From the Vice President for Finance and Management
Ted Pietrzak, director of the Burchfield Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College, has announced plans to step down in October. Since joining the 44-year-old museum as its director in 1998, Pietrzak has led the Burchfield Penney’s growth and expansion into a leading regional institution, attracting national recognition for its permanent collection and exhibitions.

He oversaw the museum’s evolution from Rockwell Hall’s third floor by leading the planning, fundraising, design, and construction of the Burchfield Penney’s 84,000-square-foot museum on the Buffalo State College campus, which has garnered numerous awards and is certified at the Silver LEED level by the U.S. Green Building Council, making it the first “green” art museum in New York State.

Pietrzak has provided the leadership and energy that drove the Burchfield Penney project to successful completion. Thanks to his efforts, Buffalo State now boasts a center of art excellence that will benefit the students, staff, and community for years to come.

The Burchfield Penney Board of Trustees will initiate a national search for a permanent museum director. Given the museum’s extraordinary success and growing prominence in the art world, the center looks forward to attracting exceptional regional and national candidates for the position. To assist with the transition, Pietrzak has agreed to provide advisory and consulting services to the organization through March 2011.

From the Interim President
I am pleased to invite the college community to a luncheon honoring faculty and staff who are in their 25th year of service at Buffalo State College on Tuesday, March 23, at noon in the Tonawanda Castle, 69 Delaware Street in Tonawanda. Reservations will be accepted through Thursday, March 11.

This annual event serves to honor our colleagues for their years of service and dedication to Buffalo State. The 36 employees crossing the 25-year mark in 2010 are:

David Atzrott, Campus Services
Christopher Aviles, Social Work
Mark Bausili, Registrar
Dean Brucz, Campus Services
Richard Butz, Technology
Betty Cappella, Educational Foundations
Ann Colley, English
Sharon Cramer, Exceptional Education
Susan Davis, Economics and Finance
Gregory Ebert, Chemistry
Gina Game, Research Foundation
Andrea Guiati, Modern and Classical Languages
James Hanahan, Residence Life
Emmanuel Hillery, Human Resource Management
Sandra Hollander, Intercollegiate Athletics
Karen Johnson, Academic Advisement
Lydia Kawaler, Human Resource Management
Carol Kirby, Modern and Classical Languages
Sam LoGiudice, Psychology
Kenneth Mernitz, History and Social Studies Education
David Miller, Environmental Health and Safety
John Moffat, Campus Services
Robert Murphy, Computing and Technology Services
Mary Ann Osborne, Educational Opportunity Program
Maria Pacheco, Chemistry
Constance Payne, Fine Arts
Mark Posluszny, Exceptional Education
Tina Scibetta, E. H. Butler Library
Edward Standora, Biology
Donald Szpaicher Jr., Campus Services
Scott Tatro, Mail Room
Lori Till, Hospitality and Tourism
Barbara Weitzner-Lin, Speech-Language Pathology
Gail Wells, Student Life
Nancy Westley, Speech-Language Pathology
Barry Yavener, Interior Design

To make your reservation, please complete theregistration form, or call Laurie Graziano or Melissa Slisz at 878-4101.

More than 350 middle and high school teachers from across the state participated in July and August in Buffalo State’s Engineers of the Future program, a $1.7 million teacher-training initiative funded by a grant from the New York State Education Department. The program was designed to provide teachers with knowledge and skills to help middle and high school students pass rigorous pre-engineering curriculum, ignite interest in engineering as a career path, and ultimately address a potential shortage of American engineers.

Steve Macho, assistant professor of technology education, was the principal investigator on the project; James Mayrose, assistant professor of mechanical engineering technology, was the co-principal. Clark Greene, technology education program coordinator, also played an integral role in the planning and success of the program.

“The purpose was to introduce middle and high school teachers to new ways of bringing engineering to life in their classrooms,” said Peter Pawlik, chair of the Technology Department.

