Piscitelli, Shannon Roche, Christine Rovegno, Eugene Schmitt, Jennifer Seymour, Tina Shafer,
Jeannine Sojka, Stewart Stanton, Duane Stenzel, Matthew Swinarski, Anil Thomas, Steven
Thompson, Kevin Turnick, Brian Varga, Timothy Vogl, Scott Willett, LuAnn Yuricek, Jennifer
Zyskowski.
Prof's Who's Who.
Five Clarkson professors were listed in the 1992 edition of
Who's Who in
American Education
. They were: Bradford Broughton, professor of technical communications;
Ahmed Busnaina, associate professor of mechanical and aeronautical engineering; Richard H.
Gallagher, president and professor of civil and environmental engineering; Erol Sancaktar,
associate professor of mechanical and aeronautical engineering; and David J. Wells, assistant
professor of mechanical engineering and director of Interdisciplinary Engineering and
Management.
Changes and Promotions.
Victor Pease was appointed dean of the school of management,
Anthony Collins as chairman of civil and environmental engineering, and Paul McGrath as
chairman of electrical and computer engineering.
Promoted to full professor were Anthony Collins, Paul McGrath, Thomas Ortmeyer,
and Hayley Shen.
Laboratory Fire.
Early on a July morning, local fire fighters fought a fire which totally
destroyed Research Professor MSAA Hammam's High Voltage Lab. Two minutes after a
Sigma Delta fraternity resident adjacent to the building reported the fire, Potsdam fire
equipment was on the scene, fighting the flames which by then had engulfed the entire third
floor.
In addition to the destruction of the voltage lab, the rest of the building sustained heavy
fire, water, and smoke damage. A substance in the smoke combined with the fire fighter's water
to form an acid which reacted with the materials in the labs on that floor, eating everything it
landed on.
The second floor lab had mostly water damage, and some first-floor rooms also were
water damaged, but nothing serious enough to close them from student use.
To clean up the mess, Clarkson hired The Restoration Company (TRC), specialists in
clearing electrical fire damage. Its teams had to dismantle, test, and clean all items in Clarkson
Hall. This cleaning was done with deionized water and special cleaning solutions. Then each
piece was placed in an oven for an hour before reassembling. The building was ready for
student use in the fall.
The one occupant in the building at the time of the blaze- a parrot owned by
a graduate student- was rescued unhurt.
Global Obstacles.
When most Clarkson professors and students had returned to their
classrooms in the fall of 1990, the office of Mathematics Professor Abdul Jerri remained
vacant. He was trapped in Kuwait, unable to leave that country after the Iraqi invasion. When
he did escape later, he was forced to abandon not only his research books, but also disks
containing several chapters of the mathematics text he was writing. Yet, working with his
publisher and from hard copy drafts, he was able to reconstruct the text and publish his
800-page reference text in 1992. (See Appendix V)
