CAS Spring 2009 final 3.qxd - University at Albany

CAS 

College of Arts and Sciences 

Today 

University at Albany Volume 7, Number 1 Spring 2009 

Minerva’s Owls: standing l-r: Mac Johnston, 

Raphael Thomas and Professor Bonnie Steinbock (coach); 

seated l-r: Rukayatu Tijani, Cameron Waldman, 

Nalini Kalanadhabhatta, and Karen Torrejon 

UA Team Competes in Bioethics Bowl 

From Star Gazer to “Ultimate Professor” 

By Sabrina Katrayan 

his insistent parents when he didn’t want to 

was like pushing a stubborn donkey to the 

well. After finally giving in and spending at 

least five minutes outside, Delano’s life 

changed as he experienced his very first 

epiphany. From that point on, Delano knew 

he wanted to pursue some aspect of science 

By Dona Parker 

By the time you get this issue of CAS Today, the results of the Bioethics 

Bowl for 2009 at Harvard University, an annual event of The National 

Undergraduate Bioethics Conference (NUBC), will be known. But results 

are not all that important to 

a group of students from 

UAlbany, at least that is what 

organizer Cameron Waldman 

told me. Cameron, a sophomore 

Philosophy major and 

Bioethics minor, along with 

five other students raised 

funds, researched issues and 

took the trip to Harvard to be 

a part of an environment 

filled with a diversity of viewpoints. 

The American Society 

of Bioethics and Humanities 

through NUBC brings to- 

At the age of nine, Professor John Delano was not interested 

in seeing Sputnik, the very first artificial satellite 

in orbit. Most astronomy enthusiasts would find it hard 

to hide their excitement to see this once-in-a-lifetime 

opportunity, but getting Delano to even go outside by 

gether students and speakers across the country. 

The event is planned and organized by 

students and covers issues of current interest 

within the bioethics field. Discussions are led 

by experts invited by the students. 

Cameron Waldman came to the University 

at Albany in 2007 from Nevada because 

he had heard about the work that Professor 

Bonnie Steinbock was doing at UA in the area 

of bioethics and he wanted to come and be a 

part of it all. Professor Steinbock was recently 

featured on the CAS Website to recognize her 

award of a month-long scholarly residency at 

the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center 

(Please see Bioethics p.21.) 

Professor Delano at 

UAlbany’s observatory 

as a career, making this experience the first 

step to his long 25-year teaching career. 

Delano attended high school with an interest 

in astronomy, but developed a stronger 

like for physics and chemistry. He credits his 

strong interest in physics to his physics/chemistry 

teacher, Julia Warburton, the mother of 

(Please see Delano p. 22.)

A Message from Dean Edelgard Wulfert 

We have come to the end of another 

semester and another academic year. One 

year ago, the future looked considerably 

brighter. We did not know that we would 

soon find ourselves in the midst of an 

exceptionally difficult fiscal situation marked 

by hiring freezes and severe budget cuts. 

Over these past twelve months, the College 

suffered painful reductions in both one-time 

monies and permanent funds and this substantial loss of 

resources has had a serious impact on our ability to support 

faculty travel, research and scholarship. As we are heading 

into the new fiscal year that starts with July 1, we anticipate 

further budget reductions and are concerned about the serious 

impact that additional cuts may have on our educational 

programs and our ability to support the scholarly activities of 

our faculty. 

Despite these challenges, we have reason to celebrate 

because our faculty and students continue with notable 

achievements, as the many examples in this issue of CAS 

Today show. As you will read in our newsletter, a number of our 

faculty have garnered highly competitive research grants from 

private, state, and federal agencies. Other faculty members 

have received attractive fellowships and awards to pursue 

their scholarly endeavors. And our students have been no less 

successful. Many have received awards, Fulbright scholarships, 

and dissertation grants to assist them in completing 

their research projects; and fifteen CAS undergraduate majors 

received the President’s Award for Undergraduate Research 

with topics ranging from scientific discovery to social issues 

and literary studies. 

Dean Wulfert welcomes 

CAS researchers and guests 

Editor’s Note 

2 CAS Today 

Reception Celebrating 

Research 

March 5, 2009 

Provost Phillips visits with CAS researchers 

In this issue of CAS Today I call your special attention to 

our feature stories. You will read about the work of Dr. Kristin 

V. Christodulu, director of the Psychology Department’s 

Center for Autism; the work of English professor and author 

Thomas Bass whose latest book, The Spy Who Loved Us, is 

receiving wide acclaim; the research of Atmospheric and 

Environmental Sciences professor John Delano and his dedication 

to our students; and the research of Chemistry professor 

Li Niu whose work may have implications for developing a 

pharmacological treatment for the debilitating neurodegenerative 

disease ALS (often referred to as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease). 

Finally, you will also find a feature about UAlbany students participating 

in the Bioethics Bowl at Harvard University. The trip 

to the bowl was their second appearance and their performance 

was described as “awesome.” 

Last but not least, let me call your attention to a new feature 

in this issue of CAS Today: the “Honor Roll of Donors” to 

the College of Arts and Sciences for the 2007-08 fiscal year. 

It is very gratifying to see that our friends have been generous 

in supporting the College. To all who have contributed to the 

programs and activities of the College, please accept my sincere 

thanks. If you have not yet done so and would like to 

make a contribution to the College, please use the form on 

page 23 of this Newsletter or go to the College of Arts and 

Sciences website. I am immensely grateful for your generosity, 

particularly in these challenging economic times, because 

your support allows us to reach out beyond our boundaries to 

share our mission. 

Best wishes and warm regards, 

Edelgard Wulfert 

Dean and Professor of Psychology 

UAlbany Day at the Empire State Plaza 

February 10, 2009 

Assistant Dean Michael Messitt and Dean Edelgard 

Wulfert look over the College of Arts and Sciences display. 

The articles and recurring sections of CAS Today represent a gathering of information supplied by our academic departments. We welcome articles 

or ideas for articles as well as highlights from our readers. If you have a topic you would like to have covered in the newsletter, please forward 

your information to dparker@cas.albany.edu. Tell us what you think—we welcome your opinion as we work to improve your college newsletter.

Mission to Improve Quality of Life for Children 

with Autism 

By Heather Senison 

Dr. Kristin V. Christodulu expanded the University at 

Albany’s Center for Autism and Related Disabilities with a 

mission to improve the lives of children with autism and their 

families across New York state. The center provides resources 

and training workshops to families with children who have 

autism and professionals who work with them. It is mainly 

funded by legislative grants through the State Education 

Department, but has also received some federal funding. The 

center currently has three UAlbany graduate students on its 

staff. It also has a parent of a child with autism, whose input is 

essential to the program’s work. 

Since Christodulu joined the UAlbany faculty in January 

2002, the center has expanded to similar programs in five sites 

across the state. However, the program is not Christodulu’s 

first contribution to UAlbany. After growing up in Penfield, 

Monroe County, she attended the university to receive her 

Bachelor of Arts in psychology in 1990 and Ph.D. in clinical 

psychology in 2000. “Basically I got into the field to improve 

the quality of life for children and families, and that is why 

I come to work everyday,” Christodulu said. “It is very 

rewarding.” 

The center is located in a building on Western Avenue and 

has a library of books, scientific journals and audio-multimedia 

that offer information on autism and related disabilities. It has 

a playroom and a meeting room where the staff holds informational 

seminars. Parents can call for information on how to 

improve self-help skills in children with autism or where to 

look for a pediatrician. “We’re trying to help the child and the 

family gain more independence,” Christodulu said. The center 

also hosts workshops in schools to train teachers in how to assist 

children with autism in their classes. “By working with the 

parents and the educators to develop skills, they are able to help 

their own children which is why this has been so successful.” 

In addition to individualized work, the center hosts family 

events, such as a Halloween costume party, a winter holiday 

party and a barbecue in the summer. The center also hosts two 

annual conferences each year, including one every fall at the 

Desmond Hotel and Conference 

Center in Albany which 

generates at least 500 guests. 

UAlbany’s center also 

conducts research on subjects 

such as facilitating peer relationships 

in school classrooms. 

The center is also finishing 

a five-year, federally 

funded research project in 

May on reducing challenging 

Dr. Kristin V. Christodulu 

behavior such as aggression, self-injury and tantrums among 

preschool children with developmental disabilities. Another 

subject of research at the center is sleep-disorders in children 

with autism. 

As for the future, Christodulu has plans to move its facilities’ 

information from the center to the Internet and onto 

DVDs. Many of the families UAlbany’s center serves live in 

rural areas and often are unable to travel great distances to 

attend workshops, so Christodulu said it is necessary to make 

the center’s services accessible through long-distance forms of 

communication. And, in the spirit of providing accessible 

resources, the new multi-media and Internet services will be 

free of charge to those who need them, she said. 

Editor’s Note: The Center for Autism and Related Disabilities has 

three appropriations in the 2009-10 fiscal year state budget for a total 

of $1.49 million. In recognition of Dr. Christodulu’s continued success, 

her title will be changed to Visiting Associate Professor. 

CARD Students Receive 

Competitive Awards 

Two students who work with Dr. Kristin V. Christodulu in 

the Center for Autism and Related Disabilities have 

received competitive awards. Ms. Lindsay Washington, 

graduate student, won the first Dr. Frank Fillipone 

’41— Hillside House Scholarship. Ms. Jerilyn Jesco has 

won the James Ryan Northeast Career Planning 

Scholarship for Rehabilitation Counseling. Ms. Jesco has 

been with the Center since 2002, working first as an 

undergraduate assistant, then as a full-time employee, 

and now she is enrolled in the graduate program in 

Rehabilitation Counseling. 

Spring 2009 3

Chemistry Professor Receives Major Grant 

Could Lead to Future Drug Discovery for ALS 

By Dona Parker 

The Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program 

managed by the Department of Defense (DOD) was established 

in 1994 to study the health effects on service members 

deployed in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. In 2001 a large epidemiological 

study conducted by the departments of Defense 

and Veterans Affairs found preliminary evidence that Persian 

Gulf War veterans are nearly twice as likely as their nondeployed 

counterparts to develop amyotrophic (am-ee-otrow-phic) 

lateral sclerosis or ALS. ALS, as is often called Lou 

Gehrig’s disease because the baseball star died from it, is a fatal 

neurological disease that affects the nerve cells in the brain and 

the spinal cord that control muscle movement. Scientists don’t 

know much about what causes ALS, although it is generally 

considered a combination of genetic and environmental factors. 

About 10 percent of cases are the familial type or are 

clearly genetic with a family history, while most incidences of 

ALS are sporadic or without an obvious genetic link. That is 

why the study of Gulf War soldiers has been an important 

study for their possible exposure to toxins and other environmental 

factors. The results of various studies provided the link 

that more combat soldiers statistically had a higher occurrence 

of the disease than the civilian population and those who suffered 

were all sporadic cases and significantly younger than the 

mean age group (45-60 years old) for ALS. Based on recent 

studies of the general U.S. population, over 5,000 people in the 

U.S. are diagnosed with ALS each year; that is about 15 new 

cases a day. However, there is no cure or treatment today that 

halts or reverses ALS, although there is a clinical drug that 

very modestly slows the progression 

of the disease. 

The Department of Defense 

is planning a Military 

Health Research Forum, 

which will be held from 

August 31 to September 3, 

Niu's research group: from left: 

2009 in Kansas City, Mis- 

Li Niu, Sabarinath Jayaseelan 

souri, and our own Dr. Li 

(graduate student), Dr. Zhen 

Niu, Associate Professor of 

Huang (postdoctoral fellow), Ms. 

Chemistry, has been invited 

Hyojung Seo (undergraduate), Ms. 

to participate in presenting 

Yan Han (graduate student), Joe 

the research findings from 

Wang (graduate student), Dr. Jae 

his laboratory. He is also in- 

Seon Park (front, postdoctoral felvited 

by DOD to participate 

low), Vurghun Ahmadov (back, 

in abstract reviewing and 

graduate student) and Mohammad 

program planning activities 

Qneibi (graduate student) 

for the meeting. Those who 

are invited to participate 

are civilians and representatives from Congress, DOD, 

Historically Black Colleges and Minority Institutions, 

Hispanic Serving Institutions and the Department of Veterans 


Professor Li Niu 

Affairs, in addition 

to scientists 

from both academia 

and military 

research institutions. 

Recently, 

Dr. Niu was interviewed 

on tape 

by DOD for the 

research discovery 

in his lab, and 

the interview will be shown during the meeting. Last year, the 

Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program and the 

Department of Defense featured Niu’s research in their published 

annual scientific report. 

Dr. Niu says that it was the $1.15 million-dollar grant 

awarded to him by the Congressionally Directed Medical Research 

Program and DOD back in late 2003 that allowed him 

to launch a major effort in his ALS research. Using this grant 

support, Niu’s laboratory has been developing a new class of 

RNA inhibitors or aptamers as potent, water soluble molecular 

reagents as potential templates for drug design. Recently, Dr. 

