Briefly

Patricia McCartney to receive nursing education award
Patricia McCartney, clinical assistant professor of nursing in the School of Nursing, has been named to receive an Award of Excellence in Nursing Education for 1998 from the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN).

The award, given annually, honors an AWHONN member recognized by her peers as exemplifying the highest standards of service to nursing education. McCartney will be honored at the group's 1998 annual convention in San Antonio, Texas, during a special awards presentation on June 9. She will receive a medallion of excellence and a check for $500.

McCartney received a Ph.D. in educational psychology from UB in 1995.

Roof replacement to affect Capen, Talbert, Norton
Roof replacement work, including asbestos abatement of roof flashings, has begun on Capen, Talbert and Norton halls.

The project will replace the entire roof system on all three buildings, with work expected to be completed in early October. The first phase of the project will be the asbestos abatement of Norton and Talbert halls. The mechanical penthouse roof on Capen will be the first roof replacement. An area-by-area schedule will be distributed to building occupants.

Persons with questions about the project can call Gordon Love, project manager, at 645-2622.

Ruth Bryant chairs United Way conference
Ruth D. Bryant, assistant dean of the School of Architecture and Planning and secretary of the United Way of New York State Board of Directors, served as chair the United Way of New York State's 12th annual conference for volunteers and professionals held May 18-19 in Albany. The theme for the conference was "Passages to the 21st Century."

Bryant, representing the state board, also recently attended the United Way of America annual conference in Atlanta.

A member of the professional staff since 1960, Bryant has been active in a number of university organizations, including the Professional Staff Senate, serving as chair in 1988-89. She has served on a number of university-wide committees, including the Task Force on Women.

Geology awards are announced
Departmental awards for the Department of Geology were announced Sunday at the department's graduation ceremony. The Gilbert Jaffe Memorial Award was presented to Joseph R. Baker. Established to honor Gilbert Jaffe, who received his bachelor's degree from UB in 1949 and his master's in 1950, it is given to a graduating student who excels in the study of marine or environmental science.

The Undergraduate Pegrum Award was presented to Elowyn M. Yager. The award was established in 1970 by Reginald A. Pegrum, founder of the Geology Department, to honor an outstanding senior in the department.

Xerox CEO to speak June 2 for Industry-University Day
Paul A. Allaire, chairman and chief executive officer of Xerox Corp., will deliver the keynote address at the second annual Industry-University Day luncheon, to be held at noon on June 2 in the Center for the Arts on the North Campus.

Industry-University Day is sponsored by the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

In a talk entitled "American Competitiveness: A Matter of Partnership," Allaire will argue that a healthy America depends on a thriving partnership between business, academia, labor and government.

Allaire became CEO of Xerox in 1990 and chairman in 1991, after serving as senior vice president, chief staff officer and president.

A member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Business Council and the Business Roundtable, Allaire also is a member of the boards of the Council on Competitiveness, the Council on Foreign Relations, the New York City Ballet and Catalyst.

Co-sponsored by the Buffalo Niagara Partnership and the Business Council of New York State, Industry-University Day is held to recognize cooperative efforts between the UB engineering school and its industrial partners.

More than 150 representatives from major firms, including IBM, AT&T, Veridian, Praxair, Sun Microsystems and Niagara-Mohawk, as well as Xerox Corp., will attend the luncheon, the theme of which is "Vital Partners."

Also attending the June 2 luncheon will be approximately 100 engineering students enrolled in UB's Engineering Career Institute, which provides intensive training and preparation for the work world, as well as summer internships with industry.

Planning for Industry-University Day was coordinated by Kenneth Manning, an alumnus of the UB engineering and law schools, now a partner in Phillips, Lytle, Hitchcock, Blaine & Huber, L.L.P.

Those who would like to attend the luncheon should contact Robert Barnes at 645-2768.

UB's summer air-conditioning policy is in effect
During the normal summer working day, all air-conditioned offices (8 a.m.-5 p.m.), classrooms, libraries and labs (8 a.m.-10 p.m.) will be cooled to 76 degrees F. Reheat systems will be bypassed in the air-conditioning process whenever possible. During the evening and on weekends and holidays, the temperature will be allowed to rise, except in those rooms with classes scheduled on Saturday. Call the University Facilities Customer Service Office at 71 (or from off campus at 645-2025) to report any air-conditioning deficiencies.

All systems were expected to be fully operational by May 13. Special-purpose spaces and facilities will be monitored to determine if modifications to the policy are warranted.

Members of the campus community who see opportunities for energy savings or wish to suggest an energy-conservation program can call Walter Simpson, UB's energy-conservation officer, at 645-3528. Questions regarding this policy or the university's efforts in the energy-conservation area should be directed to 645-3643.

Supervisors are encouraged to accommodate reasonable requests from employees for wearing more casual clothing because of increased temperatures.

Technical upgrade more than doubles WBFO's broadcast power

A technical upgrade to WBFO 88.7 FM, UB's National Public Radio station, now being completed, will strengthen services to current listeners and extend service to a new population of approximately 100,000 people in Erie, Niagara and Genesee counties, as well as to Southern Ontario.

A new transmitter and antenna to be installed within the next few weeks will enable the station to more than double its broadcast power, from 20,000 watts to 50,000 watts ERP. The old transmitter will serve as a backup, resulting in another improvement over the existing system, which has a 34-year-old, 1,000-watt transmitter as backup.

This project is part of a multi-phase plan to improve the quality of WBFO's signal and expand its coverage area. In the past five years, the station has constructed two repeater stations in the Southern Tier (WOLN 91.3 FM in Olean and WUBJ 88.1 FM in Jamestown) and replaced its directional antenna with a nondirectional antenna, restoring service to the most populous area of Buffalo.

