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The Campaign for Binghamton University Surpasses $36 Million Goal
For more information, please visit the
Campaign's webpage for links to videos, stories, and photographs
of the announcement. |
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This is a periodic feature of the Harpur Hotline and will answer questions on a variety of topics. U.S. News & World Report recently rated Binghamton University 28th among public universities, a five point jump from last year! This is the fifth year in a row that Binghamton has ranked among the elite top 50. The Dean's Campaign begins soon and alumni contributions to this important endeavor can actually boost BU's ratings further. Dean Mileur explains how: Q. What is the effect of the US News & World Report's rankings on alumni? A. Rankings have a profound effect. Prospective employers, coworkers, and other acquaintances often view your degree and judge your qualifications based on the reputation of the school you attended. Rankings are particularly important for our younger alumni because they are still trying to establish themselves professionally. So people tend to rely more heavily on things like where they went to school and how they did academically. Q. Why is alumni participation counted towards rankings? A. Alumni participation is the number of alumni who donate money to their alma mater. Rightly or wrongly, US News & World Report and other ranking agencies assume that the number of alumni who give is a measure of satisfaction. The more satisfied alumni are with the education they've had, the more likely they are to donate within their means to the school. It's a shorthand way of getting at the complex question of after-the-fact satisfaction. Q. Why doesn't the amount matter? A. The rankings agencies understand that among alumni, the ability to give varies tremendously. If they only emphasize the amount, they're really surveying the satisfaction of people who haven't been in school for 25 or 30 years. Whereas, if rankings agencies use percentage of participation, they get a sense of how more recent graduates feel about the institution. So it's awfully important that everyone gives something, whatever they're comfortable with, regularly. Q. Why do alumni donate? A. For a whole variety of reasons. Some donate because they have a strong belief in the mission of higher education. Some alumni donate because they have done very well and want to give back to the institution. The bottom line is that alumni donate because it makes them feel good. They feel they're part of something, part of a worthwhile and ongoing project. Beyond the mere question of giving money, I think it's a trend that's going to continue. It's not just money we need. It's moral support, political influence, connections, visibility, all of those things. Universities will invest more and more in relationships, and alumni will have more and more say in the futures of the universities from which they graduated. Q. What do alumni donations to Harpur College benefit? A.
The two things most donations are spent on right now are students
and faculty. Students benefit a lot through scholarships, internships,
program enhancements, and equipment purchases, such as musical instruments
for free lessons, something most universities don't offer to enrolled
students. Faculty support benefits faculty research
and conference travel, development of state-of-the-art laboratories,
and bringing in leading scholars from other renowned universities.
Alumni donations keep Harpur College strong. |
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Alumnus Spreads Faith in Music's Healing Power
In the summer of 1995, before starting his senior year, Greenzweig began experiencing headaches in the back left side of his head. He was majoring in contemporary musicianship, an Innovational Projects Board independent study program in Harpur College that combined music with computer science. By mid-term of the fall semester, Greenzweig had also lost significant motor coordination in his left hand, the dominant one. He could no longer write legibly or play music."Onward the semester went," he said. "I attributed these symptoms to stress." In January, neurologists him that the golf ball-sized tumor removed from his cerebellum was malignant. The tumor, a medulloblastoma, is classified as an extremely rare pediatric tumor. Adult occurrences are almost unheard of. Doctors couldn't predict how long Greenzweig would live, much less when – or if– he would graduate. Greenzweig's professors were supportive, sending him homework assignments via mail and e-mail. In addition to working on the show, he said, keeping busy with these projects helped him cope with the serious side effects associated with brain surgery and radiation therapy. Doctors said there was only a 60 percent chance he would survive for five years, an arbitrary statistic. But he was against accepting that prognosis. With the assistance of his friend and director, Adam Price '96, he was able to rewrite Times Like These. The end result was a revue appropriately retitled Changing Times. While Greenzweig continued to receive therapy, Price handled the tasks of cast