SEFA Campaign/United Way 1997-98
Progress as of 11/25/97
# Contributing Unit Goal Collections % of Goal Employees President's Office $1,600 $1,634 102% 9 Academic Affairs VP & Support Units $4,400 $2,787 63% 26 College of Arts & Science $20,500 $9,816.20 48% 65 Rockefeller College $7,300 $6,340 87% 40 Business $2,700 $1,919 71% 15 Education $6,300 $5,182.80 82% 27 Public Health $2,600 $1,089 42% 8 Libraries/Info Sys $8,100 $5,627 69% 40 Total for Academic Affairs $51,900 $32,761 63% 221 Finance & Business $6,400 $3,885.60 61% 40 University Auxiliary $600 $468 78% 2 Research & Grad Studies $4,500 $2,710 60% 18 Student Affairs $5,700 $4,721 83% 40 University Advancement $2,200 $1,052 48% 9 Other $2,100 $428 20% 4 Total $75,000 $47,660 64% 343
UPD Says Gotcha to Theft
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On Nov. 30, the University Police Department (UPD) initiated an Anti-Theft Outreach Program. In an effort to remind people not to leave their belongings unattended, UPD officers will be handing out flyers and posters as well as sending email to students, faculty and staff.
In addition, the officers will be distributing gotcha tagsfor placing on unattended purses or other items to remind the owner that someone could have taken the item. UPD also will assign additional personnel during the month of December since thefts tend to rise as the Christmas season approaches.
Theft represents more than 30 percent of all crime reported to UPD. And more than 30 percent of these thefts are the result of belongings left unwatched. It is hoped that by reminding the University community of the importance of securing its property, we might prevent much of the theft that occurs during this time of year, said UPD Chief Frank Wiley.
The theft outreach initiative is part of UPDs community policing system. Among the new programs in this system are the Client Satisfaction Survey, given to anyone who has contact with UPD, and the Park, Walk and Talk program, where officers get out of their patrol cars and interact more with people.
Delano to Tell December Grads of Post-Cold War Challenges
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The University will hold its December Graduates Assembly on Sunday, Dec. 7, at 1 p.m. in the RACC. John Delano, chairman of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, will deliver the Commencement Address, entitled Yet Another Crossroads.
Delano describes his topic this way: Many individuals, institutions, and nations find themselves today at yet another crossroads. All are attempting to understand their roles, responsibilities, and opportunities in the post-Cold War era. In charting a course into the future, it is important to boldly and explicitly identify our values and our strengths.
While facing challenges of the current magnitude is not easy, and success is not assured, it is important to be optimistic, and to be guided by axioms and principles provided to us by those who have succeeded in the past. Some of those axioms and principles will be discussed in the context of how they may assist us at this, and future, crossroads in life.
Delano, an associate professor of geochemistry and an expert on planetary exploration, received his Ph.D. in geochemistry from the University at Stony Brook. A recipient of the Chancellors Award for Excellence in Teaching, his research deals with topics such as chemical analysis of lunar samples, development of geochemical methods of precise time-resolution of biological and tectonic events in the geological record, and constraints on the origin of life.
In addition to serving on the editorial board of the professional journal Geology, he has served on four advisory panels for NASA. The author of more than 50 scientific publications, Delano is a member of the Geochemical Society, Sigma Xi, and the Geological Society of America.
According to Jessica Casey, director of Student Activities, approximately 500 undergraduates are eligible to graduate in December this year and more than 325 are expected to participate in the December ceremony.
She finds Support Systems to Bring Equity to Education Worldwide
By John LeMay
Locally and globally, Frances Kemmerer, an associate professor in the School of Educations Department of Educational Administration and Policy Studies (EAPS), has become a major voice in the financing and development of education systems.
She is one of the three or four most outstanding people working today in the economics and international financing of education, said Douglas Windham, a professor in the department and a close associate of Kemmerers.
Kemmerer has travelled throughout the developing world, to places as diverse as Haiti, Somalia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, to mention a few, as an advisor on the financing and administering of schools, colleges and universities. She works under contract to a variety of institutions, including branches of the UN like the World Bank and UNICEF; agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); and the Asian Development Bank, based in Manila.
She has also studied the financing of education here in New York State. During the mid-eighties, she undertook a project with Fred Dembowski, now chair of EAPS, to study tax-base and funding allocation schemes in New York. This work was done on behalf of the New York State Senates Education Finance Committee.