Funds for the project were provided by the Cameron Baird Foundation, the Don Davis Endowment Fund and by contributions from listeners.

Petsan scholarships go to nursing students

Three School of Nursing graduate students have been selected as recipients of the Gustave Petsan & Nova G. Petsan Scholarship. Peter Anders, Jennifer Datta and Brian Jackson each have received a $1,000 Petsan Scholarship to be used toward a master's degree in nursing.

Anders is a graduate student in the nursing school's nurse anesthesia program. An intensive care nurse at Kenmore Mercy Hospital, he is a member of the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists.

Datta is pursuing studies in the family nurse-practitioner program while working part-time in the surgical intensive care unit at Millard Fillmore Hospital-Gates Circle. She also is a flight nurse in the U.S. Air Force Reserves and a member of the American Association of Critical Care Nurses.

Jackson also is a student in the family nurse-practitioner program. He is vice president of the UB Graduate Nurses Association.

Graduate student awarded fellowship by Boston Athenaeum
Philip Acree Cavalier, a UB graduate student, has been awarded a fellowship from the Caleb Loring, Jr. Confederate States Imprints Fellowship Fund. He will spend a month's residency pursuing advanced work in the extensive collections of Civil War materials in the Boston Athenaeum, Boston.

Cavalier, who received one of six fellowships awarded by the Boston Athenaeum, will refine for publication his dissertation on cultural and racial identities as perceived in the letters of northerners who traveled to the South, both before and after the Civil War.

Four faculty receive Plesur Excellence in Teaching Awards
Four faculty members have received Milton Plesur Excellence in Teaching Awards from the Student Association recognizing their teaching excellence and commitment to students. Recipients of the award are student-nominated and selected.

This year's recipients are:

- Jim Twombly, assistant professor of political science. He has been teaching undergraduate and graduate courses on American government and politics at UB since 1990. He received an Outstanding Professor Award in 1995 and a Distinguished Service to Students Award in 1992, both from the Political Science Undergraduate Student Association.

- Gary Burgess, associate professor of music. He teaches voice and opera in the Department of Music and directs the university's opera workshop. In 1995, he was honored by OPERA America for his service in the field of opera.

- Debra T. Burhans, doctorate candidate in the Department of Computer Science. She teaches introductory undergraduate computer-science classes. Burhans was a UB Presidential Fellow from 1992-95, and from 1995-97 a UB Increased Representation in Science Scholar as part of a partnership with the Coca-Cola Foundation.

- Alex Ampadu, assistant professor of accounting in the School of Management. He has been teaching courses at the graduate and undergraduate level at UB since 1986. Ampadu recently was appointed a member of the New York State Society of CPA's Minority Group Recruitment and Equal Opportunity Committee for 1998-99.

Business Week magazine surveys MBA students for its 'Best Business Schools' issue
Business Week magazine is surveying full-time MBA students in the School of Management as part of its biennial effort to determine the "best business schools" in the United States.

According to the magazine's editors, the School of Management was one of 61 business schools, among 324 accredited schools nationwide, whose MBA students were selected to participate in the survey.

Members of the full-time MBA Class of 1998 recently received the confidential student-satisfaction survey, which asks them to answer questions regarding the quality and value of the MBA program, quality of the teaching, strength of the program's job-placement services and quality of its interaction with the business community, among other questions.

The survey is used by Business Week, in combination with a survey of more than 300 corporate recruiters that commonly hire MBAs, to determine the "top 50" business schools in the country. Business Week promotes its special "Best Business Schools" issue, to be published Oct. 18, as a consumer-satisfaction guide for prospective MBA students and corporate recruiters.

It is the first time that the national business magazine has targeted UB students for surveying.

UB to host computational complexity conference in June
The 1998 Conference on Computational Complexity sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) will be held June 15-18 in the Center for Tomorrow on the North Campus.

Computational complexity-the study of efficient computation using limited resources such as time and space-is the field that is developing the foundations of modern cryptography and Internet security.

According to Kenneth Regan, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and local arrangements chair, modern computer security is based on the premise that there are computational problems that require more than a reasonable amount of time and space to solve.

"Such computational intractability-the very subject of computational complexity-provides the foundation for all confidential information transactions on the Internet today, which is based on problems where you don't want anyone (other than the intended recipient) to solve them in a reasonable amount of time," said Regan, who organized the conference with Alan Selman and Jin-Yi Cai, professors of computer science.

The meeting is sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee for Mathematical Foundations of Computing, in cooperation with the Association of Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory and the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science. Additional support comes from the Department of Computer Science and the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at UB.

In addition to papers being presented by Cai and Regan, the conference has attracted researchers from institutions such as the University of Ulm, the University of Frankfurt, Montreal University, the Mathematical Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Science, Moscow State University, Harvard University, Weizmann Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, AT&T Labs and Los Alamos Laboratories.

Additional information is available at http://www.cs.buffalo.edu/~regan/ccc98.

UB to offer program on coping with depression
A treatment program to help individuals learn how to recognize and cope with depression will be offered this summer through the Psychological Services Center.

The program will be conducted in groups of five to eight participants ages 18 and older. Groups will meet for two hours once a week for 12 weeks. The registration deadline is June 15, with the first session set for the first week in July.

The goals of the "Coping With Depression" program are to teach participants how to identify and change negative thought and behavior patterns that can contribute to depression.

Changes in appetite and sleep habits, and a sense of worthlessness or guilt can be signs of depression, according to John Roberts, assistant professor of psychology.

For more information or to enroll in the program, call the Psychological Services Center at 645-3697.