outgoing laureate Sharon Olds.

The New York State Writers Institute of the State University of New York was mandated as a permanent, state-sponsored organization by legislation introduced by Assemblyman William Passannante and Senator Tarky Lombardi, Jr. of Syracuse and signed into law by former Governor Mario Cuomo in 1984. From its offices at UAlbany, the institute runs programs in literature and imaginative writing throughout New York State. It provides a setting for renowned and experienced writers from all over the world to come together with new and aspiring writers for the purpose of instruction and creative exchange.

Synergetics Develops New Technology at East Campus
By Carol Olechowski
A new research and development company at the University at Albany’s East Campus is developing a technology that may revolutionize the way small particles are identified. This new approach to particle characterization can have a strong impact on a wide range of applications - from processing of ceramic nanopowders to measuring and identifying environmental pollutants.

Synergetic Technologies, Inc., established at the campus’s business incubator last March, is developing “an innovative particle characterization technology for small particles ranging from nano to micron scale,” said Craig Saltiel, Ph.D., one of the firm’s three founders and its president. With his partners, Synergetics vice president of technology development Siva Manickavasagam, Ph.D., and vice president for research and development Pinar Menguc, Ph.D., Saltiel is creating a technology based on polarized light scattering.

“By polarizing light before and after it impinges on a cloud of particles,” he explained, “a number of scattering signals can be measured. Those signals provide a wealth of information about the nature of the particles - their size and size distribution, and their shape and structure. Most devices provide a mean effective spherical diameter of particles regardless of their shape. By measuring multiple signals and correctly interpreting them using sophisticated software we have developed, particle sizes and shapes can be determined more accurately - a real challenge in the fine, or submicron, and ultrafine, or nano, size ranges. Ultrafine particles have a tendency to agglomerate. We have developed methods to examine agglomerate structure and differentiate agglomerates from single particles.”

Synergetic Technologies’ work has applications for many industries, added Saltiel. Those applications include “the manufacture of advanced ceramics, nano-materials, powder metals, polymers, fiber optics, and pharmaceuticals.” Makers of consumer products, such as paints, pigments, paper, and textiles; and firms seeking new methods for reducing particulate emissions from combustion processes during energy production and in cars, trucks, and buses, will also find Synergetic’s research useful.

Currently, Saltiel and his colleagues are constructing a prototype “that will work in real-time to characterize particles on-line and non-destructively. In many particle characterization systems, particle samples are handled and prepared, but the process can destroy or change the agglomerate structure and be very time consuming and labor intensive.”

Synergetic Technologies has attracted some very important support from the National Science Foundation. Saltiel noted: “To date, we have received four NSF Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) awards totaling approximately $700,000. In January, we will submit two proposals to NSF for an additional $1 million.” The company may also be eligible for two-to-one matching funds up to $250,000 per project contingent upon the receipt of additional non-federal external funding.

The firm’s partners - each of whom holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering - had no connection with the University prior to locating Synergetic Technologies at the East Campus. “Siva was a student and post-doc of Pinar’s at the University of Kentucky,” Saltiel recalled. “I knew Pinar as a professional colleague; we both did research in the area of radiative heat transfer. The underlying particle characterization technology is very much based on Siva’s graduate and post-doc work.” (Manickavasagam’s wife, Vadivel Kumari, is enrolled in Albany’s information science Ph.D. program.)

Initially, the three worked out of their homes and used University of Kentucky facilities. “We moved to the East Campus last winter because of the very good laboratories and the Internet hookups available, and because of the closeness to New York State Department of Environmental Conservation personnel and facilities, which are right upstairs,” Saltiel said.

Synergetic’s proximity to DEC has resulted in a partnership, according to Saltiel. “DEC has consulted with us on our combustion sources project. Its staff - especially mobile sources division head Richard Gibbs, chief of emissions test facility William Webster, and research scientist and air pollution microscopist Dan Hershey - have been invaluable in helping us with electron microscope pictures of particles and in understanding the challenges and needs for mobile source monitoring. In Phase II of our work with DEC, we hope to have a prototype at the agency’s labs to monitor diesel and automobile engine exhaust.”

Synergetic Technologies has also forged several other partnerships. “We will be working with the Alfred University Center for Advanced Ceramic Technology and with General Electric Corporate Research and Development for analysis of diamond particles that are used in the company’s superabrasives division. The NanoResearch Corporation of Colorado and Triton Systems of Massachusetts have helped us with the nano project. We also have a close relationship with the ceramics division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, where we are working to put together some initiatives on nanopowder characterization. And we have had some help from the materials science department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,” Saltiel stated.

“From a business standpoint,” he continued, “we have been advised and assisted by Pete McElligott of H&M TA, a consulting firm that, at one time, provided free advice with funding from the Center for Economic Growth. The New York State Small Business Development Center (SBDC) and the Empire State Development Authority have also been helpful to us. In addition, Gene Schuler, assistant vice president for research and director of technology development at the East Campus, has been a real asset in helping us set up shop and network with the local business community.”

The partners are pleased that they chose to locate at the East Campus. “The facilities are excellent, the neighbors are friendly, and the atmosphere is great for business development,” Saltiel remarked.

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