By Greta Petry
When Jermaine Privott was growing up in Harlem, he could not have foreseen that in
his senior year in college, he would be making plans to travel to Venezuela, Brazil,
South Africa, Kenya, India, Vietnam, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Japan as part of
the Semester at Sea program.
Privott, an EOP student who plans to go on for a master’s degree at the University so that he can teach high school English, says he is going to take a camcorder with him so that he can show his future students that there is more to the world than their little neighborhood.
“I have always thought about how I could better myself as a person and a teacher. It has also been my dream to go abroad again,” said Privott, who volunteered in the summer of 1995 to teach conversational English to students in Eritrea, East Africa, through the Operation Crossroads Africa program.
In order to pay the roughly $12,000 needed for the Semester at Sea program, he is taking out a substantial loan and has received a partial scholarship. But Privott still needs to raise $1,000 to pay for books, field trips within the countries, and personal expenses, and he is seeking help from the University community for this purpose. Checks may be made out to the Institute for Shipboard Education, and may be sent to or dropped off at the Academic Support Services office, LI 94, in care of EOP director Dr. Carson Carr.
Perseverance enabled Privott to get to college in the first place, and he is applying that same determination and positive attitude to making his dream become a reality. As the only child of a single mother, he knew he wanted to go to college, but he didn’t know how he could pay for it. So he went to the library, looked up information about financial aid programs and on his own discovered the state’s Educational Opportunity Program.
“Albany was my first choice. I was accepted at Binghamton as well as Albany, but I chose Albany,” he said. “My guidance counselors made Albany sound like Harvard. It was my top choice. I was given a break when I was accepted to the EOP program.”
While at Albany, Privott has gained public speaking experience at local high schools, churches and the city jail, where he went on behalf of the Educational Outreach Program. At these speaking engagements he received feedback to the effect that he would make a good teacher.
An English major, Privott has been the recipient of the Presidential Leadership and Community Service award. He has been a Resident Assistant for Residential Life and is a former chair of public relations for the Albany State Black Alliance. This semester he is a student assistant for international students on Alumni Quad.
The first hurdle he faced in reaching the Semester at Sea program was to raise $1,000 for the deposit required by last February. Trying to figure out how to raise that money, he entered an essay contest sponsored by the African-American Latino Pre-Professional Association. He won $500.
“From then on I knew this was a trip that was meant for me,” he said.
Attending Louis D. Brandeis High School in Manhattan, Privott was encouraged by his mother and his teachers to do well in school.
“The teachers always helped me. They’d say, æI know you have potential. You just have to concentrate a little more. You can do better,’ “ he said. “I’d like to keep that cycle going. I’d like to give back what was given to me. That’s why I’ve been an R.A. for transfer students at Alumni Quad. That’s why I’m a student assistant now. I am really determined to be a success and to be a good teacher. I want to make myself a better teacher by going abroad. Then I can bring the world to my classroom,” he said.
Privott gained teaching experience in East Africa. Eritrea is a former province of Ethiopia which declared independence in April 1993 after 30 years of civil war. It borders on the Red Sea in the east, Sudan in the west and north, and Ethiopia in the south.
Conflicts over religion and territory between Christian highlanders and Muslim lowlanders have been a part of Eritrea’s history, with its strategic location on trade routes between the Nile River valley, the Red Sea, and Central Ethiopia making it vulnerable to frequent invasions. During the long civil war, 80 percent of the population was dependent on food aid. Even today, the life expectancy of the average Eritrean is 45.
The government of Eritrea continues to receive foreign aid and seek private investment to rebuild the devastated infrastructure.
Part of that rebuilding process is the reforestation project in which Privott worked with Eritrean students each morning. In the afternoon he taught about 25 students conversational English. Their native language is Tigrinya, of which Privott knew not know a word when he arrived.
“In the beginning, I’d talk and talk and I thought they understood me because they were all sitting there so quietly and attentively.” It took him awhile to realize that while they could understand written English, it was harder for them to hold a conversation.
The Operation Crossroads Africa program was volunteer work, for which Privott raised the entire $3,500 cost to participate.
By Mary Fiess
Leaders in the semiconductor industry say that their partnerships with the
University’s Center for Advanced Thin Film Technology (CAT) are a model for success
in their extremely competitive field.
At “Industry Day,” sponsored by the CAT on Oct. 2, corporate sponsors gathered to hear scientific and technical updates on work being done by the Center, and to report on specific collaborations between companies and the CAT.
“The center gives us access to equipment that we don’t have in our factories yet,” said James Ryan of IBM Microelectronics. “We get early exposure to new technology (prior to commercialization) and the center facilitates interaction with vendors and end-users . . . The center is a source of highly skilled professionals.”
IBM worked with the center to explore the use of a process known as chemical vapor deposition (CVD) for depositing copper interconnects on computer chips. Aluminum is currently the metal of choice for interconnects within and between computer chips, but chips of the future, on which circuits will be more densely packed, are likely to require new interconnect materials.
Through its state-of-the-art facilities and research expertise, the CAT has developed the technology to produce copper interconnects that show promise for the next generation of computer chips.
Mehrdad Moslehi, senior vice president and chief technical officer of CVC Products, offered a “tool supplier’s perspective” on partnerships with the CAT. CVC’s specialty is cluster tools that deposit thin film materials, and CVC equipment is a critical part of the CAT’s state-of-the-art facilities.
At the CAT, CVC can test its equipment with emerging technologies and, as a result, make design improvements based on results, noted Moslehi. Through its collaborative work, CVC has also gained greater technical understanding of specific processes for which its cluster tools are used. In turn, the CAT’s research efforts are strengthened through the use of proven commercial cluster tools, he said.
MKS Instruments is a component manufacturer that has worked since 1992 (even before the University was designated a Center for Advanced Technology) with Alain Kaloyeros, CAT director. MKS manufactures components that measure and control gases and materials that are delivered to chambers, like CVC cluster tools, where thin films are applied.
For MKS, a major benefit of its CAT partnership is its “association with leading center scientists, device manufacturers, tool supplies, and materials companies,” said John Bertucci. At the CAT, MKS has also been able to find “innovative solutions to immediate processing challenges” and to “test and improve products at process development stage.”