In December 1994, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded Union a challenge grant of $575,000 to renovate Schaffer Library into a
highly effective learning center and a showcase for the humanities.
In August 1995, the College received $200,000 from the NEH by meeting the first increment
of the challenge. To collect a second payment of 5200,000 this August, the College must certify an additional $800,000 in cash donations by June 30.
To help Union meet this prestigious challenge, send your gifts to Dan C. West, vice president for college relations, 27 Terrace Lane, Union College, Schenectady, N.Y. 12308. Telephone: (518) 388-6180. E-mail: westd@alice.union.edu
Looking for legacies The Admissions Office is always looking for bright, well-rounded students. Would you please tell us a little about your high-school aged child so that we can tell him or her about Union?
Specifically, let us know your child's name, address (if different from yours), birthdate, secondary school, and year in school. Please send the information to:
Looking for class correspondents The Alumni Office is looking for volunteers to act as correspondents for the class news sections in Union College magazine. If you're interested, please contact Hayl Kephart, director of the Annual Giving and Alumni programs.
Save these dates Commencement Weekend will be held June 14-16, and ReUnion will be May 31-June 2.
Speaking at Commencement at 10 a.m. on Sunday, June 16, will be Phil Alden Robinson '71, writer and director of Field of Dreams.
Other highlights of the weekend include the president's reception at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 15, and a baccalaureate service at 5 p.m., also on Saturday.
A brochure with ReUnion information has been sent to all alumni. If you have questions, contact Alison Brost, coordinator of the weekend, at (518) 388-6168. Her e-mail address is brusta@alice.union.edu
Since 1974, Ted Goble's work at Union has been research-particularly research involving isotope shift measurement. But he says that his primary concern practically forever” has been teaching, and he is proud of what many of his former students have accomplished.
“It's very satisfying to see the number of students who have developed distinguished careers in physics in both industry and the academic world,” he says, pointing to several alumni who have gone on to be
professors for example, Charles Baltay '58, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics at Yale, and Aron Bernstein '53, professor of physics at MIT.
A native of River Falls, Wis., Alfred “Ted” Goble received his bachelor's degree and Ph.D. in physics from the University of Wisconsin, where he also did postdoctoral research. He joined Union in 1945 for a nine-month position teaching physics for the three on-campus Navy training programs.
“They desperately needed physics teachers,” Goble says. “They even enlisted Helmer Webb, the librarian, to teach physics classes.” As the nine months neared an end, a tenure track position became available, and Goble accepted. “And I've been here ever since,” he says. (Goble was honored at Founders Day in February for his fifty consecutive years of service.)
Goble got involved in isotope shift measurement research during two sabbaticals at Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University. He continued his research after retiring from teaching in 1974 and began working with Seyfollah Maleki, associate professor of physics, in 1984. Their work on isotope shift measurement in Calcium II has led to three papers and presentations at professional conferences.
Over the past few years, Goble has been looking at the hyperfine structure of the
spectral lines in aluminum. The results from this research were what he had expected. “In science,” he explains, “two things happen. One, you get all the answers right and the theories work. Or two, things come out a little different than expected and that's the exciting part.” He is still analyzing the results of data he collected a year ago and has not planned any new research projects for the immediate future.
Goble was the advisor of W2UC, the predecessor to WRUC, and remains an active ham-an amateur radio operator (he was first licensed as an amateur radio operator in 1924).
He has been a member of Sigma Xi, the American Physical Society, and the American Association of Physics Teachers.
This summer, nine faculty members with 280 years of teaching at Union will retire. Here are brief profiles as the College says good-bye and thanks:
Music has always been a very important part of Tom D'Andrea's life, but it is something that has been a hobby throughout his years as an educator and college administrator.
So, as retirement approaches in August, he looks forward to having more time to pursue his lifelong interest in music-as well as working on his current research project, doing some educational consulting, and devoting more time to his many area board memberships.
