Hillary Clinton’s replacement as New York’s junior senator has vowed to help improve higher education and the economy in New York state. U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat, is “a strong advocate to keep higher education more affordable for middle-class families,” according to Rachel McEneny, the senator’s press secretary. McEneny said Gillibrand’s new federal position will increase her ability to make higher public education more affordable. This should come as a relief due to the increased tuition costs many schools, including Binghamton University, have been faced with. Gillibrand wants to make Stafford loans, in particular, more available to college students,…

The Boys and Girls Club of Binghamton has restructured its volunteer program to allow for more volunteers after an influx of applications from Binghamton University students last semester. Moshe Roberts, BU volunteer coordinator for the club, said the organization received an overwhelming number of applications last semester from BU students. “We got so many applications that we didn’t have nearly enough space,” Roberts, a junior biology major, said. Roberts worked with the club’s director Danielle Butchko to change the volunteer program so more students could dedicate their time to helping children. If so many students wanted to help, Roberts said,…

Brainify.com is a new Web site where students can connect with others academically outside the classroom and around the world. The site, said Murray Goldberg, the founder and creator of Brainify.com, uses the collective intelligence of its student members to determine which Web sources will be the most helpful to them. “The problem students have is not finding material online,” Goldberg said. “The problem generally lies in finding the best resources available.” Students may have to sort through an abundance of Web sites, but “Brainify allows students to be pointed right away to the best Web sites available to them,”…

Some other Binghamton University professors who have received awards in the fall and spring 2008 semesters: Elizabeth Carter, interim assistant vice president for student services, received a 2007 Outstanding Student Affairs Award from the SUNY Office of University Life. Joel Thirer, director of health, physical education and athletics, was named the AstroTurf Division I Northeast Region Athletics Director of the Year for 2006-07 by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. Mark Lenzenweger, distinguished professor of psychology, was selected as the 2008 recipient of the American Psychological Foundation’s Theodore Millon, Ph.D. Award. Bahgat Sammakia, director of the Small Scale…

Shelemyahu Zacks has become the latest Binghamton University faculty member to be internationally honored for his work. Zacks, a professor in the math department, is a co-winner of the 2008 Abraham Wald Prize, an international competition. Together with Nitis Mukhopadhyay from the University of Connecticut, Zacks authored a paper for the Sequential Analysis Journal entitled “Distributions of Sequential and Two-Stage Stopping Times for Fixed-Width Confidence Intervals in Bernoulli Trials: Application in Reliability.” “Sequential analysis is the method of taking observations one by one (sequentially) or in groups. After each such stage of sampling a decision is made whether to stop…

Come on, you maniacs, it’s time to recycle! After its first day of competition, Binghamton University is standing second out of 26 New York schools in the Grand Champion category of this year’s Recyclemania. According to Juliet Berling, the environmental resource manager at BU, she started entering the University into the nationwide competition about four years ago to try to jump-start BU’s own recycling initiative. “BU had a recycling program, but it was pretty rudimentary,” Berling said. “I started pushing, and as [the University] started seeing our success, they started putting more money into the program.” Over 500 college campuses…

Binghamton Outdoor Pursuits’ wintertime fun: Date of Activity — Name of Activity — Fee — Register-by date Feb. 7 — Intro to Cross Country Skiing — $10 — Register by Feb. 5 Feb. 8 — Winter Survival: Build an Igloo — $5 — Register by Feb. 5 Feb. 9 — Full Moon Snowshoe Hike — $5 — Register by Feb. 5 Feb. 13 — Lunch in a Lean-To Snowshoe Hike — $5 — Register by Feb. 11 Feb. 14 — Snowshoe Hike — $5 — Register by Feb. 12 Feb. 15 — Cross Country Day Ski Trip II — $5/$15…

This spring semester you could find yourself cross-country skiing, learning how to build an igloo or hiking in snowshoes under a full moon. Binghamton University’s Outdoor Pursuits is offering these activities, workshops and more — and most cost less than $15. In warmer weather, adventurers can also choose from larger trips such as a weekend fly-fishing trip and a spring break backpacking expedition in Kentucky’s Red River Gorge. Last weekend, graduate students Josh Teeter and John Moore led a snowshoeing expedition in the Nature Preserve. “We like to let students choose their routes on a hike like this one, in…