New Sculpture Studio Construction Progresses
By Vinny Reda
An official ground-breaking ceremony for the University’s new Sculpture Studio was held August 24.

The building, scheduled for completion in 2002, will house all sculpture and three-dimensional art activity for UAlbany students.

It will include a 780 square-foot general purpose room/gallery with “smart classroom” features.

The Perimeter Road location moves UAlbany’s sculpture studio approximately two miles from its current site on Railroad Avenue to the main campus proper, a short walk from the Fine Arts Building, which houses the Department of Art. The $3.8 million project is part of the University’s five-year, $130 million Master Plan.

Art professor and sculptor Ed Mayer, who oversaw much of the project, said of the new art building: “This facility is specifically designed to bring ideas to life in an inspirational, functional and safe environment. It is a highly original yet entirely flexible and functional building for us.”

The one-story, 20,000 square-foot building has been designed by the architectural firm of Perkins-Eastman of New York City. Chief designer on the project was Nick Leahy. The firm of David Christopher is the project’s general contractor.

When completed, the building will include high-ceilinged, windowed, individual studio/offices for faculty and students in the Master of Fine Arts program. It will feature a beginning sculpture/figure modeling classroom; a group studio for sculpture majors; a media suite with video imaging equipment; an experimental gallery/installation area with track lighting, a three-dimensional design room, a foundry/metal working area with an overhead rail system, and an outdoor work pad for assembling and loading large-scale art work and material.

There will be task-specific shop areas, such as a wood and pattern shop, plaster and mold-making rooms, and well-ventilated and well-illuminated areas for welding, sanding, spray painting and resin applications.

Among the Albany art students who joined with President Karen R. Hitchcock, other University officials, and area public officials and artists at the ceremony was Jake Bills, who, using the architectural plans, constructed a model that gives a preview of what the building will look like upon completion.

Chartwells Rolls Out New Dining Services
By Mary Fiess
Chartwells, the University’s new food service provider, is kicking off the new academic year with initiatives aimed at delivering high-quality dining services to the campus community.

Chartwells, which provides food services to 225 colleges and universities, was selected in July as the new food service provider by University Auxiliary Services (UAS) acting on a unanimous recommendation by the University’s Food Service Selection Committee.

“The University and UAS are committed to providing the highest quality food service to our students, faculty and staff, and Chartwells’ national record of accomplishment and bid presentation to the UAlbany community demonstrated the company’s ability to deliver high-quality dining services,” said Vice President for Finance and Business Paul Stec.

Chartwells is implementing a number of immediate changes, such as extending the dinner hour by half an hour to 8 p.m. in the residence halls, introducing an extensive vegetarian and vegan menu in all residence hall dining rooms, and employing a four-week menu cycle (instead of the previous 20-day cycle). In addition, Chartwells has set in motion a number of other initiatives, such as Ritazza Café, which will be a Campus Center dining operation, complete with a lounge setting. The Café is expected to open in October.

Over the last few months, the University Task Force on the Quality of Food Service, headed by political science professor Bruce Miroff, worked to define the qualities that are important in campus food service.

Good-quality food and the highest food-safety standards are top priorities, but the task force also outlined other characteristics that are important to an exemplary food service, such as constant feedback between the provider and campus community and a committed partnership between the provider and the University.

“We have met with the task force and used their recommendations in designing our program. We have spent a lot of time on employee training to assure proper food handling and preparation procedures. We are looking at all the important basics, such as the food quality, the menu variety and the cleanliness of the silverware,” said Paul Krouse, Chartwells’ resident district manager.

Chartwells has developed new sanitation guidelines and a new sanitation-cleaning schedule, and UAS has hired an independent inspector, John Morrell, to conduct unannounced safety audits of Chartwells’ operations.

“Chartwells and UAS want to assure that the University’s dining services meet the highest standards,” said UAS Executive Director Julia Filippone. She noted that UAS is in the process of filling a new professional position, food service director, whose sole, full-time responsibility will be oversight of the food service program. That position is expected to be filled by late September.

Through committees of students, faculty and staff and comment cards, Chartwells will be seeking continuous feedback, said Krouse, who brings 25 years of experience in campus dining to his new position at the University.

Chartwells’ responsibilities include food service in the residence halls, all retail operations, catering, concessions, and the Giants’ training camp.

Cyclics Corporation Calls East Campus Home
By Carol Olechowski
A start-up company at UAlbany’s East Campus is helping to revolutionize the way people work, play, travel and live.

