UAlbany’s IFW to Host Eighth Annual Awards Dinner and Fundraiser
ByLisa James Goldsberry
Initiatives For Women (IFW), a fundraising organization at the University at Albany that enhances educational and career opportunities for women, will host its Eighth Annual Awards Dinner on Wednesday, Oct. 10, at 5:30 p.m. at Birch Hill in Schodack. Tickets for individuals are $65. For more information or for tickets, contact Diane Cardone at (518) 437-4780. This year’s event is titled “Committed to Women: Avon’s Evolution as a Global Powerhouse.” Jill Kanin-Lovers ’72, senior vice president for Human Resources at Avon Products, Inc., will be the featured guest. In a conversation with UAlbany President Karen R. Hitchcock, she will discuss professional empowerment, philanthropic responsibility, and Avon’s E-Evolution.

In addition to serving as a vice president at Avon, Kanin-Lovers is a member of the Avon Executive Council, the company’s senior decision making group. Before joining Avon in 1998, she was vice president of Global Operations at IBM. Prior to her time at IBM, she was senior vice president of worldwide compensation and benefits with American Express and a vice president at Towers Perrin. Kanin-Lovers received her bachelor’s degree from UAlbany in 1972, her M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School.

Avon is the world’s leading direct seller of beauty and related products, with $5.7 billion in annual revenues. Avon markets to women in 139 countries through 3.4 million independent sales representatives. More information can be found on the Avon Web site at http://www.avon.com.

“This year we are especially pleased to have as our special guest such an exceptionally accomplished woman as Jill Kanin-Lovers,” said Carol F. Bullard, vice president for Corporate and Foundation Relations and chair of IFW. “Thanks to the generous support of the Avon Products Foundation, which this year awarded IFW a $100,000 two-year challenge grant, 10 nontraditional women students have received Avon-IFW Life Impact Scholarships to give them the opportunity to complete a four-year university degree and achieve long-term success in life.”

The honorary chair of the corporate committee for this year’s event is John C. Egan, CEO of the Albany Airport Authority. Serving as chair is Tracy L. Metzger, president of TL Metzger & Associates, LLC.

Initiatives For Women benefits women students, faculty and staff -- and the UAlbany community as a whole -- by providing them the means to advance their educational and professional goals. IFW supports endowed scholarships, fellowships, excellence awards for students, internships and training programs, career planning and advisement, research on women and women’s issues, academic and career advancement for women of color, and educational and professional initiatives for physically challenged women and others in particular need.

Award winners this year include a Ph.D. student studying activism around breast cancer in the United States, an academic advisor at UAlbany who will attend a conference for pre-law advisors, and a single mother of four to help cover the cost of childcare while she finishes her degree.

Tables at the fundraising event for corporations and groups are also available. The price of the ticket, which includes the tax-deductible contribution, will help provide funds for the next round of awards. A portion of the proceeds from this event will be applied to the $160,000 endowment goal which IFW seeks to meet in order to realize an $80,000 Challenge Grant from the Ford Foundation.

Goldwater Scholars
By Carol Olechowski

Each year, the Barry M. Goldwater Foundation recognizes about 300 college students nationwide for academic excellence in mathematics and the sciences. In 2001, two 22-year-old University at Albany seniors, Amma Agyemang and Peter Kutchukian, received Goldwater Scholarships.

Agyemang, a Los Angeles native who grew up in Ghana, is a double major in biochemistry and molecular biology; she also minors in French studies. “My professional aspirations,” she notes, “include being a biomedical scientist and physician specializing in infectious diseases.” After earning an M.D. and a Ph.D., “an additional goal is to obtain a faculty position at a medical school and to be involved in research and treatment of infectious diseases.”

Loudonville native Kutchukian, who now resides in Castleton, hopes to pursue research in medicinal chemistry. “I would especially like to be involved in natural products research, and investigate the therapeutic effects of novel natural products and their derivatives,” adds the chemistry major.