Instruction included 20 separate 60-hour engineering-based courses over six weeks. Courses were offered on campus and at remote locations for the convenience of technology teachers across the state. Four critical demand areas were emphasized: design and innovation, engineering and prototyping, biotechnology and bioengineering, and digital electronics and control systems.

The program showed teachers how to use hands-on activities, problem solving, and small-group projects—all typical engineering activities—to stimulate interest among high school students. Participants learned how to connect the products students use every day—from cell phones to hockey sticks, iPods to guitars, ballet shoes to bike helmets—to the engineering behind them. They also learned how to use computer-aided design software, an indispensable tool for today’s engineers. The biotechnology courses featured activities such as cleaning up water contaminated with phosphates and making insulin.

“We are honored to be able to deliver this important training to the teachers of New York State,” said Greene. “Each of the focus areas has a distinct connection to the future economy and employment landscape of Western New York, as well as the entire state and nation.”

Industry experts have predicted a shortage of U.S.-trained engineers in the coming years. A 2005 report from the National Academies said the United States adds just 70,000 new engineers to the global workforce each year, compared with China’s 600,000 and India’s 350,000.

By Mary A. Durlak

National Grid, Ferguson Electric, and RobsonWoese have awarded Ilya Grinberg, professor of technology, a grant for the purchase of power electronics and variable speed drives equipment that will further enhance the college’s state-of-the-art power/machines laboratory. The equipment is essential to the study and research of energy conversion in industrial applications.

“This equipment enables us to do much more sophisticated data acquisition,” explained Grinberg. “It gives us a wider scope, too.” Both undergraduate and graduate students are using it to pursue research.

Grinberg, who specializes in electric power distribution systems design and analysis, teaches courses in power systems, electric machines, and power electronics. He also supervises students from the University at Buffalo who are conducting doctoral research with the new equipment. “We are cooperating very closely with UB’s department of electrical engineering,” he said.

The electrical engineering technology program offers two programs, one in electronics and another in power and machines. Students in the first specialize in digital and analog electronic equipment; students in the second specialize in electrical machinery, control systems, and power distribution systems. Graduates from both programs are in demand.

By Jerod Dahlgren

Pamela Schuetze, associate professor of psychology, has received a $140,667 grant to continue her research on maternal substance use and toddler self-regulation through the summer of 2012.

A co-investigator on the project, Schuetze and her colleagues began recruiting new mothers and their children six years ago. About 230 children are now incorporated in the study, which features the assistance of both current and former Buffalo State psychology students.

Over the last six years, Schuetze has analyzed the effects of prenatal exposure to drugs, including cocaine, and how it relates to children’s ability to regulate their emotions such as stress, pleasure, or sadness. The five-year extension will allow researchers to follow these same children as they transition into kindergarten and elementary school, tracking how they will deal with and regulate the new emotions associated with such change.

While many of the children who experienced prenatal exposure to cocaine were characteristically more emotionally reactive, Schuetze noted, the quality of the home environment had a tremendous impact on their ability to regulate emotions.

Schuetze's efforts are funded through a subcontract from the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions, where Rina Eiden, Ph.D., is the lead investigator on the overall research project, which is supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

By Jeff Ventura

Buffalo State College will join Empire 8 football as an affiliate member starting in 2012, joining in-state foes Ithaca, St. John Fisher, Alfred, Utica, and Hartwick as well as other affiliate members Frostburg State, Salisbury, and Springfield.

Buffalo State will leave the New Jersey Athletic Conference (NJAC), which it joined in 2006. Previously the Bengals participated in the Atlantic Central Football Conference (ACFC), along with Salisbury and Frostburg, from 2004 to 2005, and played as an independent from 1981 to 2003.

“The Buffalo State Bengals are proud to be joining the Empire 8 football conference,” said Buffalo State College’s interim president Dennis K. Ponton. “We look forward to competing in a league with such a strong academic reputation and storied history in intercollegiate athletics.”

Read the full article on the Intercollegiate Athletics Web site.

The following grants were awarded through the Research Foundation at Buffalo State College in December. For more information, contact the principal investigator or the Research Foundation at Buffalo State College.