D'Andrea's father taught him to play the drums when he was very young (“Well, at least I could flail away at it,” he says.)
Playing jazz in clubs and bars in Minneapolis (where he played with such musicians as Herbie Mann) helped him pay for his years at the University of Minnesota, where he earned his bachelor's degree and Ph.D. in experimental psychology.
He began his career in education at Haverford College, where he taught psychology and later held the positions of chair of the Psychology Department, and provost and dean of the faculty. He came to Union in 1980 as vice president for academic affairs and professor of psychology, returning to teaching on a full-time basis in 1989.
His areas of teaching and . research include learning and conditioning, and pyscholinguistics. D'Andrea and Vicki Dawson of Skidmore College are in the midst of a project assessing creativity, especially in children. They recently presented a paper at the Eastern Psychological Association meeting and are revising a manuscript for the Creativity Research Journal. Two former students, Eric Westby'93 and Rosalinda Affinito '94, also worked on the project; both went on to graduate school.
D'Andrea remembers with special fondness the Alumni Gym pool and Reamer Campus Center renovation projects, expansion of the Terms Abroad program, the development of the academic program and several strong faculty appointments, and the development of the “very valuable” freshman preceptorial program.
“I have a great group of colleagues that I will miss seeing everyday, although I'll probably still be lurking around a bit,” he says. “I'm struck at how committed this group is to teaching, to their students, and to their profession. It's been very gratifying to have been so closely allied with them over the past years.”
D'Andrea is a member of the Northeast Educators Wind Ensemble and recently has been playing about four or five times a month-but often has to turn down offers because he is busy with the many other things that quickly fill up his time (including memberships on the boards of Ellis Hospital, the Schenectady Museum, and the Dudley Observatory).
“It's hard when it's just a hobby,” he says. “My technique suffers and a lot of times I'm going in with just one rehearsal.” For someone who has played with Perry Como and Andy Williams, the extra rehearsal time will be most welcome.
Tom D'Andrea
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“I'm going to do exactly the same things I've been doing except I won't be teaching classes or going to meetings,” says Joe Finkelstein, who will retire in August after spending more than fifty years at the College, first as a student and then as a professor in both the History Department and the Graduate Management Institute.
A native of Troy, N.Y., Finkelstein majored in social studies and graduated first in his class in 1945. At age nineteen, he became an instructor in the History Department, a position he held from 1946 until 1948 when he left Union to earn his master's degree and Ph.D. in economic history at Harvard University. After some postdoctoral research under a Fulbright Fellowship at the
London School of Economics, he returned to Union in 1953 and became a full professor ten years later.
During his long tenure, Finkelstein has worked with six presidents, and has been witness to many significant changes at Union. First, he mentioned the physical restructuring of the campus. “It's in much better shape now than in the fifty years I've been here,” he says.
Second, he spoke of the acceptance of women and the makings of a coeducational campus, which he says has still not been completed. “The social life for young women is still constricted by Union's fraternity system,” he says.
And last, he noted the increasing professionalism of the faculty and a gap between that professional level and the intellectual level of today's students.
His area of teaching experience and expertise include the development of American enterprise abroad, social aspects of American capitalism and government in business, and the interface of corporate policy and public
issues. He has also done significant research on the Third Industrial Revolution
– the knowledge-driven changes in technology and communication that affect our world.
“Many call it an information revolution,” he says, “but it's more than that. It will have political and economic effects over the entire global society.”
He is the author of American Economics: From Great Crash to Third Industrial Revolution and edited Windows on a New World: The Third Industrial Revolution as well as articles on many other topics.
An avid traveler, he has been to England more than ten times, including invitations as guest lecturer to the international management program at the Administrative Staff College, Henley-on-Thames. His most recent trip was to Japan last fall term as visiting professor at Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka. During this stay, his letter-to-the-editor about the Third Industrial Revolution and the twenty-first century was published in Japan Times.
