OFFICE OF INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO …inted.oie.buffalo.edu/news/ubints03.pdf · UB INTERNATIONAL OFFICE OF INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO Thomas

UB INTERNAUB INTERNAUB INTERNAUB INTERNAUB INTERNATIONALTIONALTIONALTIONALTIONALO F F I C E O F I N T E R N A T I O N A L E D U C A T I O N , U N I V E R S I T Y A T B U F F A L O

Thomas Dean of SOM.....3

CISP Lecture Series.........4

Alumnus is Ministerof Education in China.....6

Women and Workin Thailand.......................7

Asian Studies...................8

Historical Researchon Walls in China...........9

MCEER Initiatives inAsia-Pacific.......................10

UB Professor is Chair-Elect of Global E3.........11

Fulbright Program........12

Indian Languages Online...........................13

Study Abroad................15

International Alumni....17

International Activitiesof Faculty & Staff.........20

Directory........................23

PRESIDENT VISITS TURKEY TO SIGN EXCHANGEAGREEMENT AND MEET ALUMNIC O N T E N T S

S P R I N G 2 0 0 3 VOL. XII, NO. 1�

UB INTERNATIONALVisit the Office of International

Education website at:

http://www.buffalo.edu/intled

continued on page 2

President and Mrs. William R.Greiner led a UB delegation to Tur-key November 16-24, 2002 in or-

der to visit three leading Turkish universi-ties in Istanbul and to meet with themembers of the Alumni AssociationChapter in Turkey.

In addition to President and Mrs.Greiner, the delegation included StephenC. Dunnett,professor andvice provost forinternat ionale d u c a t i o n ;John M. Tho-mas, associateprofessor anddean of theSchool of Man-a g e m e n t ;Michael C.Constantinou,professor andchair of the De-partment ofCivil, Structuraland Environ-mental Engi-neering; Barbara von Wahlde, associatevice president for university libraries; Jo-seph J. Hindrawan, assistant vice provostfor international education; Laura JonesGodwin, program coordinator of re-gional alumni chapters and internationalalumni outreach; and her husband,Gerrald Godwin, an academic advisorwith student advising services.

The president’s trip included campustours and meetings with the rectors ofIstanbul Technical University (ITU),Bogaziçi (Bosphorus) University, and theUniversity of Istanbul.

During his visit to Istanbul TechnicalUniversity, Greiner signed an agreementwith ITU establishing student and faculty

exchange programs between the two uni-versities. Signing the agreement for ITU wasRector Gulsan Saglamer, who visited UB inAugust 2002 as part of a delegation of se-nior Turkish educators visiting SUNY cam-puses to explore possible forms of collabo-ration between the State University andmajor Turkish universities (see fall 2002 issueof UB International, page 10).

The visits to Bogaziçi University and theUniversity at Istanbul were also for the pur-pose of discussing possible exchange activi-ties—in the case of Bogaziçi, for programsin management, and in the case of the Uni-versity of Istanbul, in liberal arts and thehumanities. Each institution has strengthsthat match up well with UB’s.

UB’s initiatives in Turkey are part of alarger collaboration involving the State Uni-versity of New York (SUNY), the TurkishCouncil of Higher Education, and severalleading Turkish universities. SUNY Chancel-lor Robert L. King has been involved in out-reach efforts to Turkey by SUNY Central Ad-ministration.

The State University and the Turkish

Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

2

O F F I C E O F I N T E R N A T I O N A L E D U C A T I O N , U N I V E R S I T Y A T B U F F A L OPR

ESID

ENT'

S VI

SIT

TO T

URK

EY

2 TURKEYcontinued from page 1

Council of Higher Education havesigned an agreement establish-ing a partnership between SUNYand a number of leading Turkishuniversities, including ITU.

Moreover, SUNY has beenawarded a grant from the U.S.Department of State to supportthese outreach efforts in Turkey.The grant will fund scholarshipsfor both undergraduate andgraduate students to study atSUNY institutions.

The grant will also support theestablishment of several dual-de-gree and cooperative degreeprograms at State University ofNew York campuses, includingBinghamton University, the Uni-versity at Albany, and SUNY NewPaltz.

Taking the lead in developingcontacts with potential partneruniversities in Turkey have beentwo UB alumni, Ahmet “Matt”Yildizlar (B.S. 1987), a Turkish-American businessman who last year established an en-dowed scholarship program at UB for undergraduate stu-dents from Turkey; and Zeynep Uluer (M.A. 1993, B.A.1991), president of the UB Alumni Association Chapter inTurkey.

During President Greiner’s visit to Turkey, Yildizlar

hosted the delegation in hisIstanbul home. On that occasion,Yildizlar thanked the presidentfor UB’s efforts to develop closerties to Turkey, and pledged hissupport to the university's initia-tives in the country, which, hesaid, marked the beginning of along and fruitful relationship be-tween UB and its Turkish part-ners. The Greiners were also guestsof honor at a dinner partyhosted by the Alumni Associationchapter. The event was co-hosted by Laura Jones Godwinand Zeynep Uluer and was at-tended by many of the 40 mem-bers of the Turkish chapter of theAlumni Association. Dr. DavidArnett, the U.S. Counsel Generalin Turkey, also attended the din-ner. UB's previous involvement inTurkey has largely been focusedon collaborative research inearthquake engineering. Within

days of the catastrophic August 1999 earthquake in Izmit,UB’s Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake EngineeringResearch (MCEER) dispatched four researchers to the re-gion—three of them as part of the Earthquake Engineer-ing Research Institute (EERI) reconnaissance team—to ex-amine the earthquake’s impacts. The team included Pro-fessors Michel Bruneau, MCEER Deputy Director, and JohnMander, both faculty members in UB’s Department ofCivil, Structural and Environmental Engineering.

In addition, immediately after the earthquake, twoother faculty from this department, MichaelConstantinou, professor and chair, and AndrewWhittaker, associate professor, were involved in the seis-mic retrofit of the Ataturk International Airport Terminal inIstanbul as consultants for Thornton-Tomasetti Engineers.

For this work, where they utilized seismic protectivesystems developed and studied at UB, the two UB facultymembers, together with Thornton-Tomasetti Engineersand the Ataturk Airport Authorities, received the 2002Grand Award of the American Council of EngineeringCompanies.

During the November visit to ITU, Constantinou andVice Provost Dunnett took part in discussions with ITUcounterparts about possible cooperative degree programsin civil and environmental engineering that would bringundergraduate students from ITU to UB. �

President and Carol Greiner were guests of honor at a dinner hostedby the UB Alumni Association Chapter in Turkey

Rector Gulsan Saglamer and President Greiner at thesigning ceremony for the new UB-ITU exchange agreement

3

O F F I C E O F I N T E R N A T I O N A L E D U C A T I O N , U N I V E R S I T Y A T B U F F A L O

THOMAS APPOINTED DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT 3

THO

MAS

NAM

ED D

EAN

OF

SOM

By Jacqueline Ghosen

John M. Thomas, whose efforts have made the Univer-sity at Buffalo School of Management a leader in international management education, was named dean of

the school in December 2002.A member of the UB faculty since

1968, Thomas has served as interimdean since Aug. 1. He previouslyserved in that capacity from 1997-98.

In announcing his appointment,Provost Elizabeth D. Capaldi said:“John M. Thomas has demonstratedthe ability to motivate and lead in ahighly effective manner.

“He was clearly the best candi-date, and I look forward with greatenthusiasm to working with him aswe continue to build excellence inthe School of Management.”

An associate professor in theSchool of Management, Thomaspreviously served as its associatedean for international programs. Inthat role, he developed UB’s Execu-tive MBA program in Beijing in con-junction with Renmin University. Theprogram recently was designated asthe best program of its type in Chinaby the Chinese Ministry of Education.

He also has been instrumental in the development anddelivery of the school’s Executive MBA programs inSingapore, as well as MBA programs in Latvia and Hun-gary.

He designed the inter-national management op-tion for the School ofManagement’s full-timeMBA program and has taught international business in itsdomestic Executive MBA program.

Within the school, he has served as faculty director forthe Singapore EMBA, China EMBA at Renmin University,and Motorola (China) EMBA programs, associate directorof the Center for International Leadership and director ofthe International Executive Program.

Thomas has helped develop and administer the UBcomponent of the new Economics and Business Adminis-tration (EBA) Program at Konan University, UB's exchangepartner university in Kobe, Japan. This program will bring35 Konan undergraduate students to UB each year begin-ning in fall 2003 for course work in economics and busi-ness administration.

A graduate of Yale University, Thomas holds a doctor-

ate in management and organization studies from theSloan School of Management at Massachusetts Instituteof Technology, as well as a degree from the UB LawSchool. He is an adjunct associate professor of law andsocial policy in the law school.

Thomas, who joined the UB fac-ulty as an assistant professor ofpolicy sciences, was director ofUB’s Center for Policy Studies andthe university’s J.D.-Ph.D. pro-gram in policy studies from 1979-86. He has been a visiting facultymember at the Institute for Com-parative and International Law atMagdelen College of Oxford Uni-versity, visiting fellow at the Cen-tre for Socio-Legal Studies atWolfson College of Oxford Uni-versity and visiting professor theIndian Institute of Managementin Calcutta. From 1967-68, he wasan assistant professor of organi-zational psychology at MIT’s SloanSchool of Management.Thomas is the co-author of three

books – Making Regulatory Policy(University of Pittsburgh Press1990), Enforcing Regulation(Kluwer-Nijhoff 1984), and The

Management of Change and Conflict (Penguin Books 1972)— and has authored several book chapters and articles inacademic journals and law reviews.

A former editor of thejournal Law and Policy,he has served since1988 as co-editor of theSeries on Law and Public

Policy (University of Pennsylvania Press).Thomas has received grants from organizations includ-

ing the Eurasia Foundation, U.S. Agency for InternationalDevelopment, and National Science Foundation.

He was awarded the Medal of the Riga Technical Uni-versity in Latvia in 1998 and was named an honorarymember of the faculty of Budapest Technical University in1995.

He is on the board of directors for the Buffalo NiagaraWorld Trade Center and served as member and vicechairman of the Charter Review Commission for the Cityof Buffalo in 1997-98. �

Jacqueline Ghosen is director of communications for theSchool of Management.

4


CO

UN

CIL

LEC

TURE

SER

IES

4 PAST-PRESIDENT OF NAFSA WARNS OF RISKTO GLOBAL EXCHANGE FROM WAR ON TERROR

The terrorist attacks of September 2001 and the waron terrorism have put at risk the great promise andbenefits of international educational exchange. This

was the message of June Noronha, a leader in the field ofinternational education, who spoke at UB February 12,2003 on “September 11th and Its Impact on InternationalEducation and Exchange.”

Noronha is associate dean of multicultural education atthe College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota, whereshe is responsible for multicultural and international pro-grams and services. She is also past-president of NAFSA:Association of International Educators, the largest organi-zation of international educators in the world.

She was invited to speak at UB as part of a lectureseries organized by the Council on International Studiesand Programs and co-sponsored by the Office of the ViceProvost for International Education.

“The events of September 11th and its aftermath havebeen earthshaking for our country” Noronha said. “Afterthat horrific attack, discussion inevitably focused on tight-ening entry to the United States. Suddenly everyone wasunder scrutiny and legislative reform was unavoidable.The challenge was not to demonize entire communitiesand countries, and to separate out those with honest in-tentions who respect and appreciate this country.”

International students and scholars, in particular, havebeen singled out for special scrutiny, Noronha said. “Im-mediately after 9/11, the government and the medialinked the 19 hijackers to international students, eventhough only one entered the country on a student visa.

Of the 30 million visitors to the United States, only 2percent are international students, yet the first debatesand legislation following September 11th centered on in-ternational students, despite the fact that they are alreadythe most closely scrutinized category of non-immigrantvisitors to the U.S.

“Inaccurate and alarmist rhetoric, which continues to-day, obscures the indisputable reality that foreign studentsare overwhelmingly a net asset for U.S. security and themost under-appreciated success of U.S. foreign policy—not to mention the important cultural, educational, andeconomic benefits for communities across the country,”Noronha said.

