Oswego Alumni Magazine » award

International Center of Syracuse honors Oswego’s Kanbur

Staff Report — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:12:24 +0000

The International Center of Syracuse bestowed its International Educator Award on SUNY Oswego’s Shashi Kanbur in November at the Central New York International Citizen Award Banquet at Onondaga Community College.

The award recognizes an outstanding educator whose teaching, research, creative work, scholarship or services have significantly promoted global learning

Associate Professor Shashi Kanbur

outcomes among students in a college or school setting, according to the center.

Gurdeep Skolnik, coordinator of Oswego’s International Language and Education Center, nominated Kanbur for the honor in recognition of his “significant contributions towards internationalization at SUNY Oswego,” she said.

An associate professor in the physics and earth sciences departments, Kanbur is also a faculty fellow in the President’s Office this year. He has played a key role in developing SUNY Oswego’s Global Laboratory.

India native Kanbur has an international reputation in astrophysics research. Since his arrival at Oswego in 2005, he has published 23 papers with international collaborators in the top peer-reviewed journals in astrophysics. Currently he has active collaborations with researchers in Taiwan, Chile, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Japan.

Alumna Recognized by Army

Staff Report — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 16:05:21 +0000

The U.S. Army recently recognized Eileen Jevis ’01 with the Commander’s Award for Public Service, the fourth highest honor that can be given to a civilian.

Jevis coordinated the inaugural Veterans Day Ceremony at Syracuse University, where she works as public relations manager.

Eileen Jevis '01

“Eileen’s leadership in executing the first-ever Veterans Day Ceremony at Syracuse University created an awareness about veterans on campus and allowed the university to honor those who serve in the military,” Lt. Col. Susan Hardwick said in a press release. “The ceremony was extremely well done.”

Jevis said she was humbled and honored by the award. “It is very gratifying to be able to honor the students, faculty and staff who have served our country with such allegiance,” she said.

Oswego alumni collaborated with 2010 Nobel winner

Julie Blissert — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 20:23:47 +0000

“Not everybody gets to say that they worked with a Nobel Prize winner,” said Michael Plante M ’75. He is one of more than a dozen chemistry students of Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus Augustine Silveira from the 1970s to 1990s who can say just that.

When the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Oct. 6 that Dr. Ei-ichi Negishi and two colleagues had won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, excitement surged through the network of Oswego alumni around the country.

Silveira began collaborating with Negishi, now the Herbert C. Brown distinguished professor of organic chemistry at Purdue University, in the early 1970s when the 2010 Nobel laureate was an assistant professor at Syracuse University and Silveira was an associate professor at Oswego.

They both engaged their students in their collaborative projects and co-authored papers with them that became part of the overall package that the Nobel honored, Silveira said.

Their research involved using the metallic element palladium as a catalyst to synthesize complex carbon-based molecules. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences called that “one of the most sophisticated tools available to chemists today and one that is used by researchers worldwide and in commercial production of pharmaceuticals and molecules used to make electronics.”

Plante was the second Oswego student working with Silveira who collaborated with Negishi. He said he was particularly thrilled by the Nobel news because he saw an interview in which Negishi said the award was based on a core of research done from 1976 to 1978. Plante is the co-author — with Negishi, Silveira and K. W. Chiu — of a paper that came out in 1976 in the Journal of Organometallic Chemistry.

Silveira and Negishi’s collaboration extended for more than 20 years, involved Silveira’s students at Oswego and Negishi’s students and post-doctoral fellows at Syracuse and Purdue universities, led to at least 11 jointly authored research publications and contributed to many more.

Silveira himself was the recipient of more than 50 national awards in recognition of his chemistry teaching and research work with his students and his community service during his 38-year career at Oswego.

Silveira and Negishi last co-authored a paper in 1996 and have stayed in touch since Silveira’s retirement in 2000.

In March 2010, Negishi received the American Chemical Society award recognizing creative work in synthetic organic chemistry at the national ACS meeting in San Francisco. Silveira attended the dinner to celebrate the occasion and said he was pleased to see many Oswego students cited and acknowledged for their work.

“I cherish our friendship of many years,” Silveira said of Negishi.

Cohn Honored by Cable Industry

Staff Report — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 14:07:50 +0000

In honor of her achievements in sports broadcasting, Linda Cohn ’81 recently was inducted into the CableFAX Programming Hall of Fame.

Cohn was inducted during an awards luncheon for the third annual CableFAX Program Awards, Oct. 4 in New York City. Cohn was one of eight members inducted in this year’s class. Fellow inductees included actress Glenn Close, NBC Universal Cable President Bonnie Hammer, Oxygen Channel founder Geraldine Laybourne and Black Entertainment Television founder Bob Johnson.

CableFAX, a multimedia organization designed to keep viewers in the know about cable dynamics and news, publishes a bimonthly magazine and conducts webinars on how to provide training opportunities for cable professionals.

A longtime personality on ESPN, Cohn earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from Oswego. She is a member of the Oswego Athletic Hall of Fame, for her achievements in women’s ice hockey, and has served as moderator of the Lewis B. O’Donnell Media Summit. She is also the author of a book, Cohn-Head: A No-Holds-Barred Account of Breaking into the Boys’ Club.