December 2009

Kevin Mulcahy, Interim Dean, School of the Professions
$180,000
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Pollution Prevention in the Buffalo Niagara Hospitality Sector

John Siskar, Associate Professor, Art Education
$102,452 (Continuation)
Buffalo Board of Education
Urban Art Teacher Academy, Year 2

William Wieczorek, Director, Center for Health and Social Research
$50,400
Lakeshore Behavioral Health
Integrated Approaches to Planning Substance Abuse/Chemical Dependence Prevention and Treatment

By Tony Astran

Mark Fulk, associate professor of English, took a spring 2008 sabbatical to focus on Charlotte Turner Smith and Romantic poetry. And his wife didn’t mind.

Fulk, a scholar of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British literature, spent the better part of his first-ever sabbatical reading works by Smith, a British poet and novelist. Her works have been recently rediscovered, Fulk said, and contain powerful subject matter that is representative of the Romantic period.

Fulk first learned about Smith from his wife during graduate school. He had enjoyed studying the Romantic period since his teenage years and later developed a particular interest in women’s, minority, and gender studies. Smith—whose works often focus on themes of struggle and inequality—filled the bill for all of Fulk’s interests.

“In the midst of the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, Smith questioned how to raise children to be socially and politically progressive and radical during dark times,” Fulk said. “The sabbatical provided me an opportunity to read and process her works. It has also helped me reflect on Romanticism as a way of thinking, rather than just an era.” These reflections led to published articles in Women’s Writing and in a new bookabout the Romantic period.

Fulk is finalizing a book about Romantic education and politics, and made significant progress during the sabbatical. Smith’s materials will play a major role in the book, which will be his second. They will also play a role in a new course he is teaching this semester, called Romantic Retreats (ENG 615).

Just as Smith was passionately critical of the “idealized world” in her works, Fulk said, he gained more energy for classroom teaching. “My lectures feel richer because of the intellectual reflection I gained during the sabbatical,” he said, “but the experience also reminded me how important scholarship is as part of teaching.”

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Read previous Focus on Sabbatical stories:

Felix Armfield
Betty Cappella
Ann Colley
Michael De Marco
Rob Delprino
Musa Abdul Hakim
Katherine Hartman
David Henry
Andrew Nicholls
Wendy Paterson
M. Stephen Pendleton
Stephen Phelps
John Song
Carol Townsend
Jonathan Thornton
Mark Warford
Michael Zborowski

Buffalo State College is pleased to welcome writer Mick Cochrane for a reading and writing workshop on Wednesday, February 3, from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. in Bacon Hall 115. The event is free and open to the public.

Cochrane is a professor of English and the Lowery Writer-in-Residence at Canisius College, where he has three times been named Peter Canisius Distinguished Teaching Professor. He teaches courses in writing and literature, directs the creative writing program, and coordinates the Contemporary Writers Series.

Born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, he earned his undergraduate degree from the University of St. Thomas and his Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Minnesota. He published his first story, “The Lenny Green Story,” in Minnesota Monthly magazine when he was a graduate student. His first novel, Flesh Wounds (Nan Talese/Doubleday, 1997), was named a finalist in Barnes and Noble’s Discover Great New Writers Competition. His second novel, Sport (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2001), was selected for the annual New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age list. The Girl Who Threw Butterflies (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009) is his first book for young readers.

His short stories have appeared in the Cincinnati Review, the Northwest Review, the Kansas Quarterly, and theWater~Stone Review. He has also published critical essays on Raymond Carver, Bob Dylan, baseball literature, and the art of biography. He has received grants from the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This event is sponsored by the Buffalo State College English Department and the Just Buffalo Literary Center, and supported by the Buffalo State Auxiliary Services Grant Allocation Committee.

From the Chair of the College Senate
College senator and SUNY Distinguished Service Professor Betty Cappella will serve as the new chair of the Senate Curriculum Committee for the spring 2010 semester. Thanks to Dr. Cappella for taking on this responsibility.