“It is remarkable how much those of us who work ininternational education believe that international mobilityis a core issue for U.S. public policy, and those in the fed-eral government see it as a peripheral one, or for thatmatter, how little the general public even knows aboutthe issue.”

Noronha pointed out that international students• bring an international dimension to American cam-

puses, change the way courses are taught, and enlargethe understanding that U.S. students bring to issues• take with them to their home countries an exposure toAmerican values, culture, and society, which can only con-tribute to improved relations among countries• pay long-term dividends to our country• move on to conduct research and do business withtheir U.S. counterparts, particularly when, as many do,they move on to leadership positions in their home coun-tries.

The impact of events since fall 2001—“on our nationalconsciousness, on our view of ourselves, on others’ view ofus”—are only beginning to be realized, Noronha said.

“Most of all, we have become wary as a nation—anation that is/was the most optimistic, and I would add,one of the most generous, in the world.”

All areas of international education—from foreign lan-guage programs to study abroad and exchange pro-grams—have been affected by these events, “by the dis-course on terrorism and national security, by ensuing leg-islation, and by reallocation of resources,” Noronha said.

“For international educators, our soul searching hasbeen about whether people understand how importantinternational education and exchange are for breakingdown barriers between people, and for promoting peaceamong nations,” she said.

“Even though the majority of the surveys of institutionsand publics suggest that international education and glo-bal knowledge continue to be regarded as more impor-tant than they were prior to September 11th, we have alsoseen throughout the country a willingness to make a tradeoff, surrendering civil liberties for a sense of heightenedsecurity.”

Noronha, who began her term as president of NAFSAa few months before September 11, 2001, subsequentlybecame one of the leading advocates of internationaleducation in the difficult months that followed the attacks.

Extensive media attention focusing on the perceivedthreat of international students was difficult to combat.“Much of my own work as NAFSA president was provid-ing responses and strategies to address this national hys-teria.

“These views, argued persistently since September11th, seek to persuade Americans to lead from their inse-curities and fears, rather than their strengths and hopes.This is not the America we see. Nor in our opinion, is it thenation that most Americans know,” she said.

The effects of these changes and of the many recentlegislative initiatives are only now being felt, Noronhapointed out. She addressed some of the new legislationthat directly affects international exchange: the Enhanced

5


5

RISK

TO

GLO

BAL

EXC

HAN

GE

June Noronha (far left) speaking with Sami Hanna, a doctoral student from Syria;Janice Nersinger and Stephen Dunnett of the Office of International Education look on.

Border Security Act,which implements anew tracking systemfor international stu-dents and scholars;the USA PATRIOT(Uniting andS t r e n g t h e n i n gAmerica by ProvidingAppropriate Tools Re-quired to Interceptand Obstruct Terror-ism) Act; the Inter-agency Panel for Ad-vanced Science andSecurity (IPASS), whichwill set limits on whichforeigners have accessto sensitive areas ofscientific and technical research; and the Bioterrorism Pre-paredness Act, which mandates greater scrutiny andbackground checks for foreign microbiologists.

As a result of this flurry of new laws and regulations,international educators have had their hands full in re-cent months, Noronha said. They have had to:• institute new procedures• become even more conversant with legal issues as lawsare passed, one after the other• implement regulations before final authorization withlittle guidance• help draft the regulations themselves• accompany our students to interviews by the Immigra-tion Service and the FBI• defend against accusations of being unpatriotic andnaive about terrorism.

The Enhanced Border Security Act called for the imple-mentation of SEVIS (Student and Exchange Visitor Infor-mation System), a web-based data system developed bythe Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for track-ing international students and scholars, ostensibly to pre-vent terrorists from entering the country on a student visa.SEVIS is now administered by the Bureau of Immigrationand Customs Enforcement (BICE) of the new Departmentof Homeland Security.

U.S. institutions of higher education were required tojoin SEVIS by February 15, 2003. UB, which is already aSEVIS-approved institution, is currently implementing thedatabase system it will use to provide tracking informa-tion to SEVIS on the university’s 3,800 international stu-dents and scholars. SEVIS will be connected to consularoffices overseas where visas are issued, ports of entry, theBICE and the schools where international students enroll.

Noronha began her lecture by relating the story of herown experience as an international student, of leavingher native country, Kenya, and coming on a student visa

to Macalester Collegein Minnesota in the late1960s. Her parents hademigrated from Indiato Nairobi, Kenya,where she and her sib-lings grew up. She ended up study-ing in the United States“by sheer chance.” Af-ter high school she ex-pected to go to the UKfor higher education. “On a lark, I agreed toa dare to go into theUnited States Informa-tion Service (USIS) of-fice to apply to anAmerican college. No

one in my family or circle knew anyone American or any-one who had been to America, which remained an ex-otic concept to us. I walked in, sat down, and said thefamiliar words—‘I want to study in America.’”

Several months after submitting applications to tenU.S. schools, Noronha learned she had been admitted toall ten, including Cornell and Syracuse, and even hadbeen granted scholarships by most.

She noted that she would not have ended up in theU.S. if the USIS advising center had not been there, if theadvisor she spoke to had not been eager to assist her, andif it had not been relatively easy to obtain a student visa.

“I would not have ended up in the U.S., if Britain oranother country had stepped up efforts to attract studentsto their countries, as has happened since September11th,” she added.

For more than half a century, the U.S. has been theleading destination for international students, and manywho have studied here have gone on to leading roles intheir own countries and remained good friends of theUnited States. In the post-9/11 era, however, the continu-ing vitality of international educational exchange as a keypart of American public diplomacy is in question.

“In a world that is increasingly unpredictable and vio-lent, we have this evidence among our own students—successive generations of international leaders who lefttheir native countries to study abroad and ended upspeaking the language of, and breaking bread with,strangers and former foes, building alliances of friend-ship for a less fractured world,” Noronha said.

“In a small way, I represent one of those students my-self! Now more than ever, we need to speak each other’slanguages, understand each other’s religious and culturaltraditions, walk in each other’s fields, eat in each other’shomes, play with each other’s children, in our own nationand with other nations.” �

6


6

ZHO

U JI

, MIN

ISTE

R O

F ED

UC

ATIO

N UB Distinguished Alumnus Zhou Ji (Ph.D. 1984, M.S.1981) was appointed Minister of Education of thePeople’s Republic of China (PRC) on March 18,

2003 during the 10th National People’s Congress (NPC) inBeijing. Some 3,000 deputies of the NPC elected a newleadership under President Hu Jintao and Premier WenJinbao. Zhou had served as Vice Minister of Educationsince May 2002.

As minister, Zhou is a member of the State Council, orcabinet, of the PRC, the highest executive organ of statepower and administration in the country. The State Coun-cil comprises four vice-premiers, five state councilors, onesecretary-general, and 28 ministers. Zhou is one of 14newly appointed ministers, many of whom, like him, arehighly educated professionals.

Zhou will oversee the largest system of education inthe world, serving more than 250 million students at theprimary and secondary level and a rapidly growing num-ber of students in higher education—now estimated toexceed 13 million. China educates 25 percent of theworld’s students on 1 percent of the world’s educationbudget.

Zhou, who received his doctorate in Mechanical Engi-neering from the UB School of Engineering and AppliedSciences in 1984, was honored as a UB DistinguishedAlumnus in April 1999 for his major contributions to highereducation and the promotion of closer ties between Chinaand the United States.

His dissertation, "A Class of Monotonicity Analysis BasedAlgorithms for Nonlinear Constrained Optimization," wasdirected by Roger W. Mayne, SUNY Distinguished Teach-ing Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aero-space Engineering.

Before his appointment as vice minister under Presi-dent Jiang Zemin, Zhou was mayor of Wuhan, a majorindustrial city in Southern China. In that capacity, Zhoutraveled extensively to the United States to promote tradeand technological cooperation between Chinese andAmerican companies, particularly those based in SiliconValley. He was instrumental in establishing Wuhan’s “Op-tical Valley,” the center of China’s optical manufacturingindustry.

From 1999 through 2001, Zhou was president ofHuazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST)in Wuhan, one of the top five technical universities inChina. He was a professor in the School of MechanicalScience and Engineering and had served as the school’sdean from 1993 to 1999.

A distinguished researcher and prolific scholar, Zhouwas elected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1999.His fields of expertise include computer-aided design, op-timization design, intelligent design and manufacturing,and computer integrated manufacturing. He has directed

UB ALUMNUS APPOINTED MINISTER OF EDUCATION IN CHINA

many major research projects and has received four na-tional research awards. He has authored or co-authored11 monographs and more than 200 papers published inacademic journals or presented in important internationalconferences. Before doing graduate work at UB, Zhou earned a B.S.degree in mechanical engineering from Qinghua Uni-versity in 1970 and an M.S. degree from HUST in 1980. One of Zhou’s priorities as vice minister was to supportoverseas study for Chinese students, while simultaneouslyencouraging more of them to return home. According toMinistry of Education statistics, the number of Chinese whostudied abroad between 1978 and the end of 2002 ex-ceeded 580,000, of whom more than 150,000 have re-turned home. Many of these students came to the U.S.for higher education.

The returned overseas students have played a majorrole in China’s development and in promoting coopera-tion with other countries in the fields of science, technol-ogy, education, culture, and trade.

Returned overseas students, like Zhou, have assumedsenior positions in the Chinese government and academicestablishment. For example, 81 per cent of the membersof the Chinese Academy of Sciences and 54 per cent ofthe members of the Chinese Academy of Engineeringare returned overseas students.

In October 2002, Zhou met in Washington with U.S.Secretary of Education Rod Paige to sign a Memorandumof Understanding to jointly build an E-Language Projectthat will use web-based technology to help students andeducators learn a second language initially in English andChinese, free of charge on the Internet.

The E-Language Project will be especially useful forteaching English to Chinese students in the remote andrural areas of that country. The government of China iscurrently involved in basic education reform with their"Education for All" initiative. Making use of innovative tech-nologies will help them reach all of their students. �

7


7

WO

MEN

AN

D W

ORK

IN T

HAI

LAN

D

WOMEN AND WORK IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY:THE EXAMPLE OF TEXTILE WORKERS IN THAILAND

By Piya Pangsapa

In Thailand, women make up fifty percent of the laborforce out of a total working population of 31 million.During the export-intensive industrialization period of

the 1980s, fifteen percent of the total workforce was em-ployed in export industries such as electronics, textiles andgarments, food processing, precious stones and gems,and footwear and leather products. In all of these indus-tries, women outnumbered men by eighty to ninety per-cent.

In 1998, I began to conduct an ethnographic study onwomen workers employed for extended periods of time

in large textile factories in Bangkok. I was interested inlooking at how the all-encompassing nature of wage workspeaks to the subjective experiences of Thai women.

My comparison of women at different textile factoriesis used to examine issues of worker consciousness and tolook at how the complex dimensions of women’s lives arerooted in a particular industry and work setting. For fac-tory women, wage work is an integral part of almost ev-ery facet of workers’ lives. Women develop an emotionalattachment to the factory since the factory provides themwith a steady base for their livelihood.

My findings indicate that women’s social and personallives are thereby severely constrained within the economiclimits of wage work. Overtime work and pay, cited as oneof the most important aspects of factory work, acts as avery powerful binding mechanism of physical control overwomen who are dependent upon overtime wages tosupplement their daily wages.

Furthermore, the general attitude employees have to-

wards the employer is a good indicator of the kind oftreatment workers are subjected to within the workplace.

In a follow-up study, I found that the prevailing condi-tions for women workers are worsening due to markedshifts in the production processes of apparel manufac-tures, particularly in the last half decade.

The economic crisis in Southeast Asia, triggered in mid-1997, resulted in the massive layoffs of women workers inexport-oriented industries. By 1998, many textile and gar-ment factories in Thailand closed down their manufactur-ing plants and laid off tens of thousands of women.