Finkelstein is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a past member of the American Arbitration Association, a member of the American History Society, and a member of the Friends of Business History. He has been a contributor to the Wall Street Journal Review of Books and a member of its editorial board.
In addition to his Fulbright Fellowship, he has also received fellowships from the Danforth, Mellon, and Ford Foundations. For his many contributions and long service to the College community, he was awarded the Alumni Council Faculty Meritorious Service Award in 1982.
Finkelstein will continue working on a manuscript on the global economy, and he is taking a final course through the Cornell extension program to become a master gardener as he works toward his goal of growing 200 rhododendrons.
Armen Fisher
After thirty years of educating hundreds of graduate students throughout New York State, Armen Fisher is about to turn
full time to his now part-time business.
Fisher, associate professor in the Graduate Management Institute, is a dealer in American antique furniture from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He repairs, restores, and refinishes most of the furniture and sells it out of his barn in Highland, N.Y.
Fisher, who teaches statistics, joined the faculty in 1966 as assistant professor and director
of the former Poughkeepsie Graduate Center.
He earned bachelor's degrees from both Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin, where he also earned a master's degree. His degrees are in chemistry, chemical engineering, and business administration. He received his Ph.D. in statistics from Rutgers University.
He taught at Wisconsin and Rutgers and worked for seven years at Union Carbide Plastics Co. before joining Union. Fisher has written several articles that have appeared in engineering and statistical journals.
Fred Jonas
To Fred Jonas, the John Bigelow Professor of History and director of the American Studies
program, retirement will mean doing the same things-and maybe a few he's never gotten to do.
“I'm not retiring because of an urgent need to do something else,” he says.
Jonas joined the faculty in 1963 after earning his master's degree and Ph.D. in history from Harvard University. His undergraduate work in social science was done at the City College of New York.
A well-known scholar, Jonas's prolific writing reflects the areas he has taught-United States diplomatic and twentieth-century political history, constitutional history, and American studies. He has published more than 140 books, articles, and book reviews, and he has presented papers at more than twenty conferences.
His book, Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence was a History Book Club selection and a Book of the Month Club alternate. His other books include Isolationism in America 1935-41; The United States and Germany: A Diplomatic
History; American Foreign Relations in the Twentieth Century; New Opportunities in the New Nation: The Development of New York after the
Revolution; and the nine-volume The Politics and Strategy of World War
II, of which he was general editor.
Before coming to Union, Jonas was visiting professor of North American history at the Free University of Berlin. He has been the Dr. Otto Salgo Visiting Professor of American Studies at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest and a research fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. A Fulbright-Hays
He says the most exciting time at Union came in the late 1960s, when there was an effort to seriously upgrade the College academically, which included an increase in the size of the faculty and of its research orientation, and the admission of women. “The upgrading process made it a great place to be,” Jonas says, “and while it came up short of what many of us had hoped for, real progress was made. It's definitely a better place than when I came here.”
D. Edward Robison
D. Edward Robison says that the best experiences of his many years at Union have come from the interaction he has had with so many high-quality, mature graduate students and his many associations and friendships with so many outstanding faculty colleagues.
Robison, associate professor in the Graduate Management Institute, will retire after
twenty-five years on the faculty.
Robison came to Union in 1971 as associate professor of statistics and operations research at the former Poughkeepsie Graduate Center. Currently he teaches managerial calculus, statistics, and operations research, primarily for the MBA program in the Graduate Management Institute.
A graduate of the University of Oregon, where he received his degree in mathematics, Robison earned his master's degree and Ph.D. in mathematical statistics from Ohio State University. Before coming to Union he worked in the aerospace industry for ten years in the Applied Mathematics Department at Space Technology Laboratories (now called TRW Systems) in California.
He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi society, the national honor society for science and mathematics. He has published several journal articles and is a member of the Institute of Mathematical Statistical Association and the Statistical Program Evaluation Committee.
Robison says he looks forward to pursuing outside interests in music and computer software, and he is planning on doing some travel.