Securing a Goldwater award, Kutchukian notes, “gave me a sense of where I stood among other students across the nation. It’s one thing to succeed among your peers at a given university, but another to be recognized nationally. Winning the award made me feel like I could compete on a national level for acceptance into prestigious research institutions, and vie for sparse grant money further down the road.”

Agyemang is “profoundly honored to have been chosen as a recipient of a Goldwater award. This award is a further confirmation for me that I have the capacity to accomplish my goals. I think it is essential for undergraduates, as they pursue their career paths, to find out that others see their potential and feel confident that they will succeed.”

Both students are grateful to chemistry department faculty member Rabi Musah for her mentorship. “Not only did she give me the opportunity to work on projects of national interest in her lab,” observes Kutchukian, “but she also guided me in how to present my work when applying for the award.” Since becoming a Goldwater Scholar, Kutchukian has been examining the bioactivity of extracts, and of isolated and purified compounds, from a red sap from South America, Dragon’s Blood. “My second project is the isolation and structural elucidation of a type of flavinoid in the seed coat of black beans. These compounds, known as anthocyanins, are of therapeutic interest because of their antioxidant activity.”

Adds Agyemang: “Under Dr. Musah’s supervision, I have been involved in the design, synthesis, and testing of small organic molecules that specifically target the HIV-1 nucleocapsid protein in an effort to develop more effective treatments against HIV-1 infection. At this time, when AIDS and HIV infection are considered pandemic in many areas, most notably Africa, developing any molecules that can treat or cure the disease is of importance.

Kutchukian and Agyemang are candidates for graduation in May 2002.

UAlbany Offers Best Value for Tuition Dollar
ByLisa James Goldsberry
The University at Albany has been named as one of the top schools in the nation that offers the best value for your tuition dollar, according to Kaplan’s Annual National High School Guidance Counselor Survey. Published in the Kaplan/Newsweek College Catalog 2002, each year Kaplan teams up with Newsweek to provide detailed admissions information on more than 1,000 colleges and universities nationwide.

With its $3,400 yearly tuition and more than 100 undergraduate degree programs, UAlbany offers exceptional opportunities for intellectual development. It is ranked 17th in the nation among public research universities and has many nationally recognized programs.

U.S. News & World Report ranked UAlbany’s School of Criminal Justice No. 4, the School of Social Welfare No. 15, and the public affairs program No. 12 in the nation, in the magazine’s current listing of America’s best graduate schools. Approximately 17,000 students are enrolled in the University’s eight schools and colleges.

The survey polled guidance counselors about the latest national trends in college selections. Among the findings were that big is better and cities are hot. The data showed prestigious schools, not just those in the Ivy League, are among the more desirable this year, and the Web plays a major role in the selection process.

Kaplan is a premier provider of educational and career services for individuals, schools and businesses.

Emotional Victory for the NY Giants
By Christy DeLamater
The Giants beat the Kansas City Chiefs 13-3 on Sunday, Sept. 23, and dedicated their win to the rescue workers and residents of New York.

This was just the latest in the NY Football Giants’ efforts to give back to the New York City community. The Giants, who hold summer training camp at UAlbany, also responded to a city in crisis on Saturday, Sept. 15.

The terrorist attacks of September 11 hit the Giants especially hard, as they could see the twin towers of the World Trade Center from their field, and many from their homes.

The question being asked by all players after the horribly tragic events was, “What can we do to help?” They received their answer when, after delivering supplies to Jersey City on September 15, about 35 players were invited by the New York Police Department to travel to Ground Zero. There, they witnessed the devastation caused by the terrorist attacks, but more importantly, brought a ray of sunshine to the exhausted rescue workers. The players were told by visiting crisis center counselors that their presence could inspire others to act.

“We met with a lot of firefighters, police officers and military personnel,” said Glenn Parker. “They recognized us. They wanted to talk football. Some of them told us about the things they’ve seen . . . you could see that they wanted to talk, and it felt good that we were helping.”

Tiki Barber and Greg Comella even drove their SUVs to a Toys-R-Us, loaded them up with toys, and donated them to the children of the city’s firefighters and officers.

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