Niu was awarded a five year RO1 grant from the National 

Institutes of Health (NIH). This grant totaling $1.49 million 

dollars will support research in his laboratory to study the 

mechanism of action for a group of small-molecule inhibitors 

designed to be potential drug candidates for a number of neurological 

disorders and diseases, such as stroke and ALS. All of 

these inhibitors target glutamate receptor ion channels, Niu 

says. These are proteins indispensible for the normal brain 

activities, but abnormal function of these receptor proteins has 

been implicated in various neurological disorders and diseases, 

such as ALS. The ultimate goal of Niu’s research is to understand 

the correlation of the unique structural features of this 

receptor family to their function, and to provide mechanistic 

information for rational design of inhibitors that specifically 

target new and distinct receptor-mediated reaction steps as 

new molecular templates for drug discovery. 

So far, Dr. Niu and his group have published research 

papers and have a patent pending for the novel discovery in 

developing better inhibitors as drug candidates. Dr. Niu gives 

credit to his group in the Life Sciences Research building that 

includes two postdoctoral researchers, Dr. Zhen Huang and 

Dr. Jae Seon Park. Dr. Huang graduated with a Ph.D. degree 

in Molecular Biology/Genetics from Wuhan University in 

China and Dr. Park graduated with a Ph.D. degree in 

Biotechnology from University of Tokyo in Japan. Dr. Huang 

and Dr. Park lead the effort in discovery of RNA aptamers. In 

fact, Dr. Huang is currently supported by a postdoctoral ALS 

(continued on p.5)

Awards and Honors 

Anthropology 

❖ Professor Adam Gordon (Anthropology) is key investigator 

in one of the 100 best science stories of 2008, according 

to Discover Magazine. In March of this year Gordon published, 

with colleagues at George Washington University, 

a comparative study in the Proceedings of the National 

Academy of Sciences centering on an ancient skeleton discovered 

in 2004 on the island of Flores, Indonesia. (From 

University News release 12/8/08) 

Art 

❖ Professor JoAnne Carson has won the Ellin P. Speyer 

Prize in Sculpture as part of the 183rd Annual Invitational 

Exhibition, National Academy of Art, New York, NY. 

❖ Professor Amy Bloch has been awarded the prestigious 

Villa I Tatti Postdoctoral Fellowship, Villa I Tatti, The Harvard 

University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, 2009- 

2010. She also has received the Jane and Morgan Whitney 

Fellowship, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, 

2009-2010. 

❖ Professor and Associate Dean Rachel Dressler has been 

awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer 

Stipend for 2009. 

❖ Professor John Overbeck has been awarded the Institute 

for Study of Agean Prehistory (INSTAP) for spring 2009. 

Communication 

❖ A joint paper from the Center for Technology and 

Government and Department of Communication has 

been selected for the John Wiley & Sons Best JASIST 

(Journal of the American Society for Information Science 

and Technology) Paper Award. 

❖ Professor Stuart Swiny received the 2008 Albright Service 

Award from the American Schools of Oriental Research for 

outstanding service contributions to the Cyprus American 

Archaeological Research Institute (CAARI). 

English 

❖ Professor Charles Shepherdson has an appointment with 

the United States Department of State as a Senior Specialist 

in American Studies with Fulbright from 2006 to 2011. 

continued from p.4. 

fellowship from the Muscular Dystrophy Association. His 

group is also using a laser-pulse photolysis technique to characterize 

the mechanism of receptor activation and regulation by 

these inhibitors in the microsecond-to-millisecond time scale. 

In addition to his two major grants from Department of 

Defense and the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Niu has 

History 

❖ The Center for Applied Historical Research (CAHR) has 

been awarded a $2,500 planning grant from the New York 

State Council on the Humanities for traveling exhibit titled 

“Abandoned New York.” CAHR is directed by Professor 

Ivan Steen and Patricia West and facilitates broad, democratic 

access to historical resources and knowledge. 

❖ Distinguished Teaching Professor Warren Roberts was 

awarded the Nancy Lyman Roelker prize for the mentoring 

of undergraduate students by the American Historical 

Association. 

❖ Laura Wittern-Keller, Visiting Assistant Professor and 

Ph.D. graduate in History is the recipient of the Excellence 

in Research Award (2007) from the New York State 

Archives. 

Judaic Studies 

❖ Professor Barry Trachtenberg had a NEH Research Grant 

for Summer 2008. He is currently a 2009 Fellow at the 

Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies and will be 

a Summer 2009 Research Fellow at the United States 

Holocaust Memorial Museum. He also has a 2009 Jack 

and Anita Hess Seminar Follow-up Grant. 

Music 

❖ Professor Max Lifchitz’s group, the North/South Chamber 

Orchestra’s recorded album has been nominated for a 

Latin Grammy for the piece “Variación del Recuerdo 

(Variations of Memory).” 

❖ David Janower, Professor and Albany Pro Musica artistic 

director, received an honorary membership in the Tri-M 

Music Honor Society (a program of MENC: The National 

Association for Music Education). 

Sociology 

❖ Professor Hayward Horton received the 2009 Outstanding 

Community Service Award from the Black Caucus of 

the Public Employee Federation for his research on 

“Diversity in the New York State Government Workforce.” 

been funded over the years by the Muscular Dystrophy 

Association and the ALS Association. 

In addition to applying for grants and supervising research, 

Dr. Niu teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in general 

chemistry, physical chemistry and biochemistry. 


CAS Notes 

Anthropology 

■ Professor Walter Little was elected to two boards: 

New England Council of Latin American Studies 

(executive committee member) and Society for 

Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology. 

■ Professor Hetty Jo Brumbach and Robert 

Jarvenpa have been invited to serve on the board 

of the new journal Ethnoarchaeology, the first 

volume of which is expected out in April 2009. 

■ Professor David Straight is serving on the editorial 

board of the American Journal of Physical 

Anthropology, the primary journal for physical 

anthropologists. He joins Professor Tom Brutsaert 

on this editorial board. 

Sociology 

■ Professor Christine Bose was elected as the 

Eastern Sociological Society 2011 President. 


Humanities Initiative Continues 

The Humanities Initiative Working Group, begun 

in the spring of 2008 under the leadership of College 

of Arts and Sciences Associate Dean Rachel 

Dressler, is a task force focused on reinvigorating 

and making more visible the contributions of the 

Humanities scholars on campus. Associate Dean 

Dressler was encouraged in this effort by CAS Dean 

Elga Wulfert, who wanted to encourage dynamic and 

productive interactions among faculty in various 

Humanistic disciplines and to celebrate their efforts 

and accomplishments. The task force is informal and 

is composed of department chairs, graduate and 

undergraduate directors, and others in positions of 

leadership in the College. 

Among its first activities, the Humanities Initiative 

sponsored a Brown-Bag Event in November 2008, in 

which Vivien Ng, Associate Dean for Undergraduate 

Research and Associate Professor in Women’s 

Studies and Affiliated Faculty in History, presented 

current research under the title “Disconnect: Early 

20th-C Chinese Feminists and the U. S. Women’s 

Suffrage Movement” with a response by Glyne 

Griffith, Associate Professor and Chair of Latin 

American, Caribbean and U.S. Latino Studies. A 

second “Brown Bag Event” was held in April and was 

presented by Amy Bloch, Assistant Professor of Art 

History, speaking on “Ghiberti’s Creation and the 

Question of Angelic Intervention,” with a response by 

Ineke Murakami, Assistant Professor of English. 

Clinical Psychology Ph.D. 

is Outstanding 

The Association for Behavioral and Cognitive 

Therapies (ABCT) has recognized the Ph.D. Program 

in Clinical Psychology with the ABCT Outstanding 

Training Program award. This award is given to a 

training program that has made a significant contribution 

to training behavior therapists and/or promoting 

behavior therapy. In notifying our Director of Clinical 

Training, Professor John Forsyth, ABCT noted that 

“there were many excellent programs nominated, but 

the rich history of the program as a home for scientistpractitioner 

training, the leadership of your program 

facility in ABCT, and the remarkable accomplishments 

of faculty, postdocs, and students from the program in 

research, education, and practice made Albany 

uniquely deserving of recognition.” The award will be 

presented at this year’s convention awards ceremony. 

Professor Millis to Continue 

as Director 

Edelgard Wulfert, Dean of the College of Arts and 

Sciences, has announced that Professor Albert Millis 

will continue as the Director for the Life Sciences 

Research Building (LSRB) for the coming year. In 

announcing his continuation as Director, Dr. Wulfert 

noted that his leadership since the inception of this 

initiative has been exemplary and steadfast. In particular, 

over the past several years, Dr. Millis has been 

instrumental in recruiting a productive and talented 

group of scientists for the LSRB. She continued that 

she was grateful that he will provide guidance and 

leadership for this important university initiative for 

another term. 

Director of the Center for Jewish 

Studies is Appointed 

Recently, Dean Edelgard Wulfert announced the 

appointment of Professor Joel Berkowitz as Director 

of the Center for Jewish Studies. In addition to this 

appointment, Professor Berkowitz will continue as Chair 

of the Judaic Studies Department. In announcing this 

appointment, Dean Wulfert stated, "I am confident that 

under Professor Berkowtiz's able leadership the Center 

for Jewish Studies will flourish, continue to affirm its 

commitment to academic excellence, and through 

innovative community-wide programs serve as a bridge 

between the university and the community at large."

2009 CAS Teaching Awardees 

The College of Arts and Sciences recognizes outstanding 

faculty contributions in the area of teaching 

and mentoring through the CAS Dean’s Teaching 

Award. A faculty selection committee recommended 

that two awards be conferred this year: 

P. D. Magnus, Assistant Professor in the Department 

of Philosophy, received the award for Excellence 

in Teaching in recognition of his devotion to student 

learning. Such innovations as his on-line, openaccess 

textbook for “Introduction to Logic” and the 

dictionary of technical terms for Existentialism that he 

compiled for his class, testify to his commitment to his 

students. Based on letters of support from colleagues 

and students, Professor Magnus has a demonstrated 

ability to stimulate students intellectually and to 

prompt student learning in new and unique ways. 

Cheryl Frye, Professor in the Department of 

Psychology, received the award for Excellence in 

Student Mentoring in recognition of her successful 

performance in advising and mentoring. Professor 

Frye is perceived as highly demanding, but strongly 

committed to her students’ intellectual and professional 

development. She provides rigorous training 

in research skills to students ranging from those in the 

high school to doctoral candidates. She co-founded 

the yearly regional N.E.U.R.O.N. conference that 

serves as a forum for students to present their 

research and interact with neuroscientists from 

different universities. Her students also regularly 

present at national and international professional 

meetings and coauthor papers with her. To date, ten of 

her students have won research awards, including 

University at Albany Presidential Awards for Undergraduate 

Research and similar distinctions. 

Department Tweaks Name 

The former Department of Earth and Atmospheric 

Science has changed the name of their department 

to Department of Atmospheric and Environmental 

Sciences to more accurately reflect the actual 

emphasis of the department. The name change also 

recognizes the growing number of students in the 

environmental areas. 

Obituaries 

Sarah (Blacher) Cohen, English 

Sarah (Blacher) Cohen died peacefully at home on 

November 10, 2008. She was a popular professor of 

Jewish literature and a noted scholar on Jewish female 

comics. Dr. Cohen was a Professor Emerita at 

the University at Albany at the time of her death having 

recently retired after 33 years of teaching. Dr. 

Cohen wrote or edited seven books of her own, and 

several of her plays were produced in collaboration 

with Joanne Koch, from Chicago. Her most recent 

work in progress was a scholarly book for SUNY 

Press on the novelist and critic Cynthia Ozick. She 

was also general editor of the SUNY Press Series 

on Modern Jewish Literature and Culture and was 

awarded a Distinguished Fulbright Professorship to 

Yugoslavia. 

Pong S. Lee, Economics 

Pong Lee died on February 3, 2009. He was born 

in Korea and came to the United States to attend and 

graduate from Simpson College in Iowa. He received 

his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1965 and began his 

career as Professor of Economics at the University at 

Albany. He was a scholar and professor until his retirement 

in 1995. Dr. Lee was a driving force in the 

early days of the Department of Economics, serving 

in a leadership role as Chair of the department. 

Shelton Bank, Chemistry 

Shelton Bank, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry died 

suddenly on January 12, 2009, while visiting his children 

in Oakland, California. He began his doctoral 

studies at Purdue University where he worked with 

the Nobel Laureate, Herbert C. Brown. After receiving 

the Ph.D. he moved to Harvard as a Postdoctoral 

Fellow in Organic Chemistry with Professor Paul 

Bartlett. In 1961, he joined Esso (Exxon-Mobil) research 

and assumed a project leader role in 1964. In 

1966, Dr. Bank was appointed Associate Professor 

of Chemistry at the University at Albany and was promoted 

to Professor in 1972. He served as Chair of 

the American Chemical Society. Professor Bank had 

a career-long interest in nuclear magnetic resonance 

spectroscopy and was interested in discovering new 

ways to use NMR to solve applied problems. He 

authored and co-authored almost a hundred research 

papers and was awarded two patents. 

Dr. Bank received the University Award for Excellence 

in Teaching in 1988 and the Chancellor’s 

Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1989. 


