Quoins, columns and arched windows combine with a hipped roof to create a protective facade on this plan. The owners suite is tucked away in the rear corner with a private foyer entrance from the back porch. Main living areas boast volume ceilings, built-ins, and large expanses of glass for many different …
Byline: Grace O'Connor Staff writer
Elizabeth Heinmiller, a pioneer in proving that there was a place for women in social welfare, knew firsthand why the Capital District needed a graduate school for social work 25 years ago.
The School of Social Welfare at the State University at Albany opened in 1965. Much of the credit for this is attributed to research Heinmiller conducted with a committee of her peers in 1962-63, according to Maureen Didier, associate professor at the school. Didier and the Rev. Clinton Dugger, a 1967 graduate, are co- chairmen of a yearlong silver anniversary celebration.
In 1962, Heinmiller, then chairwoman of the …
MENOMONIE, Wis., May 23 -- The University of Wisconsin-Stout issued the following news release:
University of Wisconsin-Stout has upgraded its online payment system.
The system features several enhanced features, including third-party access, automatic payment scheduling, text-message notices and Secure Vault Payment.
With third-party access, students can grant parents, or others, electronic access to billing and payment information. "For many busy students, the ability to authorize parents to sign, check balances and even make payments will be a big relief," said Rick Olson, director of Student Business Services.
Automatic payment scheduling also is new. "Students can now prearrange to make payments when they are due and when funds are available," Olson said.
With text-message notification, students and third parties can opt to receive reminders about new bills, payments due and scheduled payments being processed, Olson said.
"Plus, users can now save their profiles so they don't have to remember or re-enter information," Olson added.
The system soon will offer Secure Vault Payment, a safer and more immediate form of electronic check payment. "With SVP, our customers can access their bank websites from a drop-down menu on our site," Olson said. "From there, they can view the available balance on their bank accounts and initiate payments from the security of their bank's website."
Olson plans other changes to enhance convenience. In June, students should be able to pay university housing deposits online, and a mobile app will allow anyone with an Internet-enabled phone to view their accounts, browse the online store and make payments in a more readable format.
"All these new features, like the notification system, automatic payment scheduler and SVP will dramatically improve our customers' ability to manage their accounts and avoid surprises," Olson said. For any query with respect to this article or any other content requirement, please contact Editor at htsyndication@hindustantimes.com
W.Va. lottery revenue continues to drop
One of the expenses consumers seem willing to cut back on isgambling, as state lottery revenue continues a monthslong plunge.
Revenue from racetrack video lottery games, neighborhood videolottery machines and instant tickets sales totaled just over $104million in December, a drop of about $5.2 million from December2007.
Since the start of the fiscal year on July 1, revenues are down2.1 percent, or nearly $16 million, from the same period in 2007.
State Lottery Director John Musgrave says only scratch-offinstant tickets are showing growth.
Musgrave says people who curtail trips to racetracks and barswith gambling machines to save money still go to gas stations andconvenience stores, where the tickets are sold.
Six cited for trespassing during protest
PETTUS - Six protesters have been cited for trespassing at aMassey Energy coal mine in West Virginia.
State Police spokesman Sgt. Michael Baylous says five of theprotesters chained themselves to heavy equipment at Richmond, Va.-based Massey's surface mine on Coal River Mountain on Tuesday.
Climate Ground Zero and Pan-Appalachian Mountain Justice say theprotest centers on safety at the mine. They contend the mine's coalsludge impoundment could flood nearby towns.
Spokesman Jeff Gillenwater says Massey has the appropriatepermits and the trespassers were rightfully charged.
Mountaintop mining opponents are promoting a wind farm on themountain instead of the surface mine.
The destructive practice of mountaintop mining relies on removingtons of rock and dirt to expose thin, shallow coal seams.
University establishes exchange program
WHEELING - Wheeling Jesuit University has established an academicexchange program with the Catholic University of Cardoba, Argentina.
Ryan Wall, director of Wheeling Jesuit's Office of GlobalOutreach, said Monday the partnership will allow students to enrollin any program or course offered by either institution.