Arnold Seiken
A familiar sight on the College's tennis courts, Arnold Seiken plans to continue to polish his game as well as work on computer programming problems.
Seiken, who has taught in the Mathematics Department since 1967, will remain in the area
and plans on keeping an office on campus.
Before joining the Union faculty, Seiken held teaching positions at Oakland University, Southern Illinois University, and the University of Rhode Island. A graduate of Syracuse University, he earned his master's degree and Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Michigan. He has held memberships in the American Mathematical Association and the Mathematical Association of America.
Although he has helped to teach all the courses in the department, his particular area of interest and expertise is geometry.
Seiken says that the College has remained the same in many
ways throughout his twenty-nine years here (adding that he misses the gorgeous elm trees that used to be on campus before the
Dutch elm disease struck).
He says that the quality of the faculty is as good, if not better, than when he first arrived, and students' abilities are as varied as ever.
Seiken also noted the many people who keep the College going. “I was impressed when I first came here, and I'm still
impressed by the dedication of most of the people who work at the College,” he says. “There is a lot of loyalty here. You can
feel that talking to alumni and others.”
Don Thurston
For Don Thurston, August will bring full retirement after thirty years in the Political Science and History Departments and service as the first director of the College's East Asian Studies program.
After graduating from Syracuse University with a bachelor's degree in English, Thurston was stationed in Korea during the Korean War for fourteen months. After taking a post-discharge tour of the Far East and Europe, he entered Columbia University, where he earned his master's degree in
political science with a concentration in international relations.
He then returned to Asia and taught English at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan. Back in the United States, he taught high school English for two years in New Jersey before receiving a certificate from the East Asian Institute at Columbia University and earning his Ph.D. in Japanese and Chinese politics and history, also at Columbia.
Not surprisingly, Thurston's areas of research and teaching expertise include East Asian political systems and international relations, modern Chinese and Japanese history, and the history of Japanese and Chinese art. He is the author of a book, Teachers and Politics in Japan, and has contributed articles to such publications as The Journal of Contemporary Asia, the Encyclopedia of Japan, Japan
Interpreter, and The Journal of Asian Studies. He is a member of the Association of Asian Studies, the Japan Society, and the Center for Japanese Social and Political Studies.
Also not surprisingly, Thurston is an avid traveler. In addition to several trips to Asia he has also visited the Middle East, India, Russia, and Europe. He has been a faculty member in residence for Union Terms Abroad in China and Japan and has received several grants to do research in Japan.
“I love to travel,” he says. This past year, he has spent some time in Mexico and Italy, and also took a five-week road trip through the southern United States, visiting friends and family.
His dream trip? “I would love to visit the Tung Huang Caves in China, which are filled with Buddhist sculpture,” he says.
Thurston plans to stay actively involved with the East Asian Studies program, and to continue to help raise money for it. He established an endowed fund for the program last year, to which a number of alumni have also contributed. He will also work with the program's current director, Professor Bruce Reynolds, to continue to send out a newsletter to East Asian Studies alumni.
Charles Weick
Professor of Chemistry Charles Weick isn't planning on doing anything special when he fully retires in August (he's been half retired for the past year).
He says he'll be doing the same things-“a lot of golf and maybe a little repair work around the house.” And he and his wife, Janet, are planning to do some traveling-if they can agree on a place to go. They'll definitely visit their son, who lives in California, but “she wants to go on a Caribbean cruise, and I'd much rather go out west and ski. I get antsy on the beach,” he says, laughing.
Weick joined the faculty in 1958 after completing his Ph.D. in nuclear chemistry at the University of Rochester. He was hired to begin a radiochemistry program, which he taught for about ten years. Since then, he's carved out a field in inorganic chemistry, and his areas of research interest and expertise include radiochemistry, inorganic chemistry, and gold complexes. His main area of teaching over the years has been freshman chemistry.
