Anonymous Donor Supports Bulgarian Program
An anonymous donor’s $50,000 gift will benefit UAlbany’s eight-year-old faculty exchange program with Sofia University in Bulgaria.

The grant will “bring Bulgarian faculty to Albany for teaching and research and send Albany faculty there for the same purposes,” said Professor Ernest Scatton of the Department of Anthropology. “The exchange will be based in our Office of International Education and administered by interested and committed faculty.”

Scatton and his grant partner, Sofia University Professor and Chair of English and American Studies Alexander Shurbanov, met in Bulgaria in July to work out details of the exchange. The two envision using the $50,000 “to attract additional contributions and donations that could lead to the establishment of an endowment that will keep the exchange going indefinitely,” Scatton explained.

The contribution was contingent upon UAlbany’s offer of material support, with the University committing housing for Bulgarian visitors through International Studies, and Sofia’s Department of English and American Studies extending the same courtesy to visiting professors from Al-bany.

Scatton anticipates UAlbany will host its first Bulgarian visitor in spring 2002.

News from the University Libraries
The University Council has voted unanimously to name the Research Room of the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives in honor of Marcia J. Brown ’40.

The naming of this room honors the significant contributions of Brown to the University Libraries. She is an internationally acclaimed illustrator and author of children’s books, and has been awarded the Caldecott Medal, the highest honor in this field, an unprecedented three times. An outstanding alumna, Brown has designated the University Libraries as the repository for her professional papers. Her papers, from 1943-1999, include manuscripts, sketches, notebooks, wood and linoleum blocks, and final art. She has also been extremely generous in her financial support of the Libraries.

Brown received the Alumni Association’s distinguished Alumni Award in 1969, became a lifetime member of the Alumni Association in 1990, designed the medallion for the Bertha Brimmer Award, and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from UAlbany in 1994.

Laura Cohen, network services librarian and webmaster for the University Libraries, has been inducted into the Internet Librarian Hall of Fame.

Cohen’s Internet Tutorials are widely used around the world, and garner about 60,000 “hits” per month. These tutorials have been cited by USA Today, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Byte Magazine. One cited page that regularly receives more than 15,000 hits a day is called “How to Choose a Search Engine or a Directory.”

Cohen has published widely, especially on the topic of use of the Internet as a research tool. She serves on the SUNYConnect Advisory Council, the governing board linking together all 64 SUNY campus libraries to a common Library Management System.

In other news about Cohen, on July 30, one of her Web-based Internet Tutorials was positively cited in an e-mail newsletter called the LangaList. This list has 165,000 subscribers.

Mary Jane Brustman was awarded the Librarian of the Year Award at the spring conference of the Eastern New York Chapter, Association of College and Research Libraries. Brustman’s work as a bibliographer at the Dewey Library, her involvement in professional organizations, and her noteworthy publication record were cited at the ceremony.

Faculty & Staff

D’Elia Announces Bogan Appointment
Janice E. Bogan was appointed assistant to the Vice President for Research, effective July 5. She joined the University in 1994 as assistant director of financial aid, where she processed financial aid awards, counseled parents and students on available financial aid opportunities, and coordinated the Quality Assurance Program.

In her new capacity, Bogan will serve as the primary fiscal officer for the Division for Research, assist with publication materials, provide staff support to the Council on Research, manage internal award programs, and plan and organize the annual research colloquium and all other research related functions.

Vice President Christopher D’Elia said “Janice Bogan brings a wealth of experience with her, as well as a tremendous enthusiasm to tackle new challenges. We are indeed fortunate to have her join our team.”

Bogan earned a bachelor’s degree in business education from Allen University in Columbia, S.C., and a master’s degree in personnel counseling from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Prior to joining the University, she was assistant director of financial aid at Siena College, director of financial aid at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, and associate director of financial aid at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.

Is There a Doctor in the House?
Roseanne Richard, assistant chief of the University Police Department (UPD), has earned her Ed.D. in organization and leadership from the University of San Francisco. She was working for USF’s public safety department when she began her doctoral program. Richard has had a 17-year career in law enforcement.