Student Success 

Anthropology 

▲ Gabriela Aquino, doctoral student, has received funding 

through a joint agreement between SUNY and CONA- 

CYT (equivalent to the Mexican NSF). Ms. Aquino is the 

first graduate student co-funded under this joint agreement 

– she joins another student from Stony Brook. 

▲ Maryna Bazlevych, doctoral student, is being supported 

by an NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant and by a 

Wenner-Gren Foundation grant for fieldwork in the 

Ukraine. 

Biological Sciences 

▲ Ei Ye Mon, undergraduate major, has been awarded an 

Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) 

Fellowship at the Center for Disease Control. Ms. Mon 

will be assisting with research this summer in the lab of 

Dr. James Grainger who works on developing methods 

for the determination of human exposure to polycyclic 

aromatic hydrocarbons. 

Communication 

▲ Satomi Kamimura, undergraduate major, had her paper 

“Turn-Taking in Japanese and Anglo-American English 

Conversation: A Comparative Study in Interaction” 

accepted for presentation at the competitive annual 

Conference on Undergraduate Research in Communication 

at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). 

History 

▲ Jonathan Nash, doctoral candidate, received a Research 

Award from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American 

History. The funding will be used to conduct research 

on his project, “An Incarcerated Republic: Prisoners, 

Reformers and the Penitentiary in the Early United 

States,” at the New York Historical Society. Mr. Nash 

also received travel grants from the Society of Early 

Americanists, the American Society for 18th Century 

Studies, and the Social Science History Association. 

▲ Mara Drogan, doctoral candidate, has been awarded a 

Samuel Flagg Bemis Research Grant by the Society for 

Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). She 

accepted the award at a SHAFR luncheon and she delivered 

presentations of her work. 

▲ Alena Kryukovskaya, undergraduate history major, has 

won an Undergraduate Research Endowed Fellowship 

from the UAlbany Foundation to support her project “The 

Religious Context of Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s Cossack 

Uprising of 1648.” 


▲ Jeffrey DiPaola, undergraduate history major, has won 

an Undergraduate Research Endowed Fellowship from 

the UAlbany Foundation to support his project on tenement 

housing in New York City during the late nineteenth 

century. 

▲ Denise McGeen, graduate student, has won the very 

first Patricia Stocking Brown Award for Feminist Social 

Justice research in University at Albany’s University 

Libraries Grenander Special Collections and Archives 

Department. This award will enable her to conduct 

research for her project on environmental justice, using 

the in-house primary records of both Citizen’s Environmental 

Coalition and Environmental Advocates of New 

York. 

▲ David Jones, doctoral student, has been awarded a 

Fulbright Scholarship to research the liberation struggles 

in Namibia during the 1970s and 1980s. He will conduct 

extensive oral interviews with participants from the liberation 

struggle, which ended in 1990 when Namibia gained 

its independence from South African rule. 

Languages, Literatures and Cultures 

▲ Beth Kane, undergraduate student in Slavic, has been 

selected as a recipient of a U.S. Department of State 

Critical Language Scholarship for participation in the 

Russian intensive summer language institute. Ms. Kane 

will spend two months in Tomsk University studying, living 

with a host family and participating in cultural events. 

▲ Humberto Salgado, undergraduate student French/ 

Spanish major will be in Paris, France on a scholarship 

next month. He is one of three winners of the Joseph 

Yedlicka scholarship funded by Pi Delta Phi National 

French Honor Society. The scholarship will cover all his 

expenses, including the cost of a course that grants him 

a free pass to the Louvre. 

Philosophy 

▲ Jaime Walker and Klaus Ladstaetter, doctoral graduates, 

have been appointed to faculty positions. Dr. Walker 

is at Frostburg State in Maryland and Dr. Ladstaetter is at 

Washburn College in Kansas. 

Sociology 

▲ Reese Kelly, graduate student, won the 2008 New 

York State Sociological Association Annual Conference 

Graduate Student Paper Award for “Border-Crossing 

and Trans Identity Management.”

UAlbany Students Honored for 

Academic Excellence 

The State University of New York recently honored 238 

college students from SUNY campuses with the 2009 

Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence. The event 

was presided over by Vice Chancellor and Officer-in-Charge 

John J. O’Connor who explained that the award comes after 

a three-part process on each campus that evaluates student’s 

academic, artistic and athletic performance as well 

as their service to the community. Each recipient received 

a framed certificate and medallion, which is traditionally 

worn at commencement. Students majoring in programs in 

the College of Arts and Sciences who were honored are 

Courtney D’Allaird (Sociology), Carla Neckles (Chemistry), 

Madeline Page (English), Kareema Pinckney (English), 

and Whitney Sperrazza (English). 

Biology Students Join Local Dentist 

on a Mission 

Undergraduate students from the Department of Biology 

accompanied two dentists from the parishes of St. Helen’s 

Church of Niskayuna and Our Lady of Fatima Church in 

Schenectady on a four day mission to the villages of 

Cauanacaxtitlan (Cuana) Yoloxochitl (Yolo) and Arroyo 

Cumiapa (Cumiapa) in Mexico. The students are 

Christopher Theall, Reena Patel and Mariam Sharifapour. 

Several years ago, the two parishes raised enough money 

to build a health clinic in Cumiapa. These students assisted 

the dentists in treating about 120 individuals, which included 

on average about three extractions per individual by providing 

them with a steady supply of sterilized instruments, etc. 

The students were important to the work the dentists did 

and are attributed with providing invaluable assistance. They 

represented their university, their country and their home 

admirably with dedication and professionalism. 

Driving Force Connects Students 

Communication student, Laura Anderson-Gavin, formed a 

group called The Driving Force for the purpose of creating 

bonds between students who live on campus and those who 

commute. She got to thinking about how sad it was that 

commuter students felt so unconnected, so she connected 

with Kelly Lamb from the Office of the Transfer Experience, 

whom she had previously met and talked with about her 

ideas, including opening a Commuter Lounge and providing 

lockers for commuters. Ms Lamb told her that the topic had 

come up before and that she would bring it up at a meeting. 

Within days, she got back to Ms. Anderson-Gavin and told 

her that starting in Fall 2008 the Patroon Lounge would be 

the new Transfer/Commuter Student Lounge. President 

Philip came to the opening of the lounge. The Driving Force 

is a service organization, and one of their main tasks this 

year will be fundraising to provide “Gas Scholarships” to 

commuter students to help ease the economic burden of 

driving back and forth to school. 

The Driving Force was awarded the President’s Award for 

Leadership-Great Dane Award. The founding members of 

The Driving Force are all Communication majors and along 

with Laura Anderson-Gavin include Shannon Weil, Krista 

Klock and Dawn Kassirer. 

MFA Graduates and Faculty 

Prominent at Photo Regional 

The Opalka Gallery at The Sage Colleges played host to 

the 31st Annual Photography Regional Exhibition. From 

the local press reports, Elizabeth Dubben, curator, created 

a very different exhibit. She described her mission to create 

“a window through which to view the many nuances within 

the world of photography.” One significant change was that 

the Regional Exhibit was “invitation only” instead of the 

usual juried open call for any artist. Dubben, a professional 

gallerist, hand picked the 13 artists for the show from the 

works of about 150 artists that she reviewed. Artists associated 

with University at Albany include MFA alums Justin 

Baker, Liz Blum, Colleen Cox, and Tara Fracalossi. Also, 

those exhibiting from UAlbany were Professor Daniel 

Goodwin, Professor Emeritus Robert Cartmell, and 

Adjunct Professor Mindy McDaniel. 

Undergraduate Research Endowed 

Fellowship 

Students from programs in the College of Arts and Sciences 

were recipients of the Undergraduate Research Endowed 

Fellowship. The Fellowship was made possible through the 

generosity of the Lita and Stephen Greenwald Endowment 

here at University at Albany. Each faculty mentor received a 

check made payable to their student in the amount of $400 

to be used for research supplies. Recipients and their 

mentors are: 

Daniel DaCosta – Faculty Mentor, Professor Cheryl Frye 

Jeff DiPaola – Faculty Mentor, Professor David Hochfelder 

Jonathan Friedman – Faculty Mentor, Professor Cheryl Frye 

Fareed Haddad – Faculty Mentor, Professor Cheryl Frye 

Amy Kohtz – Faculty Mentor, Professor Cheryl Frye 

Alena Kryukovskaya – Faculty Mentor, Professor Nadieszda 

Kizenko 

Francelina Morilla – Faculty Mentor, Professor Jeanette 

Altarriba 

Tang Thu Nguyen – Faculty Mentor, Professor Jayanti Pande 

James Ruppert – Faculty Mentor, Professor Lance Bosart 


Student Success continued 

Undergraduate Research Awards 

The President’s Award for Undergraduate Research has been awarded to students in programs in the College of Arts and 

Sciences. In all cases the department has supported undergraduate research that has resulted in the completion of an award 

winning project. A check for $100 was presented at the appropriate departmental function or ceremony to the following: 

Kathryn Gulfo BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 


Insights into the ROCK-mediated pathway 

leading to branching morphogenesis 

in mouse SMG 

Faculty Advisor: 

Professor Melinda Larsen 

Daniel Leonard BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 

Fibroblast Growth Factors 7 and 10 

modulate mouse embryonic salivary 

gland development in a time dependant 

manner 


Professor Melinda Larsen 

Jason Altman BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 

Fluorescence Spectroscopy of RNA 

Tertiary Hairpin Structure Formation and 

Dynamics 

Faculty Advisor: Professor Pan T.X. Li 

Sarah Deaton BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 

Brooke Seligson . WOMEN’S STUDIES 

Charlene Bradt ENGLISH 

Whitney Sperrazza ENGLISH 

Jennifer Kowalski ENGLISH 

Expression of RNA Binding Proteins 

during Optic Nerve Regeneration in adult 

Xenopus laevis 

Faculty Advisor: Professor Ben Szaro 

Learning our Gender 


Professor Barbara Sutton 

J.M. Coetzee and Politics of the Human- 

Animal Distinction 

Faculty Advisor: Professor Paul Stasi 

Silencing the Female Narrative: Elements 

of Folklore in Shakespeare’s Macbeth 


Professor Ineke Murakami 

Being the Object and the “Other”: The 

Women of Morrison’s Paradise and 

Naylor’s Linden Hills 

Faculty Advisor: Professor Paul Stasi 

Jessica Sweet English 

The Narcissistic Mise-en-Abyme in 

“The Pillar of Salt” 


Professor Steven Weber 

Karime Gazdik ANTHROPOLOGY 

Elise Bellefeuille SOCIOLOGY 

Joseph Boskovski SOCIOLOGY 

Erin Duffy PSYCHOLOGY 

Amy Kohtz PSYCHOLOGY 

Eric Horvitz PSYCHOLOGY 

White-Tailed Deer Management at 

the Ancient Maya City of Mayapan: 

An Osterometric Perspective 


Professor Marilyn Masson 

The Gender of Money 


Professor Christine Bose 

The Paradox of Felon 

Disenfranchisement 

Faculty Advisor: Professor Ryan King 

An Examination of the Self-Control 

Strength Model and its Application 

to Gambling 


Professor Edelgard Wulfert 

Sex differences, and endogenous 

hormonal milieu, interact with dosedependent 

cocaine administration for 

effects on psychomotor, anxiety-like, 

and sexual behaviors 

Faculty Advisor: Professor Cheryl Frye 

How Do Age and Negative Emotional 

State Affect Memory? 


Professor Jeanette Altarriba

Life of Pham Xuan An: A Challenging Discovery 

The book, dedicated to 

Bass’s twin sons Tristan and 

Julian, is an account of the 

life of Pham Xuan An, a spy 

for the North Vietnamese 

who doubled as a Time 

magazine correspondent 

and “reliable source” for 

David Halberstam, Neil 

Sheehan, and scores of 

other American journalists 

during the Vietnam war. 

Bass first met An in 1992 at the former spy’s villa in 

Saigon. 

“I was blown away,” Bass says of their first encounter. “I 

knew that writing about him would be a phenomenal story.” 

The story was so interesting that Bass pursued it from 

1992 until the book was published this year by Public Affairs. 

An was a story-teller with a marvelous sense of humor, 

Bass says. “We would sit in the living room of the house that 

he had been given for his meritorious services as a spy and 

An—who by then had been elevated to the rank of General— 

would regale me for hours with hair-raising tales about his 

thirty years’ service as North Vietnam’s most important spy.” 

Researching An’s life was no easy feat. After Bass published 

an early version of An’s life in The New Yorker, the spy 

stopped talking to him, apparently acting on orders of the 

Vietnamese intelligence agencies for whom he still worked. 

Bass says he didn’t get the full story until after Pham 

Xuan An’s death in 2006. 

“Every spy has a cover story,” says Bass, “but An was so 

good at his job that he had two cover stories.” 

An’s first cover story during the Vietnam War was when 

he pretended to be a Time correspondent sympathetic to the 

West while actually spying for North Vietnam’s Communist 

leader Ho Chi Minh. 