Poor market conditions werecited by factory owners as the pri-mary reason for closing downtheir operations and for dismiss-ing workers. But in reality, factoryowners were simply moving theirproduction out to rural areaswhere wages are lower andwhere labor is not unionized. This shift in production enablesthe factory to eliminate the over-time pay system while payingeven lower wages and extractingmore productivity out of labor.Subsequently, this system of pro-duction has made the workloadheavier and more stressful sincefewer employees are expected toperform greater tasks. Many laid-off women end up in

townhouse sweatshops where working conditions are haz-ardous or in the informal sector where wages are poorand unstable, while those women that remain in theirjobs are subjected to ongoing labor abuses.

Consequently, women who have jobs want to hold onto them and in turn, may be more willing to tolerate in-tensified forms of exploitation. What I have tried to do isto emphasize the importance of looking at objective con-ditions along with women’s subjectivities by highlightingwomen’s working experiences.

Oral testimonies and personal histories can reveal agreat deal about larger social and economic processes. Bygoing out and talking to people in and outside their worksettings, we are able to see how work shapes social rela-tions and how women view their wages in relation to theirstandard of living.

I hope that my study will help generate new ideasabout how we should look at the situation of women inother export-oriented manufacturing economies, espe-

Women textile workers in Thailand protest working conditions.

continued on page 8

8


8

ASIA

N S

TUD

IES

ASIANISTS TO GATHER AT UB

TEXTILE WORKERS IN THAILANDcontinued from page 7

cially in those countries with factories that are decentraliz-ing their production processes.

The classes I offer at UB are intended to enable stu-dents to develop a deeper understanding of women’sroles in the local and global economy and to critically lookat the current processes of globalization and their impacton women and their families.

Along with Professor Monica Jardine, my work in theWomen & Global Citizenship Concentration in Women’sStudies exposes students to three key areas of researchand knowledge: the regional transnational mobilizationof women’s labor; the alignment of women’s movementswith new postcolonial histories; and the crafting of newethnographies of acting subjects.

Students study women’s lives in the United States, EastAsia, the Caribbean and Africa and participate in our re-search agenda, which incorporates labor struggles, im-

migration, and women’s engagement in national andtransnational movements. �

By Thomas W. Burkman

The Asian Studies Program will host the annualmeeting of the New York Conference on AsianStudies (NYCAS) in fall 2003. Some 200 faculty

and graduate students from colleges and universitiesacross New York State and surrounding states will lis-ten to research papers and plenary speakers on avariety of topics related to East Asia, Southeast Asia,South Asia, and Asia-America.

The meeting will be held at University Inn andConference Center in Amherst on October 17-18.NYCAS is a regional body of the Association for AsianStudies. The conference theme, “Walls in Asia,” wasselected as a prelude to a major art exhibition, “TheWall,” which will be staged in Buffalo in 2005. Walls havebecome symbols of Asia in the minds of Asians and non-Asians alike. They denote separation, but also serve toprotect and foster identity. Presenters at the conferencewill address the theme both concretely and abstractly,including treatments of racial, gender, cultural, economic,and disciplinary barriers.

A highlight will be a lecture/performance of Beijingopera titled “The Monkey Knows No Walls.” A troupefrom Beijing will bring this event to the Center for the Artson Friday night October 17, portraying Monkey King leg-ends.

James L. Watson, an anthropologist from Harvard Uni-versity and president of the Association for Asian Studies,will deliver an address on “The Other Side of the River:Hong Kong’s Border Saga, 1898-2003.”

Asia specialists and graduate students are invited topropose panels, papers, and roundtables. The deadlinefor proposals is May 1. The Call for Papers and registra-tion information are on-line at http://wings.buffalo.edu/asian/NYCAS03.

In conjunction with the NYCAS meeting, Asian Studieswill co-sponsor a teacher workshop, “Asia in the Class-room,” on October 17. The workshop, co-sponsored byBuffalo/Niagara WorldConnect, will include a session withthe Beijing opera troupe and presentations on Chineselegends and current issues in Chinese society. For moreinformation, contact Professor Burkman [email protected]. �

Thomas W. Burkman is research professor of history and di-rector of Asian Studies at UB.

Performance of the Beijing Opera "The Monkey Knows No Walls"

Piya Pangsapa is an assistant professor in the Depart-ment of Women’s Studies. She received her Ph.D. inSociology from Binghamton University in 2001. Herareas of specialization include comparative social andeconomic development (East Asia and Latin America),gender and development, and women and work.Among the courses she teaches are Women in Contem-porary Asia (WS240), Women’s Movements: Contest-ing Modernities and Global Change (WS401), and theGraduate Women’s Colloquium, Working Women inEast Asia and the Global Economy (WS517).

9


9

RESE

ARC

H O

N W

ALLS

IN C

HIN

A

THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF GREAT WALLSAND CITY WALLS IN CHINA

Quite apart from whether the Great (or, literally,“Long”) Walls of China are visible from the moon(they are not), they have long been the subject of

more serious controver-sies. Were they marvel-ous engineering feats, orlong workers’ cemeter-ies? Symbols of China’sdefensive posture, orsigns of its imperial am-bitions?

Arthur Waldron inThe Great Wall of China:From History to Mythrightly points out thatthe rammed-earth wallslinked together by theQin (221-206 B.C.E.) dif-fer considerably fromthe brick-faced wallsbuilt by the Ming (1368-1644 C.E.). But Waldron underes-timates the military importance of the earliest walls andthe political significance of those that have endured fromthe Qing (1644-1911C.E.) to the present.

I would emphasize that the long walls of the Qin andHan (206 B.C.E.- 220 C.E.) were constructed much furtherout in the steppe than were the walls of the mid-Ming,resulting in an absolute as well as relative decline inChina’s effort to control the world in which it aspired tobe central.

I would note, too, that long walls had originated in theSpring and Autumn and Warring States Periods (722-221B.C.E.) and only in the Qin and Han came to delineatetwo different cultures.

They recovered their military importance during thecontest between the Jin and the Song (circa 1126-1234 C.E.) and attained their greatest utility during the Ming, butthey also retained strategic as well as symbolic value aslate as the Republic (1911-49) and People’s Republic(1949-).

China’s long walls differed in several ways from its citywalls. Long walls were situated largely in the north, gen-erally reinforced the lay of the land, and formed a linearboundary that did not fully enclose the space they delim-ited.

City walls, on the other hand—including the ones Ihave studied in Zhengzhou, Kaifeng, and Shangqiu,which are located in the heart of the central plain (a com-mon synecdoche for China)—were completely man-made and entirely surrounded the spaces within them.

By Roger DesForges

Yet city walls, or at least these three, shared two im-portant characteristics with the long walls: they markedoff spaces that generally diminished in size over time;

and they rose and fellrecurrently ratherthan developing alonga line from history tomyth. The original wall ofZhengzhou that datesto the mid-Shang(circa 1600-1250B.C.E.) or early Zhou(circa 1250-256 B.C.E.)formed a rectangle(longer north to souththan east to west) witha circumference ofsome 7 kilometers. Later on, during the

Han or the Tang (618-907 C.E.), a second wall arose atopthe original southern wall and parts of the western andeastern walls, forming a new rectangle (now longer eastto west than north to south) with a circumference of only4.5 kilometers. It was faced with brick in the late Ming,and, after being damaged by rebels, was restored in theearly Qing. Remnants of much of the southern, eastern,and western sections of the wall remain to this day.

The city walls of Kaifeng experienced even more upsand downs over time. The original wall of Da Liang, capi-tal of the Wei state that flourished from 339 to 225 B.C.E ,was several times larger than the wall of the regional cityof Bianzhou (circumference: 10 kilometers) that replacedit in the Tang.

In the Northern Song (960-1126), the capital city ofDongjing inherited Bianzhou’s wall and added an exter-nal wall 16 kilometers in circumference. After the Jin inva-sions, the city, now called Kaifeng, gave up its outer walland fell back to its inner wall. Kaifeng suffered furtherdestruction during the Yuan and was reduced to the capi-tal of a single province during the Ming and Qing.

The city was inundated and its walls largely buried bythe Yellow River at the end of the Ming and again in thelate Qing, but it was both times reconstructed and thussurvived into the twentieth century.

Although somewhat damaged during the Civil Warand the Cultural Revolution, the walls of Kaifeng are stillamong best preserved in China. While the city has yieldedits role as provincial capital to Zhengzhou, it has recentlybegun to accent its heritage as the capital of six earlier

Roger DesForges standing on remains of Kaifeng city wall , November 2002

continued on page 10

10


WALLS IN CHINAcontinued from page 910

MC

EER'

S AS

IA-P

ACIF

IC IN

ITIA

TIVE

S

states in an effort to become an attractive his-torical site.

Further east the principality of Song, estab-lished in the early Zhou for the descendantsof the Shang kings, was originally encircledby 12.7-kilometer-long wall. That wall was sev-eral times the size of its successor in Suiyang, acounty town established by the Qin that flour-ished as the principality of Liang during theHan.

In 1503, after Suiyang was destroyed in amajor flood, the Ming established a new citynamed Shangqiu on higher ground to thenorth and wrapped it with an even shorterwall totaling only 4.35 kilometers.

The new wall, though smaller, was built of brick.Shangqiu therefore survived many floods and wars andremains today, under the name Suiyang, largely unaf-fected by the industrial development that has been con-centrated in yet another new city, named Shangqiu, justto the north. Together the old and new towns of Shangqiuconstitute only a regional center, but they have recentlybecome a rail hub and may grow considerably in thenear future.

In sum, both the long walls and these three city wallscontained spaces that generally diminished in size overtime. They also waxed and waned in patterns that, al-though various, were largely cyclical and complementary.

While the Great Walls flourished in the Qin-Han and

Jin-Ming periods, Zhengzhou’s walls arguably peaked inthe Zhou and Tang, Kaifeng’s reached maximal size inthe Warring States and Song, and Shangqiu’s becamesolid in the Han and Ming. Further research is necessaryto determine how these patterns are related to largerones in Chinese history.

Meanwhile, their significance will depend in part onthe views of contemporary Chinese and of other peoplesof the world. �

Roger V. DesForges is a professor in the UB Department ofHistory and chair of the Asian Studies Advisory Council. Dur-ing his most recent visit to China in fall 2002, he conductedresearch on the historical significance of walls in China.

By Andrea S. Dargush

The Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER) is a national center of excel-lence that develops and applies knowledge and ad-

vanced technologies to reduce earthquake losses. Sinceits inception, MCEER has coordinated more than $120million in projects to reduce the United States’ vulnerabil-ity to earthquakes.

Headquartered at the University at Buffalo, the Centerwas established in 1986 by the National Science Founda-tion (NSF) as the country’s first National Center for Earth-quake Engineering Research (NCEER).

MCEER maintains an extensive program of interna-tional activities involving joint research, institutional affilia-tions, and collaborative projects aimed at investigatingand preventing losses due to earthquakes.

The Asian Pacific Network of Centers for EarthquakeEngineering Research (ANCER), founded in October 2001

EARTHQUAKE ENGINEERING CENTER PURSUES ASIA-PACIFIC INITIATIVES

at the initiative of MCEER, is a unique international non-profit, professional organization consisting of seven na-tional centers involved in earthquake engineering re-search.

The objective of ANCER is to coordinate limited re-sources in the respective countries to develop and imple-ment, on a cooperative, center-to-center basis, innovativeengineering methods and new enabling technologies toreduce seismic hazards.

ANCER engages in the following activities: exchangeof research plans; exchange of data and information; net-working of experimental facilities; exchange of researchpersonnel; organize workshops and seminars; and pro-mote cooperative research projects.

MCEER also coordinates two U.S.-China collaborationsintended to promote research on technical topics of mu-tual interest to advance earthquake hazard mitigation.One project, the U.S.-People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.)

Shangqin city wall undergoing reconstruction, November 2002


11


11

MO

OK

CH

AIR-

ELEC

T O

F G

LOBA

L E3


Collaboration on Earthquake Engineering Research sup-ports the exchange of researchers between the U.S. andto China to carry out specific research tasks.

These tasks are in keeping with the Annex III to theU.S.-P.R.C. Protocol for Scientific and Technical Coopera-tive Research. The earthquake protocol was one of theoriginal state-to-state Science and Technology agree-ments established between the US and China.

