After Bill Bradley and his New York Knicks teammates lost two straight games to the Boston Celtics in the early 1970s, he received an urgent and threatening letter from a fan."Bradley, if you lose one more game to the Boston Celtics, I'm going to come to your house and kill your dog," the letter stated.
As the University Honors and University Scholars programs at UB expand to give qualified students an academic experience outside the norm, nearly one-third of incoming freshmen will receive some form of academic tuition assistance next fall - the highest number in the university's history.In keeping with the trends across the nation, UB has increased its focus on and commitment to the honors programs and to the students they recruit."Our goal has always been to open up honors, and to open up our university for students," said Josephine Capuana, administrative director of the University Honors Program.
For an institution where an emphasis is supposedly placed on a cooperative spirit of learning, college can be one of the most competitive environments one faces in life.
UB officially brought Michael Dell and more than 2,000 of his company's computers into its high-tech bioinformatics project Tuesday, creating a $13 million supercomputer that is likely the third most powerful in the world.The interconnected Dell PowerEdge servers are the latest addition to the university's Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and the Center for Computational Research, which has secured $61 million in funding in this year's state budget and has attracted approximately $290 million from government and commercial partners over the last two years.More than 80,000 pounds of hardware have been installed in a former food services space in Norton Hall, just 90 days after signing a purchase contract with Dell Computer Corporation.
It's a quiet Tuesday night at Broadway Joe's, a small Main Street bar on the southern edge of the University Heights district.
Trying to access mathematics professor John Ringland's university Web site using Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser software returns the following error message:"You are using software from a company that does not conform to reasonable standards of civilized behavior.
A resolution up for consideration at Tuesday's Faculty Senate meeting has garnered wide support from UB faculty frustrated with the software used to manage research at UB.The resolution, which deems the more than $20 million installation of the OASIS project by the SUNY Research Foundation "a disaster," asks the president and provost to communicate the software's shortcomings to the SUNY Research Foundation and either improve or abandon the software altogether.OASIS, the Oracle Application Software Implementation Strategy that links SUNY's four research centers, is based on Oracle's database application software, which has been implemented in similar systems by Yale, Carnegie Mellon and other universities.
The Lee Road project, which promises to provide the communal environment many believe has long been missing from North Campus, may also become home to UB's Campus Club, a long-standing but little known gathering place for UB's faculty and professional staff.For a period after its creation in 1953, UB's Faculty Club had around 700 active members who regularly met for lunch in South Campus' Beck Hall, invited guest speakers to monthly events and were greeted by a full-time receptionist seated outside the club.
John Duffy, a senior majoring in computer engineering at UB, wasn't especially worried when the University Police arrived at a party he and his South Lake Village roommates threw at their apartment the weekend before fall classes started."You come from living in the dorms, it's a bit more rowdy there and hardly anybody gets written up," said Duffy.
Tensions were high at the first open forum for Student Association and New York State Student Assembly candidates, which pitted the incumbent Results Party against the UB Students' Party challengers.During the nearly two-and-a-half-hour meeting, candidates addressed a gathering of about 40 students, the majority of whom were representatives from academic and engineering clubs.While the Results Party seemed at ease fielding softball questions concerning recent successes and future goals, the UB Students' candidates were heavily questioned, forcing them to defend their platform."Half those in attendance work with the staff currently running," said Erica Diaz, treasurer for UB's Society of Professional Hispanic Engineers chapter.
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