recruitment, logistics, Theatre Department approval, lighting coordination and set design. Greenzweig's treatment ended March 31, 1996, and, against all medical advice, he returned to school. Hairless, pale and unable to consume solid food, he attended class, picking up where he’d left off at home, and continued working with Price and a skeleton cast and crew, adding the finishing touches to Changing Times. "It was truly a miracle that everything was able to happen the way that it did. Immediately afterward, I went home to recuperate for a week until it was time to drive back for graduation on May 17 – one of the happiest days of my life." Greenzweig wishes to thank his fellow alumni and the faculty and staff of Binghamton University for their coordinated efforts in helping him to achieve his academic goals and in creating Changing Times, most notably Susan Peters, musical director in the Theatre Department; Janice McDonald, administrative assistant to the associate academic dean of Harpur College; Jane Zuckerman, assistant to the chair of the Music Department; Don Boros, associate professor of theatre; Tom Kremer, associate professor of theatre; Colleen Reardon, associate professor of music; and Al Hamme, Bartle Professor of music, for helping him to achieve his academic goals. Since June of 2001, he has focused solely on his music. His future plans are to develop a new brand identity in "inspiration therapy" and build a small record label of other inspiring artists – all of whom, so far, are Binghamton University alumni. He is scheduled to give a free concert at Homecoming 2002. "My music is dedicated to the thousands of people less fortunate than me who continue to fight for survival while keeping hope alive in mind, body and spirit, never abandoning their faith. One must maintain a strong spirit, no matter how difficult. With some visceral determination and a little bit of hope, you will find that you can surprise yourself when you least expect it. "Miracles do happen. My being here is one of them." For more information,
check out http://www.matthewzachary.com.
Ten percent of all revenue from CD sales is donated
to charities which include the American Cancer Society. |
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Harpur
College Creative Writing Program Establishes Book Awards The Creative Writing Program at Harpur College has established publishing awards to honor two former faculty members. The new John Gardner award recognizes the most outstanding book of fiction published in 2001 by a small or university press. The award honors the memory of John Gardner (1933-1982), critic, poet and novelist, and former head of the Creative Writing program at Binghamton University. Among his writings were the novels, The Sunlight Dialogues (1972), Grendel (1972) and October Light, which won the National Critic's Circle Award in 1976; a collection of short stories; children's books; poetry and criticism. The John Gardner Fiction Book contest is open to books by living
American writers published in a standard edition of 40 pages or
more in length and 500 or more copies. The winner will receive a
$1,000 award and will be invited to participate in an awards ceremony
by giving a reading of his or her work. He is attributed with founding Binghamton University's Creative Writing program. Kessler's collections of poetry include The Grand Concourse and Sailing Too Far. One of his poems, "Thanks Forever," was chosen to appear in London's subway cars to be seen by as many as 2 million riders a day as part of the "Poems on the Underground" project. The Milt Kessler Poetry Book contest is open to books of poems by living American poets published in an edition of 48 pages or more in length and 500 or more copies. The winner will receive a $1,000 award and will be invited to participate in an awards ceremony by giving a reading of his or her work. Writers and poets may submit more than one book. Three copies of each book and an application form should be sent by April 1 to: Maria Mazziotti Gillan, director, Creative Writing Program, Binghamton University, P.O. Box 6000, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000. Winners of each award will be announced in The Poets & Writers newsletter. Books entered in the competitions will be donated to the contemporary literature collection at the Binghamton University Library and to the Broome County Library. The book awards are co-sponsored by the Harpur College Dean's Office.
For more information, contact Maria Mazziotti Gillan at 607-777-2713. |
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Harpur College Dean's Workshop Series Offers Broader Perspectives On December 7, 2001, Laura Marks, associate professor of film studies, traveled from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada to to present "The Logic of Smell: Olfactory Media, Actual and Virtual," a topic that stems from her research about multi-sensory media, such as how films can represent sensory perceptions. Her teaching at Carleton focuses on gender and cinema, intercultural film, for instance, the African and Asian diasporas, and how artists create film with low-end technologies like super-8 film. She is at work on her second book on the subject.
