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Rensselaer in Brief
NSF funds new initiative
Tuesday, March 27 will bring an announcement from Rensselaer of a new university-wide initiative to encourage equal gender representation among high-ranking educators.

The goal of the initiative is to aid women in their path along in careers in academia from the junior positions women typically occupy toward full professorships and tenure. It looks to improve the advancement experience of Rensselaer faculty, while also serving as a national model for advancement reform, according to Cheryl Geisler, professor and department head of Language, Literature, and Communication and principal investigator on the project.

The program, called Reforming Advancement Processes through University Professions (RAMP-UP), seeks to accomplish this goal through implementing faculty advancement coaches, searches to recruit women from national labs or industry, faculty workshops and even mentoring programs. This initiative is funded through a $329,960 grant from the National Science Foundation.

The event will be held in the auditorium of the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies next Tuesday at 3 pm. It will be led by President Shirley Ann Jackson and will include a colloquy of national experts on women’s advancement issues such as Shulamit Kahn, professor of finance and economics at Boston University; Carol Colatrella, professor of literature and cultural studies at Georgia Tech; and Robert Drago, professor of labor studies and women’s studies at Pennsylvania State University—all of whom have published reports or books regarding the role of women in academia as well as in the fields of science and mathematics.

The campus community is encouraged to attend as the highlights and key components of the RAMP-UP program as well as faculty advancement awards will be announced in the course of the event.

Man sentenced to prison
Jose Munoz was sentenced to 17 years in the state prison this morning for beating and nearly blinding his girlfriend’s now five-year-old daughter Xctasy Garcia in a motel room last year.

Munoz said nothing before Judge Karen Drago of Schenectady County ordered him to begin the sentence. Munoz had snapped Garcia’s right shoulder, and nearly blinded her with Irish Spring Soap and bleach.

Drago told the 26-year-old man that he needed to be “removed from society.”

Garcia was not his only object of torture, as on January 22 he pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree assault when he admitted to not only this attack on the girl, but also that he had used a cigarette to burn his girlfriend’s nine-year-old son, Hennessy Velazquez.

Munoz would have faced up to 25 years in prison if convicted of first-degree assault for pouring bleach in Xctasy’s eyes last June; prosecutors, however, let him plead guilty to lesser charges and serve no more than 17 years in prison since it was not proved that Xctasy was permanently injured.

Xctasy’s mother, Delia Hernandez, is also scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday. Hernandez, 27, was living with Munoz, Xctasy and her two sons at the Twins Motor Inn last year when her daughter was injured by Munoz.

Authorities argue Hernandez did nothing to stop Munoz from abusing her daughter.

Drug probe snags cop
A veteran city detective is facing felony drug charges—exposed, prosecutors say, by a hair sample that registered 55 times what’s generally considered a positive hit for cocaine. Investigator Jeffery Curtis was arrested after a nearly two-month-old police probe into missing drugs from the evidence locker.

Although there is no evidence linking Curtis to the theft of the drugs, he was charged with drug possession and sale, and was taken into custody Thursday after police pulled him over in Princetown, said Schenectady County District Attorney Robert Carney.