He has received a National Science Foundation Science Faculty Fellowship, which allowed him to study inorganic complex reaction mechanisms at Northwestern University, and also spent a year working in bioinorganic chemistry at the University of Kent at Canterbury, England. He was secretary for six years of the regional branch of the American Chemical Society and is a past member of Sigma Xi, the national science honor society.
Weick's many memories of his thirty-eight years at Union include meeting his wife and watching his whole family graduate.
When he first arrived on campus, he was teaching in the “Alps”-Butterfield 201. One day in his office, he stood up and hit his head. At the infirmary,
he met a nurse, who thought he was a student. Later on, he met Janet again at folk dancing lessons at the YWCA. They married, lived on campus for one year in Silliman Hall, and had two sons who graduated from Union-David in 1984 and Brian in 1986. Janet Weick also graduated from Union in 1986 with her bachelor's degree in the arts. “When you think of a Union family, we're pretty much it,” he says.
When Weick was working as a teaching assistant in graduate school, he knew that he wanted to teach. “My main goal was to teach,” he says. “And I suppose I've been lucky because I've been able to spend my days doing what I enjoy doing.”
Hugh Allen Wilson
Hugh Allen Wilson leaves Union with at least one hope:
“Whoever my successor may be will certainly have other ideas. That's fine. The most important thing is to keep this campus singing-singing more and listening more.”
Wilson, professor of music and director of the Union College Choir, will retire in August after thirty-four years of teaching, directing, and performing.
“I've spent half of my life here at Union. I've seen them come and I've seen them go,” he says. He promises that his work won't stop. “There are books to write, music to make, gardens to tend, and travel to do. I'm going to get back into the recital business and do a lot of conducting.”
A graduate of Yale, Wilson's studies ranged from musicology, music theory, and organ to improvisation and the harpsichord. He joined the Union faculty part-time in 1962 as a visiting associate professor and became full professor in 1978.
He has taught virtually “everything” in the music department, while directing the Union College choirs-first the men's glee club, then the men and women's choirs, and finally the mixed Union College Choir, which was formed in 1985. Under his direction, Union choral groups have made several recordings and toured the East Coast as well as Venezuela in 1977 and Greece and Crete in 1990.
Wilson has performed thousands of times as a recitalist-piano, organ, and harpsichord-and as a conductor and
choir director. He is part-time organist and choir director of the Glens Falls Presbyterian Church, conductor of the Glens Falls Symphony, and was a founding director of the Adirondack Studio of Song, which later became the Lake George Opera Festival.
While at Yale he received the Woods-Chandler Prize for organ playing, and in the 1950s he received the Steinway Citation for service to American music.
At Union, he was recognized for his contributions to the campus community with the Faculty Meritorious Service Award in 1974. Last year, several of his former students established an endowment in his name to assist with the maintenance of the choral music program. The endowment was revealed to him at the ReUnion concert, which he was directing. “There are not too many professors in this country who have had endowments set up in their honor while they are still alive,” he says happily.
Wilson has seen immense change at the College-the institution of the trimester system, the admittance of women on a full-time basis, and the rebuilding of the campus, which he describes as “stunning.”
He has vastly enjoyed teaching as well as working with the many people who keep the College going. “There have been more days when the light lit up for a student than I as a teacher probably deserve,” he says. “I've also enjoyed so many people in all areas at Union. Hearing Joe Finkelstein's chortle could cheer me up on even the darkest of days. I shall sorely miss him.”
As for his students, Wilson says that they continue to turn up in his life all the time. “We just seem to float through each other's lives, which is truly wonderful.”
In a recent series of articles, first in a conservative think-tank piece by Chet Finn and then in George Will's syndicated column, colleges and universities were-again-taken to task on a variety of educational and financial issues. Although the attacks are not new, having first occurred in the late 1980's, the number and tone and rhetoric in those articles are increasing.
