Student Enthusiasm Keeps Community Service Program Contributing to Region
By Carol Olechowski
For Albany senior Jackie Sanchez, it was a way to work with disadvantaged children and mentor high school students while building impressive résumé credentials. For Jeff Moore �97, it was a means of using his mathematical skills to "do some important work in the community." For Norma Chapman, founder of a non-profit enrichment program that benefits youngsters in Albany, it�s a blessing. And elementary school principal Dorinda Davis says that her teachers and students "love it!"
It�s the University�s Community and Public Service Program (CPSP). And after nearly 30 years in existence, according to program director Neil Cervera, Ph.D., it�s still going strong.
Founded in the late 1960s, CPSP still maintains as its central feature student service to the community. Although it�s administered by the School of Social Welfare, undergraduate students in any major are welcome � and encouraged � to participate. An average of 600 sophomores, juniors, and seniors do so each year, according to Cervera, a Social Welfare faculty member who has headed CPSP since 1985.
Cervera supervises an assistant director and four graduate students, and consults with the program�s undergraduate board students. He has instituted a number of curricular and administrative changes during the past 13 years, including a writing exercise for the coursework and a structured series of reviews for students� field work experiences. Under his leadership, an interactive website for undergraduates and agency personnel was recently added. He was also instrumental in establishing the Ralph Sidman Memorial Scholarship Fund, which has recognized nearly 20 students who have successfully completed the School�s two public service courses, RSSW 290 and 390.
According to Cervera, prospective CPSP participants may choose from a wide range of opportunities at 300 area health-related, family services, community, state and local agencies, as well as elementary and secondary schools. Among them are Headstart, Ronald McDonald House, the Association for Retarded Citizens, the Center for the Disabled, the Albany County Nursing Home, the Albany County Rape Crisis Center, and even the Albany Symphony Orchestra.
Jackie Sanchez, a social welfare major who will graduate next spring, completed both RSSW 290 and 390 and won a Sidman scholarship. Through CPSP, she mentored two high school students with the Liberty Partnership Program at Draper Hall, and served as a program leader for underprivileged 14-year-olds at the Albany Girls Club.
Sanchez � who has also done volunteer work at Our Lady of Mercy Nursing Home through her sorority, Delta Zeta, and on campus for American Red Cross blood drives � promotes the CPSP experience. "Absolutely. It�s an excellent program," she says. "I can�t think of one reason not to do it. You get to meet someone new every day, and it�s a great way to learn. The experience looks great on a résumé, and it�s is a great way to acquire it."
Each CPSP participant draws up a learning contact with the agency and has to do 100 hours of service during the semester. "My supervisors were flexible," said Sanchez. "If I had tests or papers due, I worked fewer hours that week but increased them at other times." A final paper is mandatory; "you elaborate on the questions to be answered and reflect on how well you�re able to deal with the people you�re serving."
In order to broaden her community service further, Sanchez is now doing a field placement with Samaritan Hospital�s Sexual Assault Care Center. "I wanted to explore another area," she explains, "so I chose to work with a population with which I had no experience." She is applying her Sidman scholarship to the costs of her last year in school.
Jeff Moore�s involvement with CPSP brought him a job � as the program�s assistant director.
Moore, a mathematics major at the time, recalls needing some additional credits in the spring of 1996 and coming across the CPSP booklet. "I found a community service program that interested me � working for State Library Development," he recounts. During his semester with the organization, "I checked statistics, did data entry, prepared reports on the state�s 700 libraries and tested new software to make sure it was intuitive. It was a positive experience for me. CPSP got me some good professional experience."
That experience encouraged him to take the assistant director�s job in 1997. "In addition to the �traditional volunteer work� � homeless action or rape crisis � our students are able to go into some of the public agencies, like the State Education Department, which recently put out a call for a volunteer to create a web page," he said. He estimates that CPSP "gives some 60,000 service hours per year to the Capital Region."