Cyclics Corp., established at the Rensselaer County site in late 1999, manufactures a low-viscosity material that can be mixed with carbon fiber and fiberglass to make composite parts, according to company Chief Operating Officer/Chief Financial Officer Ted Eveleth. That resin system creates a thermoplastic material that “is unique in many of its properties,” he added. “It’s light but very tough, and resists breakage well. In addition, it’s recyclable and doesn’t emit pollutants when it’s processed, so it’s also environmentally friendly.”

Given their strength and durability, cyclic thermoplastics lend themselves well to applications in construction and infrastructure, transportation, sports equipment and aerospace. Cyclics Corp.’s product can be used in the manufacture of “golf club shafts, snowboards, medical instrumentation, and wind turbine blades,” said Eveleth. “But everything from bicycle frames to bridges could benefit from the damage tolerance of a thermoplastic matrix. Damaged off-shore oil rigs and shipping containers could be repaired, then ultimately recycled. Someday, we may also make cars from thermoplastics.”

Eveleth and Cyclics Corp. President and Chief Executive Officer John Ciovacco were attracted to the East Campus setting, the chief operating officer explained, because “it was the best wet-lab space in the Capital Region. Somebody else deals with the infrastructure and environmental needs, so it’s great in that respect. We looked around the region, but we hadn’t found anything else nearly as good as the East Campus to move into.”

In the months since Cyclics took up residence at the campus, the company has utilized a few other UAlbany resources. Noted Eveleth, “We’ve used the library and the University’s network services.” He termed both the library facilities and the computer network “excellent.”

Cyclics Corp., which began operations with just two employees, now has a staff numbering more than ten, including chemists and composite engineers. At least half a dozen new jobs are waiting to be filled; “we’re hiring all the time,” Eveleth commented. The company also has an office in Germany.

James Welsey Childers, 93
James Wesley Childers, age 93, of Gaithersburg, Md., died May 6 of complications from Parkinson’s disease.

Childers, who joined the University at Albany in 1941, was a retired professor of romance languages and chair of the modern language department. He left the University in 1963 to accept a professorship at Parsons College of Fairfield, Iowa, where he was also head of modern languages. He was granted the title of professor emeritus from the State University of New York in 1975.

Born in Emma, Texas, on June 21, 1906, Childers received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

In 1959 Childers was appointed chief of the Office of Statistical Surveys for the Foreign Language Program Research Center of the Modern Language Association of America. He was responsible for gathering information on the teaching of modern foreign languages and interpreting such information to the U.S. Office of Education. He subsequently incorporated the data from his study into his book, Foreign Language Teaching in the United States, which had several printings and was translated into Japanese. Childers also wrote Tales from Spanish Picaresque Novels: A Motif-Index, and other scholarly works.

In 1964, he was elected to the International Society for Folk Narrative Research.

He is survived by his wife, Margaret Alcorn Childers of Gaithersburg, Md.; a son, John B. Childers of Alexandria, Va.; a daughter, Margaret E. Shearer of Annapolis, Md.; and two granddaughters.

Four UAlbany Faculty Achieve Distinguished Professor Rank
Four University at Albany faculty members have been promoted to the rank of Distinguished Professor, the highest academic rank within the State University of New York.

Vincent Aceto in the School of Information Science and Policy, has been appointed Distinguished Service Professor. Professor Aceto has returned to the faculty after serving as president of the University-wide Faculty Senate for the past four years. A Collins Fellow and former Fulbright Scholar to Bangladesh, he continues as the co-director of the Film and Television Documentation Center, which produces the Film Literature Index database. Aceto is principal investigator for a project with the IBM Corp. in Poughkeepsie and East Fishkill to manage the library and online information services at those sites. Aceto’s research interests center on database design and indexing structures. He teaches a course in Abstracting and Indexing.

John Delano, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, has been appointed to the rank of Distinguished Teaching Professor. Professor Delano has taught courses in Project Renaissance, the Presidential Scholars Foundations of Great Ideas course, Geo 100N Planet Earth, and Geo 190N Earth Resources, as well as graduate-level courses in geochemistry.

A nationally known geochemist who is working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to investigate the origins of life, Delano was the featured speaker at UAlbany’s 156th undergraduate commencement in May. One of a handful of scientists leading the nation in trying to answer some of the most basic questions about the universe, he has worked with NASA in various capacities since 1979. He is associate director of its New York Center for Studies on the Origins of Life as well as a principal investigator in the Exobiology program.

A faculty member at UAlbany since 1982, Delano served as chair of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences from 1996-’99. Among his many honors, he received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. Prior to coming to Albany, Delano had positions at SUNY Stony Brook and Australian National University.

Helmut Hirsch, Department of Biological Sciences, has been appointed to the rank of Distinguished Teaching Professor. Hirsch, who is known for his ability to take complex material and explain it clearly and concisely, has taught at UAlbany for 27 years. Three of his favorite classes to teach are: Brain, The Final Frontier; World Food Crisis, which was developed by Professor Margaret Stewart; and The Neural Basis of Behavior.