A first glance at Kemmerers resume, however, may yield a puzzled response: before she earned her doctorate in the economics and financing of education (at the University of Chicago in 1981), her undergraduate background was in philosophy, and her masters degree was in world religions.
Windham has an explanation: Her interest in equity and fairness permeates everything she does. She takes her values and applies them in the economic sphere promoting fairness, whether the issues are those of gender, ethnicity or language.
And Kemmerer herself said, My concerns are primarily equity concerns. Economics is about the allocation of resources. Who gets what and why? Educational finance involves a set of philosophical as well as practical issues.
As she spoke, her computer screen glowed in the background, displaying a paper-in-progress which she is writing with Windham and World Bank personnel. The paper will help guide World Bank policy in future interventions in developing nations. Maps, photos, and artifacts from around the world quietly punctuate her office space.
Kemmerer is quick to point out that much of her work is undertaken with colleagues, and that most members of the department are accomplished in the area of international education. Thats whats so interesting about our department, she said.
Still, the work listed under supplemental activities on her vita could easily make a career in themselves.
This past summer, Kemmerer worked on two separate projects in developing countries Cambodia and Mongolia and a comparison of the two projects gives some idea of the range of circumstances in which she works.
In Cambodia, working for USAID, Kemmerer and Anthony Cresswell, another EAPS faculty member, gave a three-week planning workshop to ministry of education officials in Phnom Penh, providing training in planning and research skills. This was Kemmerers first visit to Cambodia.
Although the workshop itself went well, Kemmerer described Cambodia as a post-conflict nation in which Pol Pots killing of two million people has left the education system with enormous handicaps and relatively few trained personnel. Of the ministry personnel she met with in Cambodia, some had masters degrees and some had only primary educations.
This is the first year since the `holocaust in which their university has been able to offer freshman through senior courses, she said. Cambodia has an extraordinary need for external support that hopefully will be gone after a few generations.
Mongolia, which Kemmerer visited with Windham, is experiencing different problems.
Kemmerer had been there before. It was like a homecoming, she said. In contrast to Cambodias status as post-conflict, she described Mongolia, a former ally of the Soviet Union which now stands as a buffer between Russia and China, as post-command, a reference to the controlled, centralized economies of the Soviet era.
Mongolias education had been heavily subsidized by the Soviets; since the break-up of the USSR, that funding has dried up, with the result that Mongolias education system looks good on the surface its infrastructure is intact and it has a well-educated population and highly trained educators but it is drawing down on its capital stocks. Nothing is coming in and it is downsizing severely. Mongolia will need external support to get them through this transition.
Asked if any of her work has been particularly gratifying, Kemmerer said, Ive loved all of it. In all of this work you get so much more than you give, just because you learn so much about culture and issues.
Kemmerer described her contribution to developing nations in characteristically modest terms: Our recommendations often serve to give outside support to those people within the developing countries who are already working toward similar goals.
In our sector work, we always strive to be fully collaborative, involving all the stakeholders in the process. An outside team of six to eight members is paired with a team of local consultants, heads of ministries, representatives of teachers, and where possible in the subsectors, groups of teachers and parents.
Kemmerers international work has had a striking effect on the student population at the University: Weve gotten a lot of students this way. Ive had students from every country Ive worked in. They eventually find their way here.
She teaches a full courseload, and department chair Fred Dembowski called her a mainstay of the doctoral dissertation seminar, which she teaches nearly every year. This means that most doctoral students work with her immediately before writing their dissertation proposals. Dembowski said that as a result, she currently serves on over twenty dissertation committees, and chairs many of them.
Windham had a further explanation of Kemmerers presence on so many dissertation committees: She is one of the very best teachers the University has students quickly figure out who has the expertise and who will devote the time and patience to their dissertation work.
Windham calls Kemmerer an ideal of what a University professional should be, in terms of teaching, research and service to the community.
Despite Kemmerers extensive international work, there is one aspect of it where she feels she hasnt done enough. Though she has done a lot of sector assessment analyzing the needs and capacities of education systems, and shes done a lot in the area of teacher incentives finding the right mix of financial and nonfinancial rewards for teachers, Kemmerer said that her work in community support working with the families of students and other community members has been mostly theoretical.
To be directly involved with community support, she said, would require a commitment to long-term fieldwork which she hasnt yet been able to make. But when asked whether her future will include any change in that situation, Kemmerer responded, Yes, I am definitely going to do it.