Posted on Sep 1, 1996

The College has received nearly $2,170,000 through estate and financial plans, including:

$1,959,922 in trust distributions, with the largest -$1,957,754 – coming from the late S. Wellford Corbin '30. Additional trust distributions came from the estates of Eugene Hellmich '23 and Franklyn Millham '32 for scholarships and from Ferdinand Helm '37 for unrestricted use.

More than $86,000 for scholarships came from life income distributions received after the deaths of William M. Wheeler '36 and Louis D. Miltimore '29.

A total of $101,179 was received in gifts for life income programs, including $80,000 for charitable gift annuities and $21,179 for pooled fund agreements. The gifts came from William V. Johnson '44, to benefit the Memorial Chapel Fund; Robert L. Slobod '35, for unrestricted use; Robert E. Groundwater '43, for the Schaffer Library Endowment Technology Fund; and Virginia Fisher, to establish a scholarship in memory of her husband, John H. Fisher '52.

An endowed scholarship of $25,000 in memory of William Gietz '49, a gift from his widow, Barbara Brugh, has been established through the proceeds of the sale of an undeveloped lot in Williamsburg, Va.

Recent gifts to benefit scholarships at the College have come from:

Ms. Marjorie Hayden, a friend, established the Charles P. Steinmetz Endowed Scholarship ($25,000);

William M. Wheeler '36 contributed towards the William M. Wheeler Endowed Scholarship ($17,127);

Frederick F. '38 and Janet Fagal started the Henry C. Fagal Endowed Scholarship ($25,000);

Lewis W. Hallenbeck '40 completed funding for the Hallenbeck Family Endowed Scholarship Fund in memory of J. Potter Hallenbeck '10 and Robert P. Hallenbeck '42 ($14,000).

Other recent gifts and pledges include:

Dr. Hans '74 and Janet (Dwyer) Black '74 contributed $15,000 to establish the Hans and Janet Black Endowment Fund;

Dr. George Braff '66 contributed $25,000 towards the Braff Challenge in recognition of his thirtieth reunion Annual Fund gift;

Benjamin A. Brown '35 pledged $20,000 to support the renovation of Schaffer Library and the National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge.

The GE Fund matched $145,792.32 in gifts from Union alumni. The fund's directors approved full matching of the gifts even though the total exceeded the fund's cap of $100,000 for annual gift matching for a single institution.

Posted on Sep 1, 1996

When the College's development officers fan out across the country to visit alumni and friends, they frequently are asked about the endowment. Dan West, the College's vice president for college relations, discusses the importance of the endowment, which has a market
value of $168 million.

Q. What is endowment?

A. Endowment is money that is given to the College that is never spent. It is invested, and only a certain amount of the income is used to pay for parts of the operation of the College that have been designated by the donors. Many additions to the College's endowment come in the form of bequests-funds left to the College by friends and alumni under the provisions of their wills. Other additions to the endowment are made by living donors.

Q. Why do we have it?

A. Endowment provides a permanent financial foundation for the College. If managed well, it provides a reasonably dependable source of income to help operate the College each year. It gives stability and strength to the College. For this reason the market value of the endowment is often used as an index into the College's quality and staying power. It is looked at by those who rank colleges in magazines or assess colleges for the purpose of making grants or measure the fiscal integrity of colleges for bond ratings.

Second, it is a way for some who want to make a gift that will support, in an ongoing way, some part of the operation of the College in which they are particularly interested-a position on the faculty, for example, or the athletic program, or scholarships for students, or the library, or maintenance of the grounds. These are all specific objectives for which endowments have been established.

Finally, endowment supplements what the College derives in tuition, fees, and annual gifts, and it helps us hold down the rate of increases in our prices.

Q. Have we always had an endowment?

A. One reason Union prospered in the first half of the nineteenth century was the financial creativity of its president, Eliphalet Nott. We believe that Union's endowment exceeded $1 million by the mid-1850s, making us one of the wealthiest colleges in America at that time.