Her dissertation topic was “The Perceptions of Women Leaders in Law Enforcement: Promotions, Barriers and Effective Leadership.” Most of the interviews for her work were done while attending the meeting of the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives. “I have first-hand experience in some of the challenges that women in this field encounter,” said Richard, who is the first woman to hold the position of assistant chief of UPD at UAlbany. “It has always been an interest of mine to talk to successful women in this field to find out what made them successful and share that knowledge with other women interested in advancing in this field.”

Richard received her B.S. in mathematics and a master’s degree in public administration from USF.

Rosenkrantz Honored
Department of Computer Science Professor Daniel Rosenkrantz received the Association for Computing Machinery 2001 SIGMOD (Special Interest Group on Management of Data) Contributions Award at the SIGMOD/PODS Conference in Santa Barbara, Calif., in May.

The award recognized Rosenkrantz, a UAlbany faculty member since 1977, for outstanding and sustained service to the database field through research, conference organization, and journals. The former PODS (Principles of Database Systems) Executive Committee member and three-term PODS general chair has carried out pioneering research in numerous areas of computer science. In addition, Rosenkrantz was an editor of the Journal of the Association for Computing Machines (JACM) from 1981-86 and subsequently served a five-year term as editor-in-chief. In honor of his contributions to formal languages, compiler design, algorithm analysis, databases, parallel and fault-tolerant computing, and for exemplary service to the organization, he was named an ACM Fellow in 1995.

Rosenkrantz, whose areas of specialization include database systems, algorithms, and compilers, is teaching CSI 418, Software Engineering, this semester.

Zelizer Wins Grant
Julian E. Zelizer, associate professor of history and public policy, has received a special projects research grant from the Dirksen Congressional Center. The grant will finance his release time this year as he edits The Reader’s Companion to the American Congress (Houghton Mifflin). This volume will include the work of 40 authors, including three Pulitzer Prize winners, who will provide the first comprehensive history of the American Congress from the colonial era through today.

Zelizer is also working on a book, titled The Cost of Democracy, that will be published by Cambridge University Press.

Baran and Clyman Win Fulbrights
Henryk Baran and Toby Clyman, two colleagues from the Slavic and Eurasian Studies Program in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, both professors of 19th- and 20th-century Russian literature, have received prestigious Fulbright Awards.

Henryk Baran received a grant for his project on “Information Searching in the Humanities and Social Sciences: A Course and a Textbook.” As part of the grant, Baran will teach a course at the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow, on “Traditional and Non-Traditional Information Sources in the Humanities and Social Sciences” and to co-author a manual on this subject with a staff member at that institution. The grant is for the Spring 2002 semester.

Toby Clyman, professor of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, will spend the academic year in Moscow, teaching at Moscow State University and conducting research on 19th-century Russian women’s autobiographies, diaries, and letters. Her areas of expertise also include Chekhov, Gogol, and Polish language and literature.

Baran Receives Honorary Doctorate from Russian State University
In a separate honor, on July 3, Henryk Baran was presented with a doctoral degree honoris causa by Dr. Iurii Nikolaevich Afanas’ev, rector of the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow. Baran, a historian of Russian literature, was honored for contributions to the growth of “scholarship and culture.” Honorary degrees were also presented to Dr. James Billington, a historian of Russian culture and Librarian of Congress, and the linguist and Slavist Professor Boris Uspenskij of the Italian Istituto Universitario Orientale in Milan and the Universita della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano.

Baran’s contacts with RSUH, in particular with its Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, began in the mid-1990s. In 1996 he helped organize an international congress, “Roman Jakobson Centennial,” at the university; subsequently, he was a principal editor of a follow-up volume, “Roman Jakobson: Texts, Documents, Materials.” (1999). He was a member of the International Advisory Council of the university’s historical-philological faculty. During fall 1997 he taught at RSUH as a Fulbright lecturer.

Hall Publishes Eighth Edition
The eighth edition of Richard H. Hall’s Organizations: Structures, Processes, and Outcomes, has just been published by Prentice-Hall. This book is often used as a textbook, with translations of earlier editions in Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean. Hall is a distinguished professor in the Department of Sociology.