Three high priority categories are identified for bilat-

eral collaboration for the next 5 years: 1) auto-adaptive and sensing materials; 2) urban seis-mic design; and 3) advanced disaster re-sponse. Since its inception, MCEER has been an ac-tive participant in post-earthquake reconnais-sance investigations. MCEER deploys teams ofresearchers to the affected sites of destructiveearthquakes to examine the structural perfor-mance of buildings, bridges and other infra-structure, as well as viewing evidence of fault-ing and land failures.

MCEER also studies the short and long-term organiza-tional and cultural response of the government, emer-gency management agencies and society at large.Among the major earthquake disasters that have beenstudied in the past seven years are: Iran (2002), Taiwan(1999), Greece (1999), Turkey (1999), Columbia (1999),and Japan (1995).

In conducting these studies, MCEER reconnaissanceteams work closely with researchers in the region, pro-

MOOK IS CHAIR-ELECT OF GLOBAL ENGINEERING EDUCATION EXCHANGE

D. Joseph Mook, professor of mechanical and aero-space engineering and assistant dean for interna-tional education in the School of Engineering and

Applied Sciences, was unanimouslyelected chair-elect of the U.S. ExecutiveCommittee of Global Engineering Educa-tion Exchange (Global E³) in January2003. His appointment was formally an-nounced at the Global E3 Annual Meet-ing in March.

Global E³ is a consortium of leadinguniversities in 18 countries that providesopportunities for undergraduate andgraduate students in engineering andcomputer science to receive academiccredit for courses taken at overseas insti-tutions and practical training in a foreignsetting.

The program, which is administeredin the United States by the Institute of In-ternational Education (IIE), was established to address agrowing demand for more well-rounded, global-mindedengineering graduates. Global E³ participants gain thenecessary foreign language ability, cross-cultural skills, andprofessional experience to excel in the multinational,multicultural business environment of the 21st century. Glo-bal E³ is supported by the National Science Foundation,institutional membership fees, and the ABB Group of com-panies.

UB has been a member institution of Global E³ since

1995, and Mook has served on the program’s U.S. Execu-tive Committee for the past two years. The seven mem-bers of the Executive Committee are elected from among

the U.S. member institutions. PeggyBlumenthal, Vice President for EducationalServices at IIE, is an ex officio member ofthe committee. Mook will succeed LesterGerhardt, professor and associate dean atRensellaer Polytechnic University, as thenext chair of the Executive Committee. Engineering and Computer Science stu-dents at member institutions are eligible toparticipate prior to the completion of theirregular academic degree program. In theUnited States, Global E³ students are typi-cally but not always in their junior year.Currently, more than 100 universitiesworldwide are members of the Global E³program, including some 35 universities inthe United States.

U.S. students may study in any country overseas wherethere is a participating Global E³ university, provided thata Global E³ member university in that country acceptsthem for study. Students at universities outside the UnitedStates may apply to study at participating U.S. universi-ties. Participating countries include Australia, Austria, Den-mark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary,Italy, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Swe-den, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. Many ofthese countries offer programs taught in English. �

12


12

FULB

RIG

HT

PRO

GRA

M

MCEERcontinued from page 11

ducing several collaborative reports with their collectivefindings, describing lessons learned which may help miti-gate against future damage from earthquakes. Reportscan be viewed at MCEER’s web site at: http://mceer.buffalo.edu/research/default.asp#recon

A new technical periodical, the Journal of EarthquakeEngineering and Engineering Vibration, published biannu-ally, has been established by the Institute of EngineeringMechanics (IEM), China Seismological Bureau, in coop-eration with MCEER, for the purpose of promoting scien-tific exchange between Chinese and foreign scientists andengineers improve the theory and practice of earthquakehazards mitigation, preparedness, and recovery.

To accomplish this purpose, the journal will publishoriginal papers and invited papers addressing the state-of-the-art knowledge and practice that have overlappinginterest between China and other countries related toearthquake engineering. The journal has a special inter-est in encouraging joint authorship of Chinese and for-eign contributors. Some subject areas include:• Evaluations of damage to structures and engineering

systems resulted from recent earthquakes• New observations of strong motion characteristics anddata processing techniques• Seismic risk and hazard analysis of civil infrastructuresystems• Site effects on structures and geotechnical engineer-ing• Seismic behavior and design criteria for buildings andlifeline systems• Advances in structural dynamics relevant to earth-quake engineering• Theory and practice of health monitoring for structuresunder extreme loading• Retrofit strategies for existing infrastructure systems• Application of emergency sensing, monitoring, andhigh performance materials.

The journal's website is: http://mceer.buffalo.edu/eeev �

Andrea S. Dargush is a project staff associate at MCEER.

Mark A. Ashwill, director of theWorld Languages Institute andFulbright Program Adviser at

UB, became the first faculty member orprofessional in the U.S. to be awarded aFulbright Senior Specialists Grant to Viet-nam, and one of the first UBers to re-ceive this prestigious grant.

The Fulbright Senior Specialists Pro-gram, administered by the Council forInternational Exchange of Scholars(CIES), offers two- to six-week grants toleading U.S. academics and profession-als to support curricular and faculty de-velopment and institutional planning atacademic institutions in 140 countriesaround the world.

Created to complement the tradi-tional Fulbright Scholar Program, whichwas started in 1946, the Senior Special-ists Program aims at increasing the number of faculty andprofessionals who have the opportunity to go abroad on aFulbright.

Ashwill spent January 2003 as a visiting scholar in theDepartment of Applied Linguistics, Institute of Linguistics,National Center for Social Sciences and Humanities inHanoi, Vietnam. During that time, he made a series ofpresentations to researchers, faculty, and students on post-

9/11 U.S. language policy, postsecondaryforeign language instruction, the uses oftechnology in American higher education,language use programs such as Lan-guages Across the Curriculum, and En-glish as a Second Language (ESL) instruc-tion. He consulted with Institute colleagues onthe development and application of na-tional standards in relevant subjects, thelocal adaptation of the Interagency Lan-guage Roundtable (ILR) levels used by theU.S. government to train and assess theproficiency of foreign language specialists,and the development and measurementof intercultural competence. Ashwill also worked on several projectswith his host at the institute, Dr.Vu ThiThanh Huong, including an inventory ofVietnamese behavioral culture and a bi-

lingual book to be published in Vietnam that consists ofessay-length responses to questions asked by Vietnameseabout various aspects of American culture and society.Readers interested in participating in the latter projectshould contact Ashwill at: [email protected].

For information about the Fulbright Senior SpecialistsProgram, visit the program website at: www.cies.org/spe-cialists. �

ASHWILL RECEIVES FIRST FULBRIGHT GRANT TO VIETNAM

Mark Ashwill with Vu Thi ThanhHuong at the Institute of Linguistics

13


13

IND

IAN

LAN

GU

AGES

ON

LIN

E

UB RESEARCHERS DEVELOP SOFTWARE TOPUT TEXTS IN INDIAN LANGUAGES ONLINE

By Ellen Goldbaum

So, you think searching for things in English on theInternet is frustrating?

Well, try searching for documents written in an-cient Sanskrit, modern Hindi and any of dozens of Indianand South Asian languagesthat are based on the beauti-ful, intricate symbols of theDevanagari script.

The ability to put this valu-able content online fromprinted sources in Devanagari,requires optical character rec-ognition (OCR), the tool neces-sary to turn any text documentinto a digital one.

“The lack of a good OCR forDevanagari has made it verydifficult to make available onthe Web the vast majority ofDevanagari documents,” saidVenu Govindaraju, Ph.D., asso-ciate director of the Universityat Buffalo’s Center of Excellencein Document Analysis and Rec-ognition (CEDAR) and UB pro-fessor of computer science andengineering.

Now, with funding from theNational Science Foundation,Govindaraju and his UB col-leagues are taking a major steptoward boosting online accessto these documents.

The UB researchers happen to share not only exper-tise in machine-print and handwriting recognition, butalso a rare passion for—and fluency in—Sanskrit andother Indian languages.

Their project, funded under a $487,000 grant fromthe National Science Foundation’s International DigitalLibraries initiative, endeavors to make Devanagari docu-ments, ranging from ancient Sanskrit masterpieces, suchas the Bhagavad Gita and the Vedas, to contemporarydocuments in Hindu, Marathi and other Indian lan-guages, easily accessible on the Web.

The researchers, based at CEDAR, have created a soft-ware tool that is the first step in developing OCR forDevanagari, ultimately allowing documents in thesescripts to be widely searchable on the Web.

It was presented by Govindaraju, who is the principalinvestigator, on March 11, 2003 at the 13th International

Workshop on Research Issues on Data Engineering inHyderabad, India. The UB researchers expect to make itavailable for free on the Web. “We are developing machine technologies to readDevanagari documents, whether they are contemporarydocuments written in Hindi or ancient documents that

were handwritten on palmleaves,” said Govindaraju. The project, which involves col-laboration with the Indian Statis-tical Institute in Kolkata, one ofIndia’s premier research institu-tions, takes an important step to-ward bridging the digital dividebetween the developed worldand some developing nations, ac-cording to the UB researchers. “The half-billion people aroundthe world whose main languageis Hindi, or one based onDevanagari, are missing out onthe ‘information revolution,’”said Govindaraju. “In IT, the na-tive languages all have taken aback seat.” While Sanskrit has been con-sidered a “dead” language, henoted that in his native India amovement to revive it both inwritten and spoken forms hasbeen gaining ground and in cer-tain regions, schools are includ-ing Sanskrit in their curricula.He and his UB colleagues on the

project are among those in the U.S. who have rediscov-ered the language; they teach Sanskrit to their own chil-dren and hold classes in it at the Hindu Cultural Society ofWestern New York. “The Indian civilization is 5,000 years old,” saidGovindaraju. “So there are many, many documents writ-ten in Devanagari script, but if we want to include them ina digital library in order to preserve access to them, weneed to develop software that recognizes the script.”

OCR, the UB researchers explain, essentially “trains”the computer to correctly interpret the images of a par-ticular alphabet based on “truthed” data, that is, numer-ous scanned images of characters or words and their in-terpretation recorded by humans who have visually exam-ined the original images.

About 15 years ago, UB’s CEDAR, the largest researchcenter in the world devoted to developing new technolo-gies that can recognize and read handwriting, developed


Sanskrit text from the Rig Veda

14


14

LEC

TURE

S IN

MD

DLE

EAS

T

INDIAN LANGUAGES ONLINEcontinued from page 13

the first comprehensive OCR forhandwritten documents in English.

That turned out to be a milestone,spurring numerous new researchprojects into handwriting recognitionthat led to some of the applicationsnow taken for granted, such as per-sonal digital assistants.

“Similarly, we are expecting thatthe development of benchmarkedOCR for Devanagari will trigger agroundswell of research in machine-reading technologies for Indian lan-guages,” said Govindaraju.

To develop benchmarked OCRs,the UB researchers have constructed a dataset of 400pages of Hindi and Sanskrit documents from books andperiodicals, both ancient and contemporary, that is rep-resentative of the huge variety of documents available inthese languages.

The researchers have used the tool they developed torecord information about these documents that indicatehow OCR for Devanagari should interpret each word. Theresearchers also plan to develop character databases and

on-line dictionaries, text corpora andother tools for linguistic analysis thatwill be invaluable to the OCR commu-nity. “The availability of our truthingand evaluation tool together with theavailability of new truthed Devanagaridata, will spur greater research in thedevelopment of Devanagari OCR,”said Srirangaraj Setlur, Ph.D., seniorresearch scientist at UB’s CEDAR andco-investigator. Vemulapati Ramana-prasad, Ph.D., senior research scien-tist at UB’s CEDAR, also is co-investiga-tor.

In the future, the UB researchers plan to extend thescope of this tool to include OCR evaluation for other In-dian languages such as Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil andTelugu, that do not use the Devanagari script, as well foras Arabic and Urdu. �

Ellen Goldbaum is senior editor for University New Ser-vices.

Venu Govindaraju

Othman Shibly, clinical assistant professor andsenior resident associate in the Departmentof Periodontics and Endodontics, recently vis-

ited the Middle East under the auspices of the Schoolof Dental Medicine’s affiliations with two leading uni-versities in the region—Beirut Arab University in Leba-non and Damascus University in Syria.