Dorinda Davis, principal of the lower house at Albany�s Philip Schuyler School, sings CPSP�s praises. At Schuyler, "the University students tutor in some cases. In others, they work with the children in one small group while the teacher works with another."
Norma Chapman, who founded the Frank Chapman Memorial Institute at Arbor Hill Community School in Albany, echoes Davis regarding the University volunteers who have assisted her after-school enrichment program for children. "Right now, we have ten students from Albany working one-on-one with about 35 children. They help the kids keep up their marks through remedial help, homework assistance, and tutoring. They have special relationships with the children. The kids are always looking for them and asking when they�re coming!"
"Without them, I don�t know how we could survive, and that�s why the University at Albany has helped us tremendously."
At left, Jackie Sanchez stands with fellow Sidman scholarship recipient Stacy Plaske and CPSP director Neil Cervera. At right, youngsters from the Institute get ready to take center stage at a local talent show. University students give the children lessons in African dance, singing, and other performing arts, as well as work with them academically. At far right, Albany senior Jamie Birnbaum and Nicole McCaw �98, volunteers last year at the Frank Chapman Memorial Institute. Birnbaum returned this year.
CSDA Growth an Aid and Relief to Researchers
By Suzanne M. Grudzinski
John Logan of the Department of Sociology is currently investigating how immigrant and minority groups have been incorporated into the New York metropolis from 1880 through the present. The study is looking at the extent of progress African-Americans have made in the last 20 to 30 years as a result of Civil Rights legislation as well as at how long it took European immigrant groups of the 1860s to break into mainstream society.
The study is also looking at the question of whether the experiences of newer immigrant groups, such as Latinos, Caribbean Island natives, and Asians, parallel that of European-American immigrants or that of African-Americans.
These issues are all part of Logan�s study, "Generations of Immigrants and Minorities in New York." The University�s Center for Social and Demographic Analysis (CSDA) is supporting Logan and other researchers in such areas of scholarship. And recently, the Center has been able to help in a much more hands-on manner through the support of a $2.5 million population research center. The grant was received in 1997 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), a branch of the National Institutes of Health.
Only 12 population research centers are currently supported by NICHD nationwide: Brown, John Hopkins, Princeton, and Pennsylvania State universities, Rand, the universities of Chicago, Michigan, North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania, Texas at Austin, and Wisconsin, and Albany, which is the most recent of the grantees.
Support is received from NICHD in renewable five-year increments on the basis of the center�s research productivity, success in achieving research grants, and institutional commitment.
Stewart Tolnay, current director of the CSDA, and a faculty member since 1988, said that the people involved in the Center have worked very hard in each of these areas, but he also gives credit to "the administration, which has been incredibly supportive of the CSDA for a long time. This support has helped us to become competitive for the NICHD Center Grant. The University has made commitments to the Center, but moreover has followed through on them. This has made an impression locally and nationally."
Nancy Denton, like Logan a member of the Department of Sociology and a CSDA associate, said CSDA�s changes "have been an incredible support and have brought an enormous sense of relief for researchers because of the assistance they provide."
The Center is organized into three cores: Administrative, Computing/Statistical, and Information/Data Services. The grant has individually strengthened them and the Center as a whole.
The Computer/Statistical Core, for example, is now able to fulfill researchers� needs for a computer infrastructure, through a newly installed UNIX computing system. It has made storing, archiving, moving, and analyzing large databases much easier. The Computing/Statistical Core also provides support for planning and executing research projects, consulting on demographic and statistical methods, and individual computing, statistical, or UNIX training.
"For one project," said Logan, "I was using the 1920s census to gather data on children and decided to also include information on parents. I soon realized I had no idea how to synthesize all the information in the manner that I wanted. One of the professionals put it together in a week where I might have spent a month learning technical tricks that are not in my area of expertise."
The Information/Data Services Core coordinates their efforts with the Computing/Statistical Core to make data and other types of information available to researchers. Logan recalled unsuccessfully trying to find data for neighborhoods in 1920 Cleveland. The Information/Data Services Core called around the country and found a range of reports with information on these neighborhoods between 1910 and 1940.
