QuadAngles
          Compiled from SU news reports
Steve Sartori
Activist Geoffrey Canada, president and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone and author of Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America, delivers the keynote address at the University’s 19th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration in January at the Carrier Dome. Among the Unsung Heroes Awards recipients honored at the celebration were SU’s Regina Jones, program coordinator for the Office of Multicultural Affairs; and Joy Mutare, an M.B.A. student at the Martin J. Whitman School of Management (see “Passion for Africa”).

 

Research HEADQUARTERS

The headquarters for the New York State Center of Excellence in Environmental Systems (CoE-ES) will be constructed on the site of the former Midtown Plaza building in downtown Syracuse.

The site, located about a mile north of the Main Campus, will feature administrative offices and laboratories for creating new technologies that improve environmental quality and energy efficiency in buildings and urban communities. “Our vision is that the entire building itself will be an experimental apparatus that our researchers and corporate partners will use to evaluate and demonstrate new technologies for environmental control and energy generation,” says CoE-ES executive director Edward Bogucz, an SU faculty member and former dean of the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science. “The building also will include one-of-a-kind laboratories that will earn recognition worldwide for their unique capabilities.”

The CoE-ES includes collaborative research and development, education, and economic development programs involving 12 academic and research institutions, including SU, and 19 firms and organizations. To date, the center has secured awards and commitments of more than $40 million from New York State and nearly $11 million from federal sources.

 
Deans APPOINTED
Steve Sartori

Eric Spina

Vice Chancellor and Provost Deborah A. Freund has appointed Eric F. Spina as the Douglas D. Danforth Dean of the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) and Mark Robbins G’81 as dean of the School of Architecture.

Spina, who has been a faculty member for 15 years and associate dean of ECS since 2000, became dean in December. The position is endowed by Pittsburgh civic leader and ECS alumnus Douglas D. Danforth ’47, H’99. Spina succeeds Edward Bogucz, who was named executive director of the New York State Center of Excellence in Environmental Systems. “Eric served as ECS associate dean with great distinction,” Freund says. “In addition, he has ably served on a number of important University-wide committees. I have every confidence that he will do an absolutely outstanding job.”

Spina chaired ECS’s Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Manufacturing Engineering from 1995-98 and headed the Division of Mechanical, Civil, and Chemical Systems from 1996-2000. He holds master’s and doctoral degrees from Princeton University.

Courtesy of SU
Communications

Mark Robbins

Robbins, currently a visiting critic at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard, will begin his deanship in the fall. He will take over for Professor Arthur McDonald, who has acted as interim dean. “Mark will bring to SU the invaluable experience of his years as an architect, an artist, an educator, and a nationally recognized administrator,” Freund says. “The School of Architecture will benefit greatly from his presence.”
Robbins, who holds a master’s degree from the School of Architecture, started his own practice in 1986. He previously taught at the Knowlton School of Architecture at the Ohio State University, served as curator of architecture at the Wexner Center for the Arts, and was director of design at the National Endowment for the Arts.


Peace OFFICERS
Chancellor Kenneth A. Shaw has approved a plan by the Department of Public Safety (DPS) to train selected DPS officers to become commissioned as peace officers. “We see the peace officer status as a positive move that will significantly enhance our partnerships and services for the community,” says DPS director Marlene Hall.

The plan will be implemented over a three-year period and will involve training 47 DPS personnel and acquiring new equipment, including sidearms, vehicle lights, and sirens, Hall says. Among their capabilities, peace officers can enforce protection orders related to domestic violence, issue tickets for court appearances and vehicle and traffic violations, and investigate traffic accidents.

Governor George E. Pataki approved legislation last year granting peace officer status to properly trained and approved DPS officers. Since then, the issue has been discussed on campus in public forums and other venues.


Geordie Wood

Music Makers
Members of the SU student band Roast perform in the Schine Underground as part of the Bandersnatch Music Series, a new division of the University Union Concerts. The student-organized series seeks to revive the musical spirit of the Jabberwocky nightclub, which once brought such performers as James Taylor, Cyndi Lauper, and the Talking Heads to the Hill.

Supporting ATHLETICS

For years, Syracuse University has been one of roughly 30 schools in the nation with a self-supporting athletic program, thanks to the revenues produced by men’s basketball and football. That situation will change in the next fiscal year as the athletic department projects a $2.5 million budget shortfall, due in part to the Big East Conference shake-up and the possibility of lost television revenues (see “Big East: The Sequel” ).

To help athletics overcome the deficit, Chancellor Kenneth A. Shaw has proposed a tuition increase of 6.4 percent for next year, rather than an expected increase of 6 percent (undergraduate tuition is currently $24,172 per year). The additional 0.4 percent increase will provide athletics about $450,000 and also support other budget costs. The remainder of the athletics’ shortfall may be covered through a variety of ways, including increasing the size of the incoming freshman class to add tuition revenue, increasing average ticket prices, and doing more to improve average attendance for football and men’s basketball games. “There are solutions to this problem,” Shaw says. “The alternative, however, is to watch a program with a proud tradition twist in the wind, and in a relatively short period of time have even greater budgetary problems.”

For more information, visit sunews.syr.edu/athletics/index.html.

News MAKERS

Actress Phylicia Rashad will speak at SU’s 150th Commencement on May 9 in the Carrier Dome.

Steve Sartori

Rosemary O’Leary G’88, a professor of public administration and political science at the Maxwell School and the College of Arts and Sciences, was appointed to NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel.

Nick Smith, professor of instructional design, development, and evaluation at the School of Education, is serving as president of the American Evaluation Association.

Melvyn Levitsky, professor of international relations and public administration at the Maxwell School and the College of Arts and Sciences and a distinguished fellow of the Global Affairs Institute, was elected to the International Narcotics Control Board by members of the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

Tiffany Mitsui ’04, an advertising major at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, and Anthony Alvarez ’04, who’s majoring in advertising at Newhouse and sociology at the College of Arts and Sciences, were among 32 finalists nationwide selected by the American Advertising Federation (AAF) to participate in the Most Promising Minority Students program. The AAF sent the finalists, all college seniors, to New York City in February to meet with executives from leading agencies, advertisers, and media companies, and to interview with top advertising industry companies.

 

 

Primary POLITICS

For six days, Max Garcia G’04 trailed retired general and presidential candidate Wesley Clark around New Hampshire. He filed five stories on the Arkansas resident for The Daily Citizen in Searcy, Arkansas. “Reporting on the New Hampshire primary was a great experience,” says Garcia, a graduate student in the magazine, newspaper, and online journalism program at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. “The politicians were receptive to the young reporters, and we had a positive response from other media professionals.”

Garcia was one of 17 Newhouse students who journeyed to New Hampshire to cover its Democratic Party presidential primary for newspapers and radio stations in several states. Students reported for such newspapers as the Republican-American in Waterbury, Connecticut, The Pilot in Southern Pines, North Carolina, and the Syracuse Post-Standard. Additionally, five broadcast journalism students conducted live reports for WATD, a Boston-area radio station, and WVIA-FM, a National Public Radio station in Pittston, Pennsylvania.

“This was a superb opportunity for the students to get real-world experience and to see democracy in action,” says Professor Charlotte Grimes, Knight Chair in Political Reporting.

Mary Morin G’04, a graduate broadcast journalism student, covered candidate Howard Dean for WATD. “It was an incredible opportunity for me to put the skills I learned at Newhouse into practice, as well as to meet big-time reporters I respect,” Morin says.
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