An developed his second cover after the war ended in 

1975. “He pretended to have been nothing more than a 

strategic analyst, observing the war from the sidelines,” says 

Bass. “This second cover story was believed by most of An’s 

American journalist friends.” 

By Heather Senison 

When University at Albany English and Journalism professor 

Thomas A. Bass wrote The Spy Who Loved Us, he published 

more than an award-winning book—he uncovered one of the 

greatest American mysteries in the 20th century. 

Bass reported in his New Yorker story that An had won 

four military medals for his contributions to the North 

Vietnamese. 

It was only after An’s death that Bass discovered that the 

great spy had actually won sixteen medals, many of them for 

providing the tactical intelligence that allowed the 

Communists to win major battles. 

“He had been absolutely crucial in advance planning and 

tactical maneuvers,” says Bass. “He was the secret weapon 

that allowed the Communists to win the war.” 

Besides the difficulties Bass overcame uncovering An’s 

story, he also faced the hurdles that come from being a 

reporter in a Communist country. 

Bass had to register with the Vietnamese Ministry of the 

Interior to secure a press pass, and he assumed that the translators 

and assistants assigned to work with him were doing 

double duty as intelligence agents. 

“The only way to function in this environment is to make 

the job of your spies as easy as possible,” Bass says. “You tell 

them in advance about every place you are visiting and person 

you are interviewing. You keep the spies on your payroll, 

taking them out for lunch and dinner, even when you are 

paying for your own translators and assistants. If you are 

transparent enough about your activities, then there is no 

need for anyone to seize your notes and tape recordings as 

you leave the country.” 

The secrecy and obstacles surrounding An’s story drove 

Bass to dig deeper, until he got the truths published this 

spring in The Spy Who Loved Us. 

When Bass is not traveling to Vietnam and other Asian 

destinations, he teaches fulltime at UAlbany, where he loves 

what he describes as his students’ “spunk” and “curiosity.” 

Bass received his Bachelor of Arts from University of 

Chicago and Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness from 

University of California at Santa Cruz. He is married and has 

three children. 

Bass is currently writing the screenplay for The Spy Who 

Loved Us and working on his next book. He declined to reveal 

its subject, saying only that it might have something to do 

with spies and journalists. 


Faculty Books 


Death in the Classroom 

Jeffrey Berman 

In his new book, Death in the Classroom, 

Jeffrey Berman writes about “Love 

and Loss,” the course that he designed 

and taught two years after his wife’s 

death, in which he explored with his 

students the literature of bereavement. Building on 

his previous courses that emphasized self-disclosing 

writing, Berman shows how his students wrote about 

their own experiences of love and loss, how their writing 

affected classmates and teacher alike, and how writing 

about death can lead to educational and psychological 

breakthroughs. In an age in which eighty percent of 

Americans die not in their homes but in institutions, 

and in which, consequently, the living are separated 

from the dying, Death in the Classroom reveals how 

reading, writing, and speaking about death can play a 

vital role in a student’s education. 

Archival Storytelling: 

A Filmmaker’s Guide to 

Finding, Using, and 

Licensing Third-Party 

Visuals and Music 

Sheila Curran Bernard 

Archival Storytelling is an essential exploration of one 

of the more challenging issues facing media makers 

today: the use of images and music, including historical 

and commercial materials, to which someone else holds 

the rights. How do producers find and negotiate fees for 

these materials? When are substitutions acceptable, 

and when do they compromise the final product? What 

do producers need to know when shooting a world filled 

with rights-protected images and sounds? Filled with 

advice and insight, Archival Storytelling features conversations 

with industry leaders including Lawrence Lessig, 

Stanley Nelson, Patricia Aufderheide, Anthony Falzone, 

Rick Prelinger, Hubert Best, Rena Kosersky, and 

Geoffrey C. Ward. The book defines such key terms 

as copyright, fair use, public domain, orphan works, 

Creative Commons and more, and challenges filmmakers 

to become not only archival users but also 

archival and copyright activists, ensuring their ongoing 

ability as creators to draw on the cultural materials that 

surround them. 

Americans at the Gate 

Carl Bon Tempo 

Unlike the 1930s, when the United 

States tragically failed to open its doors 

to Europeans fleeing Nazism, the 

country admitted over three million 

refugees during the Cold War. This 

dramatic reversal gave rise to intense political and 

cultural battles, pitting refugee advocates against 

determined opponents who at times successfully 

slowed admissions. The first comprehensive historical 

exploration of American refugee affairs from the 

midcentury to the present, Americans at the Gate 

explores the reasons behind the remarkable changes 

to American refugee policy, laws, and programs. 

Carl Bon Tempo looks at the Hungarian, Cuban, and 

Indochinese refugee crises, and he examines major 

pieces of legislation, including the Refugee Relief 

Act and the 1980 Refugee Act. He argues that the 

American commitment to refugees in the post-1945 era 

occurred not just because of foreign policy imperatives 

during the Cold War, but also because of particular 

domestic developments within the United States such 

as the Red Scare, the Civil Rights Movement, the rise 

of the Right, and partisan electoral politics. Using a wide 

variety of sources and documents, Americans at the 

Gate considers policy and law developments in connection 

with the organization and administration of 

refugee programs. 

Haiti et la France, 

1804-1848. Le reve brise 

(Paris: Karthala, 2008) 

Jean-Francois Brière 

This book is a study of the rocky 

relations between France and Haiti 

after 1804, the year Haiti unilaterally 

proclaimed its independence from 

France. 

It shows how France tried to reestablish colonial 

rule over Haiti after 1814 before imposing draconian 

conditions upon the young nation in exchange for 

recognizing independence in 1825.

Hume’s Morality: 

Feeling and Fabrication 

Rachel Cohon 

This book offers an original interpretation 

of the moral philosophy of David 

Hume, focusing on two areas: his analysis 

of what is involved in making a moral 

evaluation, and his view that some (though not all) 

virtues of character depend for their existence on social 

convention. On the first topic, the author argues that 

according to Hume, human beings discern moral virtues 

and vices by means of feeling or emotion in a way rather 

like sensing; but this also gives the moral judge a truthapt 

idea of a virtue or vice as a felt property, contrary 

to what traditional interpreters have claimed. On the 

second, she argues that Hume sees certain character 

traits (such as honesty) as prosthetic virtues that compensate 

for deficiencies in human nature. Because their 

true status clashes with our common-sense conception 

of a virtue, however, it has been concealed, giving rise to 

the paradoxes about these traits that Hume identifies. 

Race & War in France 

Richard S. Fogarty 

During the First World War, the 

French army deployed more than 

500,000 colonial subjects to European 

battlefields. The struggle against a common 

enemy associated these soldiers 

with the French nation, but racial and cultural differences 

left them on the outside. This study investigates French 

conceptions of race and national identity at the time as 

reflected in the attitudes and policies directed toward 

these soldiers. 

How far did French egalitarianism extend in welcoming 

and disciplining nonwhite troops? Using the experiences 

of African and Asian colonial soldiers, Richard S. Fogarty 

examines how tensions between racial prejudices and 

strong traditions of republican universalism and egalitarianism 

resulted in often contradictory and paradoxical 

policies. Employing a socially and culturally integrated 

approach to the history of warfare that connects military 

and political policies with the society and culture in 

which they developed, Fogarty presents a fresh picture 

of how the French came to deal with race relations, 

religious differences, and French identity itself. 

Queering Cold War Poetry 

Eric Keenaghan 

Many feel that individualism, and the 

security it demands, define democracy 

and freedom. This belief is characteristic 

of the attitude that thinkers from John 

Dewey to Michel Foucault have criticized 

as “liberalist.” In actuality, though, we share intimate 

associations with one another through contacts 

established by our bodies and language. 

In Queering Cold War Poetry, Eric Keenaghan offers 

queer theory, queer studies, and literary theory, a new 

political and conceptual language for revaluating past 

and present high valuations of individualism and security. 

He examines four Cold War poets from Cuba and the 

United States—Wallace Stevens, José Lezama Lima, 

Robert Duncan, and Severo Sarduy—who lived in an era 

when homosexuals were regarded as outsiders or even 

security threats. In their struggles against liberalist state 

and cultural mandates that foreclosed positive estimations 

of vulnerability, these poets radically revised ethics 

and identity in their day. Their work exemplifies how modernist 

poetry disseminates experiences of differences 

challenging prevailing attitudes about individuals’ relationships 

to one another and to their nations. These 

studies of lyric and poetics clear the way for imagining 

what it means to belong to a passionate and compassionate 

citizenry which celebrates vulnerability, searches 

for difference in itself and each of its constituent individuals, 

and identifies less with a nation than with a global 

community. 

Reconstructing Motherhood 

and Disability in the Age of 

“Perfect” Babies 

Gail Landsman 

This is a book about transformation 

— about the meanings mothers of 

“imperfect” children give to motherhood and disability in 

an age in which infants are commodified and new technologies 

hold out the promise of “perfect” babies. It is 

based on two years of anthropological field research at 

a site at which developmental physicians evaluate young 

children, and on sixty in-depth interviews with mothers 

who received the “bad news” that their child has, or is at 

high risk for disability. In an era in which motherhood is 

achieved rather than ascribed, public health campaigns 

suggest the possibility of maternal control over pregnan- 


Faculty Books 

cy outcome, and specific traits of babies themselves 

increasingly appear to Americans in terms of choice, the 

author asks, “How do mothers of infants and toddlers with 

disabilities—the children few would actively choose—make 

sense of their motherhood? How do they interpret and 

negotiate the meaning of disability? How might their 

experience of nurturing a child who differs from what is 

understood to be “species typical” contribute to disability 

studies and disability activism, and to our understandings 

of how personhood is—and could be—constructed in 

America?” (Gail Landsman is Associate Professor 

Emerita.) 

Marriage Advice for a Pope: 

John XXII and the Power 

to Dissolve 

Patrick Nold 

In Medieval Europe the regulation of 

marriage fell to the Church, and the 

Church taught that marriage was an 

indissoluble union between man and woman formed by 

the verbal agreement of the two. Patrick Nold’s new book 

investigates a little-known loophole in this teaching: that 

a marriage could be dissolved by one spouse’s joining a 

religious order after consent had been exchanged but 

before consummation through sexual intercourse had 

occurred. He shows how this exception to the rule that 

consent made an indissoluble marriage vexed Thirteenthcentury 

academics and intellectuals, and how in 1322 

Pope John XXII (1316-34) was led to call on a group of 

big-name theologians and lawyers to study the issue. 

These professors submitted to the pope consilia, or 

advice, which sought to explain the exception to the rule 

of marital indissolubility for a chaste monk or nun, and to 

explore whether the pope had the power to dissolve nonconsummated 

marriages by extending the exemption to 

celibate priests and deacons. Such position papers were 

used by the John XXII to draft his decretal Antique Concertationi 

(1322) which became a part of medieval marriage 

law. Professor Nold discovered this Marriage Advice 

for a Pope in a manuscript preserved in an obscure library 

in Rome, and has made the Latin texts available to the 

scholarly community by editing them in his book. His book 

supplies a missing link in the evolution of marriage theory 

in the West–between the twelfth century when popes 

legislated that consent ‘made’ a marriage and the fifteenth 

century when popes began to dissolve marriages based 

on consent alone. It also offers insight into the decisionmaking 

process at the Roman curia in Avignon under a 

controversial pope. 


National Monuments and 

Nationalism in 19th Century 

Germany 

Hans Pohlsander 

No century in modern European history 

has built monuments with more enthusiasm 

than the 19th. Of the hundreds of monuments 

erected, those which sprang from a nation-wide initiative 

and addressed themselves to a nation, rather than part 

of a nation, we may call national monuments. Nelson’s 

Column in London or the Arc de Triomphe in Paris are 

obvious examples. In Germany the 19th century witnessed 

a veritable flood of monuments, many of which 

rank as national monuments. These reflected and contributed 

to a developing sense of national identity and 

the search for national unity; they also document an 

unsuccessful effort to create a “genuinely German” 

style. They constitute a historical record, quite apart from 

aesthetic appeal or ideological message. As this historical 

record is examined, German national monuments of the 

19th century are described and interpreted against the 

background of the nationalism which gave birth to them. 

(Hans Pohlsander is Professor Emeritus.) 

Reform and Resistance 

Helene Scheck 

This book explores the relationship 

between gender and identity in early 

medieval Germanic societies, centering 

mostly on competing perceptions of 

female subject formation in times of 

conversion, reform, and resistance. While women played 

an active role in the spread of Christianity during the 

Middle Ages, their freedoms were often restricted by the 

Church during periods of reform, when uniformity and 

conformity were important. The author’s inquiry extends 

beyond one specific region or historical moment through 

two centuries and three diverse Germanic regions: 

Carolingian France, late Anglo-Saxon England, and 

Ottonian Saxony. Each of these moments exhibits distinct 

yet interconnected stages of conversion and reform, 

different stages of cultural amalgamation out of which 

various possibilities for female subject formation emerge. 

The book also connects with current conversations about 

the interrelatedness of power, knowledge, and subjectivity, 

opening new possibilities for the study of women in early 

ecclesiastical cultures.