Shibly spent three weeks in the region in late De-cember and January, delivering lectures in Beirut aswell as Damascus and Tartous, Syria. A Syrian na-tional, Shibly was born in Beirut to a Lebanesemother.

During his lectures Shibly entertained questions re-garding the post-9/11 situation in the United States andthe tragic events surrounding the terrorist attacks. He alsorecounted his personal experience of recent events dur-ing several newspaper interviews given during his stay inthe Middle East.

“I highlighted how the UB and Western New York com-munities provided full support and protection to the localMuslim community and to international students, espe-cially those from the Middle East,” Shibly said. “I alsopointed out that American Muslims provided medical and

PROFESSOR OF DENTAL MEDICINE LECTURES ONPOST-9/11 SITUATION DURING VISIT TO MIDDLE EAST

Othman Shibly addresses the College for Muslim Youth in Beirut, Lebanon;next to him is Hasan Barbauor, director of the college's educational activities

financial aid to the victims of 9/11 attacks.“My goal in these presentations was to emphasize the

human tragedy of the terrorist attacks and their after-math. My message was clear: We are all one family andall part of the same human race. I concluded from myvisit that people in the Middle East and the U.S. sharemany of the same values and principles. We both lovefreedom and justice. We both hope for peace on earth."

Shibly's participation in the faculty exchange programstrengthened the academic relationship with the univer-sities he visited in Syria and Lebanon. �

15


15

SUM

MER

PRO

GRA

M IN

DEN

MAR

K

NEW ARCHAEOLOGY PROGRAM IN DENMARK LAUNCHED THIS SUMMER

Tina L. Thurston, UB assistant professor of anthropol-ogy, is the director of the university's newest studyabroad opportunity, an archaeological field school

in Denmark.The program runs in conjunction with The Thy Project,

a National ScienceFoundation-sponsoredresearch program, ofwhich Thurston is theprinciple investigator,an international coop-erative project con-ducted in associationwith the National Mu-seum of Denmark atThisted.

The research focuseson how chiefly societiesbecome states, usingthe case study of Den-mark during the so-called Viking era.

While the term “Viking Age” may bring to mind manymovie and cartoon stereotypes, the project’s goal is tostudy the development of complex societies and thechanging social, economic, and political relationships be-tween upper and lower classes, local and central elite,and urban and rural dwellers during a period of stateformation between 500 and 1100 A.D., when severalchiefdoms were transformed into a single, unified polity

Previous research in Scania, a rich agricultural regionlater incorporated into the state, showed that the “corearea” initiated large-scale changes in this periphery, es-tablishing markets, fortresses, an urban infrastructure,and land reforms that changeddemographic patterns. Localresistance led to rebellion, but itwas crushed by the state.

In the last six years theproject’s scope has expanded toinclude a parallel study of grow-ing state political dominion overThy in North Jutland, an agri-culturally poor, sparsely popu-lated, but strategically essentialmilitary and trade region.

Conflicts led to warfare acentury earlier than in Scania,but in contrast, the North Danesdefeated the state, killing theDanish king — yet soon after,North Jutland unified with Den-mark. Clearly, socioeconomic

conditions, historical processes, and ruler’s strategies weredifferent between these regions.

Since 1998, students and volunteers have been an es-sential part of the project. Unlike some field schools, wherearbitrary sites are excavated, team members work on a

research project wheretheir contribution mat-ters. The project has con-ducted a full-coveragesurvey of more than 15square kilometers inThy, identified over 250sites, and done 106 testsat 36 specific type-sitesthat will help answerour research questions:• When did state au-thorities first exercisepower here?• When did local lead-ers relinquish power?

Did they disappear or co-exist with the state?• Did similar processes of urbanization, market develop-ment, and demographic change occur in Thy as inScania?

In the field, the team first identifies sites through sur-vey, for data on size and location change through time,reconstructing where and how people lived. Next, testexcavations indicate whether sites are preserved enoughto merit excavation.

In 2003 excavations begin at what may be the resi-dence of a Viking Age elite attached to the king. If so, itwill help explain when central authority was first mani-

fested in Thy. Other sites slatedfor excavation in 2003 include alocal Thy elite compound, a Vi-king Age marketplace, andfarmsteads from several timeperiods. The field headquarters is acomfortable retreat center,from which students visit muse-ums, living history centers, andarchaeological sites from theStone Age through the MiddleAges. Participants also enjoy thebeach, horseback-riding, visitsto nearby towns, and often, atrip to Copenhagen. Visit theproject website at:www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~tt27/ThyFrameset.html �

Students in the 2002 Field School in Denmark conduct test excavations

A replica of a Viking ship

16


16

SPRI

NG

BRE

AK IN

FRA

NC

E

SPRING BREAK IN FRANCE:UB DELEGATION PARTICIPATES IN THEATER FESTIVALBy Sue Wuetcher

A delegation of UB students and faculty spent spring break in France, representing UB and the United States at the 12th International Festival of Theatre

(Rencontres Internationales du Théâtre) at the Université deFranche-Comté in Besançon, France.

The delegation participated in the French theater fes-tival, held March 11-15, under the auspices of the Inter-national Artistic and Cultural Exchange (IACE) Program ofthe Department of The-atre and Dance, foundedand directed by Maria S.Horne, associate professorof theatre and dance.

During the festival, theUniversité de Franche-Comté hosted 10 differentstudent groups fromFrance and from aroundthe world—a total of be-tween 130 and 150 stu-dents. Two or threegroups performed oneach day of the festival,presenting a play in theirown language.

In addition to the UBdelegation, student per-formers from Algeria, Bul-garia, France, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Spain, Ukraine, andVenezuela participated in the festival.

“On the following day there was an open discussion ofthe plays performed,” Horne said. “The basic aim of thisfestival is educational and seeks to achieve improvementthrough feedback and workshops. There is also, of course,a festive aspect to it all, in that students have the opportu-nity to meet others from different countries who sharethe same enthusiasm for the theatre.”

During their stay in Besançon, the UB delegation alsohad the opportunity on March 11 to meet with studentsparticipating in the SUNY New Paltz study abroad pro-gram based at the Centre de Linguistique Appliquée(Center for Applied Linguistics) at the Université deFranche-Comté considered one of the best languageschools in France. This was arranged in cooperation withAnnick Jaccard Beugnet, the resident director of the NewPaltz program.

Horne, who has been actively involved in internationalperforming arts during the past two decades and servesas vice president of the International University TheatreAssociation, which is co-sponsoring the French event, saidshe has been invited to bring a student group to this fes-

tival on several occasions. She was forced to decline theinvitation in 2002 due to the events of September 11, butjumped at the chance this year when the invitation wasextended again.

“It is a great honor to represent our country and ouruniversity, and a unique experience that forever changesthe students who participate,” she says.

The students agree.“I was elated and hon-

ored to be included in the2003 international the-atre festival,” saidCatherine Lynch, a the-atre and dance student.“I believe that art is oneof the highest forms ofexpression. It is a univer-sal language, as well astool to convey uniquenessand cultural identity.”

The play the UB stu-dents presented inBesançon is an interdisci-plinary, multi-media ad-aptation of LeonardMelfi’s one-act play “Bird-bath,” conceived and di-rected by Horne. This

production adds poetic text, music, dance and creativemultimedia to the original material.

The original Melfi play has become a “beloved vehiclefor method-acting practitioners,” Horne says, calling it “aboy-meets-girl love story unlike any other.”

The plot revolves around a young, unsuccessful poetwho meets a young virginal girl while both are working atan all-night cafeteria in Manhattan.

“When the diner closes, she waits for him outside. It isobvious that she does not want to return to her home inthe Bronx where she lives with her mother,” Horne says.“The poet convinces her to stay with him for a whilelonger at his place. It is the story of their discovery.”

Horne’s adaptation expands the original two-charac-ter, one-act play of about 30 minutes into a full hour per-formance.

“Our cast of seven actors is joined by severalmedia artists and designers who share the stage, eitherseen or unseen by the audience. Our present productionbegins by incorporating the poem ‘Dawn’ by FedericoGarcia Lorca from ‘Poet in New York’—there is a directreference to this book on the original script,” Horne says.

“This poem is, in turn, deconstructed on stage, notcontinued on page 19

UB delegation and SUNY New Paltz students in Besançon; Maria Horne is infront, third from the right; Vincent O'Neill is in back, second from the right

17


WU TIEH-HSIUNG, DISTINGUISHED ALUMNUS 17

INTE

RNAT

ION

AL A

LUM

NI


Wu Tieh-Hsiung (Ph.D. 1979), recently named aUB Distinguished Alumnus for 2003, has had anillustrious career as a scholar and educator, cul-

minating in his current appointment as Vice Minister ofEducation for Taiwan.

In this capacity, Wu is responsiblefor elementary, secondary, and physi-cal education in Taiwan as well assome of the general administrative af-fairs of the Ministry of Education.

During his tenure as vice minister,Wu’s chief goal has been to providestate-of-the-art education for youngpeople in Taiwan, integrating and bal-ancing all dimensions of their educa-tional experience—moral, intellectual,physical, and artistic.

Few have been as well preparedfor this position as Wu. His career hasspanned all stages and aspects of theeducational enterprise—from teach-ing in elementary and secondaryschools to a full professorship at Na-tional Taiwan Normal University, thecountry’s most prestigious institutiondevoted to teacher education, and later to the presidencyof National Tainan Teachers College.

During his career, Wu established himself as an inter-national authority on computer-assisted instruction andthe use of quantitative analysis in education—fields inwhich he first gained expertise during his doctoral studiesat UB’s Graduate School of Education.

Wu says he was destined to become an educator, ashis birth date, September 28, suggests. It is the birthdayof Confucius, the great teacher of Chinese culture. Notcoincidentally, the date also marks National Teachers’ Dayin Taiwan.

Growing up in Tainan County in southwestern Taiwanduring the 1940s, Wu was educated in the traditionalschool system, one which he has devoted his career tomodernizing. At the time, secondary education was notcompulsory, and Wu had to take an exam to be admittedto junior high school. He went on to Tainan Teacher’sSchool, a senior high school, where he focused on arteducation.

After graduating, he served as an elementary schoolteacher for three years. Later, he decided to take the na-tional college entrance exam and go on for higher edu-cation. He was admitted to the National Taiwan NormalUniversity, where he earned a B.S. from the Departmentof Education, with a focus on educational psychology, in1966.

When he graduated, he was appointed to teach in a

senior high school. At the same time, he also passed theNational Examination for Governmental Officers and wasqualified to work in any governmental educational institu-tion. At the high school, he was in charge of distance educa-

tion and began his career-long in-volvement with instructional technolo-gies. At that time, he also publishedhis first scholarly article in a well-knownacademic journal. “However, I realized that I stillneeded more advanced knowledge topursue my interests in education andteaching,” Wu said. “I decided to quitmy job and apply to study in theUnited States.” Soon after, one of Wu’s colleagueswas admitted to the University at Buf-falo and recommended Wu applyalso. However, when he applied to UB,Wu wasn’t offered a scholarship. Hetherefore decided to accept admissionwith a scholarship from the Universityof Rochester. "Before I went to Rochester, I went

to see my colleague who was studying at UB. I visited theDepartment of Educational Psychology and met the chair-man, Professor Ron Gentile. I told him that I would like tostudy at UB if the program could provide a scholarship.

“Since I had already accepted admission at Rochester,Professor Gentile suggested I go to Rochester and thenapply again to UB. That was what I did. I finished mymaster’s degree in Educational Psychology at the Univer-sity of Rochester in one year and then transferred to UB.”

At UB, Wu came under the tutelage of his academicadvisor, Malcolm J. Slakter, now professor emeritus in theDepartment of Counseling, School, and Educational Psy-chology (CSEP). After Wu took Slakter’s course in the firstsemester, Slakter asked Wu to be his assistant and to helphim teach a statistics course.

“However, I did not have a full scholarship yet—only atuition waver for the first year of my doctoral program.Another of my mentors in the department, S. David Farr,also professor emeritus, gave me an assistantship and hadme work in the quantitative lab. He subsequently becamemy advisor.

