Posted on May 10, 1996

David Peak, Frank and Louise Bailey Professor of Physics, has received the 1996 Prize for Research in an Undergraduate Institution from the American Physical Society. The prize was established by the Research Corporation to honor a physicist whose research in an undergraduate institution has contributed to the professional development of undergraduate physics students. Peak is on leave from Union College as visiting professor of physics at Utah State University.

Amanda Leamon, assistant professor of French, presented a paper titled “On the Inside Looking Out: Distortion and Inversion in Medhi Charef's Le thé au harem
d'Archi Ahmed” at the Northeast Modern Language Association conference recently.
She is also author of an article forthcoming in the September issue of French Forum
titled “Eclipsing the Self: Sexuality and the Color Black in Blaise Cendrars' Prose
Fiction.”

Donald Rodbell, assistant professor of geology, has received an equipment grant
from the National Science Foundation for “Particle-size and Carbon Instrumentation
for the Integration of Quantitative Sedimentology Into the Undergraduate Geology
Curriculum.” The matching grant of $34,000 will provide instrumentation for use in a
number of courses including “Lakes and Environmental Change,” “Carbonate
Sedimentology,” “Process Geomorphology,” “Glacial and Quaternary
Geology,” and “Introductory Physical Geology.”

Terry Weiner, professor of sociology and political science, and Felmon Davis,
associate professor of philosophy, has an article titled “Sociological Theory and
Mental Retardation” published in a recent issue of the International Journal of
Sociology and Social Policy. The article explores the possibility of linking the
“conflict perspective” and the “medical model” of mental retardation,
usually thought to be at odds as explanatory frameworks.

Yoshimitsu Khan, assistant professor of Japanese and East Asian Studies, gave a
lecture titled “An Explanation of Confucianism” as a guest speaker this spring
in the Union College Academy of Lifelong Learning (UCALL). He spoke about filial piety,
ancestor worship, and religiosity in Confucian tradition.

Bruce Reynolds, professor of economics and director of the East Asian Studies
program, gave a talk titled “Reinventing East Asian Studies Under a Tight Budget
Constraint” at the annual convention of AsiaNet recently. Funded by the Luce and Ford
Foundations, AsiaNet brings together Asianists at liberal arts colleges to pool ideas and
resources. In May, Reynolds is to be a panel participant at a Cornell University
conference, “Lessons of Taiwan's Development Experience.”

J. Richard Shanebrook, professor of mechanical engineering, Lee Johnson Jr.
'94 and Richard I. Skoglund '93 are co-authors of the article, “Device for
Visualization of Anastamose Flow Pattern,” which appeared in a recent issue of the
French journal, Innovation and Technology in Biology and Medicine. The paper
presents a new type of aerodynamic wind tunnel that is useful for investigating the fluid
dynamics of bypass grafts as well as models of prosthetic devices that could improve their
long-term performance. The principal advantage of this approach is that air flow can be
used to simulate the flow of blood provided the Reynolds number of the two flows are
comparable. Also, many aspects of aerospace technology can now be used to study a wide
variety of cardiovascular flows.

Posted on May 10, 1996

Thomas Werner, the Florence B. Sherwood Professor of Physical Sciences, was elected chair of the Board of Governors of the National Conference on Undergraduate
Research.

As Chair, Werner – who also was elected to his third three-year term on the 24-member board – will be responsible for heading the board in their planning of next year's
conference, to be held at the University of Texas at Austin.

One issue Werner says he will be addressing as chair is the size of future conferences. This year's NCUR was about 50 percent larger than NCUR 1995 held at Union College.
“We don't want NCUR to get too large … it could lose something,” Werner said.
“We also want to maintain the possibility that schools like Union will be able to
host NCUR in the future.”

This year's NCUR was the tenth annual conference, and returned to the University of
North Carolina at Asheville, which started NCUR and held the first two conferences.
Attending were about 35 Union students and four faculty members including Werner, Walid
Thabet, George Shaw and Margaret Schadler. Schadler gave an invited talk on planning and
implementing college conferences on undergraduate research, such as Union's Steinmetz
Symposium.

Posted on May 10, 1996

Union's Class of 2000 – while not yet on campus – is making quite an impression already.

A week after the May 1 reply deadline, Admissions had received a record high 620 deposits, according to Dean of Admissions Dan Lundquist, and a few more could trickle in from foreign students who mailed their replies from abroad.

