IFW Seeks Award Applications
Initiatives For Women is now accepting applications for the fifth round of Initiatives for Women Awards. The competition is open to any person or group affiliated with the University who supports or is working toward the advancement of women or women’s concerns. Applications are available in AD 301 or by calling Diane Cardone at 442-5415. Deadline for receipt of applications is March 9.
Award recipients from previous years include an undergraduate student who needed books and printmaking material for an art course; a University staff member who wanted financial support to register for an additional undergraduate course; a group of faculty and librarians for a project to create a video series titled “Seeing Women Transnationally;” and a Ph.D. student to support her research on women in politics, especially women in Congress.
Anyone who has a project or need that is appropriate is strongly encouraged to apply.
Holiday With Heat
This year’s 1997-98 Campus Holiday Voluntary Leave Program will discontinue its energy savings component in order to address research concerns.
According to Executive Vice President Carl Carlucci, several faculty members and graduate students over the six-year term of the program have voiced the need to continue their research during the shutdown. “Accordingly,” he said, “all buildings on campus will remain heated during the period Dec. 20 to Jan. 4.”
Mindful, however, that the shutdown has afforded employees an opportunity to schedule vacation leaves without fear of a conflict, the University will maintain a liberal leave policy during the period. Offices that are able to do so are encouraged to allow employees to take vacation or leave without pay during the period, and even close on some or all of those days if the services normally performed permit such action.
“Since it is anticipated that most employees will choose to be on leave during the period,” said Carlucci, “the food service areas in the Campus Center will not be open from the close of business December 20 until the beginning of business on Jan. 5.” Paycheck distribution on Dec. 24 will be normal for Administration Building, Physical Plant and School of Public Health employees. Other Uptown Campus people can pick up checks from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in AD 322 on Dec. 24, 29-31, and Jan. 2. Downtown employees can get theirs in Draper 112 from 9 a.m. to noon on Dec. 24, and after that at the Uptown location and times.
“In essence,” he said, “the University will still ‘stand down’ from an operational perspective. However since buildings will remain heated, we will not need to resort to those measures required in the past to accommodate offices that must remain open, or employees who choose not to take leave.”
French Students Visit Quebec
Graduate students in Professor Eloise Briere’s seminar on Quebec in the Department of French Studies met in Montreal with representatives of Quebec’s Liberal and Parti Quebecois parties and visited headquarters of l’Office de la Langue Francaise for a program on the province’s language policies. They also met with writer/scholar Lori St. Martin at the University of Quebec.
Students Safe in Fire
On Tuesday, Nov. 18, a fire broke out in the early morning hours in an Albany house inhabited by four members of the University’s chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. All escaped without injury, although there was extensive damage to the house.
The students were immediately offered two weeks of free room and board on campus, plus low-cost loans to replace furniture and school materials.
First Ph.D. in French Studies
Louise Charbonneau, a doctoral candidate in French Studies and a former Presidential Fellow, has defended her dissertation on “L’Emprunt lexical et le transfert linguistique a l’anglais dans une communaute franco-americaine du Vermont.” Charbonneau is the first student to come out of the new Ph.D. program in the Department of French Studies.