Lisa Krieger, assistant vice president for finance and management and interim director of the Research Foundation at Buffalo State, graduated on March 17 from the Higher Education Resource Services (HERS) Institute at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

HERS is an educational nonprofit organization providing leadership and management development for women in higher education administration. Since 1978, the institute has offered female faculty and administrators the opportunity to participate in an annual intensive program that prepares them to be leaders in higher education. Krieger attended the institute in four three-day sessions spanning October 2011 to March 2012. The 67 participants selected for this year’s institute represented 56 institutions across the United States. 

Krieger has worked at Buffalo State since 1994, serving as assistant vice president since 2009. She was previously senior assistant to the vice president.

Ted Schmidt, associate professor of economics and finance, chaired the session "Ideological and Financial Underpinnings of the Great Recession" at the 2012 Eastern Economic Association Meetings in Boston, Massachusetts, March 9–11. As part of the session, Schmidt presented his paper "Financialization of Commodities and the Monetary Transmission Mechanism," and he was the discussant for the paper "Financial Underpinnings of the European Crisis."

Reva Fish, assistant professor of social and psychological foundations of education, and Laura Klenk, assistant professor of elementary education and reading, presented their research about play in early childhood education at the 2012 Conference on the Value of Play: Multigenerational Actions and Strategies, held at Clemson University, in South Carolina, February 26–29.

One presentation, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice If Everyone Were on the Same Page?” The Conflict over Play in Preschool," discussed Head Start teachers’ efforts to address preschool academic standards and the conflict about play in preschool that they experience with parents and administrators.

Another presentation, "How Kindergartners Distinguish between Work and Play in School," addressed how children view tasks that they do in the classroom as work tasks or as play tasks. The implications for motivation to learn and classroom engagement were discussed.

At the conference, the US Play Coalition awarded a seed grant to Fish and Klenk to continue their research.

Geoffrey Skoll, associate professor of criminal justice, will present an invited lecture, "Fear and Trembling at the End of the World," on Sunday, March 18, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the Memorial Library. The lecture applies world-system theory to explain current developments in the global political economy.

Gerald Mead, lecturer in the Design Department, was elected to the founding board of directors of the Arts Services Initiative of Western New York in January and appointed to the leadership team of Arts Partners for Learning in February. He also served as an artists portfolio reviewer for the Seneca Arts Virtual Incubator exhibition in Salamanca, New York, in December; was the guest speaker for the Buffalo Niagara Art Association’s annual meeting in October; and served as a panelist for “Urban Alchemy: A Forum on the Power of Public Art,” a symposium organized by Emerging Leaders in the Arts Buffalo, a regional affiliate of Americans for the Arts, also in October.

Heidi Dietz Faletti, associate professor of English, read the paper “Psychosis as Existential Self-Affirmation in Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper and Schnitzler’s Fräulein Else” at the 10th annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities, held in Honolulu January 10–13.

Nicole Puskas, a teacher in the Buffalo State College Child Care Center, received the 2012 National Child Care Teacher Award from the Terri Lynne Lokoff Child Care Foundation. Puskas, who has taught at the center for almost six years, is one of 52 early child care teachers across the country who were chosen for their work on an enhancement project that is educationally, socially, and emotionally beneficial to the children in their care.

Puskas developed the Incubator Project, which gives children in her 2- and 3-year-old classroom the opportunity to observe the stages of development from egg to baby chick using age-appropriate charts and teaching materials. Puskas has also served for four years as a board member of the Association for the Education of Young Children (AEYC) of Western New York and as chair for “The Week of the Young Child,” a national celebration sponsored by AEYC.

Puskas will receive a $1,000 award during a ceremony recognizing all 2012 Terri Lynne Lokoff Child Care Foundation winners on April 19 at the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Since its inception in 1994, the foundation has presented 687 awards totaling more than $650,000 to early child care education providers.

Maria Assad, professor emerita of modern and classical languages, has published a chapter, "Ulyssean Trajectories: A (New) Look at Michel Serres' Topology of Time," in Time and History in Deleuze and Serres (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2012).

Dan Gaygen, assistant professor of business, presented “The Effects of Music on the Time Course and Number of Buy Decisions” at the American Marketing Association 2012 Winter Educators' Conference, held in Saint Petersburg, Florida, February 17–19.

Gaygen reported on two well-controlled laboratory experiments that directly tested the effects of tempo, key, and affective qualities of music on participants’ buying decisions. A Buy/No Buy experimental paradigm was developed that measured the time course and frequency of Buy Decisions by participants viewing photographs of models wearing articles of clothing for sale. The results indicate that Buy Decisions take longer than No Buy Decisions and that unwanted items are, on average, rejected very quickly. Exposure to music significantly reduced viewing times and Buy Decisions, though different qualities of music had no differential effects.

Michael Johnson, associate professor of modern and classical languages, presented a poster session and two-hour discussion, "The Virtuous Wife and Facets of Creativity Theory in Proverbs 31," at the 131st annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, held in San Francisco, California, November 19–22, 2011.