Gail Iwamasa traveled to Binghamton from the University of Indianapolis where she is associate professor of Psychology and coordinates the Master's program. Her presentation on October 12, 2001, "Multicultural Mental Health Across the Lifespan: Implications for Clinical Psychology" discussed the need for psychological services tailored to the specific cultural needs of Asian Americans.Ê Iwamasa has written many scholarly articles on the subject of behavior therapy and cultural diversity. Marks and Iwamasa are two of many internationally renowned academics that will speak on campus throughout the year, thanks to the Harpur College Dean's Workshop Series, an innovative way to bring renowned academics to campus, share their research with our community, and get the University's name more publicity in academic circles. "These talks serve as both an exposure to research and as a career symposium for our students, and our majors seem to find them interesting and valuable," explained Valerie Brunell, coordinator of the lectures for Psychobiology. Funded by the Dean of Harpur College, Jean-Pierre Mileur, the workshops are initiated by faculty in their areas of current research. Faculty invite other academics, often whom they've met at conferences, to speak on their research areas. Many are from distant universities, our own scholars are often featured, and a few are graduate students. The Harpur College Dean's Workshop Series is unique within Binghamton University and offers students a broader perspective than what is available here on campus. Academics come from around the world to share their research interests with the students and faculty of Harpur College. "The workshops supplement undergraduate education in two basic ways," said Mileur, "The first thing they do is bring together faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates in the context of sophisticated intellectual exchange in areas where research is actually being done. The workshops provide undergraduates with an unusual degree of access to the contemporary intellectual conversation as it's experienced by people who not only transmit knowledge but create it." Faculty and students alike find the workshops very interesting and relevant. Dean Mileur funded 20 workshops for the Fall 2001 semester. Most of which are interdisciplinary, such as "Public Reason and Democratic Inclusion Social, Political, Ethical, and Legal Philosophy Workshop," sponsored by Africana Studies, Philosophy, Political Science, and Women's Studies. The workshops are always free and open to the university community, including alumni. The workshops have administrators who are awarded $4,000 to cover the speakers' travel expenses and presentation materials. Administrators spend wisely, getting the most for their money. While the Dean of Harpur College sponsors these workshops, they benefit the entire campus. They will continue throughout the semester and the Dean encourages everyone to attend. It's a wonderful benefit of being a member of this community. |
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Harpur
professor uses 'time capsules' in salt to shake up traditional views
on seawater chemistry
Tim Lowenstein, a professor of geology who specializes in low temperature geochemistry, is proving that the salt of the earth is peppered with important clues about the planet’s prehistoric past. His research has as many facets as the salt crystals he studies. It is helping to reclaim from lake sediments ancient data that could help us to better understand the indicators of worldwide climate change. It is providing new contexts for the history and evolution of ocean-dwelling plants and animals. And, as documented in an article in the November 2, 2001 issue of Science, it is debunking age-old presumptions that the chemistry of seawater has remained unchanged for the past 600 million years. "The relative amounts of salts in today’s oceans are the same everywhere," Lowenstein said. "What we’re saying is that the levels of specific salts have fluctuated over very long time frames of 100 to 200 million years, and that the fluctuations we’re documenting seem to correspond quite nicely with the fossil record indicating that certain organisms have risen and fallen with the change in seawater chemistry." Coral, the animal that comprises today’s coral reefs, for instance, builds its skeleton out of a type of calcium carbonate called aragonite, Lowenstein said. "At other times, reefs were made up of other animals, not coral, and those animals built their skeletons out of calcite." These changes correspond with the oscillations in seawater chemistry that Lowenstein and his research group have recorded. Another application of Lowenstein’s work conceivably could help to shed new light on the origins of life on this planet. Techniques developed by his research team have been key in his collaboration with colleagues at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. There researchers are working to unravel the mysteries surrounding a Methuselan bacterium that was revived in the year 2000 after surviving 250 million years entombed in salt crystals. The bacterium, dubbed 2-9-3, is a contender for the title of "the world’s oldest known organism," and seems to push back by hundreds of millions of years the timeline of life. More than that, it seems to open