“Both men were very important mentors during mygraduate studies at UB. Professor Slakter even found me aposition at UB two years before I graduated. I served as aresearch associate in the School of Dental Medicine untilI decided to return to Taiwan.

“Professor Slakter was a huge influence on me. WhenI was undecided whether to return to Taiwan or to stay in

18

O F F I C E O F I N T E R N A T I O N A L E D U C A T I O N , U N I V E R S I T Y A T B U F F A L OIN

TERN

ATIO

NAL

ALU

MN

I

18 WU TIEH-HSIUNGcontinued from page 17

the United States, he recognized my dilemma and sug-gested that if I was uncertain about staying in the U.S. Ishould return home, since I could always come back tothe States later if I wanted to.”

The late Paul R. Lohnes, who was a professor in CSEP,also played an important role in Wu’s life at UB, serving asa member of his dissertation committee. One of the rea-sons Wu chose to do his Ph.D. at UB was the department’sstrong reputation in psychometrics.

“Lohnes was one of the first people to employ comput-ing in statistics. Working with him greatly influenced mysubsequent career. When I came back to Taiwan, I wasone of the first educators in my country to promote com-puter-assisted teaching and curriculum,” Wu added.

“My first job was as director of the special educationcenter at the National Kao Hsiung Normal University. Iwent to the National Taiwan Normal University and servedas an associate professor in the Department of Educa-tional Psychology the nextyear.”

While at UB, Wu was alsoactive in campus life. He be-came president of the Tai-wanese Student Associationin 1976. “I made severalgood friends while I wasplanning the organization’sactivities. This experiencealso developed my leader-ship skills.”

Following his graduationfrom UB in 1979, Wu em-barked on an impressiveacademic career, duringwhich he rose through theranks from associate profes-sor to full professor, eventually attaining the position ofprofessor and founding chair of the Department of Infor-mation and Computer Education at National Taiwan Nor-mal University, that country’s most prestigious college ofteacher education.

A pioneer in the field of computer-assisted learning,Wu not only established the department but also devel-oped its graduate and undergraduate programs. Hegained an international reputation as a leading scholar inthe field and published extensively both in Taiwan and ininternational journals.

In 1992, Wu was appointed President of NationalTainan Teachers College. Under his leadership, the col-lege developed into a leading teacher-education institu-tion with a distinguished reputation as a center of excel-lence recognized throughout Asia.

His success at National Tainan Teachers College andhis rise to international prominence as an advocate ofinstructional technology in education and the moderniza-tion of education in Taiwan led to his appointment in 2001as Vice Minister of Education. In this capacity, he is re-sponsible for implementing far-reaching educational re-forms in Taiwan.

“My UB training in educational psychology (includingdevelopmental and learning psychology), statistics, andcomputer-assisted learning helped me establish myteaching and research career,” Wu said. “I would say thatthese experiences have been very beneficial in my workas Vice Minister of Education.”

Wu has long been active in UB’s Alumni Associationchapter in Taiwan and has been its president since 1999.The chapter boasts more than 500 alumni.

“Our current activities include welcome and farewellparties for both new alumni and new UB students who

are leaving Taiwan for Buffalo.We also plan alumni reunionseach year. We are now puttingtogether a comprehensive di-rectory of our members.”

Wu has visited UB sev-eral times in the past fewyears, and has referred manyTaiwanese students, includinghis own son, to the university.

During his doctoralstudies at UB, Wu married LilyTsai, now a teacher at the Na-tional Tainan Commercial Vo-cational High School. Today,the couple lives in a suburb ofthe City of Tainan. They havetwo sons—Stewart, a senior in

electronic engineering at UB; and Tung-Yeh, who earneda degree in electronic engineering from the NationalChung-Cheng University and is currently serving in themilitary.

Wu is also active in his community and has served onmany boards, including those of Taiwan's Youth Corp, theAssociation of Chinese Psychological Testing, and Associa-tion of the Education of Tainan City.

Dr. Wu’s contributions to education have been recog-nized through numerous awards and citations, includingtwo Academic Service Awards from the Academy of Edu-cation. In addition, Taiwan’s National Science Council hastwice honored Wu as an outstanding research scholar.

Wu will be presented with the Distinguished AlumnusAward during the commencement ceremonies for theGraduate School of Education on May 9. �

My UB training in educational psy-chology (including developmentaland learning psychology), statistics,and computer-assisted learninghelped me establish my teaching andresearch career . . . I would say thatthese experiences have been verybeneficial in my work as Vice Ministerof Education—Wu Teih -Hsiung

19


19

INTE

RNAT

ION

AL A

LUM

NI

UB alumnus Huh Sung-kwan(Ph.D, 1986; MBA, 1982) wasappointed February 27 to

head the Ministry of Maritime Affairsand Fisheries in the cabinet of Korea’snew president, Roh Moo-hyun.

Prior to his appointment, Huh hadserved as a professor in the GraduateSchool of Business at Dong-A Univer-sity in Pusan.

The Ministry of Maritime Affairsand Fisheries (MOMAF) waslaunched in 1996 through the con-solidation of 13 different ministriesand agencies.

This ministry is particularly signifi-cant given the importance to Korea of its maritime indus-tries and fisheries. MOMAF statistics from 1998 indicatethat Korea ranked first in the world in terms of shipbuild-ing (12.70 million tons), sixth in volume of seabornecargo, (500 million tons), eighth in vessel capacity (25million tons), and eleventh in fishery production (2.90 mil-lion tons). Some 99.7 percent of Korea's trade cargo istransported by sea.

The ministry has six principal goals: “sustainable de-velopment of fisheries, conservation of marine environ-ment, integrated coastal management, competitive yetsafe shipping industry, investment and creation of hub-port centers of northeast Asia, and strengthening of in-

UB ALUMNUS NAMED MINISTER OF MARITIME AFFAIRS AND FISHERIESIN NEW KOREAN GOVERNMENT

ternational cooperation.” Moreover, MOMAF has promulgated anewly developed Basic Program forOcean Development intended to addresskey issues involved in the “Blue Revolu-tion” of the 21st century such as resourcedepletion, food scarcity, and environ-mental degradation. Huh has also served on the economiccommittee of President Roh Moo-hyun'stransition team. He is currently a mem-ber of the Citizens’ Coalition for Eco-nomic Justice. Between 1995 and 1996, Huh servedas an adviser to the Pusan city govern-ment on management. He also advised

the Pusan Urban Transit Authority on financial affairs in1996.

Born in Masan, Korea, Huh earned his undergraduatedegree at Dong-A University before coming to Buffalo todo graduate work in the UB School of Management. AtUB his major field was accounting, his minor field financeand economics.

From 1985 to 1988, Huh was an assistant professor atBaruch College in the City University of New York. Prior tocoming to the U.S., he worked as a junior economist forthe Bank of Korea and later as a corporate planning man-ager for Korea Silk Company. Huh is married to KimKyung-ok and has a daughter and a son. �

only interpretatively, but through sound and movementas well. Music, dance, art, visual projections, and creativemultimedia are intertwined in the actual performance.”

The performance is envisioned as “experimental the-ater research,” derived from work conducted by IACE’screative research team during the past six months, Hornesays. It explores the potential interaction betweenmethod acting and new technologies across the disci-plines," she adds. The students were involved in all as-pects of the production, from design to performance.

The purpose of this research, Horne says, is “to furtherthe creative integration of technology in the curriculumby preparing technology-enhanced performances thatchallenge the performer as well as the audience. Thus,by including 21st century technology in the educationalexperience, UB is fulfilling its commitment to preparing

SPRING BREAK IN FRANCEcontinued from page 16

today’s students to become tomorrow’s professionals.”The IACE and the Melodia Jones Chair in French in the

UB Department of Romance Languages are sponsoringthe UB students’ trip to France.

In addition to Horne, the UB delegation included the-atre and dance students Jane Bacon, Thomas DeTrinis,Jamie Elvey, Matthew Erickson, James Hergenroder, CateLynch, Heather Murphy, Lindsay Rogan, Dena Roncone,Kevin Smith and Chelsea Warren, and media study stu-dents: Michael Arisohn and Andrew Michaeloff. VincentO’Neill, chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance,also accompanied the group.

The students presented preview performances of“Birdbath” March 5 and 6 at the Center for the Arts,North Campus. �

Sue Wuetcher is director of periodicals and editor of the Re-porter at the Office of News Services.

20


20

NTERNATIONALE N -ROLL-MENTUP

NTERNATIONALE N -ROLL

INTE

RNAT

ION

AL A

CTI

VITI

ES

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTUREDepartment of Urban and Regional PlanningDaniel Baldwin Hess, visiting assistant professor, is an invitedspeaker at the 8th International Conference on Computers in UrbanPlanning and Urban Management. The conference is being held inMay 2003 in Sendai, Japan. The title of Hess’s talk is “ReconcilingIncompatible Zone Systems in Metropolitan Planning.”

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCESDepartment of AnthropologyGeoffrey Braswell, assistant professor, will be traveling to Belize thissemester to continue directing the Pusilha Archaeological Project,supported by the National Science Foundation. The project is study-ing the political and economic history of an ancient polity in thesoutheastern periphery of the Maya region.

Robert K. Dentan, professor, gave a talk “Islamizing Malaysian In-digenous Peoples” at the University of Leiden, Netherlands in Feb-ruary 2002. At the university, he also served as an invited “oppo-nent” to Ph.D. thesis on Semai. In fall 2002 Dentan was a visitingprofessor at the University of Helsinki, where he participated in aninternational seminar on Bornean ethnography and taught two ad-vanced courses on Southeast Asia. During the fall, he also gave a talkat the University of Uppsala, Sweden on Malaysian indigenes, andserved as invited “opponent” to Ph.D. thesis on Caribbean religion.Dentan has several publications in press: “Ethnocide Malaysian Style:Turning Aborigines into Malays.” In Legislating Modernity, Christo-pher Duncan, ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University of Press ,(with KirkEndicott); and “Ideas Redeem but Political Memories Do Run Short:Islamicization in Malaysia.” In the journal Social Justice: Anthropol-ogy, Peace and Human Rights. Dentan recently published “Disrepu-table Magicians, the Dark Destroyer, and the Trickster Lord.” AsianAnthropology 1 (2002): 153-194; “Against the Kingdom of the Beast:An Introduction to Semai Theology, Pre-Aryan Religion and the Dy-namics of Abjection.” In Tribal Communities in the Malay World:Historical, Cultural and Social Perspectives, Geoffrey Benjamin andCynthia Lau eds., Leiden and Singapore: International Institute forAsian Studies, 2002): 206-236. Also in press are “How the Androgy-nous Bird God Brought Agriculture to Semai of West Malaysia: Disci-pline, Hard Work and Subordination to the Cycle of Time.” In PierreLe Roux, Christian Coiffier and Bernard Sellato, eds., Les MessagersDivins: Aspects Esthetiques et Symboliques des Oiseauxen Asie du Sud-Est. Aix-en-Provence/Marseille:Presse de l’Universite de Provenceand Paris:Editions SevenOrients; “Semai Traditions.” In The Encyclo-pedia of Malaysia, vol. 10: Peoples and Traditions. Kuala Lumpur:Editions Didier Millet; “Cautious, Alert, Polite and Elusive: TheSemai. of Central Peninsular Malaysia” In Kemp, Graham, and Dou-glas Fry, eds. Keeping the Peace: Lessons from Peaceful Societies. (Lon-don: Routledge); and “Maarit Laitinen. Marching to Zion:Creolisation in Spiritual Baptist Ritual and Cosmology.“ ResearchSeries in Anthropology, University of Helsinki. Suomen Antropologi.

Barbara Tedlock, UB Distinguished Research Professor, will be inBeijing, China and Mongolia for three weeks in July 2003, attendingan international meeting and researching indigenous healers.