The Geography of Religion: 

Faith, Place, and Space 

Roger W. Stump 

This book provides a comprehensive examination 

of the geographical study of religion, focusing 

in particular on the organizing concepts of 

place and space. The discussion addresses four 

principle themes: the special distribution of religions, including 

the emergence of religious hearths and the varied processes 

through which religions have spread out of their places of origin; 

the intrinsic diversification of religious traditions as their adherents 

practice them with specific contexts; the role of religious belief 

and behavior in shaping the meanings and uses of the secular 

spaces of everyday life; and the variations in the nature of sacred 

space and in the ways in which adherents interact with it. In 

addressing these themes, the discussion adopts a broadly comparative 

stance, drawing examples from many different traditions. 

Books Highlighted in this Issue 

The Revolutionary Roots 

of Modern Yiddish, 

1903-1917 

Barry Trachtenberg 

At the beginning of the twentieth 

century, Yiddish was widely 

viewed, even by many of its speakers, as a corrupt 

form of German that Jews had to abandon if they 

hoped to engage in serious intellectual, cultural, 

or political work. Yet by 1917 it was the dominant 

language of the Russian Jewish press, a medium 

for modern literary criticism, a vehicle for science 

and learning, and the foundation of an ideology 

of Jewish liberation. The Revolutionary Roots of 

Modern Yiddish, 1903-1917 investigates how this 

change in status occurred and three major figures 

responsible for its transformation. 

The College of Arts and Sciences is proud of the achievements of its faculty and each Spring we share their work with 

publication information. The books, highlighted with their covers, represent a fraction of the work that has been published 

since July 1, 2008. See below for information about more books from CAS authors. 

Lee Bickmore (ANTHROPOLOGY/LINGUISTICS) 

Cilungu Phonology is the product of over 15 

years of fieldwork. This book is a comprehensive 

description and analysis of the phonology and 

morphology of a language whose tonology is 

extremely complex, necessitating no fewer than 

44 separate tone rules that interact with more 

than 20 segmental processes. As the diversity of 

spoken languages continues to taper in Africa, 

this work presents a valuable study of a multifaceted 

language with several unique elements that 

might otherwise be lost for future analysis and 

reference. 

Christine Bose (SOCIOLOGY/WOMEN’S STUDIES) 

Global Gender Research: Transnational Perspectives 

provides an in-depth comparative picture of 

the current state of feminist sociological gender 

and women’s studies research in four regions of 

the world—Africa, Asia, Latin America/Caribbean, 

and Europe—as represented by many countries. 

It contrasts the threads of similarity and strands 

of difference in feminist concerns globally, covers 

the breadth of gender research, and facilitates 

understanding of national contexts. 

Andrew Byon (EAST ASIAN STUDIES) 

Basic Korean: A Grammar and Workbook comprises 

an accessible reference grammar and 

related exercises in a single volume. This book 

presents twenty-five individual grammar points, 

covering the core material which students would 

expect to encounter in their first year of learning 

Korean. 

Hilde Hoogenboom (LANGUAGES, LITERATURES 

AND CULTURES) 

Mapping the Feminine Russian Women and 

Cultural Difference is a collection of fifteen comparative 

articles on women over three centuries 

in Russian literature, autobiography, culture in 

emigration, and contemporary feminism in Russia. 

Approaches include transnational, cultural, and 

performance studies, psychology and the gaze, 

the recovery of forgotten women, and the canon. 

Bonnie Steinbock (PHILOSOPHY) 

The Oxford Handbook of Bioethics is an authoritative, 

state-of-the-art guide to current issues in 

bioethics. Thirty-four contributors reflect the interdisciplinarity 

that is characteristic of bioethics, 

and its increasingly international character. Thirty 

topics are covered in original essays written by 

some of the world’s leading figures in the field, 

as well as by some new ‘up-and-comers’. 

Barbara Sutton (Women’s Studies) 

Security Disarmed: Critical Perspectives on 

Gender, Race, and Militarization Security is 

a book where scholars, policy planners, and 

activists come together to think critically about 

the human costs of violence and viable alternatives 

to armed conflict. Arranged in four parts— 

alternative paradigms of security, cross-national 

militarization, militarism in the United States, 

and pedagogical and cultural concerns—the 

book evaluates and resists the worldwide crisis 

of militarization. The contributors voice a positive 

and encompassing vision of human security 

by analyzing the relation-ships among gender, 

race, and militarization. 

Juan Thomas & Maurice Westmoreland 

(LANGUAGES, LITERATURES, AND CULTURES) 

Selected Proceedings of the 4th Workshop 

on Spanish Sociolinguistics is an edited 

volume that contains selected proceedings 

from the Fourth International Workshop 

on Spanish Sociolinguistics (WSS4), held 

April 17-18, 2008 at University at Albany. 

Each paper addresses some aspect of 

Spanish language variation, identity, or 

change in the Americas or in Spain. 

Laura Wittern-Keller (HISTORY) 

The Miracle Case: Film Censorship and 

the Supreme Court co-written with 

Raymond J. Haberski, Jr, a UAlbany alum 

with BA and MA degrees, details the littleknown 

legal challenge that turned the tide 

of decades of governmental movie censor 

ship in the United States. This was a case 

fought over an obscure 40-minute Italian 

film that brought the full weight of the 

Catholic Church and the State of New York 

to bear against a small businessman who 

believed that movie censorship violated the 

First Amendment. He won, New York State 

lost, and the process of state movie censorship 

began to unravel. 


Research News 

This list of faculty awards covers grants received from January 2009 to the present. 

● Dean and Professor of Psychology Edelgard Wulfert 

has recently been awarded a five-year RO1 grant from 

NIMH, Intervention Mediators and Moderators in 

Cognitive Motivational Behavior Therapy for Excessive 

Gamblers. The purpose of the grant is to conduct treatment 

outcome studies of compulsive gamblers. 

● Professor Kevin J. Williams (Psychology) received 

an award in the amount of $87,498 from Skidmore 

College/ National Institute on Drug Abuse entitled 

“Steroid Use in Adolescents.” 

● Research Project Assistant Richard Van Dam 

(Psychology) received an award in the amount of 

$15,000 from the 2008 Mind and Life Institute Francisco 

J. Varela Research Grant. The grant title is “Exploring the 

Impact of Meditation on Stress and Psychopathology: 

Attentional Allocation as a Potential Mechanism of Active 

Change Following Meditation.” 

● Professor Christopher Thorncroft (Atmospheric and 

Environmental Sciences) received an award of $280,000 

for four years from NASA to study “Interannual variability 

of the African Easterly Jet and Easterly Waves and associated 

weather and climate.” 

● Professor Hua Shi (Biological Sciences) received an 

award in the amount of $687,000 from the American 

Cancer Society titled “Aptamer-Mediated Sub-Molecular 

Modulation of Estrogen Receptor Activities.” 

● Professor Paul Roundy (Atmospheric and Environmental 

Sciences) received his first NSF award of $354,000 for 

three years to study “Variations in coupling between 

intraseasonal oceanic Kelvin waves and atmospheric 

convection.” 

● Research Professor John Molinari (Atmospheric 

and Environmental Sciences) has received two grant 

awards, one in the amount of $523,000 titled “Large- 

Scale Influences on Tropical Cyclogenesis” from the 

National Science Foundation. and one in the amount of 

$184,751 titled “Convective Bursts during Tropical 

Cyclone Formation and Intensification” from NASA. 

● Professor Kate Lawson (Department of Geography and 

Planning) is co-PI on a $97,290 grant from the New York 

Correction 

The Fall issue of CAS Today incorrectly described the research 

interest of Professor Samantha Friedman (Sociology) as 

an urban anthropologist when it should have read urban sociologist. 

Also, the Craigslist project “Cybersegregation: Is Neil a 

more desirable tenant than Tyrone of Jorge?” is designed to look 


Grant Notification Just Received 

Professor Lawrence Schell (Anthropology and 

Center for Minority and Health Disparities) has 

been awarded a five-year grant totaling 

$6,819,703 from NIH National Center on Minority 

Health and Health Disparities for the creation of 

The Exploratory Center on Minority Health and 

Disparities in Smaller Cities. The center will support 

researchers from multiple determinants of 

health disparities in smaller cities, and, by working 

with community groups, it will test programs to 

reduce barriers, and improve utilization and health. 

State Energy Research and Development Authority and 

the New York State Department of Transportation to 

reduce greenhouse gases. She will be joined in this project 

with UAlbany’s Office of Environmental Sustainability 

to examine surveys on how people get to work and examine 

public bus routes. 

● Professor John Justeson (Department of Anthropology) 

has been awarded 10,000,000 Mexican pesos (about 

$900,000) by Mexico’s National Institute of Indigenous 

Languages (INALI) to support research documenting the 

vocabularies and grammars of the minority languages of 

Mexico. The Project for the Documentation of the 

Languages of Meso-America is co-directed by Dr. 

Justeson. 

● The National Geographic society awarded a $26,000 

grant to Professor Marilyn Masson (Anthropology) for 

her archaeological project Nodes of Power in the Urban 

Landscape of the Postclassic Maya Capital City of 

Mayapán, to begin summer 2009. 

● Professor Cheryl Frye (Psychology) received an award of 

$14,000 from the National Science Foundation in support 

of a “Conference-Grant to Support the 5th International 

Conference on Steroids and the Nervous System” which 

was held in Torino, Italy, February 2009. 

at how housing providers respond. As Executive Editor for CAS 

Today, I apologize for the publication of incorrect information 

regarding Professor Friedman’s research interest and project. 

– Dona Parker

Alumni News 

Alum Credits Former Teacher for Interest in Economics 

Dino Kos ’81 on the Fiscal Issues 

His face and voice may be 

familiar to those who regularly 

tune into CNBC or Bloomberg for 

their financial news. Dino Kos ’81, 

oversees equity research at the 

Manhattan office of Portales 

Partners, LLC, described as an 

“independent research boutique” Dino Kos 

that focuses on financial companies 

(banks, brokers, consumer finance companies). Its customers 

include a variety of mutual funds, pension funds, and 

hedge funds. 

The affable Kos left Croatia (then part of Yugoslavia) for 

the US at age 8. The family settled in Queens, NY. He enrolled 

at the university in 1977, majored in economics, and 

thirty years later, offered three observations of his student 

experience. “My introductory economics courses taught by 

Professor Helen Horowitz first got me interested in the subject. 

She was amazing—always with a cigarette in hand when 

you visited her. Second, a semester abroad in Copenhagen 

provided a special introduction to international finance and 

an opportunity to explore comparative economic systems of 

former Iron Curtain countries such as Poland. Lastly, I still 

remain close to my old roommates.” 

After receiving a bachelor’s degree in Economics, he 

worked for two years in the insurance industry in California, 

then returning east to enter the MBA program at NYU, 

gaining additional exposure to global markets through a 

study semester in Singapore. 

Kos accepted an offer from the Federal Reserve Bank and 

rose through the ranks in a number of positions over a 22year 

period including Manager of International Surveillance 

Staff in the Bank Supervision Group, Head of Foreign 

Exchange, and, from 2001-06, Executive Vice President, 

Markets Group. “Working at the Fed during that time of my 

life was filled with rewards and challenges,” he added. 

In 2006, markets analyst Bill Cara noted on his website, 

Cara Community, that “Kos could very well be the most 

powerful man in America. He’s the guy who hits the “buy” 

and “sell” buttons for the Federal Reserve Bank’s Federal 

Open Markets Committee (FOMC).” 

In 2007, Kos left the Fed for the private sector and was 

named Managing Director of Central Bank and Sovereign 

Wealth Funds at Morgan Stanley, working with the firm’s 

most elite clients. Now, at Portales Partners, his experience 

and counsel is sought after by the leading players in the 

investment community. 

He commented that the regulatory environment for the 

markets is likely to change. “There are likely to be new constraints 

on risk taking and leverage. The financial business 

will be less profitable in coming years. There will be new 

players. The large banks that survive need to adapt to this 

new environment rebuild their franchises.” 

Kos offered a few opinions about current newsworthy 

topics such as the budget and stimulus package recently 

passed by Congress. “The package is too back-loaded. Not 

enough will be spent in 2009. Most of the package involves 

transfer payments. The amount dedicated to improving our 

decaying infrastructure is disappointingly small. We as a 

country need to allocate much more for the construction and 

repair of roads, bridges, electrical and power grids, and my 

personal favorite—airports and a new air traffic control 

system. 

The budget sets ambitious goals aiming to reverse the increasing 

gap in income inequality trends over the last 20 

years, in part by increasing various government programs. 

This objective is worthy but comes at a price. The budget 

deficit this year will be very high—$1.75 trillion, roughly 

12% of GDP, by far a record. More than 55% of our federal 

debt is held overseas, meaning we are paying interest to 

foreign creditors. That trend looks set to increase in the near 

term. The problems we are facing are complex, and creative 

and bold solutions will be required.” 

Despite the current crisis in the world economy, he was 

upbeat. “Our country has near-term challenges and the 

period ahead will not be easy, but we have shown the ability 

to rebound and renew ourselves. We will again. My family 

immigrated to the United States because of the opportunities 

this country offers. That defining feature remains.” 