up the possibility that life, in the form of bacteria, could originally have been transported to Earth by meteorites. Salt crystals similar to those containing the 2-9-3 bacterium were found in a meteorite in 1999, Lowenstein said. Tapped for close to $525,000 in National Science Foundation awards over the past four years, Lowenstein received the University’s Excellence in Research award this year. He is an authority on the origin and significance of evaporites. These are sedimentary rocks composed of 50 or more saline minerals, the most common of which is halite, or common rock salt. His main research focus, however, is "fluid inclusions," small pockets of ancient seawater or other fluids that become trapped in ancient salt or rock formations. The bacterium being studied at West Chester was discovered in a fluid inclusion retrieved from a salt bed about a third of a mile beneath the earth’s surface near Carlsbad, N.M. Lowenstein this summer gathered samples from salt mines that extend hundreds of feet beneath the city of Detroit to look for inclusions that might similarly contain signs of life. Some fluid inclusions appear as bubbles large enough to be seen by the naked eye. Fluid inclusions in clear salt crystals were actually used, in fact, as the bubbles in early leveling tools, Lowenstein said. Still, most fluid inclusions are only a fraction of the width of a human hair. Until recently, this made it difficult for researchers to work with them, and no matter the results, every analysis was subject to charges that ancient fluids might have been contaminated in the process. Today, however, reliable scientific analysis of the ancient fluids is possible because of a new technique developed by Lowenstein’s research group, most notably Michael Timofeeff, Sean Brennan and microbeam specialist William Blackburn. The technique involves freezing and slicing open the inclusions and, then, using X-rays to determine their chemical composition. Using this technique to analyze the chemistry of fluid inclusions from salt crystals gathered from Australia, the Middle East and the Americas, Lowenstein and his research group are showing that the chemistry of seawater has actually oscillated back and forth, perhaps every 200 million years or so, perhaps based on major shifts in the tectonic plates. Some salt crystal samples Lowenstein has examined contained ancient seawater up to 500 or 600 million years old. "These fluid inclusions are like tiny little time capsules of sea water and sometimes of life that could have been trapped in it." Lowenstein’s work also has major implications in the study of ancient climates. Since salts are formed by evaporation, salt itself provides "beautiful records of past climates," by helping researchers determine if the climate was wetter or drier, hotter or colder, he said. More specific temperatures can be determined because fluid inclusions serve as "little thermometers," he said. Researchers can figure out the temperatures at which salts were grown by using the homogenization temperature of fluid inclusions as a gauge, he said. Increasing our knowledge of ancient climate changes could eventually help us to predict future climate changes, Lowenstein said, but it isn’t likely to do much to improve the accuracy of the weekend weather forecast. His work on samples taken from a dry basin in Bolivia indicates, for instance, shows that about 20,000 years ago, the area was the site of freshwater lake, probably hundreds of feet deep. "I guess the hope for us is that we will eventually have a better understanding of long-term records of climate change so that we can look for clues about what might be driving it." Lowenstein isn’t yet used to seeing his research reported in places like The New York Times, which ran an article referring to his work last month. But with journals, journalists and research scientists from around the world taking notice of his work, one thing seems certain: Lowenstein’s research will never again be taken with a grain of salt.
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Join our second annual Broadway Theater Party on April 18, 2002, with a pre-theater reception at Sardi's, followed by Sweet Smell of Success at the Martin Beck Theater! Tickets are limited so please reserve early. For more information, call 607-777-4278 or contact harprsvp@binghamton.edu. For
more information about the musical, check out http://www.sweetsmellthemusical.com |
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New
items coming soon! Shop the campus
bookstore from the comfort of your PC or Mac. Want to pick up a
copy of the new Harpur history book The Cornerstone? Visit...
For hats, shirts and other apparel, see http://www.bkstore.com/binghamton/merch.html
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For other Campus News, visit: http://www.binghamton.edu/home/about/default.html Back Issues: December
18, 2001 |
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The
saying "There is life after college" is more than
just a cliché to Matthew Zachary Greenzweig ’96 (a.k.a.
Matthew Zachary). He’s proof that life can go on not only after
college, but after cancer.
Check
out the Harpur mugs, the cool notecards and bumper stickers.
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This page was last updated on January 31, 2002 at 10:40a.m.