Wheeling Jesuit says the first students from Argentina willarrive in Wheeling later this year. The agreement also allows forthe exchange of faculty, publications, academic programs andresearch projects.
COMPILED FROM WIRE REPORTS
In the days after seven of their co-workers were gunned down by afellow employee, workers at Xerox Corp. in Hawaii did what their gut -and heart - told them to do. There wasn't any other way.
As officials at Edgewater Technology are certainly finding outthese days, following the deaths of seven of their workers, there areno manuals on what to do next. These are not situations that anyoneprepares for, and they can leave a company in limbo, especially asmall company like Edgewater. For Xerox, and likely for Edgewater,it's a time to make up the rules as events unfold.
What Xerox employees did first, as a group, was to pray. And atthat prayer session, two days after the tragedy in November 1999,they decided to go back to work the next day. They decided it was theone sure way they could pay tribute to their friends who had died.
At corporate headquarters, Xerox officals acted swiftly to makesure that the needs of surviving employees and the families of thedead were met. Counselors were brought in. Security was increased.Funeral arrangements were made, and paid for, by the company.
But the primary concern on the mind of Rich Thoman, then chiefexecutive of Xerox, was the future of the families that had lostsomeone.
According to Glenn Sexton, the Hawaii division vice president andgeneral manager, Thoman wanted to do "the right thing," and thatmeant assuring the families that they would not have to worry aboutthe future.
The company made payments to each family based on the deceased'sfuture earning potential, minus benefits, workers' compensation, andlife insurance. There were no strings attached to the payments,Sexton said.
Sexton would not disclose the amount paid to each family or thetotal, though he did confirm that the company had paid out more thana million dollars.
"The effort was to try and protect the quality of life for thefamilies," Sexton said.
To date, the company has not faced litigation from any of thevictims' families. However, Xerox is facing two lawsuits from peopleclaiming mental anguish, one from a contractor who found the bodiesand another from an employee who was spared by the gunman.
Edgewater is not likely to face suits from the families, accordingto a Boston personal injury lawyer. David White-Lief of the firm ofBreakstone, White-Lief, and Gluck said injuries at work, includingdeath, are covered under Massachusetts law by workers' compensation.
Other facets of the future aren't as clear, such as the company'sown prospects. As an Internet consulting company, Edgewater is in aprecarious position, in a slumping sector of the economy.
Like Edgewater, the Pettit & Martin law firm in San Francisco wasalso facing uncertain times when a man opened fire in its offices andkilled nine people in 1993. Two years later, the firm closed.
While some former members of the firm say that Pettit & Martin washeaded for financial trouble, like other law firms in the mid-1990s,other members say the shooting probably had something to do with itsdemise.
"It was kind of a rough time anyway," said Michele Marinaro, thenmanager of recruitment and development for the firm, which numberedmore than 200. "While a lot of the partners have said it wasn'ttotally the reason for the closing, it certainly didn't helpmatters."
Dru Ramey, executive director of the Bar Association of SanFrancisco, said the shootings were "the coup de grace" for the firm,adding that the event "completely shattered everyone there."
"I think this firm would have made it if this didn't happen,"Ramey said.
While Xerox has faced turbulent times of late, Sexton said thatthe Hawaii division has performed well since the shootings and thatthe company's customers seemed to rally behind them. He also said heknows of no employee who left the company because of the slayings.
Then there is the issue of actually going back to the office.Ramey said that for years the building that housed Pettit & Martinhad a stigma attached to it. "Nobody wanted to go in it," she said.
Xerox closed the floor of the warehouse building where theshootings occurred, and the company is in the process of moving to anew warehouse altogether.
At Ferguson Enterprises Inc. in Pelham, Ala., employees still cometo work each day at the scene of two killings by a co-worker inAugust 1999. One employee, who shared an office with one of thosekilled, still works inches from where his friend was murdered.