Tina Thurston, assistant professor, was in Denmark in March 2003doing an archaeological survey and research in connection with herThy Archaeological Project, which has been funded by the NationalScience Foundation since 1998. Her research concerns the unificationof several chiefdoms into a nation-state in Denmark from the eighthto the twelfth century. She was accompanied by graduate studentsfrom University College, London; the University of Copenhagen, andstaff from the UB Archaeological Survey. She will return there in July2003, with a group including several University at Buffalo under-graduates (see page 15), to begin excavations of a Viking Age elite’s“hall,” which will give insight into when and how centralized

rulership was first manifested in the formerly autonomous chiefdoms.

Department of ArtMillie Chen, assistant professor, will be an artist-in-residence at LaCité Internationale des Arts in Paris this summer, sponsored throughthe Canada Council for the Arts. In addition, Chen and Paul Vanouseand Andrew Johnson, also assistant professors in the department,and members of the collaborative team, “PED,” participated in thesecond exhibition of “PED” last December at the International Per-formance Art Festival in Belfast, Northern Ireland. “PED” is an inter-active, site-specific, performance project in which viewers/partici-pants embark on talking-bicycle lecture tours. “PED” debuted in theUB Art Gallery in Spring 2001.

Elka Kazmierczak, assistant professor, and Peter Storkerson, aformer Faculty member, are organizing an interdisciplinary, interna-tional, and participatory working symposium Preparing for the Fu-ture of Knowledge Presentation, on May 30-31, 2003 at Illinois Insti-tute of Technology, Chicago, IL. The symposium is presented underthe auspices of the International Institute for Information Design,Vienna, Austria and the Institute of Design at IIT. This event is struc-tured with two keynote addresses and sequential presentations withmoderated discussions covering the following 5 themes: (1) Com-munication & Conceptualization - how people understand, (2) Mak-ing Information Flow - matching information to human activities, (3)Identifying User Needs - putting knowledge in context, (4) NewMedia, New Contexts, New Knowledge - preparing for the futureof knowledge presentation, and (5) Building Collaboration - theExpert Group for Knowledge Presentation. Participants are invitedfrom multiple disciplines including, but not limited to informationscience, knowledge management, education, psychology, social sci-ence, finance, artificial intelligence, and other information special-izations.

Asian Studies ProgramThomas W. Burkman, research professor and director, was a Visit-ing Research Professor at Seijo University in Tokyo, July and August2002. He conducted research on the League of Nations Associationof Japan. During his visit, he also represented UB at the 40th anniver-sary celebration of the Buffalo-Kanazawa sister-city tie

Department of ChemistryRobert Coburn, professor, was an invited lecturer at the 5th Interna-tional Symposium on Innovations in Pharmaceutical Sciences andTechnology, February 1-3, 2003, Mumbai, India. In conjunction withthis meeting he also served as one of the international faculty pre-senting a pre-conference 3-day short course on Drug Discovery, Jan29-31.

Department of EnglishRaymond Federman, emeritus SUNY Distinguished Professor andformer Melodia Jones Chair in French, was one of four of the century’spioneering authors and critical theorists who were honored recentlyby the president of Romania for their lifetime achievements in litera-ture. The awards were made at the International Festival of Writersheld in Costantza, Romania. Federman shared the stage with AlainRobbe-Grillet, considered one of the most innovative filmmakersand writers of the 20th century; Michel Deguy, an outstanding figurein modern French literature, and the distinguished Franco-Spanishphilosopher and poet Jorge Semprum. He has published two newbooks, “The Twilight of the Bums” and “Mon corps en neuf parties.”

Department of GeographyHugh Calkins, professor, was awarded a Fulbright Senior Special-ists grant in Urban Planning at the Joint Laboratory forGeoInformation Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, dur-ing the spring 2003 semester. The Fulbright Senior Specialists Pro-

INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITIES OF FACULTY AND STAFF

21


21

INTE

RNAT

ION

AL A

CTI

VITI

ES

gram offers two- to six-week grants to leading U.S. academics andprofessionals to support curricular and faculty development andinstitutional planning at academic institutions in 140 countriesaround the world.

Jessie P.H. Poon, associate professor, will be in Taiwan and SouthKorea from May to July 2003 interviewing firms for a research projecttitled “Asian Foreign Investment in the US: A Firm-Level Study ofTechnology Acquisition and Transfer,” which is funded by a NationalScience Foundation grant.

Department of HistoryHelju Aulik Bennett, professor, gave a paper “Russian Political Cul-ture: Investigating the Sources of its Differences from the West” atthe Baltic Conference held at the University of Tartu, Estonia in June2001.

Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, associate professor, was invited as a dis-tinguished speaker to present at two recent seminars in Europe. Hegave a talk “On Creolization, Hybridity, Mongrolization, andMestizaje. Pondering Narratives on Latin American Colonial His-tory” at the International Seminar on Creolization at University Col-lege in London, England in June 2002. In April 2002, he presented“Modern Ethnographers or Postcolonialists ‘avant la lettre’? Eigh-teenth-Century Clerical Critiques of Travel Accounts in ColonialSpanish America,” at the Instituto Universitario Europeo (EuropeanUniversity) in Florence, Italy. In July 2001, he was an invited speakerat the conference La evolución histórica de la España moderna, whichwas held at the Fundación Duques de Soria in Soria, Spain. His talkwas titled “Ideas sobre la decadencia en la Ilustración española.”

Department of Media Study“E-Poetry 2003: An International Digital Poetry Festival,” the secondevent in the acclaimed E-Poetry series inaugurated at UB in April2001, will be held April 23-26, 2003 at West Virginia University. Thefestival is co-sponsored by the Electronic Poetry Center at UB and theCenter for Literary Computing at WVU. The E-Poetry series, directedby Loss Pequeño Glazier, associate professor and director of theElectronic Poetry Center, provides artists with an opportunity toengage the state of their art and advance its possibilities throughdialogue, performance and peer interaction.

Department of MusicFlutist Cheryl Gobbetti Hoffman, adjunct assistant professor, wasinvited to premiere contemporary chamber music at the 8th WorldHarp Congress held in July 2002 in Geneva, Switzerland. Gobbetti-Hoffman, along with UB colleague and saxophonist Susan Fancherand harpist Sonja Inglefield of the Baltimore Opera and JohnsHopkins’ Peabody Institute of Music, were invited to present worksby emerging composers Alejandro Rutty (Ph.D., University at Buf-falo) and Mark Engebretson (D.M.A., Northwestern University).

Department of PhilosophyKah Kyung Cho, Distinguished Service Professor, was invited as anOutside Reviewer of the Reform Program, Faculty of Letters, OsakaUniversity, November 26-29, 2002, Osaka, Japan. The result waspublished by the Council on University Reform, Osaka University,January 2003. Cho published “Chiastic Logic in Watsuji Tetsuro’sClimatology” in Metaphysica, Osaka, Japan: February 2003): 1-22.He contributed the entry on “Marvin Farber” to the Dictionary ofModern American Philosophers 1860-1960, Thoemmes Press, Bristol,United Kingdom, 2003. Cho has been invited to contribute to thevolume, Comparative Research of Educating Philosophy, Toyo Univer-sity, Tokyo 2003 (contributors include Strawson, Dummett, Danto,Derrida, Theunissen, Waldenfels). Cho’s article “Husserl’s LogicalInvestigations at the Crossroad between Constitution and Analysis,”was published in Japanese in Phenomenology of Mediality, Tokyo,

Japan, 2002): 349-361. Cho contributed “Phenomenology and East-ern Thought,” to Listen Lectures in Beida, (Beijing: Beijing UniversityPress, 2002): 163-174.

As a senior researcher on the research project “The Dual Nature ofTechnological Objects” (Delft, The Netherlands) funded by NWO(NSF, The Netherlands), Randall R. Dipert, C.S. Peirce Professor ofAmerican Philosophy, gave two talks at the University of Leipzig(June 2002) on “Sets, Graphs and Metaphysical Structure” and “TheNature of Artifacts,” and one at the Technische Universität Berlin onthe structure of artifacts. Also in June, he visited Supreme Head-quarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Mons, Belgium to takepart in discussions on military ethics. In July 2002 he gave a mainaddress, “Pythagoreanism and Explanation in Science and Philoso-phy” at a conference at the University of Karlsruhe (Germany) on theoccasion of the retirement of Wolfgang Breidert.

Peter H. Hare, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, de-livered a lecture on “Charles Peirce and Philosophy Today,,” to thePhilosophy Department of University College, Dublin, Ireland, inNovember 2002. During a visit to the former Yugoslavia in April2003, Hare gave a lecture on “The American Mind” at the Serbian-American Center, Belgrade; and a lecture on “Truth and AmericanPragmatism Today” to the Philosophy Department of the Universityof Belgrade.

Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy (Cornell, 1999) by CarolynKorsmeyer, professor, was translated into Spanish under the title ElSentido del Gusto: Comidia, estética y filosofía, (Barcelona: Paidós,2002). As a result of this publication, she was invited to write anarticle for the cultural supplement of La Vanguardia, a newspaperpublished out of Barcelona.

James Lawler, professor, is president of the Society for the Philo-sophical Study of Marxism, which is a member of the InternationalFederation of Philosophical Societies. He is currently organizingthree Round Tables at the World Congress of Philosophy, in Istanbul,Turkey, August 10-17 (1. Socialism and the Market in the 21st Cen-tury; 2. Toward a 21st Century Marxism of the New Global Age; 3.Secular Humanism and World Religions Converging Toward a Glo-bal Humanity).

Barry Smith, Julian Park Professor, continues to serve as Director ofthe Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Sciencein the University of Leipzig under the auspices of the Wolfgang PaulPrize Program of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He de-livered a plenary lecture at the XVIIIth International Congress of theEuropean Federation for Medical Information in St. Malo, Franceand has presented papers at conferences in Austria, England, Fin-land, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland and also at the De-partment of Computing of Imperial College, London. In addition,he has given courses in ontology in Copenhagen and Germany, andis currently collaborating with the Belgian company Language andComputing on testing the degree to which the application of meth-ods of philosophical ontology can yield to increased efficiency ofmedical text processing software. In April 2003, Smith organizedwith David Mark, professor of geography, and Isaac Ehrlich, UBDistinguished Professor of Finance and Managerial Economics, anNSF-sponsored international conference centered on the work ofHernando de Soto, president of the Institute for Liberty and Democ-racy (ILD) in Lima, Peru.

Stephen Wear, adjunct assistant professor, was a visiting professorat the Graduate Institute of Philosophy of National Central Univer-sity in Chung Li, Republic of China (Taiwan) from July 3-August 4,2002. During that time Wear gave various lectures and grandrounds, and participated in many case conferences at health care

22


22

INTE

RNAT

ION

AL A

CTI

VITI

ES

facilities in the Chung Li/Taipei area. He also collaborated on vari-ous research projects roughly focused in the area of ethics commit-tees and bedside ethics consulting with people at the Institute, andphysician and nursing faculty at the Yang Ming School of Medicine inTaipei.

Jiyuan Yu, associate professor, presented the paper “Happiness:Socrates’ Life and Aristotle’s Theory,” at the Department of Philoso-phy of Guelph University in Canada in October 2002, and also at theDepartment of Philosophy of Queen’s University at Kingston,Canada, in January 2003. Yu has been invited to give a paper on therelation between Aristotle and Anaxagoras at a conference to heldat Brock University in Canada in March 2003; and to give a paper onthe metaphysical foundation of Aristotelian ethics at a conference atBeijing University, China in May 2003.

Department PhysicsSurajit Sen, associate professor, is the lead organizer of the work-shop “Peer-Reviewed, Online K-12 Science Education: A FeasibilityStudy,” to be conducted at the National Environmental EngineeringResearch Institute in Nagpur, India in July 2003. The workshop willbring together distinguished researchers and science educators fromSouth Asia and the United States to assess the feasibility and impactof online K-12 schools to promote scientific illiteracy in rural commu-nities in India and other South Asian countries.

Department of Political ScienceClaude E. Welch, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor, addressedthe World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations(WANGO) during the organization’s annual meeting held recentlyin Washington, D.C. Welch presented his reflections on the impact ofnon-governmental organizations on human rights throughout theworld and chaired a 90-minute panel on that topic. WANGO is aninternational membership organization of NGOs worldwide thatare united in the cause of advancing peace and well-being.

