NEW PALTZ — Five award-winning State University of New York at New Paltz faculty members will talk about their research pursuits and the intellectual vitality they and their fellow faculty colleagues bring to the college and the Mid-Hudson community at a symposium this evening, April 14, titled “Poised for the Future: SUNY New Paltz and the Hudson Valley.”
The symposium, which is one of the main events this week in connection with the inauguration of President Steven Poskanzer, will begin at 6:30 p.m. with a reception in the Honors Center, then move to College Hall, Room 114, at 7 p.m.
Panelists include: Gerald Benjamin (dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences); Robert Michael (dean, School of Education); Patricia C. Phillips (professor, Art); Tulin Sener (professor, School of Business); and Gerald Sorin (faculty emeritus, History). Provost David Lavallee will moderate the panel.
The panelists will bring a wide range of topics to the symposium. Benjamin’s topic will focus on localism in democracy; Michael will discuss a new cooperative outreach program in Utica that the School of Education has recently implemented; Phillips will be looking at the role that art journalists play in the region; Sener will be discussing the direct and indirect impact New Paltz has on the economic and business development of the region; and Sorin will talk about biography and social justice, with an emphasis on Irving Howe.
Gerald Benjamin was appointed to the rank of distinguished professor of Political Science by the SUNY Board of Trustees in April, 2002. He has served as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at SUNY New Paltz since 1996.
Dean Benjamin’s masters (1967) and doctoral (1970) degrees in Political Science are from Columbia University. He joined the faculty at SUNY New Paltz as assistant professor of Political Science in 1968, and has held the rank of professor since 1981.
Formerly director of the Center for the New York State and Local Government Studies at SUNY’s Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany, between May of 1993 and March of 1995, Benjamin served as research director of New York’s Temporary State Commission on Constitutional Revision. In 1988 and 1989, he was principal research advisor to the New York City Charter Revision Commission; its efforts lead to the most extensive changes in the structure of New York City government in this century.
Tulin Sener is a professor of Finance at the School of Business at SUNY New Paltz. She holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University and has taught at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey, and the University of Wisconsin in Whitewater.
Sener has significant investment and development banking experience and has served as the former president and chairman of the board of directors for the State Investment Bank of Turkey. She is the first and, thus far, the only woman president of any bank in Turkey.
Sener has been given many teaching and research awards, and the Chancellor’s Research and Scholarship Recognition Award for 2003. Recently, she received the title of honorary professor by Tashkent State University of Economics, Uzbekistan.
Robert Michael has taught in public school classrooms and has served as a faculty member at the college since 1974. His background includes work in regular and special education programs, and he has published extensively in the area of special education.
Michael is the author of “The Educator’s Guide to Students with Epilepsy” and served for three years as the editor of The Journal of International Special Needs Education. Recently, he has developed an interest in creating strong partnerships among the school of education programs, public schools and community agencies.
Michael holds a bachelor’s from Farmington State College, Maine; a masters from the University of Southern California; a certificate of advanced study from SUNY New Paltz; and a doctorate from Fordham University.
Gerald Sorin has taught history at the college since 1956. He has also taught in the Netherlands at the University of Utrecht’s School of Journalism, and the University of Nijmegen, where he held the John Adams Distinguished Chair in American Studies as a Fulbright Professor.
Sorin is the former chairman of the History Department (1986-1996) at New Paltz, and continues to direct the Louis and Mildred Resnick Institute for the Study of Modern Jewish Life. In 1994, he was awarded the State University of New York’s highest rank: distinguished professor.
Patricia C. Phillips’ research and critical writing concern contemporary public art, architecture, sculpture, landscape and the intersection of these fields. Since 1980, her essays and reviews have appeared in Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, Sculpture, and Public Art Review, as well as books and collected essays published by Rizzoli International Publication, Princeton Architectural Press, M.I.T. Press, Actar, Bay Press and Routledge.
Phillips is the curator and editor of “City Speculations” (Princeton Architectural Press and Queens Museum of Art, 1996) and author of “It Is Difficult,” a survey of the work of Alfredo Jaar (Actar, 1998.) In 2002, she was appointed editor-in-chief of Art Journal, the quarterly publication on modern and contemporary art of the College Art Association.
Phillips has been at SUNY New Paltz since 1991, where she has served as chair of the Art Department and dean of the School of Fine & Performing Arts. She currently is a professor of art. In 2002, she was awarded the SUNY Chancellor’s Research Recognition Award.
