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ubspectrum.com
Friday, February 6, 2015
Building a new bridge
How UB alumni Shawn Lewis went from architect to artist
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News Bites: Catch up on this week’s headlines School of Management students offer free tax service
Bulls football signs 21 recruits
470 photos of possible ISIS representative found on campus
Courtesy of Jeanette Chwan Shawn Lewis, who graduated UB with a B.S. in architecture, pursues a career as an artist creating music, music videos and art installations.
nior year as a way to fill his schedule. He didn’t expect to enjoy designing installations more than designing buildings. After a couple of classes, he picked up an art minor and continued taking classes for the next two years, engrossing him-
Black gold
self in sculpting and media. Many of the skills he had been using in his architecture classes carried into his art classes, like conceptualizing ideas and designing sketches. The architecture major began to no-
UB makes own compost out of campus food waste
Tom Ludtka, the service manager for CDS, holds some of UB’s soil amendment. Courtesy of Raymond Kohl
The scraps from your on-campus Sloppy Joe or that fourth plate of macaroni and cheese you grabbed at the dining hall aren’t getting sent into a landfill, but back into the earth. Students may not realize their left-
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SEE LEWIS, PAGE 5
CHARLES W SCHAAB ASST. NEWS EDITOR
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TORI ROSEMAN SENIOR ARTS EDITOR What starts as an average music video for just another rock band becomes a work of art, as the group starts to play in front of a green screen. The upbeat tempo of the drums keep time as the world around the band begins to shift, morphing into various psychedelic patterns and shapes. The band members become cartoons. Their limbs stretch and twist as their music continues to beat on in the background. Shawn Lewis turns what could have been a simple music video shoot into performance art for the Sleepy HaHas, a Buffalo-based band. Lewis, a UB alumnus who graduated with a B.S. in architecture, has taken his life in a different direction than his degree suggests. Lewis graduated from UB in 2013 from the architecture program, but in his current career as an artist, he doesn’t use formulas or blueprints. He is following his dream of being an artist under the title Lesionread. He creates music and exhibits, showing his exhibits at the Center for the Arts (CFA) and performing his music throughout Buffalo. “I had to choose between architecture, which would provide me with a job where I’d be paid and being an artist, which would allow me to spend my time pursuing not just one thing, but all of my hobbies,” Lewis said. A change of heart Lewis started taking art classes his ju-
Volume 64 No. 45
overs are being mixed into UB’s soil, helping on-campus foliage thrive. Campus Dining and Shops (CDS) has been using students’ food waste to produce soil amendment for more than six years, but a lot of students don’t know that. UB estimates it prevents more than 700,000 pounds of food waste from entering landfills annually, according to
Raymond Kohl, the marketing manager for CDS. “Our recycled scraps can be put into further use … getting maximum use out of our organic materials is important,” said Brian Lounsbury, a sophomore environmental geosciences major. “I had no idea UB offered the waste us students produce in compost form.” UB’s pre- and post-consumer waste is collected and sent to an on-campus facility to begin the composting process. Composting is the natural process of organic material degrading into an organic matter that is beneficial for all plant growth. This matter, which some gardeners refer to as ‘black gold,’ is not considered a fertilizer but a soil amendment. “I think it is awesome UB is helping reduce some of the waste we produce,” said Veronica Kreutzer, a sophomore environmental engineering major. “Being the major campus we are, [UB] should do something to help reduce trash.” UB hosts roughly 30,000 students who are regularly going in and out of oncampus eateries and producing loads of waste. Normally, the waste breaks down slowly. It can take months for an eggshell or banana peel to decompose and be used in soil. But UB has a food decomposer that expedites that process, allowing the university to produce soil amendments in about 16 hours. All pre- and post-consumer waste from around campus is sealed in recycled plastic containers. Those containers are then taken to the Statler Food Commissary in Amherst, where they are emptied and any non-organic materials are sorted out. The material is then fed through a grinder. This process removes moisture and gives the material added surface area, according to Kohl. The extra surface area and reduced moisture in the product aids in the next step of the process: the food decomposer. This food decomposer takes the organic material and, through a heating and churning process, sanitizes and deSEE COMPOSTING, PAGE 6
CHARLES W SCHAAB ASST. NEWS EDITOR University Police reported finding 470 photos of what “appears to be an ISIS representative” holding a gun and wearing a black mask in a copy machine on South Campus, according to police reports. The report was filed at 9:33 a.m. on Feb. 2. The copy machine was in Farber Hall, which houses classrooms, wet labs and offices of the School of Public Health and Health Professions. Chief of Police Gerald Schoenle told The Spectrum an investigation of the incident is ongoing. “What we have is a picture printed on a copy machine,” Schoenle said. “No threats, no verbiage, no crime involved. None the less, we are still investigating to look into this further.” The complaint was filed a day before ISIS released a video of Muadh al-Kasasbeh, a Jordanian pilot, being set on fire and burned to death in a cage. Any information regarding the issue should be reported to UPD (716) 645-2229. email: news@ubspectrum.com
Some Faculty Senators look to change dean review process Decanal review process dominates semester’s first Senate meeting
TOM DINKI SENIOR NEWS EDITOR When the matter of possibly changing UB’s decanal review process was raised in a Faculty Senate Executive Committee meeting last fall, “Most people said, ‘Wait, where did this come from? What’s the problem? Why should we bother?’” according to law professor Martha McCluskey. McCluskey was part of a group that initially discussed making changes to the process in 2011. She stepped onto the Faculty Senate floor Tuesday to advocate for them again. “We’re in an era and culture of assessment. We have to not just trust in excellence, but we have to really have different ways of assessing and monitoring it,” McCluskey said. “We’ve done that for students and faculty and staff. I think including a more professional, clearer, ramped-up process for decanal performance is just part of that same goal and culture and it will benefit us all.” A committee tasked with evaluating how UB reviews its deans presented its findings in the first Faculty Senate meeting of the spring semester Tuesday. Decanal review changes were not the only thing discussed, as members of UB’s administration also gave updates on the implementation of new general education requirements and the Heart of the Campus initiative. The committee, which includes members from 12 UB schools, was formed in fall 2013 after a Faculty Senate Executive Committee motion in April 2012 by professors, including McCluskey. McCluskey said Tuesday that UB’s current decanal review policy from 1994 is vague, not regularly followed and hard to find. Elaine Davis, an oral diagnostics professor SEE FACULTY SENATE, PAGE 6