Feal named executive director of MLA
After a nationwide search, the Modern Language Association (MLA) has appointed Rosemary Feal, professor of Spanish and chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures in the College of Arts and Sciences, to succeed Phyllis Franklin as executive director of the association.

	FEAL

The MLA, founded in 1883, has 30,000 members in 100 nations and fosters scholarship and teaching in modern languages and literatures, folklore and linguistics.

It is among the most eminent and well-known scholarly societies in the world.

Feal, who joined the UB faculty in 1999, will take a leave from her current position and assume the executive directorship this summer when Franklin retires.

Feal's active involvement with the MLA began in 1988 when she was appointed to the association's delegate assembly. She later was elected to several other positions, most recently to chair the association's Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession.

She is senior consulting editor of the Latin American Literary Review and associate editor of the Afro-Hispanic Review and serves on the editorial boards of Latino Cultural Studies, New Centennial Review and Letras Femenina.

Zagora to head HR
Paula E. Zagora has been appointed assistant vice president for human resource services at UB.

In her new position, Zagora will be responsible for all aspects of Human Hesource Services at the university, including State Employment Services, Research Foundation Employment Services, Employee Relations, Benefits/Time and Attendance, Information Resources, Customer Service and Classification/Recruitment/Staffing Services/Salary Administration.

Zagora previously was director of human resources for Tops Markets, where she was responsible for managing employment, legal compliance, employee relations, training and human resource policy development. She also coordinated several strategic planning and re-engineering initiatives during her 17-year career with Tops.

She earned a bachelor's degree in communication from UB.

Correction
Faculty member Lois Weis was misidentified in an article in last week's Reporter.

Weis is a professor of the sociology of education in the Graduate School of Education.

Nominations sought for senate secretary
Nominations are being sought, including self-nominations, for the position of secretary to the Faculty Senate.

This is the second call for nominations; the first call produced nine nominations, none of whom were willing to stand for election.

The secretary to the Faculty Senate is responsible for providing minutes for the monthly Faculty Senate meetings and for the weekly meetings of its executive committee. In the absence of the chair of the senate, the secretary presides at Faculty Senate and FSEC meetings.

The secretary, ex officio, also chairs the Faculty Senate Elections Committee. The office of the Faculty Senate provides support for the secretary.

Second-round nominations are due in the Faculty Senate office, 543 Capen Hall, North Campus, by Feb. 15.

"American Airborne" to be presented
The Department of Theatre & Dance will present a faculty workshop production of Douglas Delaney's "American Airborne," Feb. 7-10 in the Rehearsal Workshop, Room B83, in the Center for the Arts, North Campus. Performance times are 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.

Written by Douglas Delaney, "American Airborne" tells the story of three women from various socioeconomic backgrounds who find themselves together in a court-ordered detox facility serving sentences for a variety of crimes that they have committed while under the influence of alcohol.

The play was first produced as a one act in 1988 under the auspices of Working Stages, a New York City theater company dedicated to the development of new American plays. Since then, "American Airborne" has been produced in various venues across the country.

The production will be directed by Greg Natale and will feature a student cast.

Tickets for "American Airborne" are $5 and are available at the Center for the Arts box office from noon to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and at all Ticketmaster locations. For more information call 645-ARTS.

Lecture series offering insight on events of Sept. 11 to be held
A special lecture series offering "Perspectives on September 11th and its Aftermath" will be presented this spring by the Council on International Studies and Programs and the Office of the Vice Provost for International Education.

The series is designed to address the need in the university community for access to a variety of informed perspectives on the terrorist attacks, the subsequent war on terrorism and the implications for both the United States and the rest of the world. The lectures, which will be free of charge and open to the public, will serve to highlight the increased importance of international education and exchange in the post-Sept. 11 world.

The series will open with a talk on "Bioterrorism: What is Our Risk?" by Richard V. Lee, UB professor of medicine, pediatrics and gynecology-obstetrics, at 3 p.m. Feb. 6 in the Student Union Theatre on the North Campus.

The remainder of the schedule:

• "September 11: Views from the Arab World," 3 p.m. Feb. 13 in the Student Union Theatre. The talk will be given by Bader Dweik, a UB alumnus and former Fulbright scholar now serving as professor of English linguistics at Al-Zaytoonah University in Jordan.
• "The Kashmir Issue in International Politics," 2 p.m. Feb. 21 in 330 Student Union. The speaker will be Saleem Kidwai, visiting Fulbright scholar at Villanova University and a visiting fellow at the Center for Western and European Studies at Jawaharial Nehru University in New Delhi.
• "The Islamic Movement in Uzbekistan," 3 p.m. Feb. 27, Student Union Theatre. Guli I. Yuldasheva, a visiting Fulbright scholar at Indiana University and leading scientific fellow at the Institute for Strategic and Regional Studies in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, will speak.
• "International Education Post 9/11," 3 p.m. March 6, Student Union Theatre. The lecture will be presented by Allen E. Goodman, president and chief executive officer for the Institute of International Education and former executive dean and professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
• "The War on Terrorism and Its Impact on Civil Liberties," 3 p.m. March 21, Student Union Theatre. The talk will be given by Lee Albert and David Filvaroff, UB professors of law, and a representative from the U.S. Department of Justice.

For further information about the lecture series, contact John Wood, secretary of the Council on International Studies and Programs, at jjwood@buffalo.edu.

