Mendoza-Denton's message was that discrimination, prejudice and racism is still present in our lives, even 40 years after the work of Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks.

His talk was part of the Buffalo State College Spring 2004 Speaker Series put on by the psychology department.

This spring there are two speakers this semester, besides Mendoza-Denton later on this semester:

• Thomas Szasz, M.D.
• Roger Greenberg, Ph.D.

This is the fourth year that Dr. Michael Zborowski , a professor at Buffalo State College, has been the head of the speaker series. He called the series psychology's attempt to promote a scholarly atmosphere here on our campus .

As a primarily liberal arts college, Buffalo State tends to be less scholarly compared to other colleges. The psychology department is trying to enhance a scholarly attitude and atmosphere with this speaker series.

On Feb. 20, Mendoza-Denton spoke. His topic of interest was Sensitivity to Status-based Rejection: Implications for Minorities' College Student Experience. He is currently at the University of California at Berkeley as an Assistant Professor.

The research he initially did took place at Columbia University, while he was there receiving his doctorate in Psychology. The research at Columbia was done with African American students over a two-or-three year period, with each student, depending on the focus group the students were put in.

The research done was on how prior experiences affect future expectations, based on rejection for race, ethnicity and culture.

The students who go around not expecting race-related rejection where labeled as low, and those expecting race-related rejection were labeled as high. Because Columbia is predominantly white with few African-Americans, they have reason to expect race-based rejection.

Currently, Mendoza-Denton's research is working with Latin American students on the Berkeley campus.

The next speaker in the series will be Greenberg speaking on Expectancy and Common Factors: Creating Hope in Psychotherapy. The March 26 speech will be from 4 to 6 p.m. in Room 213 in the Science Building on campus.

The speaker will be Roger Greenberg, Ph.D. speaking on Expectancy and Common Factors: Creating Hope in Psychotherapy.

The presentations are free of charge and open to the public .