Kathie Dello, Department of Atmospheric and 

Environmental Sciences undergraduate class of 

2004, is the Division of Water’s Climate Change 

liaison with NYSDEC in Albany. She is developing an 

action plan to adapt water programs to the changing 

climate, working with the Sea Level Rise task force, 

as well as developing other research projects. Ms. 

Dello has published an article “Trends in Climate in 

Northern New York and Western Vermont” in the 

New York State Bar Association Government, Law 

and Policy Journal. 




Honor Roll of Donors 2007-2008 

The following donors have contributed all or a portion of their annual gift to the College of Arts 

and Sciences from July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2008. 

Edward P. Waterbury Society ($25,000 to $99,999) 

*Lawrence A. Shore Marie Shore 

David Perkins Page Society ($10,000 to $24,999) 

Anonymous 

Grayce S. Burian ’63, ’64 

**Clorox Company Foundation 

**Deloitte & Touche Foundation 

Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund 

Michael Frisch 

**General Electric Foundation 

**Goldman, Sachs Group, Inc. 

Fountain Society ($5,000 to $9,999) 

Nolan T. Altman ’77 

Susan G. Diamond Altman ’77 

William F. Bluhm ’74 

R. Findlay Cockrell 

Marcia Cockrell 

Martha J. Downey ’51 

Jewish Communal Fund 

John Ben Snow Memorial Trust 

Podium Society ($2,500 to $4,999) 

Anonymous 

Matthew Bender, IV 

Phoebe P. Bender 

Embassy of Spain 

Sue R. Faerman, Ph.D. ’87 

Edward Grabowski 

*Lenore Rampino Grabowski ’61 

Donald Killoran 

Purple and Gold Society ($1,000 to $ 2,499) 

*Jamshid A. Afnan ’80 

Nazly Afnan 

Elizabeth Barbehenn 

Kyle Barbenhenn 

Maureen Egan Buhrmaster 

’70, ’72 

Robert Buhrmaster 

Lorraine B. Chesin ’77 

Sorrell E. Chesin, Ph.D. 

Donald R. Cohen ’61, ’72 

Susan Gersten Cohen ’63, ’68 

Compro Business Services, LLC 

Kathleen A. Dennis ’75 

Mark S. DeNunzio ’75 

Barbara DeNunzio 

Gloria F. Deutsch, Ph.D. ’60 

Christine A. DeLaMater Doyle ’04 

Daniel E. Doyle ’97, ’04 

Minerva Club ($500 to $999) 

Edward B. Blanchard, Ph.D. 

**Bristol-Myers Squibb 

Foundation 

Edward W. Brown ’69 

Jason A. Brzoska ’03 

Seth D. Chaiken, Ph.D. 

**ChevronTexaco Corporation 

Citadel Investment Group 

William J. Derkasch ’81 

Estate of Harriet Dyer Adams 

Beth Elitzer 

Peter H. Elitzer 

Eitan Evan 

Malka Evan 

Alice L. Gibson 

Walter M. Gibson, Ph.D. 

Christina Noring Hammond ’61 

George S. Hastings, Ph.D. 

Carol A. Griffin Idone ’78 

Vincent P. Idone, Ph.D. ’77, ’82 

**ISO New England 

**ISO, Inc. 

Janet Junod ’79 

Thomas C. Junod ’80 

Beth A. Sexer Kern ’82 

Dinah Gole Kramer ’79 

Marc Z. Kramer ’77 

Louis A. Desorbo ’78, ’80 

Stephen J. Dohnalek, Jr. ’70 

Michael R. Drews 

The Foundation for Enhancing 

Communities 

Frances Hopkins Freeman ’54 

Jack Freeman 

Elizabeth Gaffney 

Janice M. Smith Gasparrini ’53,’54 

Beatrice Hirsch Herman ’42, ’62 

Robert S. Herman, Ph.D. 

**IBM Corporation 

Intel Corp. 

John P. Lowe, Jr. ’73 

Kathryn Keck Lowery ’75, ’76 

Ann C. Mataraso ’02 

Matthew H. Mataraso 

Ruth M. Killoran 

Roanne M. Kulakoff ’81 

**Merck Co. Foundation 

John T. Ray 

Sherry P. Hood Livingston, Ph.D. 

’72 

James D. Livingston 

**Lockheed Martin Corporation 

Steven Mankoff ’84 

Michael M. Messitt 

**Morgan Stanley Foundation 

Steven F. Napolitano ’85 

**New York Life Foundation 

*Debra H. Paget ’76, ’78 

Lynn K. Sher Pickus ’92 

Robert B. Pickus ’91 

**Pfizer Inc. 

Mary E. Prehn ’69 

**Prudential Foundation 

Robert W. Rosenstock ’82 

Erik H. Schmall ’88 

Iliana A. Semmler, Ph.D. ’79 

*Paul M. Gold ’75 

Richard H. Grumm ’81 

Steven L. Herschlag ’82 

Peter H. Kolaian ’87 

Linda A. Marin Lant ’78, ’80 

Steven V. Lant ’79, ’84 

Vicki J. Levine ’76 

Lori J. Van Auken Lewis ’83 

Marc Lewis 

The Schwab Fund for Charitable 

Giving 

William A. Lanford, Ph.D. 

Jonathan L. Snow 

Lawrence C. Snyder, Ph.D. 

Monty J. Strauss 

Jane L. Winer, Ph.D. ’69, ’70 

Herman P. Salomon, Ph.D. 

Beno Sternlicht 

Lisa Sternlicht 

*Arnold Smith ’54, ’59 

*Virginia Stachowiak-Moritzen 

’79 

Syracuse University 

Anthony P. Tartaglia 

Jeanne Tartaglia 

Bonnie Taylor 

TicketWeb 

David Tieman 

Dawn Tolan-Schmall ’89 

**Union Bank of Switzerland 

United Jewish Federation of 

Northeastern New York 

Susan F. Weber ’78 

Edelgard Wulfert, Ph.D. 

Daniel L. Wulff, Ph.D. 

*Brian P. Maloney ’88 

Kim Maloney 

John A. Markowicz ’72 

Marilyn A. Masson 

Benjamin Mendel, Jr. 

Ruth Mendel 

**Nationwide Foundation 

**Novartis US Foundation 

William P. O’Dea, Ph.D. ’88

George W. Parker ’70 

Martha Parker 

**Raytheon Company 

Scott R. Saffran ’82 

Robin C. Sagon ’73 

Beverly S. Sann ’73 

Brian Sann 

Carillon Club ($250 to $499) 

**ADP Foundation 

Margaret M. Ryan Anderton ’82 

William J. Becker ’72 

Barbara Salvia Blanco ’85 

Martin A. Blanco ’85, ’88 

Paula S. Blumenfeld ’72 

*David B. Bregman, Ph.D. ’82 

Michele Cella ’71 

Alice Cheang 

Gretchen Kugler Chenenko ’78 

*Steven F. Chenenko ’78 

Lindsay N. Childs, Ph.D. 

Brett E. Cohen ’82 

Arthur N. Collins ’48 

Donald E. Collins ’54 

Andrew I. Colman ’90 

Ariella M. Saat Colman ’91 

Winston W. Conn 

Barbara Kettle Coon ’65 

Charles R. Coon ’65, ’66 

*Terry M. Corallo ’87 

Albany Club ($100 to $249) 

Christine S. Acevedo- 

Schermerhorn ’95 

Richard D. Alba, Ph.D. 

Henry C. Albrecht ’61 

Johanna C. Bonacci Albrecht ’60 

Rita Z. Alterman ’77 

Joseph Y. Appiah ’84, ’89 

Michael F. Archer ’71, ’73, ’73 

Esther N. Armoza ’98 

James Avery 

Lawrence A. Bach ’91 

Robert J. Ballentine, Ph.D. ’79 

Edward P. Bancroft ’77, ’78, ’87 

Gary N. Barber ’73 

Christopher Barbero, Ph.D. 

’89,’93 

Shari E. Bardash-Eivers ’86 

Daryl C. Bart ’89, ’91 

Nathan Baum ’77 

David H. Bayley, Ph.D. 

Laura Yepez Bedinger ’69 

Michael I. Belenko ’75 

*Joseph C. Benedetti ’87 

Barbara Bochnak Billhardt ’64 

William M. Bird ’60 

Norma Gregory Bird ’61 

*Jan Rosenbaum Sass, Ph.D. ’78 

Mark A. Sass ’78 

Sadie Flax Schneider ’40, ’57 

Gary L. Scott ’73 

Roger E. Sheffer ’74, ’79 

Malcolm J. Sherman, Ph.D. 

Ivan D. Steen, Ph.D. 

Sheila A. Crespi ’79 

Robert M. Dannin ’76 

Richard A. Davis ’91 

Francis S. Decormier 

Maria Dempsey ’87 

Jerrold I. Dolinger ’67 

Marcia Dolinger 

Edward Elliman 

Marvin Freedman 

Sherry Freedman 

Evelyn Hoyt Fullagar ’35 

Agostino Futia ’01, ’08 

Paige V. Griggs ’85 

Steven E. Harwood ’77 

Jacqueline K. Huvane ’85 

David M. Janower 

Richard S. Julie ’97 

Staci L. Julie 

Ann M. Riley Krug ’53 

Harold Kudler ’75 

Susan Applebaum Kudler ’75 

Marvin Bishop 

Catherine G. Keelan Blaine ’72 

John L. Blumenthal ’96, ’00 

Stephanie Desimone Bollam ’67 

Peter R. Bonchonsky ’76 

Lance F. Bosart, Ph.D. 

Jeremy M. Boss, Ph.D. ’77, ’78, ’82 

Valerie Curtis Boss, Ph.D. ’78, ’83 

Judith M. Breselor ’95, ’97 

William H. Brewster ’84, ’85 

Irena Briganti ’96 

Clifford W. Buell ’76, ’78 

Lorri Buell 

Michael A. Burke ’70 

Michael Butler 

Madelyn E. Kelstein Campbell ’84 

Roger G. Canal ’96 

Nancy Leighton Capasso ’74 

Glenn C. Champagne ’63 

Harry E. Charlton 

Joshua S. Charry ’93 

William Chien ’03 

Judith Clement 

Thomas A. Clement ’70 

Paul F. Coiteux, Ph.D. ’81 

Cherie A. Pash Corr ’70, ’71 

Gail A. Steen ’73 

Linda L. Smith Stevens ’69 

Sambamurthy Thyagarajan 

John J. Toole, Ph.D. ’75 

Agnes Russo Treacy ’49 

Steven Trohalaki, Ph.D. ’79, ’87 

* Mark H. Van Benthem ’80, ’82 

*Barbara Laricchia 

John J. Lehr ’51 

Teresa M. Kerwin Lehr ’60 

Gregory Leinweber 

*Mariane Kurjatnik Leinweber ’84 

*Eric Liebes, Ph.D. ’75 

Diane L. Marshall 

Clay Mathews Samson, Ph.D. ’04 

**May Department Stores 

Company Foundation 

Edward A. Mayer 

**McGraw-Hill Foundation, Inc. 

*Matthew A. McMahon, Ph.D. 

’56,’57 

Bruce T. Milne, Ph.D. ’79, ’81 

Laura J. Milstein ’81 

Karlene Molina 

Gwen L. Moore, Ph.D. 

New Jersey Institute Technolgy 

Lawrence R. Pemble ’79 

Gail M. Foldy Poulter ’70 

Charles P. Crawford ’78 

Rosemary Crawford 

John R. Crowner 

Antonella Cupillari, Ph.D. ’84 

Chistopher J. Cyphers, Ph.D. ’98 

Linda L. D’Arcy ’83 

Sean D’Arcy 

*Gary C. Davis ’71, ’77 

Lynda B. de Zorzi ’96 

Joseph Decatus 

George Decker ’36, ’42 

Louise DeCormier 

Robert DeCormier 

James B. Deschamps ’81 

Christina R. Diaz-Moskow ’85 

Yvonne M. Dina ’78 

Vicki A. Dreyer-Fischer ’81 

Alexandra J. Dufour ’99 

Shelley W. Dumoulin ’02 

Patricia A. Dunn ’74, ’77, ’91 

Thomas Durante ’05 

Mary O. Dutt 

George F. Edick ’81 

Wendy M. Egnor ’05 

Thomas G. Eldred ’54 

Lee J. Ellman ’78 

Leigh E. Walker ’62 

Mary M. Long Walker ’61 

Wei-Chyung Wang 

Chao-Hsien Wang 

Robert A. Weisman, Ph.D. ’88 

Joan Wick-Pelletier 

Linda Zenner ’69 

George L. Preston, Ph.D. ’97 

William T. Quinn, Ph.D. ’74 

Rachel S. Ringler ’76 

Karen R. Sbuttoni ’83, ’91, ’94 

Michael J. Sbuttoni, DDS ’75 

Hortense Zeilengold Schmierer 

’49 

*Roy Shulman ’82 

Abby Schulman 

Nancy Harris Sidford ’80 

Seth M. Siegel 

Steven R. Silberglied ’89, ’91 

Jonathan T. Simon ’94 

John D. Spengler, Ph.D. ’71 

Bonnie Steinbock, Ph.D. 