Fifteenth Biennial Paul C. Lemon Award
The Paul C. Lemon Lecture and Award ceremony is today, Friday, Sept. 14, at 3 p.m. in Biology 248.

The Lemon Award is given every two years to honor excellence in graduate research. Lemon, who passed away in March, was a prominent ecologist who served as chair of Biological Sciences at UAlbany. Upon his retirement, he endowed a program that includes an award for a thesis that is an outstanding contribution to our understanding of the ecological and environmental problems, inter-relationships and challenges in man’s natural world.

The award is open to all M.S. and Ph.D. graduates of UAlbany. More than 400 entries were screened. Faculty from four departments participated as judges. The prize winner for this round is Christian Hogrefe, Ph.D. (2000) Atmospheric Sciences for his thesis on “Evaluating the Regional-Scale Photochemical Modeling Systems and Using Them for Regulatory Policy-Making.”

Hogrefe will present a public lecture based on his graduate research, followed by an award presentation.

George Robinson, associate professor of biology, is chair of the Paul Lemon Award Committee.

New Life Sciences Building - is located on the northeast side of campus. The steel framing for the structure began a month ago; much of the infrastructure is in place.

Sculpture Studio - Completion of the Sculpture Studio is expected in mid-August of 2002. The contractors are working diligently to assure this new facility opens at the beginning of the next academic year. Drive by the east side of campus and see the progress this building has taken on over the summer.

CESTM II - Ground has been broken on Fuller Road next to the existing CESTM building. Phase II of this research facility will start to take shape this fall. Similar in look to the existing building, the second phase will be on the southwest side.

Conference on Workers and Globalization Set for Oct. 4 and 5
Renowned scholars, labor representatives, and students will gather at UAlbany on October 4 and 5 for a major conference on Workers and Globalization in the Americas: Shifting Productive Structures, Social Identities, and Labor Strategies.

On Thursday, Oct. 4 in Lecture Center 19, beginning at 5:30 p.m., the focus will be on Struggling for Workers’ Rights and a Living Wage in the 21st Century.

Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Carlos Santiago will open Friday’s session at 9:30 a.m. in the Campus Center Assembly Hall. Joining him will be Liliana Goldin, chair of the Department of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and Fernando Leiva, conference chair.

Other participating UAlbany faculty include Oscar Best, Chris Bose, and Ray Bromley.

The first 20 UUP members will have registration fees waived. The cost is $7 to pre-register, $10 to register on site, and free for students.

For more information, go to http://www.albany.edu/faculty/fleiva/workersconf.html. To reach the conference chair, contact Professor Leiva at (518) 442-4891, or fleiva@albany.edu.

Conference sponsors include the Department of Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Center for Latino, Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CELAC).

UAlbany In The News

Loretta S. Malta and her colleagues at UAlbany’s Center for Stress and Anxiety Disorders drew national press in response to their study of road rage that was published in the June edition of Applied Psychophysiology & Biofeedback.

The study of 14 aggressive drivers and 14 calm drivers found that aggressive drivers appear to be angrier in general, and may benefit from being taught relaxation techniques, possibly including muscle relaxation.

Self Magazine gave readers advice on how to avoid road rage in “Rush Hour Relief” in its September issue.

“If you sweat like crazy or feel your heart race during a scary movie, think twice before driving in heavy traffic,” the article advised, saying UAlbany researchers found that “having strong physiological responses to emotional situations indicates you are likely to lose it on the road.”

Reuters General News Wire Service called the study one of the top five Yahoo news stories for June 15, 2001. CBS HealthWatch reported on the issue June 19, followed by the Seattle Times on June 22, and HealthScout on June 27.

In addition, news stories aired on the aggressive driving study on WCBS-AM All News on June 18, and on the KCSN (California State University) radio station’s Sound-bites News Update program on June 22.

David Wills, far right, chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, presented UAlbany students of Danish with books about Denmark at a recent departmental reception. The books were donated by the Danish embassy in Washington, and the Danish consulate in New York. Next to Wills is Anne Marfey, adjunct lecturer of Danish. /Photo by Mark Schmidt