In his research, Hirsch was the first to demonstrate that experience can have specific effects on structure and function of nerve cells in the mammalian brain. For the past ten years, he has used the fruitfly, Drosophila melanogaster, as a model for understanding developmental plasticity, and will be writing two major reviews covering that work.

Hirsch was the first Albany faculty member to receive an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation fellowship in neuroscience and a Whitehall Foundation grant. He has been the recipient of the President’s and Chancellor’s awards for Excellence in Teaching. In addition, Hirsch is a co-founder of the University’s faculty-initiated interdisciplinary major in human biology.

Susan Sherman, School of Social Welfare, was appointed to the rank of Distinguished Service Professor. Professor Sherman, a Collins Fellow, has served as president of the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education. She received the Walter M. Beattie Award for Distinguished Service in Gerontology and the University’s award for Excellence in Academic Service. She is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education, and was president of the New York State Society on Aging.

Sherman has research interests in intergenerational exchanges, age identity and socialization for aging, environments for aging, and gender role stereotypes in middle and old age. She is the author and co-author of many articles and books, including Foster Families for Adults (Columbia University Press) and The Environment for Aging (the University at Alabama Press).

Daniel Levy, Department of Educational Administration and Policy, was appointed to the rank of Distinguished Professor last fall. Levy is a leading scholar of Latin American and comparative politics and of higher education policy internationally.

Appointments

Paul Stec became the University at Albany’s vice president for finance and business July 1, after holding that position on an interim basis from March 1999. He previously served as interim vice president for Univer-sity advancement. Over the years, Stec has also held a number of other positions within the advancement and finance and business divisions. In his new role, he continues as executive director of The University at Albany Foundation.

Julia Filippone has been appointed assistant vice president for finance and business. Since joining the UAlbany staff in 1991, Filippone has served in a number of administrative capacities, most recently as director of business development and executive director of University Auxiliary Services. As assistant vice president, she will continue to oversee UAS and business development while assuming responsibility for The University at Albany Foundation’s day-to-day operations. Filippone’s appointment was effective July 1.

Ruth Killoran accepted the position of associate vice president for major gifts within the Division of University Advancement August 1. Killoran, a graduate of the University of Connecticut and Russell Sage, comes to UAlbany from RPI, where she held several senior administrative positions in advancement for 12 years and directed the Campaign for Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Jennifer Orton joined the advancement division as senior major gifts officer June 26. She formerly served as director of the annual fund at Emma Willard School and, earlier, as associate director of the Harvard Law School Fund. Orton earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees from Colgate University and UAlbany, respectively.

Penelope Benson-Wright joined the advancement division as assistant director of corporate and foundation relations. A UAlbany alumna, she previously served as director of the University’s China Initiative for the Department of East Asian Studies and the Office of Academic Affairs, developing a management training program in Shanghai with Fudan University.

Mary Fritz has joined the University at Albany as director of the Office of Affirmative Action. Her appointment, which followed a nationwide search, was effective July 17. Fritz comes to Albany from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, where she headed the Office of Affirmative Action, Compliance, and Diversity. During her three years there, she advised the college president and other administrators and faculty on various equal employment and affirmative action issues. Fritz also taught human resource management to undergraduates in the Brooklyn College business program. In 1998, she began her own consulting business, writing and conducting training sessions on such issues as equal employment opportunity, diversity, and conflict resolution. In addition to writing numerous training curricula, Fritz recently contributed an article, “Expansive Diversity at Brooklyn College,” to Profiles in Diversity Journal. A native of Mobile, Ala., Fritz received a B.S. degree in human service/social work from Empire State College in 1985. In 1992, she earned her juris doctor from New York University School of Law, where she was a teaching fellow and a writer for the Journal of Human Rights. Fritz also won an award for outstanding achievement in race and poverty law. Fritz succeeds Gloria DeSole, who retired recently after 24 years with the University.

Pomerantz Adds To Communication
Anita Pomerantz recently joined the University as an associate professor in the Department of Communication. Prior to coming to UAlbany, she was an associate professor in communication sciences at Temple University.

Pomerantz received a Ph.D. in social sciences at the University of California, Irvine. She has been the recipient of several awards and fellowships, including a Leverhulme European Visiting Fellowship. She has collaborated with sociologists at the University of York in England, and has conducted interdisciplinary research at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at Oxford University.

Pomerantz’s research interests involve examining the knowledge and reasoning processes that people employ in face-to-face interaction. Three areas of specialization are health communication, language in social interaction, and qualitative methods. She is currently under contract to complete a book on misunderstandings, and is looking forward to organizing a research project on the communication between elderly patients and health care providers.