Veronica A. Shane Tanev ’82, ’85 

Louise Tornatore ’63 

Robert E. Williams ’74 

Margaret C. Ervin, Ph.D. ’97 

Robert C. Farquharson ’71, ’78 

Linda C. Felice ’72 

Ann C. Fenech ’96 

Kevin S. Ferentz ’79 

Lisa R. Ettinger Ferentz ’81 

Jacquelyn S. Fetrow, Ph.D. 

Rose Stern Flax ’43 

Gail Juda Fowler ’70 

*David A. Friedman ’78 

Julie Friedman 

**First Horizon National Corp. 

Edward C. Fristrom, Ph.D. ’07 

Joseph Froniewski ’79 

Robert Frost 

Subramanian Ganesan, Ph.D. ’83 

Carolyn Sylvia Garrison ’68 

**Geico Philanthropic Foundation 

Edward H. Gockel ’65 

R. Brian Goewey ’75 

Helene E. Gold ’94, ’97 

Carol E. Bart Goldie ’86 

Jay Goldstein 

Steven T. Goldstein ’85 

Robert B. Golombek ’73 

Linda A. Goodman ’80 

*Individuals whose employers generously matched their gifts ** Employers who have generously matched gifts of their employees 


Honor Roll of Donors continued 

Janet Gould Goodrich ’45 

Suzanne Schum Green ’79 

Ann E. Green, Ph.D. ’98 

David S. Greenberg ’56 

Anita J. Greenberg 

Thomas F. Greene ’80 

Douglas J. Greenfield ’86 

Judith A. Greenwood ’62 

William Gregory 

Maurice Griffel 

Nicholas A. Gross ’86 

Beth M. Grosser ’94 ’95 

Ethan L. Grossman, Ph.D. ’76 

Pamela Burri Grossman ’76 

*Ann M. Grumet ’73 

Marie Miranda Guillet ’61 

*Chuangxing Guo ’94 

Dennis S. Hackett, Ph.D. ’72 

Linda A. Quinn Hanley ’84 

Charles E. Hansen ’71 

Lynn Heaney 

Joseph Heaney 

Joel Helfman ’00 

Catherine Huvar Henry ’44 

Katharine H. Herber ’38 

Laurie S. Grader Herbert ’83 

Raymond Herbert 

Deborah Beecher Hernandez ’93 

Richard D. Hernandez 

Andrea Hirsch 

Michael J. Ho ’00 

Rochelle Hoch ’61 

Lynn Holland ’81 

Michael Daly Hulbert ’06 

Nilsa Jaca, Ph.D. ’93, ’07 

Joann Licenziato Johnson ’88 

Joy E. Jones ’86 

Phillip L. Jones, Ph.D. ’85, ’87,’90 

Harvey Kaufman ’76 

Brian A. Kell ’91 

Patricia Conway Kellie ’65 

Willard J. Kohen ’59 

Kristen E. Koines ’95 

Werner S. Kolln ’73 

Christopher Kopach ’72 

Rosalyn G. Walsh Kopach ’73, ’73 

Boris Korenblum 

Susan Kormanik ’75 

Daniel T. Kraft ’94 

Ronald Kuivila 

Jacqueline LaMar ’80, ’82 

Joseph R. Lapinski ’87 

James A. Large ’00, ’02 

Fernand R. Lebrun ’67 

John Leis 


Lise A. Lekuch ’87 

Kenneth J. Leto ’73 

Estate of Alfred Levitas 

Yuyan Liao ’01, ’03, ’05 

Carol Kuehner Lincoln ’69, ’70 

Harvey M. Lincoln ’68 

Kenneth J. Lindblom ’92 

Charles B. Lindemann, Ph.D. 

’69, ’72 

Eric M. Littman ’94 

Jeremy W. Loubaton ’06 

Michael C. Lowery ’76 

Amy C. Lutz, Ph.D. ’01, ’02 

Lesley F. Malin ’92 

Carolyn A. Malone ’83, ’85 

Cathy A. Manjunath ’07 

Georgianna Himonidis Manzino 

’83 

Michael A. Manzino ’82 

Mary L. Wright Martinez ’80 

America Martinez-Lewis ’72 

Madeleine J. Martzloff ’69 

Jeanne M. Matefy ’67 

Dianna R. Maus ’01 

Patricia E. McCauley ’71 

Jeri I. Lundin McNeany ’73 

Steven F. Messner 

Drake M. Michno ’73 

Jayne M. Smith Michno ’72 

Joseph L. Miele, Ph.D. ’86 

Louis M. Miranda ’85 

Roselle Warshaw Mironer ’65 

Sandra M. Misiewicz ’98 

Joel Morrison 

Neal L. Moskow, Esq. ’86 

Michael J. Murphy, Ph.D. ’82 

Estella K. Mysels 

Francine Naccarato ’66, ’68 

Caryl A. Nackenson-Sheiber ’75 

Paul G. Nance 

Beverly J. Narvey ’75, ’80 

Paul Nicholson 

Christopher Nielsen ’82 

Airi Nihommatsu ’05 

Andrew C. Nygard ’91 

Petra Nygard 

Carolyn O’Connor 

Diane M. O’Malley ’75 

James J. Ormond ’93 

John J. Palange ’83 

*Anthony C. Paone ’72 

Dona P. Parker ’85 

Gerald W. Parker ’68 

Diane E. Paster ’75 

John M. Pellegrino ’71, ’76 

Randee S. Madsen Pellegrino ’71 

Anne L. Peterson ’46 

Vincent E. Pierce, Jr. ’74 

David J. Pollock ’84 

Patricia E. Dagliolo Pollock ’84 

Lynne Poublon 

Paul K. Praus ’64, ’69 

Michael R. Press ’73, ’76 

Deborah Press 

*Virginia R. Prevosto ’75 

David G. Putman, Ph.D. ’92 

Anita Rabinoff-Goldman ’74 

Kenneth L. Rabinoff-Goldman ’73 

Vidia S. Ramdeen ’03 

Meta Rappaport ’88 

Margaret G. Redinbaugh ’77 

Mark D. Reed, Ph.D. ’86 

Paul J. Reid ’73 

Richard Reisman ’74 

Allen G. Reiter ’72 

Dorothy M. Evans Reynolds 

G. William Reynolds, Ph.D. ’51,’58 

Katharine K. Richman ’95 

Daniel Rider, Ph.D. ’49 

Corinne L. Hartman Riley ’75 

Joseph Riley ’74 

Elaine Brooks Rinaldo ’79 

Ellen McCormick Robbiano ’80 

Anna Harrington Robinson ’73 

Catrina D. Rocco ’03 

Anna B. Rosen 

Jonathan Rosen 

Franklin D. Roth ’58 

Alicia Rudin ’82 

Stephanie C. Ruel ’87, ’93 

Scott M. Rusch ’78 

Victor N. Rush ’82 

Linda M. Fried Russell ’78, ’80 

Perry J. Samson, Ph.D. ’72, ’74 

Robert P. Santandrea, Ph.D. ’74 

Deborah J. Sarria ’85 

Vaughn B. Sayles, Jr. ’70 

Patricia M. Scensny ’80 

Jonathan R. Schaffer ’93 

Elbert J. Schermerhorn ’93 

Schering-Plough Foundation 

Karl E. Scheuerman ’89 

John T. Schmidt, Ph.D. 

Jane M. Schwamberger ’71 

Steven C. Schwartz ’87 

Lawrence M. Schwartz ’77 

Harvey R. Sheiber 

Sybil Meyer Sherman ’58 

Amy E. Gross Shimberg ’78 

Howard A. Shlom ’80 

In addition, over 550 donors gave gifts to the College of Arts and Sciences of up to $100 each. 

We thank you all for your generosity and support of the college. 

John J. Shufon ’71 

Ronald S. Simeone, Ph.D. ’77, ’79 

Anne Simpson ’76 

Diane Sklar ’75 

Grant O. Smith ’69 

John R. Smith ’83 

Johnny Smith ’75 

Sharon R. Sobel ’81 

Laurel E. Solomon ’83 

Vaclav Z. Sotola ’91, ’96 

Scott J. South, Ph.D. 

Richard W. Southwick ’75 

Richard F. Spettell ’86 

Glenna D. Spitze, Ph.D. 

Harvey L. Stoler ’71 

Norma deRoos Stotz ’54 

Kerwin C. Stotz 

Linda Rubino Sturgill ’82 

Tracy-Ann G. Suleiman ’98 

Takeda Pharmaceuticals NA 

Mark B. Tausig, Ph.D. ’79 

Jessica Teitz 

Lisa M. Theriault ’88 

Elfriede Wirth Tillman ’60 

Lenore H. Nosal Toomey ’66 

Linda J. Tremblay ’87 

Katherine Trent, Ph.D. 

Frederick Tubbs 

Harold Tulchin 

Janine M. Scarola Tulchin ’86 

John G. Turgeon ’97 

J. R. Vargas 

Varada D. Vaughan ’87, ’93 

Kimberly A. Gregory Verhoff ’00 

Edward J. Verhoff ’03 

Joseph Villani ’01 

April J. Volk ’90 

Gary C. VonBieberstein ’73 

Mary Jo Nazarko VonBieberstein 

’73, ’76 

**Wachovia Bank of North 

Carolina 

Robert J. Walker ’75 

Min Wang ’02 

Russell A. Ward, Ph.D. 

Kathy E. Webber ’97 

Barbara Fontaine White ’78, ’81 

Carolyn W. Williams ’82 

Michael E. Wyllie ’75 

Agata Madalinski Zawierucha ’89 

Dariusz Zawierucha ’88 

Yehong Zhong ’94, ’94 

Leslie Zucker 

Mark Zucker, Esq. ’84 

* Individuals whose employers generously matched their gifts ** Employers who have generously matched gifts of their employees

Bioethics continued from p.1 

located on Lake Como, Italy. Her main area of research is 

bioethics with a focus on reproduction and genetics. She is the 

author of over 60 articles, the most recent, The Oxford Handbook 

of Bioethics. The book edited by Professor Steinbock is an 

authoritative, state-of-the-art guide to current issues in 

bioethics. 

As a freshman, Cameron formed a Philosophy Club and 

became its President. Last year the club hosted a Bioethics 

Forum and invited faculty to speak on issues. Cameron told me 

that he was inspired by then senior Philosophy major Elizabeth 

Gray who is now pursuing a graduate degree in Philosophy. 

She served as mentor to many of the philosophy majors and 

helped them to apply to compete in the Bioethics Bowl held 

last year at Union College. Professor Steinbock told me that 

the Bioethics Conference started in 1999 at Princeton 

University and has traveled to many colleges and universities. 

Students at Princeton convened the first NUBC meeting 

where Dr. Harold Shapiro, then President, was and still is a 

well known figure in bioethics. He is currently a professor of 

economics and public policy at Princeton. In 1996 he was 

appointed by President Clinton to chair the National Bioethics 

Advisory Commission. He is a Fellow of the Hastings Center 

located in Garrison, NY, the premier bioethics research institute 

in the United States, and one of its board members. Since 

that first meeting, each year a different campus applies to be 

the host campus and is selected for its geographical location 

and ability to accommodate the participants. 

The students who attend the conference to participate in 

the Bioethics Bowl must raise the money to make the trip. 

Even though Union College was less than 20 miles away, students 

had to raise $2000 which was accomplished through 

application to the Alumni Association and funding from the 

Philosophy Department foundation account. Elizabeth Gray 

was important to the project by creating an email list which 

served to reach out to prospective members interested in participating. 

Out of that effort the first Bowl Team was formed to 

compete with six team competitors and one researcher plus a 

couple of other reserves. 

This year’s team is rich in diversity in terms of gender 

and race and diverse in discipline interest. Joining Cameron 

Waldman at this year’s Bowl are Nalini Kalanadhabhatta 

(Biology and Psychology), Raphael Thomas (Physics), 

Rukayatu Tijani (Political Science and Criminal Justice), Mac 

Johnston (Philosophy) and Karen Torrejon (Chemistry). This 

team is a mixture of those who are experts in structuring arguments 

and others who research the facts for the arguments. 

The things that the judges are looking for are how in depth you 

can get into arguments, how well you can reason through different 

perspectives, team unity and how well you present your 

arguments. Cameron believes that the UA team has good 

chemistry – they get along socially. Bonnie adds that an important 

outcome of participating in the Bowl is the ability to network 

with other faculty and students with like interests. The 

competition will be stiff and the UA Team, known as Minerva’s 

Owls, is aware that they will be up against high caliber teams 

and some of those teams have had past experience being in the 

competition. Also, many teams send their debate teams to 

compete. Cameron is quick to reply that even the best debate 

teams are not that successful. From her observations of past 

Bowl competitions, Professor Steinbock points out that it is 

more important to be thorough and have a not so aggressive 

approach. 

