Your University: SBU to Host Landmark Alumni Reunion

More than 32,000 Stony Brook University alumni who graduated between 1961 and 1981 have been invited to a massive reunion that the university hopes will unite its "first generation" of graduates.

The idea was the brainchild of college friends Ken Marcus, Class of 1971, and Ed Berenhaus, Class of 1974, who hadn't spoken in years before they reconnected. The Alumni Office bought into the idea of a "Generation One" reunion, and received an overwhelmingly positive response to a survey it sent out about the possibility. The reunion is set for April 28.

"It is time for these pioneering alumni to return to the campus to reassert their place in Stony Brook University history," Marcus said.

SBU Team Makes Major Archaeological Discovery in Iraq. A research team including two professors and two PhD students from Stony Brook are the first Americans to make a significant archaeological discovery in Iraq in twenty years. Elizabeth Stone of the Department of Anthropology and Paul Zimansky of the Department of History, along with students Stephanie Rost and Abdul Amir Hamdani, discovered evidence of a "herding or marsh-based settlement" in what is now southern Iraq, but which was known as the ancient Mesopotamian site of Tell Sakhariya dating back to the second millennium B.C. The Iraq Minister of Culture has since awarded the team a permit to excavate at Ur, the Biblical birthplace of Abraham, which was last excavated in 1934.

SBU Transit Gets GPS Capabilities. Scientists at the university's Center of Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology have developed a tracking system for students to know when and where the next SBU Transit buses will stop. Equipped with wireless routers, automated passenger counters and card-reader technology, the system will also allow the university to better understand the flow of traffic throughout campus. Mobile applications are currently in development for the project, which will be implemented in three phases starting in March.