The yield represents a 15 percent increase – 80 students – over last year's figure of
540 for this point in time. Last year's yield was 29 percent; this year's is 33 percent.
The usual “summer melt” — as other colleges go to their wait lists — could
mean a class as large as 580 this fall, Lundquist said.

“Unless this is a glitch – and we have no reason to think that it is – we could
safely infer that we are really getting out there in the market,” Lundquist said,
citing the efforts of the campus community in recruiting students. Peer institutions with
which Union competes are not reporting unusually large classes and many are under target,
Lundquist said. Skidmore is the only other college in the region that appears to have had
a similar experience — about 80 more than their target of 620.

“Everything we did was geared toward getting a class of 520,” Lundquist said,
noting that Union admitted the same number of students as in other years. The results are
especially remarkable considering that only a few weeks ago deposits were trickling in and
early decisions were down to about 140 (from a high of 170), he said.

Lundquist said that many students put off their decision as long as possible.
“Students and families are taking the entire month to visit, negotiate and make up
their minds. There used to be less shopping. Now, they're waiting until the 11th
hour.”

Union's Class of 1991 — the largest so far — arrived on campus (in 1987) with 550.
The Class of 1990 started with 544, the Class of 1998 with 543.

While Admissions tallies the deposits, others on campus are trying to figure out what
it will mean to have what will likely be the College's largest class. “As a good
campus citizen,” Lundquist said, “I feel for my colleagues.”

Posted on May 10, 1996

With presentations ranging from cloning of a putative enclonuclease to children's understanding of sarcasm, scarcely a topic, it seems, will be untouched at the end of this year's Steinmetz Symposium on Friday.

Steinmetz this year will celebrate the creative, scholarly and research achievements of more than 200 students. Presentations will take place in four sessions beginning at 1 p.m.

And on Saturday, the College will recognize the achievements of more than 100 students
at Prize Day at 11 a.m. in Memorial Chapel. There will be a President's reception before
the ceremony, beginning at 9 a.m. in Library Plaza.

Schedules for Steinmetz and Prize Day events will be available in Reamer Campus Center
atrium on Friday afternoon.

The symposium is named for Charles Proteus Steinmetz, professor and head of electrical
engineering and applied physics at Union from 1902 to 1923. A world famous scientist, he
also was known as the “Electrical Wizard” of General Electric.

Posted on May 10, 1996

“To me a bridge symbolizes an obstacle overcome, man triumphing over nature, and even the passageway to other worlds,” writes Trinh Thai, a senior civil
engineering major who is about to embark on a Watson Fellowship.

Blending her fascination with bridges and her personal background as a Vietnamese immigrant of Chinese ancestry, Trinh Thai's proposal to study the social, political and
economic effects of historic bridges in England, Italy, China and Japan recently won her a Watson, a one-year grant of $16,000 from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation to fund travel
and study abroad. Only 60 students from 50 American colleges and universities received the fellowship.

“I think we can learn a lot from ancient bridges,” explains Thai, a resident
of Queens, N.Y., and a 1991 graduate of Norman Thomas High School. “With all of our
modern technology, we often lose sight of simplicity.” She will be photographing the
bridges and exploring why the bridges were built and what stories or myths may surround
them.

In England, where she will spend a little over a month, she will be exploring slab or
“clapper” bridges, such as the Eastleach Martin Bridge. She will then move to
Italy, where she will also spend about a month studying bridges built by the Romans,
including Ponte Di Augusto in Rimini and Ponte Rotto in Rome.

Thai will spend most of her year in Asia, beginning in China. She is looking forward to
returning to China, where she spent a Term Abroad in 1993. “My first brief visit to
China reaffirmed the pride I have in myself and my ancestry. I met relatives I didn't know
existed and felt quite at home,” she explains in her proposal. “Through the
Watson I hope to extend my introduction into a more thorough exchange and experience in
China and with the Chinese.”

She is hoping to learn more about her cultural identity through studying Asian bridges.
“I feel that not enough emphasis is put upon what can be learned from Asia, in
particular China and Japan,” she explains. In China, she is planning on visiting the
An-Chi bridge at Chao Chou, the Camel Back bridge in the Summer Palace at Beijing and the
Poh Lam bridge over Dragon River in Fukien. In Japan, she is interested in the Engetsu
Bridge, Kintai Bridge, and the Isahaia Bridge in Kiushu, Japan.