What troubles me about the articles is not that they are being written. They should be. Vigorous debate about our educational system is welcome; however, that debate should be informed. What's bothersome is that so many critics put colleges like Union into a common mold-and I think it is important that our alumni and friends understand the fact that some of us, at least, do not fit into that mold.
One of the glories of the American higher education system is its diversity. For every college committed to the liberal arts, for instance, there is-and ought to be-a community college that serves a different audience or a large university where the liberal arts are only a small part of the mission.
At Union, our commitment is to teach young men and women how to communicate, learn, and think-broadly, effectively, and creatively. Our graduates understand not just how to do things, but the significance and meaning of what they do. The education we offer will last a lifetime, and, in a rapidly-changing world, we think ours is not just the best but also the most useful kind of education for the long haul.
Providing this kind of education is a labor-intensive undertaking. Although we could clearly lower costs by increasing class size or hiring teaching assistants, we would change the very character of Union in the process-for the worst.
With this fact in mind, let's look at some of the common themes in the broad attacks on colleges and universities. Finn, for example, argues that colleges and universities, to meet their constantly expanding need for revenue, continually expand their student body. He contends that the average post-secondary institution enrolled 535 more students in 1993 than in 1974. At Union, we have fourteen more students than we did two decades ago.
Another theme is the “disappearance” of requirements, or the notion that students can take whatever they want. That's simply not true here. Every Union freshman participates in our Freshman Preceptorial; every student takes courses in literature, history, mathematics, and natural science; and every student completes the Writing Across the Curriculum program. And nearly every student completes a thesis or senior project.
The critics claim that full-paying students “subsidize” those on financial aid. Most of our scholarship money is offset by income from other sources-earnings on endowment and Annual Fund contributions. It's also important to remember that no Union student pays the full cost of her or his education-that each is supported by the voluntary generosity of alumni and friends.
The critics also ignore the fact that it costs just as much to educate a student at a state university as it does here; the cost of buildings, books, computers, and services is no different. The difference is where the money comes from. At a state university, government provides a subsidy that covers most of the cost.
Broken down on a daily basis, Union's price next year of $27,325 amounts to $130 daily-comparable to a room and three meals at the Holiday Inn on Nott Terrace. The difference, of course, is that at Union students receive laboratory and research facilities, a library, athletic facilities, cultural events, room and board, the chance to study in countries around the world, health and counseling services, police and fire protection, the opportunity to associate and compete with other excellent students-and great teaching.
Federal largesse is called into question, too. Although we receive some support from the federal government, both in terms of scholarship support for our students and occasional support of scientific equipment for our students and faculty, that support represents less than one percent of our budget each year. Even when the state allocations are factored in, the impact on Union's budget is approximately two percent annually. Certainly, we could survive without that support, even though it does make our lives somewhat easier.
Claiming that institutions will no longer be able to expand their sizes, the critics say that colleges and universities will have to do some serious belt-tightening. Regular readers will know that we continue to closely examine our costs. For example, we have reduced the number of employees to 662, from 732, while maintaining a no-layoff policy; we continue the process by carefully examining every job that becomes open when someone retires or resigns. These and other efforts have taken $8 million out of our budget in five years.
There are some “belt-tightening” moves that we just won't take, however. Finn and Will cite institutions hiring “gypsy” faculty members and teaching assistants to reduce costs (there are no teaching assistants at Union). Arguing for “unbundling” costs, Finn says that students going only to classes should be charged for “the collegiate equivalent of a no-frills basic-transportation automobile,” while students using the gym or laboratories should be charged more.
The critics never seem to ask the very people for whom they say they speak-students. We do. Nearly ninety percent say the College enhanced their ability to “acquire skills and knowledge on my own,” and the same number praise the quality of instruction.
No one-least of all me-will argue that colleges cannot improve their performance. I find it unfortunate, however, that colleges like Union are being tarred by the broad Finn-Will brush, and I trust that our alumni and friends will give such attacks the dose of skepticism they deserve.