Department of PsychologyJack Meacham, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor, currently aFulbright scholar at the University of Sarajevo, delivered severallectures on “Religious Pluralism in the United States of America:Realistic or Idealistic?” while in Sarajevo. He spoke at the School ofIslamic Sciences—the oldest educational institution in SoutheastEurope—as well as at the Bosniak Institute, a research institute es-tablished to promote the cultural heritage, scientific and artisticactivities of the Bosniaks, as well as other peoples with whom theBosniaks have lived.

Department of Romance Languages and LiteraturesWorld Languages InstituteMark A. Ashwill, director and Fulbright Program Adviser, authored“Vietnamese Students: A Force for Renewal,” which appeared in aMay 2002 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. He was a mem-ber of a panel discussion, “A Bi-Continental Review of Factors Im-pacting Student Flows from Asia,” at the 2002 NAFSA annual confer-ence in San Antonio, Texas. In August 2002, Ashwill made a presen-tation at the University of New Orleans entitled “E-Business Japa-nese: The Benefits of Hybrid Distance Learning,” based on a cross-cultural and language training program he developed two yearsago. In fall 2002, he became certified to administer the InterculturalDevelopment Inventory (IDI), a survey developed by Milton J.Bennett that measures intercultural sensitivity and competence.

Department of SociologyMichael P. Farrell, professor and chair, co-authored a paper with hisstudent, En-Ling Pan, that was presented at the International Con-ference on Intergenerational Relations over the Family Life Course inTaipei, Taiwan in March 2003. The conference was sponsored by the

Committee on Family Research, International Sociological Associa-tion, and The Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica in Taipei. Thetitle of the paper was "Ethnic Difference in the Effects of FamilyStructure on Adolescent WellBeing."

Department of Theatre and DanceKazimierz Braun, professor, was elected president of the PolishCultural Foundation at the general meeting of the membership inNovember 2002. The foundation seeks to promote and support Pol-ish culture, language, arts, and national heritage in the U.S.

SCHOOL OF DENTAL MEDICINEDepartment of Periodontics and EndodonticsSebastian G. Ciancio, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor, andRobert J. Genco, SUNY Distinguished Professor and chair of theDepartment of Oral Biology,and vice provost and director of theOffice of Science, Technology Transfer and Economic Outreach(STOR), participated in a symposium held recently at the WorldHealth Organization in Geneva Switzerland. The symposium, en-titled “Periodontal Medicine: Health Policy Implications,” was or-ganized by the Sunstar Foundation for Oral Health Promotion. Theunderlying theme of the symposium is the impact of periodontaldisease on systemic health.

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATIONDepartment of Counseling, School and Educational PsychologyLeAdelle Phelps, professor of school psychology, will be represent-ing the American Psychological Association’s Committee on Accredi-tation at the Trilateral Forum, a commission that studies psychologylicensure reciprocity issues in Canada, Mexico, and the United States.

SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCESDepartment of Mechanical and Aerospace EngineeringDeborah D.L. Chung, Endowed Chair Professor of Materials, is amember of the Local Scientific Committee of the 14th nternationalConference on Composite Materials (the largest conference on com-posite materials in the world), to be held in San Diego, California, inJuly 2003. Chung’s new book book Composite Materials: FunctionalMaterials for Modern Technologies was published by Springer (Lon-don, UK) in January 2003. Chung served as host (master of cer-emony) in the Christmas Celebration (concert) of Kingston College,Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada in December 2002. She led thesinging of the Canadian National Anthem (O Canada) in the 10thAnniversary Banquet Gala of the Taiwan Entrepreneurs Society ofToronto in Markham, Ontario in January 2003. She gave a solo con-cert at Shepherd Village Retirement Residences in Scarborough,Ontario in January 2003.

SCHOOL OF INFORMATICSDepartment of CommunicationJunhao Hong, associate professor, conducted several researchprojects on media and communication in China and Hong Kongduring his sabbatical in 2002 as a visiting professor at the School ofJournalism and Communication, The Chinese University of HongKong. He served as an international advisor for organizing the Inter-national Conference on Communication, Culture, and InternationalRelations, which was held in Beijing, China, April 2002. Also, hepresented papers at the following conferences, all in 2002: “Interna-tional Communication Research by Chinese Scholars: Progress, Prob-lems, and Prospects” at the International Conference on Communi-cation, Culture, and International Relations, Beijing, China in April;“A New Function of Television in China: Television As A Public Fo-rum” at the International Association for Mass Communication Re-search (IAMCR) Conference, Barcelona, Spain in July; and “ThroughLocalization to Globalization: The Theoretical Implications of theDevelopment of STAR TV” at the International Conference on Com-munication Globalization, Localization, and Indigenization in Taipei,

23


Office of the Vice Provost forInternational Education(716) 645-2368, 645-2528 (Fax)[email protected]://www.buffalo.edu/intledDr. Stephen C. Dunnett

Vice ProvostMr. Timothy J. Rutenber

Associate Vice ProvostMs. Marvis Robinson

Financial Resource OfficerMr. Elia Widjaja

Manager, Information Systems

International EnrollmentManagement(716) 645-2368, 645-2528 (Fax)[email protected]. Joseph J. Hindrawan

Assistant Vice Provost and DirectorMr. Raymond Lew

Assistant to the Director

International Admissions(716) 645-2368, 645-2528 (Fax)[email protected]. Steven L. Shaw

DirectorMs. Elizabeth A. White

Assistant DirectorMs. Jill M. Szczesek

Admissions Advisor

International Student and ScholarServices(716) 645-2258, 645-6197 (Fax)[email protected]. Ellen A. Dussourd

DirectorMs. Maria R. Rosciglione

Immigration SpecialistMs. Jennifer J. Chazen

International Student AdvisorMr. Eric E. Comins

International Student AdvisorMs. Mary Jean Zajac

Paralegal

Study Abroad Programs(716) 645-3912, 645-6197 (Fax)[email protected]. Sandra J. Flash

DirectorMs. Rhona D. Cadenhead-Hames

Study Abroad Advisor

Council on International Studiesand Programs(716) 645-2368, 645-2528 (Fax)Dr. Barbara B. Bunker

Chair

Fulbright Program(716) 645-2292, 645-2293 (Fax)Dr. Mark A. Ashwill

Fulbright Advisor

D I R E C T O R Y 23

DIR

ECTO

RY

Taiwan in November. In March 2003, Honghosted Jin Canrong, a political science pro-fessor from Renmin University of China, UB'spartner university in Beijing, for a visit to UB.Jin gave guest lectures on Sino-American re-lations in courses in the departments of com-munication and history. The Asian Studiesprogram, which sponsored Jin’s visit, also aninformal lunchtime conversation with Jin.

SCHOOL OF MEDICINE ANDBIOMEDICAL SCIENCESDepartment of SurgeryDon W.D. Collure, clinical associate profes-sor of surgery and emergency medicine,delivered a lecture on “Pre-Hospital TraumaCare” to the faculty, surgical residents, andmedical students from the Department ofSurgery at the Faculty of Medicine, Univer-sity of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka in November2002. The availability of pre-hospital care islimited in Sri Lanka following decades ofcivil war, so supplies, transport, and com-munication are inadequate. Collure hadearlier conducted a course on the “InitialManagement of Trauma,” in February 2001,

INTERNATIONALACTIVITIEScontinued from page 22

under the auspices of the College of Sur-geons of Sri Lanka. His trip to Sri Lanka todeliver the lecture was funded in part by anIndividual Development Award from UnitedUniversity Professionals.

Constantine P. Karakousis, professor, gavea presentation “Metastasectomy in Malig-nant Melanoma” at the 1st Panhellenic Con-gress of Malignant Melanoma in Athens,Greece in September 2002. He developedan affiliation between Euroclinic of Athens,Greece and the Department of Surgery atMillard Fillmore Hospital in Buffalo to haveKarakousis and his staff provide consultativesupport, review of radiological studies, andother patient and laboratory data reviewfor agreed-upon fees. Karakousis recentlypublished several articles in Greek medicaljournals, all in 2002: “Operations on ChestWall Tumors,” co-authored by PanagiotisPanacgiopoulos, in Oncology Update; “De-velopments in Surgical Oncology” in Oncol-ogy Update; and “Developments in the Di-agnosis and Treatment of Cancer” inMessinian Medical Chronicles.

NEW SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM FORINTERNATIONAL FRESHMEN

Beginning in fall 2003, qualifiedinternational freshmen admit-ted to UB will be eligible for re-

newable $2,500 merit scholarships,the Office of International EnrollmentManagement (IEM) has announced.

“The new scholarships will help usincrease our pool of highly qualifiedfreshmen applicants and eventuallyenable us to diversify our interna-tional enrollment,” said Joseph J.Hindrawan, director of IEM and assis-tant vice provost for international edu-cation.

“In particular, we hope the schol-arships will increase the number offreshmen that we enroll fromCanada,” Hindrawan said.

“The new scholarship program ispart of a comprehensive international

recruitment effort aimed not only atincreasing numbers of internationalstudents but also ensuring that thesestudents have excellent academicqualifications.

“A trend we are seeing in somecountries, especially in Asia, is for stu-dents to defer their studies in theUnited States until they have com-pleted one or more years of highereducation in their own countries. Thisis both more affordable and moreappealing for students’ parents, whoprefer their children to study at homefor the first few years,” he added.

Scholarship awardees will be ableto receive the $2,500 annually for upto four years as long as they continueto meet high academic standardsduring their studies at UB. �

UB INTERNATIONAL

Office of International Education

University at Buffalo

The State University of New York

411 Capen Hall

Buffalo, NY 14260-1604

U.S.A.

Non-Profit Org.

U.S. Postage

PAID

Buffalo, NY

Permit No. 311

� UB INTERNATIONAL

is published twice yearly by the

Office of International Education

of the University at Buffalo,

The State University of New York.

John J. Wood, Editor

RUTENBER TO RECEIVE CHANCELLOR'S AWARD

Timothy J. Rutenber, associatevice provost for internationaleducation, is to receive the

Chancellor’s Award for Excellence inProfessional Service for 2002-2003. Hewill be presented with the award atthe Professional Staff Senate's AnnualAwards Luncheon on May 21.

The Chancellor's Awards provideSUNY-wide recognition for superlativeperformance and outstandingachievement by professional serviceemployees. The recipients are indi-viduals who embody SUNY’s higheststandards and who inspire and serveas role models for the entire univer-sity community.

"We are delighted that Tim is be-ing honored by SUNY for his out-standing service to UB, the State Uni-versity, and the field of internationaleducation," said Stephen C. Dunnett,professor and vice provost for inter-national education. "Tim is a great as-set to the university, and no one ismore deserving of this award than heis," Dunnett said.

A UB staff member since 1987,Rutenber serves as chief operatingofficer for the Office of the Vice Pro-vost for International Education. Asthe vice provost's deputy, he was act-ing vice provost in spring 1999 whenDunnett was on sabbatical leave.

Reporting to the associate viceprovost are the directors of the majorfunctional areas of international edu-cation: International Enrollment Man-agement, Overseas Sponsored Pro-grams, International Student andScholar Services, and Study Abroadand Exchange Programs.

Rutenber is responsible for inte-grating the operations of all units ofthe Office of International Education,providing effective personnel admin-istration and fiscal management, and

facilitating and supporting externally-sponsored international activities.

Since 1999, Rutenber has alsoserved as Director of the Secretariatand Treasurer for the Association ofInternational Education Administra-tors (AIEA), a membership organiza-tion formed in 1982 of institutionalleaders engaged in advancing the in-ternational dimension of higher edu-cation. The AIEA Secretariat is theassociation’s coordinating office.

Along with the other Chancellor'sAwardees, Rutenber will receive acertificate and an inscribed medal-lion, and will be recognized in futureeditions of University at Buffalo cata-logues by the addition after theirnames of the phrase “State Univer-sity Chancellor’s Award for Excellencein Professional Service.” �

Documents

OFFICE OF INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO …inted.oie.buffalo.edu/news/ubints03.pdf · UB INTERNATIONAL OFFICE OF INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO Thomas