How Union attained one of its defining characteristics-liberal arts with engineering-can be traced to Eliphalet Nott, president of the College from 1804 to 1866.
Nott brought William M. Gillespie to campus in 1845 as lecturer and head of the Civil Engineering Department. To understand that decision, we must go back to Nott's relationship with the Rensselaer Institute – later to become Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
The Rensselaer Institute was founded in 1824 by Stephen Van Rensselaer,
a wealthy landowner who rose to high military and political positions in New York. Van Rensselaer wanted to encourage farmers and
improve agriculture. Thus his school would produce teachers who would instruct in the basics of the “business of living”-everything from experimental chemistry to the “arts and manufactures.”
He hired Amos Eaton as senior professor. Eaton, the son of a wealthy farmer from Chatham, N.Y., began his professional life as a lawyer but decided to follow his true love of science. He conducted several geological surveys, studied botany, published several pieces of work, and became
well known for his scientific accomplishments.
In 1835, state legislation authorized the Rensselaer Institute to establish a department specifically for engineering and technology.
The president of the institute during these early years was Eliphalet Nott (who continued, of course, his remarkable presidency at Union). Nott's role seems to have been mainly advisory, although he developed close ties with Eaton and supported his quest to encourage and teach engineering, science, and technology. It was a quest that interested many Union students, including Nott's own grandson, who journeyed to Troy to take classes.
Eaton died in 1842. Three years later, Nott-who never let an opportunity pass
resigned his presidency at the institute and hired Gillespie to begin engineering at Union. Juniors and seniors could take courses in civil engineering. As written in the 1845 catalog, “those who regularly go through it and evince due proficiency, will receive a special diploma or certificate to that effect.”
Those first classes in geometrical drawing, isometrical projection, and leveling have evolved into such classes as
computer-aided graphics and drafting, audio and image digital signal processing, and the mechanics of material failure. And from that one department with one professor have come three departments with more than thirty faculty members.