The years after Nott's death in 1866 were marked by internal strife, however, and by 1900 our permanent funds amounted to only $425,000. Gradually, under the guidance of Frank Bailey, our long-time treasurer, we began to
improve our financial situation. By the time of his death in 1953, we had an endowment of more than $10 million.

Q. What is the difference between giving to the endowment and giving to the Annual
Fund?

A. A gift to the endowment is permanently invested and only a portion of the total return (interest, dividends, and appreciation) is spent each year. A gift to the Annual Fund is generally spent, entirely, within the fiscal year in which it is donated. In essence, one helps us build for the future and one helps the College with immediate needs.

Which is more important? Neither. Both are essential ways
to build a stronger Union and help it progress and improve. Endowment is crucial for the reasons mentioned above. The Annual Fund is crucial because it provides funds, often unrestricted, that can be used to pay the bills this year. We need both. It would be wrong to pit the two needs against each other or to make donors feel the two are in competition for their help.

Ideally, donors will see the importance of each and help with both. That isn't possible for many, however. And so the endowment claims the help of some who like building for the future. The Annual Fund appeals to others who want to help now or who, generously, attach no restrictions to their gifts.

Q. Who manages the endowment?

A. The investments of the endowment are overseen by an Investments Committee of the Board of Trustees. The committee, in turn, has hired investment managers to invest monies with various objectives. The committee's goals are to protect the principal against inflation, beat indexes over the long term, and maintain the relative value of the endowment for present and future generations.

The endowment can be invested up to a maximum of sixty-five percent in equities (stocks). At this point about fifty-five percent is in stocks and the rest is in fixed income securities (bonds) or cash and cash equivalents.

Q. How does the College use the endowment?

A. The College has a “spending rate policy” on how it uses income from the endowment, which is based on a total return expectation that maintains the investment objectives.

Discrete parts of the endowment are assigned units, similar to the way a mutual fund works, and then each endowment fund is pooled for investment purposes. The total return on the endowment consists of the current yield (interest and dividends) plus realized gains (appreciation). Because appreciation is not guaranteed and there can be depreciation in some years (if the stock market
or bond prices go down) the College seeks to protect the principal of the endowment by using a three-year average “market value” of the consolidated investment pool as the base for applying a spending rate.

In 1996-97 the trustees have set the spending rate at five percent. This means that the College will take five percent of the three-year average market value of an endowment fund to spend on the purpose stipulated by the donor.

Now, we hope and expect that, over time, the total return will exceed five percent. For example, last December 31, 1995, the total return on our endowment for the previous twelve months was 19.6 percent, for the previous three years it was 11.2 percent, and for the previous five years it was 14.2 percent.

So, if the total return is, say, fifteen percent in 1996-97 and the College spends five percent of the market value averaged for the previous three years, then ten percent of the total return is available for adding to the principal to protect the buying power of the endowment for the future. In this way the trustees try to protect the principal against inflation.

There are always questions about whether we could have earned more or managed the money differently. It is important to remember, however, that in addition to obtaining the best possible return the trustees have a fiduciary responsibility to protect the endowment against loss. For this reason they may take what others would consider a more conservative approach in investing. There is always a tension between making more and avoiding loss.

Q. What are our goals in building the endowment?

A. So far in our Bicentennial Campaign we have raised about $60 million for endowment; our goal is to raise $87 million as part of the overall goal of $150 million. Our hope is to reach the $200 million mark in the market value of the endowment.

We have made splendid progress. Since the beginning of the Campaign, 110 new endowed scholarships have been established. We require a minimum of $25,000 to set up a new, named, endowed scholarship. That has made a tremendous difference in the College's ability to admit well-qualified students who nonetheless need financial aid to attend here.

Other endowments have been added to support professorships, terms abroad, ongoing maintenance for the Yulman
Theatre, the Nott Memorial, Schaffer Library, Memorial Chapel, Jackson's Garden, etc.

