In 1936, at a time when 125 out of every 1,000 Americans were high school graduates and 23 out of every 1,000 Americans were college graduates, the Division of Nursing within the University at Buffalo’s School of Medicine was established. Four years later, it became independent, making it the university’s 12th school.

UB’s School of Nursing is marking its 75th anniversary with a yearlong celebration that includes a number of guest speakers and events throughout the fall and spring, culminating with an anniversary cocktail reception in May at the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society.

Over the course of 75 years, much has been accomplished that can’t be captured in celebratory events only. To commemorate some of those outstanding milestones, accomplishments and individuals, Jean Brown, PhD, RN, FAAN, professor and dean of the UB nursing school, turned to a member of her faculty, Janice Cooke Feigenbaum, PhD, RN, clinical nursing professor.

Feigenbaum has completed two of seven posters with photos and facts that illustrate the School of Nursing’s journey, from its founding on High Street in Buffalo as part of the then-private “University of Buffalo” up to its current, state-of-the-art home on UB’s South Campus.

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The University at Buffalo’s comprehensive physical plan has received regional and international awards for excellence in three distinct areas: planning, landscape architecture and economic development.

“Building UB: The Comprehensive Physical Plan,” has received the 2010 Planning Excellence Award for Comprehensive Planning from the New York Upstate Chapter of the American Planning Association (APA). The plan, by UB, along with Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners and other subconsultants, previously received an award for comprehensive planning from the APA’s Western New York section.

“Building UB” has also received a 2010 Merit Award of Achievement from the New York Upstate Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

In addition to the two regional awards, the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) has recognized “Building UB” and the university’s UB 2020 long-range plan with an honorable mention for Excellence in Economic Development in the category of Partnerships with Educational Institutions for communities with populations of great than 500,000.

“These awards in planning, landscape architecture and economic development, and the range of organizations presenting them, speaks to the comprehensiveness of the ‘Building UB’ plan,” said Robert Shibley, the professor of architecture and urban and regional planning who directed the project.

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Paschalis Alexandridis, a UB distinguished professor and the director of graduate studies in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering in the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has been chosen to receive the 2010 Jacob F. Schoellkopf Award.

The award, given annually by the Western New York section of the American Chemical Society, honors an individual in the Niagara Frontier for outstanding work and service in the fields of chemistry or chemical engineering.

In selecting Alexandridis, the award selection jury cited his “fundamental discoveries on block copolymer thermodynamics, structure and dynamics.” The jury also noted his “development of functional products utilizing self-assembly methodologies.”

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For more than 10 years, the University at Buffalo’s HIV Clinical Pharmacology Research Program has helped fight the global AIDS epidemic by hosting visiting pharmaceutical scientists from countries like Zimbabwe and Nigeria in order to teach them how to conduct clinical trials and research on HIV/AIDS.

Now, in recognition of their success and the need to expand these efforts, the National Institutes of Health has awarded a total of $2.3 million to the laboratory, housed in the UB School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and UB’s New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences.

The new grants bring to more than $11 million the funds that the UB HIV Clinical Pharmacology Research program has been awarded since 2008.

“This exciting new award represents a research and educational program that is making an impact well beyond Buffalo,” says Alexander Cartwright, interim vice president for research at UB. “It is an excellent example of the important programs that are being developed and delivered by researchers in UB’s NYS Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences.”

With the new funding, the UB researchers — led by Gene Morse, professor in the UB School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and associate director of UB’s Center of Excellence — will be able to intensify efforts to train in-country laboratory specialists where HIV/AIDS infection rates are highest globally, test their bioanalytical proficiency and conduct quality control analysis of HIV/AIDS clinical trials and their pharmacology-focused research studies.

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The New York Upstate Chapter of the American Planning Association has awarded Robert G. Shibley, the next dean of the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning, with the Michael J. Krasner Professional Planner Award.

The award honors an individual for sustained contribution to the planning profession through distinguished practice, teaching or writing.

Shibley, a professor of architecture and urban and regional planning, joined UB’s faculty in 1982. Over the past two decades, he led a series of initiatives that today constitute the major part of the public planning framework in Buffalo Niagara.

At UB, Shibley’s achievements include founding and managing the Urban Design Project, an award-winning center for the study and critical practice of urban design. He has inspired generations of students, teaching courses ranging from “Buffalo Niagara by Design,” a large, undergraduate lecture for a general-education audience, to “American Urbanism” and “Sustainable Design: Democracy, Ecology and Urban Placemaking” graduate seminars.

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Steve Pinker, the über-eminent and multiple award-winning cognitive scientist, will inaugurate the University at Buffalo Department of Philosophy’s Paul Kurtz Lecture Series on Dec. 2.