CATE bridges the miles via interactive Internet hookup
On Jan. 18, hundreds of high school students from Western New York and Central America got into a real-time discussion about education, technology and the environment, despite the 2,200 miles that separated them. They engaged one another, along with distinguished primatologist Jane Goodall and Oscar Arias, former president of Costa Rica and winner of the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize.

	(Left to right) Don Jacobs, Jane Goodall, Oscar Arias, Fred Mednick and Jack Bimrose pose at the Lincoln School in Costa Rica, where Bimrose serves as director general.

The live event, which focused on "Peace, Human Progress and the Environment," involved students at Clarence, Grover Cleveland and Ellicottville high schools and four Costa Rican high schools.

It took place via an interactive Internet video hookup made possible by UB's Center for Applied Technologies in Education (CATE). It was carried to area students over Buffalo CityNet, a distance-education, video-conferencing network developed and administered by CATE that links 18 Western New York schools and community organizations.

Goodall and Arias first addressed comments to the students, as did Fred Mednick, director of the Seattle-based organization "Teachers Without Borders," and Donald Jacobs, associate dean of the UB Graduate School of Education and founder and director of CATE. All of the speakers then discussed issues covered in the talks.

The event was broadcast live from Lincoln School in San Jose, Costa Rica, which houses a state-of-the-art, video-conferencing network designed by the UB center. The site is part of a global initiative called HopeNet that was developed jointly by Jacobs and Goodall to create distance-education sites in Asia, Africa, Europe and across Latin America.

Jacobs said this was the first trip to Central America by Goodall, an environmental educator whose work with chimpanzees in Tanzania changed the way in which we view the relationship of humans with the natural world and with primates in particular.

She and Jacobs were on a speaking tour of Costa Rica, during which they addressed development and use of advanced communication technologies to enhance international understanding and cultural exchange.

Grants available for research in Vietnam
Mark Ashwill, director of the World Languages Institute, is encouraging eligible UB faculty members to apply for five-month research and curriculum development grants from the Asia Foundation for work undertaken in Vietnam at any time between September 2002 to December 2003.

The program, developed through generous support from the Henry Luce Foundation, is designed to promote the development of Vietnamese studies in the U.S.

Each grantee will be placed as a visiting scholar at an appropriate research or educational institution in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City. Upon return to his/her home institution, the scholar will be expected to teach the material developed during the five-month field research in Vietnam.

Applicants must have a doctorate and hold a regular teaching position in international relations, political science, economics, sociology or Asian Studies.

"There is no better way to learn about a country than to spend time there working, traveling, and developing lasting personal and professional relationships," Ashwill says. "It's a cliché but also a sad reality that Vietnam is still synonymous with war in the minds of most Americans, including our students.

"This is a golden opportunity for U.S. faculty members to learn firsthand about Vietnam. After returning, they can either incorporate that knowledge into existing courses or develop new Vietnamese studies courses."

The application deadline is March 31. Details can be found on the Asia Foundation Web site at www.asiafoundation.org/programs/prog-asia-viet-research.htm.

King scholarship deadline extended
The deadline has been extended to tomorrow to apply for the Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Award, established by the Minority Faculty and Staff Association to honor a junior or senior who demonstrates high academic standards and leadership ability, and who exemplifies personal characteristics that advance the spirit and philosophy of King.

The $1,000 annual award is supported by Kenneth Gayles, clinical assistant professor of medicine, local cardiologist and UB graduate, in honor of his late mother, Lula Gayles.

To be eligible for the scholarship, applicants must be underrepresented persons of color, full-time juniors or seniors at UB, possess at least a 3.3 grade-point average and be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident.

Applications are due in 208 Norton Hall, North Campus, by 5 p.m. tomorrow.

For more information, contact Roland Garrow or Denise Hood at 645-3072, or Kevin Ragland at 882-2400.

"Network New York" opens doors
To serve the career needs of its students in a poor national job market, the School of Management organized a networking session with more than 30 well-placed UB alumni employed in New York City for 75 of its MBA and business-administration students earlier this month.

The idea behind "Network New York" was to give students a chance to consult with alumni from 25 top New York City firms like Kraft Foods, Merrill Lynch, NBC, Prudential, Ernst & Young and Andersen.

Held at the Manhattan headquarters of Andersen, located on the Avenue of the Americas, the event included resume-critiquing sessions with alumni and "realistic job previews" of various careers and industries.

"Reaching out to influential alumni is one way to generate opportunities in a tight job market," said event organizer Michael Paolini, associate director of the School of Management's Career Resource Center. "This wasn't meant to be a recruitment event, but we are hoping it will open doors for our students."

In addition to job advice, the students got a primer on living in New York City. UB alumni Carlos Rey Martin, vice president of finance at BBVA Bank in New York, and Paul Houghton, a senior associate at Andersen, provided pointers on apartment hunting, subway riding and safety precautions after dark.

"These things are second nature to New Yorkers, but they can be tricky for newcomers," explained Martin.

Andersen donated space for the event in recognition of the many UB graduates the company has hired over the years. Andersen partner Gary Koster, a UB alumnus, was an organizer of the event.

"Asia at Noon" sets first lecture
The Asian Study Program's first "Asia at Noon" brown-bag lunch gathering of the semester will take place from noon to 1 p.m. tomorrow in 280 Park Hall, North Campus.

Michael Frisch, professor of history, will discuss "The Problematic Past and Promising Future of American Studies in Asia: Report on a Recent Visit to Japan and Korea."

The convener will be Ruth Meyerowitz, professor in the Center for the Americas.