"To work in the office like that, I bet it's a little spooky,"said Chris Nicoletta, operations manager for the heating and airconditioning equipment supply company. "I work in the office rightnext to it. But we totally cleaned it out. We took out the desk. Werepainted the whole room.
"When we got done, it looked like nothing had happened."
SIDEBAR: A look back Mass shootings in the workplace have affecteddifferent companies in various ways. Some recovered; some closedtheir doors; others underwent major changes. Some examples: PLEASEREFER TO MICROFILM FOR CHART DATA. GLOBE STAFF GRAPHIC
If you're in the vicinity of a television at 3:30 p.m. today, youmight want to tune in to Channel 17. And if you're not, you might want to fire up the DVR.
The last thing you might have expected has happened. Somewhat incredibly, movie critic Roger Ebert is back, even if not always on camera or on mic.
The name of the show is "Ebert Presents 'At the Movies.' "It's not much better than it was when Ebert was physically able tobe a part of it, but I must say the edition I saw last week was abit smarter.
Ebert's plight in the past few years is one of the most famous inAmerican journalism history. He is still the most famous film critic in America (not the best, but then he never was, despite the prizes). Because of cancer, though, and several bouts with radical surgery, he can no longer speak or eat.
He can write, though. My, can he ever. And he can watch moviesand then write about them. It has seemed to some of us that hiswritten work since his health took him off TV has never been betteror, at times, nobler. His recent blog on the disparity of wealth inAmerica had nothing to do with movies but is typical of the stubborn integrity that is among the few things physical privation can't besmirch.
If he were to win a Pulitzer Prize on Monday, it woulddistinguish the award, rather than be a marketing device for him,as it was after he did win in 1975.
His fame and his difficulties though have given him privilegesnot shared by other film critics (not least, of course, his unique ability to bring his fantastically helpful wife, Chaz, a co-producer of his new show, to movie screenings, even at crowded festivals where others wait in lines to get in for 90 minutes). It's as it should be, of course, given his frailty and his position (i.e., his fame and marketing importance), even if it can cause difficult spur-of-the-moment seating decisions for those who might be exhausted from standing in a cattle car line for 90 minutes.
But then no one ever said that etiquette is always easy.
His new show, similarly, causes rather difficult etiquette decisions among those who'd evaluate it.
I still dislike the frick-and-frack stuff rather heartily, no matter who's charged with doing it. It's not as bad now as it was when Ebert and the late Gene Siskel were pillow fighting, but it's artificial enough.
Ebert's reviews, in the edition I saw, were read by Bill Kurtis, which seemed to me a clever way to deal with the physical silence that illness has enforced on an articulate and voluble man.
The Heckle-and-Jeckle act on the edition I saw was performed byAP film critic Christy Lemire and a young Chicago critic namedIgnatiy Vishnevetsky (who was, yes, born in the Soviet Union).
Both are attractive young people. Lemire was no less bland and inconsequential than she usually is in print, but the virtue of the new Ebert TV show was Vishnevetsky, a feisty fellow of unpredictable, maverick opinions that don't come in a can purchasable at the local supermarket.
And that's where the show is so much smarter than in the past. Ithas been Ebert's contention that despite budgetary lacerations to the profession by newspaper managements no longer interested in supporting film junkets, the Internet has given us a kind of Renaissance in film criticism.
Nor is he wrong. The din of stupidity on the Web is loud indeed, but the number of knowledgeable and independent-minded people who don't produce opinion in a can stamped with a freshness date has also become impressive.
Yes, you can see good old garden-variety youth pandering and homogenization on the new Ebert show, but you can also see an older, wiser Ebert including lessons from life and media that give the show more promise than it ever used to have, despite the current frailties of its presiding "brand."
What has become obvious in the era of the Film Critic Massacre isthat Ebert's fame -- so fatuous and spurious at its height -- served the useful purpose of insisting that the profession he shared with others mattered, even if the show never deserved to matter.
His fame kept a lot of critics busy, in his prime. In a differentway, it still does -- on a show you can now watch on Channel 17.