Pinker, the Johnstone Family Professor in the Harvard University Department of Psychology, will present “A History of Violence” at 4 p.m. in the Screening Room, Center for the Arts, UB North Campus.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Contradicting what he calls “the treacle that we often teach our children” about a historical past defined largely by peace and harmony, Pinker will chart the decline of violence from Biblical times to the present day, which he defines as “the most peaceful time in our species’ existence.”

“Though it may seem illogical and even obscene, given Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Iraq, Ruanda and Darfur,” Pinker says, “it is true.”

A Canadian-American experimental psychologist, psycholinguist and author of popular science, in 2004 Pinker was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world.

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When one of the nation’s largest providers of oncology pharmacy services decided to expand from a New York City suburb into a new facility on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus last month, an important factor was the potential to partner with the University at Buffalo.

According to OncoMed officials, the company’s interest in locating in the Innovation Center near UB’s New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences and the UB School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences is a result of the outstanding reputation of the university’s Doctor of Pharmacy program, the tremendous growth in the number of cancer patients anticipated due to the aging population and the increasing complexity of oncology pharmacy.

It’s also a reflection of the growing expertise at UB and its partners in improving health-care outcomes and lowering costs by integrating and optimizing electronic medical records.

“On the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, we’re in a great center of activity, which is incubating all the biomedical sciences and technologies,” says Burt Zweigenhaft, chief executive officer and managing partner of OncoMed. “We have opportunities to work with the UB pharmacy school, the UB medical school and Roswell Park Cancer Institute not only to produce better clinical excellence but to develop the pipeline of professionals who will be needed to fill the gaps that are coming in oncology pharmacy.”

The UB-OncoMed partnership will provide some UB pharmacy students with a unique opportunity to learn the complexities involved in compounding and dispensing cancer medications, by working in OncoMed’s cleanroom facilities on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

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The University at Buffalo Archives and the Bureau of Jewish Education of Greater Buffalo/Jewish Buffalo Archives Project have received the New York State Archives’ 2010 Debra E. Bernhardt Annual Archives Award for Excellence in Documenting New York’s History.

The annual state awards program recognizes outstanding efforts in archives and records management work in New York State by a broad range of individuals and organizations.

The award was presented at a luncheon ceremony in Albany last month to UB Archivist John Edens; Michael Frisch, professor of history and American studies at UB and a senior research scholar at the university; and Evie Weinstein and Chana Kotzin of the Bureau of Jewish Education of Greater Buffalo.

The recipients were honored for facilitating partnerships between community agencies, educational institutions, cultural and professional organizations and many other entities in documenting the Jewish community in Buffalo for the Jewish Buffalo Archives Project (JBAP).

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The University at Buffalo has ranked among the top five research institutions in the United States in its production of Fulbright Scholars for the 2010-11 academic year.

According to the most recent list of university recipients published on the website of the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars, which administers the Fulbright scholarships and fellowships for the U.S. Department of State, UB produced six Fulbright scholars for the current academic year. See http://www.cies.org/.

UB is tied with Harvard University, Cleveland State University, the University of Florida, Virginia Commonwealth University and Washington University (St. Louis), each of which produced six scholars, and ahead of Stanford University, UCLA, the University of Delaware and the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, which produced five each.

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Michael Glick, DMD, professor and dean of the UB School of Dental Medicine, has been awarded the Edward B. Shils Entrepreneurial Education Award and the American Dental Education Association’s William J. Gies Foundation First Place Editorial Award (ADEA GIES).

Glick, who became dean in December 2009, is editor of The Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA), the premier peer-reviewed journal in dentistry, and is known for his innovative, medicine-oriented approach to dental care. He is an advocate for having dental students think of themselves as health care professionals first and dentists second.

The Edward B. Shils Entrepreneurial Education Award is given every year to an individual or organization that represents the dental community from areas as diverse as industry, academia, organized dentistry and public health dedicated to oral health care. Individuals must demonstrate creativity, engagement with multiple constituencies in the dental community, leadership and effectiveness to be considered. The nominating committee recognized Glick “as an outstanding transformational leader” and for his “steadfast editorial voice and advocacy on behalf of the underserved.”

The ADEA GIES Foundation Award is a first-place editorial award for the article “Expanding the Dentist’s Role in Health Care Delivery: Is it time to discard the Procrustean bed?” which appeared in the November 2009 issue of JADA. In it, Glick challenges the notion of the “traditional dental workforce model” as imposed by state dental boards that determined that dentists may not be allowed to perform finger sticks for the purpose of identifying patients in need of a medical referral.

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