As I write this article the team has been practicing four 

times a week: Mondays 9 p.m. to 10 pm., Tuesdays 7 a.m. to10 

a.m., Thursdays 9 p.m. to 12 a.m. and Saturdays 10 a.m. to 1 

p.m.—but longer if needed. I guess they need Fridays and 

Sundays off to do some research and maybe some homework. 

Sometimes faculty members, like Professor Steinbock, join the 

team at the practice sessions to act as a resource for information 

about the topics and to critique the presentations. During 

our interview, Professor Steinbock and Cameron told me that 

the most successful teams stick to the questions and work on 

taking their presentation to a deeper level rather than add new 

topics to the discussion. 

In closing, Cameron reiterated that Albany is a great place 

to be especially when it comes to being a good resource for 

Bioethics. Professor Steinbock agrees adding that this area is 

rich in resources with the Union University cluster that includes 

Albany Medical Center, Albany Law School, Albany 

College of Pharmacy, Dudley Observatory and Union College. 

The city of Albany is the location of the State Capital, New 

York State Government, and University at Albany with its 

School of Public Health that deals with health policy issues. 

Final note: I had an opportunity to ask Cameron how Minerva’s 

Owls did in the bowl and he felt the team did “phenomenally” 

well and he was proud of their performance. He went on to say 

that it was “a unique opportunity” to have to deal with the 

world’s toughest issues and to be guided by one of the world’s 

leading experts. He said that “Professor Steinbock taught us 

well” and every case they had to debate, their research was 

always more comprehensive. In every round the team received 

compliments from the judges and from the opposing team’s 

coaches. Professor Steinbock remarked that “It was a great 

experience and I couldn’t have been prouder of my team.” 

Minerva’s Owl’s Prepare for Competition [ l-r: Rukayatu Tijani, 

Cameron Waldman, Mac Johnston, Raphael Thomas, Karen Torrejon, 

Nalini Kalanadhabhatta, Professor Bonnie Steinbock (coach)] 


Delano continued from p.1 

two Harvard students and a woman who just “walked on 

water.” “She was just so helpful and inspiring,” he said. Delano 

took this interest to Upsala College where he first majored in 

physics, but changed to geology after growing intrigued with 

the people being sent to the moon in the Apollo program. 

The next part of Delano’s life took him to Cornell University 

for two years then seven years at Stony Brook University 

for his Ph.D. He completed his graduate thesis on the chemical 

composition and origin of the moon by using the data collected 

from NASA’s Apollo missions visiting the moon every 

six months in 1969-1972. “It was thrilling to see Saturn V 

rockets blasting off to the moon and bringing back the next 

chapter of my thesis,” he said as he recalled getting back samples 

at the lab, analyzing them, and then reporting the results 

at conferences while waiting for the next mission. 

Delano then completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the 

Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, working 

with a member of the Royal Academy of Science and the 

National Academy of Science of the United States of America. 

He spent 90 to 100 hours a week as a grad student and postdoctoral 

research fellow to publish 10 papers. 

Students enrolled in Professor Delano's AENV 250 class 

(Sustainable Development: Energy and Resources) take two field 

trips every spring semester, one of which is to the Fenner Wind 

Project consisting of twenty 1.5-megawatt turbines. The turbines, 

which have a height of 328 feet and generate energy for nearly 

10,000 homes in New York state. 


Delano began his teaching and research career at University 

at Albany as an assistant professor in 1982. He taught geology 

general education courses and geo-chemistry courses and 

continued his federal funded research for NASA on analysis of 

moon samples coming from the Apollo missions. Delano 

would study these to better understand the moon’s origin, history, 

and composition. This helps answer questions about the 

beginning of Earth and its early life since the moon was created 

around the same time. With this position, Delano continues 

to serve on scientific advisory panels to NASA, suggesting proposals 

to NASA for their missions along with other scientists 

across the nation. If they were found appropriate and useful, 

the government would fund the proposals. In February, 

Delano was awarded a five-year NASA grant to continue his 

astrobiology research. 

Delano’s work and activities didn’t stop there. He also 

worked with the National Science Foundation and with paleontologists 

from universities in Rochester and Buffalo. Back 

home at University at Albany, Delano joined the President’s 

Task Force, a group of faculty, students, and administrators 

working together to make the campus a “greener” environment 

by promoting recycling. Delano also practices this 

lifestyle at home with his son and wife, using solar electricity 

and solar thermal panels. “On a sunny day we use the sun to 

heat 105 gallons of water for domestic use and we may not use 

all that heat, so we save it for literally a rainy day,” he says. 

You’d think Delano is the type of person who goes out 

every night with his telescope to study the stars and other heavenly 

bodies, but he tells CAS Today he really doesn’t. “When I 

am out, I wonder, ‘Who I am looking up at over there.’ Is there 

something there that I’m not seeing?” he says. “But it’s going 

to change,” he said with a shudder of excitement. Beginning 

this March, the United States launched a spacecraft, Kepler, 

into orbit that will have the ability to detect planets (even 

smaller than Earth-sized) orbiting other stars. Delano believes 

that Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars will be abundant, 

but not to the naked eye. He will be a part of this new research 

looking at the results. 

His work hasn’t gone unnoticed. In 2000, Delano received 

the honor in the SUNY system by being promoted to 

Distinguished Teaching Professor. He is also a proud recipient 

of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in 

Teaching as well as the University at Albany President’s Award 

for Excellence in Teaching. And in 2007, students from the 

graduating senior class selected Delano for the Torch Award 

because he was one of the faculty members to have a large 

impact on their academic lives. When it comes to having this 

trait, Delano credits his beloved high school physics/chemistry 

teacher. “She was just so bright,” he recalled, “I almost cry 

every time I think of her not being around anymore. She held 

you to high standards and would make fun of herself. She was 

just something!” 

Delano says effective teaching comes to him in three steps. 

First he breaks down course material for students to under- 

(continued on p. 23)

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stand by presenting the fifty 

thousand foot view. “You 

should look at the forest and 

then gradually focus on smaller-and-smaller 

units until 

you’re looking at the bark 

because by then you’ll gain a 

better appreciation,” he says, 

“And it’s a two-way street for 

students. Some understand it, 

some don’t.” Next, Delano 

shows enthusiasm for his topic. 

“If you are, students should go 

‘my gosh if he cares, maybe I 

should!’” Delano says that it’s 

important to present the topic 

with a passion and delight, 

Professor Delano and one other 

member of the UAlbany community 

spent hundreds of hours renovating 

the University's 16-inch diameter 

telescope at no cost to the institution. 

The telescope is used to enrich 

courses in the Honors College, 

Environmental Science, and Physics, 

as well as for campus events. 

instead of droning on where 

the students wonder, ‘Why 

am I here?’ Thirdly, Delano 

makes fun of himself. “It’s 

interesting and it communicates 

to students, ‘Hi, I’m 

approachable.’ It gets students 

to raise their hands in class and 

participate,” he says. If you 

want to know how you’re doing, Delano says faculty members 

should really pay attention to student input when it comes to 

those surveys and questionnaires at the end of the semester 

because it makes you professionally better. He goes above and 

beyond this step though by creating a personalized questionnaire 

asking students for their input or comments to find out 

what he did wrong in class. “I want students to remember me. 

They won’t remember me because I was the person who gave 

them 1,000 factoids, but for something more durable like ‘he 

helped me understand many things. If you understand, you don’t 

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of Arts & Sciences, please contact Michael Messitt, 

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need to memorize’,” he says. Finally, Delano says that he really 

enjoys teaching. “It’s why we’re here, right?” he added. 

Twenty-five years spent as a professor, over 60 papers published, 

a handful of distinguished awards, actively involved in 

life-changing research and activities, the respect of many students…it’s 

fair to say that John Delano is the ultimate professor. 

So how can we become ultimate figures in this world like him? 

“You do the best you can with what you’ve got at the time,” he 

says quoting former President Teddy Roosevelt. “If you apply 

this to academics, your professional life, family life, and athletics… 

if you keep working hard all the time and keep moving, 

there’s no greater payoff in the future than that. Not because you 

know what the payoff will be, but that there will be payoff,” he 

adds. During the final moment at the end of the semester, he 

faces the students in every course, uses the Vulcan gesture, and 

states the following words from one of his fictional heroes, Mr. 

Spock, on the original Star Trek: “Live long and prosper.” 

Professor Delano's family has two kinds of renewable energy systems at 

their home, including the solar panels shown in this image that generate 

about 35% of their electricity. During occasional power outages due to 

storms, the family's comfort is maintained (e.g., following the electrical 

outage in December 2008 due to the ice storm that knocked out electricity 

for nearly 7 days). Students in his UFSP 100 course have visited his 

home to see these renewable systems in operation. 

Spring 2009 23 

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CAS Today is a faculty/staff newsletter published in the Fall and Spring by the College of Arts and Sciences, 

University at Albany, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12222; e-mail: dparker@albany.edu; 518-442-4012 

Executive Editor: Dona Parker Designer/Proofreader: Judy Bedian 

Contributing Writers: Sabrina Katrayan and Heather Senison 

Retirements 

University at Albany faculty member Professor Boris Korenblum, 

Department of Mathematics and Statistics, has recently 

retired. Professor Korenblum received the D.Sc. in 1956 from Moscow 

State University. From 1974 to 1977, he was Professor of 

Mathematics at Tel-Aviv University (Israel) and in 1977 he was a 

member of the School of Mathematics, Institute for Advanced Study 

(Princeton, New Jersey). 

In 1978 Dr. Korenblum gave an invited address at the International 

Congress of Mathematicians in Helsinki, Finland. The International 

Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest congress in 

the mathematics community and it comes together every four years. 

It was at the 1900 congress in Paris, France, where Davie Hilbert 

announced his famous list of 23 open problems in mathematics, 

aptly called “Hilbert’s problems.” 

The Department of Mathematics held an event honoring Dr. 

Korenblum in which Professor Kehe Zhu presided with a presentation 

of the mathematical contributions of Professor Korenblum. The 

colloquium is posted on the Mathematics and Statistics Department 

website at http://math.albany.edu:8000/math/boris_talk.pdf. 

It was noted that Professor Korenblum was instrumental in the development 

of the mathematics behind the CAT scan that led others 

to being awarded the Nobel Prize. His colleagues are impressed 

that at the age of 85, Professor Korenblum continues to produce 

cutting edge mathematics and that he has retained his keen sense 

of humor. 

Professor Bonnie Spanier, Department of Women’s Studies, 

retired from the University at Albany faculty position she began in 

1984. At the time of her initial appointment, Dr. Spanier was also 

appointed as Director of the Women’s Studies Program—a position 

she served in until 1990. In 1990, the Women’s Studies Program 

became a Department and Professor Spanier served as chair of the 

department until 1994. During her time as chair of the department, 

Professor Spanier guided the process that led to the approval of a 

Master’s Degree in Women’s Studies in 1998. 

Professor Spanier received the Ph.D. in Microbiology and 

Molecular Genetics from Harvard University in 1975. She served as 

Assistant Professor of Biology in Wheaton College from 1975-78 

and it was there that she developed an interest in women in science. 

She accepted a two-year grant from the prestigious Bunting 

Institute of Radcliffe College to conduct research on women in 

science. Recently Professor Spanier has lectured on research that 

ties the chemicals in cosmetics to a range of cancers. She is cofounder 

and co-President of the Capital Region Action Against 

Breast Cancer (CRAAB). At the University at Albany, Professor 

Spanier was awarded the 1992 Excellence in Teaching award and 

in 1996 she received the University at Albany Award for Excellence 

in Academic Service. 

Anne Boehm, Assistant to the Chair for the Department of 

Biological Sciences, retired January 22, 2009. Ms. Boehm was 

appointed in 1981 as Assistant to the Chair and served in that 

capacity until her retirement. During her 27 years at the University 

at Albany, she assisted six different chairs guiding them and the department 

through each transition. Ms. Boehm was appreciated by 

each chair for her commitment to the success of the Department’s 

goals and objectives. She is recognized for her knowledge, skills 

and talents that have helped her to perform effectively on multiple 

tasks for the Biology Department and the university community as 

well. In 2001, Anne Boehm received the Excellence in Professional 

Service Award that recognizes individuals who have repeatedly 

sought improvement of themselves and their campus. 

Emeritus Faculty News 

Professor Emeritus of English Donald Stauffer has been honored 

with an award from Community Caregivers. While looking for a 

way to give back to the community, Dr. Stauffer discovered Altamont 

Community Caregivers, which was helping neighbors with transportation 

to medical appointments. In an article for the campus 

Update, Dr. Stauffer said that he thought it sounded like a good idea 

so he went to the program director and joined and today devotes up 

to 15 hours per week lending a helping hand driving neighbors to 

the doctor’s office and spreading the word about the service. Since 

joining he has seen the group expand beyond its village borders so 

he and his colleagues now go by just “Community Caregivers.” He 

was honored at the Community Caregivers Gala in November where 

he received the Victor G. Ross Community Caregivers Founders 

Award. This award recognizes the highest level of honor by Community 

Caregivers and is named for Victor Ross, who co-founded 

Community Caregivers in 1994.

CAS Spring 2009 final 3.qxd - University at Albany

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