***
"Body of Proof:" The newest star coroner on the TV block is Dana Delany, who's certainly more attractive than the late Jack Klugman in "Quincy," though not quite as temperamental as Jill Hennessy in "Crossing Jordan." She plays an ex-brain surgeon who was such a workaholic that she lost custody of her teen daughter in her divorce. Jeri Ryan is her boss; John Carroll Lynch is the annoyed cop in the vicinity.
At this stage of her career, there is no one on television whocan do the all-knowing expressions Delany can -- that perpetualsmirk on her face that tells the world, "I know what you did lastnight, but don't worry, I won't tell unless you cross me." You'veseen it many times before in every new TV season. If you nod off inthe middle of every show and wake up at the end, you won't missmuch.
e-mail: jsimon@buffnews.com
The House approved a landmark overhaul of the United States'antiquated telecommunications laws Friday that would freecompetition in the telephone, cable and broadcasting industries andmandates new technology allowing parents to block violent andsexual programming on their television sets.
The bill was approved 305-117 after five hours of sometimesheated debate that resulted in substantial changes to the finalbill, but leaving so many differences with the Senate version ofthe bill that a whole new political battle is looming over acompromise.
At stake is the blueprint for the future of the U.S.communications industry, breaking down the regulatory barriers thathave kept telephone, cable and television as distinct industriesunder separate and limited ownership for four decades.
"Technology is so far ahead of regulators and courts that wecan't hold it back," said Pacific Telesis Group Chairman Phillip J.Quigley. "If it finally becomes law, this legislation will cementthe United States' position as the acknowledged leader in the newage of global information."
Under the sweeping House document that runs roughly 200 pagesof fine print, the concentration of ownership of everything fromradio stations to advertising billboards would begin to rise.
Anticipation of the reform is a key ingredient in themultibillion dollar wave of mergers sweeping through the broadcastindustry, just one example of the profound economic effects of thelegislation.
Supporters of the measure say the changes eventually will bringgreater diversity to the entertainment and news market, as well aslower prices, but op ponents castigate the bill for allowing major corporations toincrease their power over both the content of what the Americanpublic consumes and the prices in the marketplace.
The winners Friday appeared to be local telephone companies andcable television providers, while the losers were long-distancetelephone companies. Major broadcasting corporations were bloodiedin several battles, but overall came out with the right tosignificantly increase their ownership concentration of thetelevision market.
The bill's key features would:
Drop limits on the number of radio and television stations asingle corporation could own, and raise from to 30 percent from 25percent the share of the U.S. television audience those stationscould reach. Broadcasters had hoped for a 50 percent share. Alllimits on radio ownership would be dropped.
Loosen cross-ownership restrictions, which since the 1950s haveset limits on how many media outlets a single company can controlin one market. Under the proposed law, a single company now couldown a newspaper, two television stations and unlimited radiostations in the same market.
Permit local telephone companies to offer long-distanceservice, opening up the $70 billion long distance market to theBaby Bells and GTE. Long-distance companies lost their effort toforce the local carriers to prove conclusively that competitionexists in their local service markets before entering thelong-distance market.
Encourage computer on-line services and the Internet to controlpornography, but not allow the Federal Communications Commission toregulate content, as did the Senate. The provision, offered throughan amendment by Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., passed by a nearunanimous margin.
Drop federal price regulation of cable television rates,adopted in 1992 as cable rate increases became a nationalcontroversy, but leave intact local controls.
Require the television industry to adopt a system, known as thev-chip, which would allow parents to block out objectionabletelevision programs based on a rating issued by agovernment-mandated panel.
The sweeping reforms are underpinned by new technologies thathave rendered much of the nation's existing telecommunications lawobsolete.
Within hours of passage of the measure, major corporations andconsumer groups began waging a new battle to shape the finaloutcome of the reform measure, which will be hammered out nextmonth in a conference committee.
President Clinton also called for major changes, declining tosay whether he is willing to sign either the House or Senateversions. Earlier this week, Clinton vowed to veto the House billas it then stood, but he said Friday that his signature depends onthe final conference version.