Logan said "because of this amazing follow-up I can do things with Cleveland that I never thought possible. Before I wouldn�t have had time to find basic information much less the gold mine I have now. I am planning to do a study on just Cleveland because of the extensive data that I now have."
In addition to the services available through each of the three cores, the CSDA is also offering a colloquium series, organized by Denton, whose aim is to provide a stimulating and intellectual atmosphere and to reveal the new findings and research occurring both in and outside of the university setting.
"My hope is that it will induce collaboration and create a culture of intellectual exchange," said Tolnay. Denton adds that this exchange "makes people feel that they are part of something larger than just their own projects." With these same goals in mind, the Center will also be sponsoring various workshops and conferences.
Because of outreach programs such as the colloquium series, the CSDA has gone beyond sociology and has come to include other disciplines such as criminal justice, anthropology, public health, psychology, social welfare, geography and planning, economics, and Latin American & Caribbean studies. Logan said "the Center can be a nucleus for bringing people together from different areas to create an interdisciplinary forum." This commitment from varying disciplines gives the Center the ability to pursue further funding.
Logan notes that when the Center began in 1982 "it was very informal and had few resources. I and other researchers helped it at first, and now it helps us."
Tolnay concurs: "Population research at the University at Albany is in a clear ascendancy, and the Center�s future looks extremely promising."
OPEN FOR BUSINESS
The exterior stairways adjacent to the main fountain reopened last month, after having been closed for repair since May 18. A sleeker design was an added benefit.
GIFTS
Endowments, anonymous gifts, bequests, and a sorority endowment all have contributed to recent fund-raising efforts, according to Sorrell Chesin, Associate Vice-President for University Advancement.
Miriam Snow Mathes, class of 1926, has donated $25,000 to establish a scholarship endowment in memory of Myskania, an informal student government organization founded in 1917 and disbanded in 1979.
Over the course of its active years, hundreds of student leaders served on Myskania, making the body an important voice for students. In establishing the endowment, Mathes noted the important role this group played in the modern history of the institution. The scholarship is to be awarded to students who have made a significant contribution to student life at the University.
Shirley Smith Phillips, Class of �67 and an M.S. graduate in 1970, recently joined the Heritage Circle Society by contributing $10,000 to the University�s Charitable Gift Annuity Program. Her gift will establish a named endowment.
Emeritus William N. Fenton of the Department of Anthropology has donated $10,000 to the University�s Charitable Gift Annuity Program. The donation will be used for the purchase of books in anthropology through the University Library.
Virginia Slocum, Class of �32, made a donation to the University�s Pooled Income Fund in memory of her late husband, Clyde Slocum, Class of �28. Her donations are designated for a scholarship endowment in their names.
The late Barbara Bates has recently been added to the Heritage Circle Society Honor Roll because of her decision to include a bequest for $50,000 in her will to support the University�s German Exile Collection. The donation will be used to support the cataloging and maintenance of the writings of her late husband, Roy C. Bates. The collection is unique to the University and has taken shape over many years under the direction of recently retired John Spalek, formerly of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures.
Through a bequest of $15,000, an endowment has been established in the name of the late Marcia Gold Goldman Mayer, Class of �33. The bequest has named Mayer to the Heritage Circle Society Honor Roll and will also benefit students at the University for generations to come.
The University�s Program in Biodiversity, Conservation and Policy recently received a contribution of $25,000 from a donor who wishes to remain anonymous. This relatively new interdisciplinary master�s degree has attracted top students from across the country. The donor has pledged additional gifts of $25,000 for the next two years.
More than 200 people attended a dinner dance held by the Psi Gamma Sorority to celebrate its 100th anniversary. The sisters of the sorority represented Classes of the 1930s through the current student members of the Class of 2001.
In honor of this milestone occasion, the sorority committed $15,000 to the University to establish the Psi Gamma Endowment and assure that the sorority will forever be a part of this institution.