Pomerantz has completed numerous publications on strategies of seeking information, methods of negotiating responsibility, and practices for giving feedback. Her article, “When Supervising Physicians See Patients: Strategies Used in Difficult Situations,” can be found in the 1997 (23:4) issue of Human Communication Research.

In addition, Pomerantz has presented papers and workshops around the world.

Faculty & Staff

Professor of Africana Studies and English department adjunct Leonard A. Slade, Jr., continues to earn recognition for his work. Last spring, the NAACP presented him with an Artist Award for his tenth book of poetry, Elisabeth and Other Poems, which was published by McGraw-Hill last year and reviewed in the November 3, 1999 Update. Elisabeth pays homage to famous - and not-so-famous - women of that name, as well as to Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., family life, and the human spirit.

At its national conference in Balt-imore earlier this year, The Langston Hughes Society recognized Slade with its Distinguished Service Award for his work as the society’s national president. The North Carolina native, whose writings have won the praise of such literary notables as Gwendolyn Brooks and Maya Angelou, has taught at UAlbany for 12 years.

Lillian S. Williams’ book, Strangers in the Land of Paradise: The Creation of an African American Community, Buffalo, New York, 1900-1940, has been published in paperback by Indiana University Press. Originally published last year, the work details how African Americans - attracted to New York’s second-largest city a century ago by job opportunities - overcame discrimination to found a thriving community. Strangers in the Land of Paradise has been very well received and has earned Niagara Falls native Williams, an associate professor in UAlbany’s Department of Women’s Studies and director of the Institute for Research on Women, rave reviews for researching and documenting the challenges the newcomers faced. The paperback edition of the 296-page book, which contains photos, illustrations, and maps, is available at bookstores for $22.95. For more information, call 1-800-842-6796.

Sylvia Barnard of the Department of Classics recently received an Alumni Citation at her high school reunion at Northfield Mount Hermon School, Northfield, Mass. The Alumni Citation recognizes outstanding volunteers to the high school and its alumni association. Barnard, who earned a Ph.D. from Yale, has taught at UAlbany for 23 years.

The University Libraries Web page was recently mentioned as part of an Aug. 8 article in USA Today by Elizabeth Weise. The article discussed the problems of navigating one’s way around the Internet when 7.3 million pages of information a day are being added to the Web.

For more information, the reader was referred to albany.edu/library/internet, which contains the University Libraries’ Internet tutorials. These are a series of tutorials developed by Network Services Librarian Laura Cohen, and are among the most popular.

Thomas L. Gebhardt, director of Personal Safety & Off-Campus Relations and chair of the Committee on University and Community Relations, has been awarded a certificate from Albany’s Neighborhood Resource Center for being an outstanding public official. Gebhardt was honored as a public official who is particularly responsive to neighborhood issues.

Earlier this year, Gebhardt’s report on the effects of University and community coalition was published in the prestigious Journal of American College Health.

Over the summer he gave a presentation on successful campus-community coalitions at the “College Summit 2000” in Harrisburg, Pa., as well as the keynote address at a Nebraska statewide conference on “Creating a Low-Risk Drinking Environment.”

The Office of Personal Safety & Off-Campus Relations has moved to the new University Police Building.

UAlbany’s Career Development Center has won an award for Excellence in Programming from the State University of New York Career Development Organization, Inc. The winning program was initiated by Academic Affairs and the Advisement Services Center to help first- and second-year students with career development and decision-making issues.

UAlbany’s Middle Earth Program has been awarded a Model Program Grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The $88,000 grant will be used to enhance an innovative, comprehensive and student-driven alcohol prevention program for the entire student community. In addition to the grant, Middle Earth will be featured in a publication distributed to every high school in the country.

Gary Kleppel, director of the Biodiversity, Conservation and Policy program in the Department of Biological Sciences, has been appointed by the International Global Ocean Ecosystems Dynamics Experiment to the Focus 2 Working Group, that will design research for the European Union’s effort in this international investigation of the role of physics in shaping the ocean’s ecosystems.

The UAlbany Women’s Association celebrated more than 50 years of friendship and service by recently establishing a University at Albany Women’s Association Endowed Scholarship. More than 60 individuals and couples gave in excess of $14,000 during a three-month period to establish the scholarship through the University at Albany Foundation.

A celebration party and thank you for the donors will be Thursday, Sept. 21, at the home of UAlbany President Karen R. Hitchcock. To contribute to the fund, contact Nancy Scholes, scholarship treasurer, at 439-7759. Women interested in joining the association are invited to call Jana Lininger at 458-7370. Women faculty, female staff members and wives of faculty are invited to join.

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