Much opportunity remains to build the endowment even stronger. Based on a market value of about $168 million and an enrollment of approximately 2,000, we have about $84,000 of endowment for each student. Many of the colleges with which we compete exceed $100,000 per student, and several are
at $200,000 or even $300,000 per student.

The endowment per student will, at five percent, provide about $4,200 this year for each student. This, along with monies contributed to the Annual Fund, represents a subsidy for every student that is not charged as part of their tuition but which allows us to provide a better educational program, better faculty, better facilities, and better equipment.

There is little wonder that there is a strong public perception that the more endowment a college has the better college it is.

Posted on Sep 1, 1996

First-year engineering students arriving this fall will take on something that students before them could only anticipate for the first two years of study: engineering design.

As part of the revised engineering curriculum starting this fall, planners have scrapped what Dean of Engineering Richard Kenyon calls the “have faith” approach: that all the math and physics students learn the first two years would eventually lead to engineering.

Instead, freshmen engineers will take a “Fundamentals of Engineering/ Computer Science” module-one of three continuous year-long modules-that will examine the social, political and cultural contexts of engineering problems, not just math and science, Kenyon said. In addition to faculty from engineering and computer science, the module will be team taught by faculty from economics, philosophy, sociology, and environmental studies.

“If there has been something missing from engineering education over the last forty years, it is context,” Kenyon said. “We've done a great deal of analysis, technique, and skill. But we haven't fully developed the social, cultural, or intellectual contexts of engineering.”

First-year students also will take a year-long module of integrated math and physics courses. Traditionally taught separately and with little or no coordination, students have had difficulty transferring their math skills to physics and relating those disciplines to engineering. Math and physics will be team taught by faculty from both departments. The objective, explains Kenyon, is to strengthen students' understanding of the relationships between mathematics and physics as well as to provide a better bridge from the sciences to engineering subjects.

Besides the two year-long modules (Fundamentals of Engineering and Integrated Math and Physics), students will take the full-year general education module of freshman preceptorial and two inter-related history courses.

The second year of the program-still under development-will continue the core concept through the first term. Students who complete the second year in any of the engineering disciplines will remain eligible to move into the third year in any program except computer science. Students may transfer to computer science by making up required elements.

The third year will focus on studies within the particular discipline but the concept of engineering as the basic discipline will remain. In all disciplines, the fourth year will include a comprehensive engineering project of a
disciplinary nature. Most projects will be year-long and involve students from more than one discipline.

Students will be encouraged to pursue a Term Abroad or international exchange or a term in industry without the need to substantially lengthen the duration of their undergraduate study.

In the past year, the College has developed new exchanges for engineering and computer science with the University of Puerto Rico in Mayaguez, the Czech Technical University in Prague, the Technical University of Wroclaw in Poland, the Middle East Technical University in Turkey, and the University of Wales in Swansea.

The revision of the College's engineering curriculum was supported by a grant of $750,000 from the General Electric Fund.

Posted on Sep 1, 1996

The 595 members of the Class of 2000 arrived on campus to be greeted by new roommates, class advisors-and paintbrushes, brooms, and rakes.

The first-year students participated in a range of community service projects during two days of their orientation. The projects were coordinated through Schenectady 2000, a community-wide revitalization program in which Union students, faculty, and staff serve regularly as volunteers.

President Roger H. Hull, who is vice chair of Schenectady 2000, said, “Part of a liberally-educated person is recognizing that there is a civic responsibility to contribute something back to society. It is my hope that all Union students-besides studying here for four years-will vote and volunteer and help make Schenectady a better community.”

The freshmen helped paint bridges, plant shrubs, remove debris and brush, and install children's playground equipment in a city park.

The orientation project is the latest in a tradition of community service by Union students. During recent years, forty percent of the College's students have participated in such projects as:

• Big Brothers/Big Sisters, where ninety students represent sixty-five percent of the total local volunteers; 
• We-Care-About-U-Schenectady, where forty students have helped rebuild half a dozen homes for lower-income families; 
• Mentoring and internship programs for several hundred pupils in Schenectady elementary, middle, and high schools; 
• Youth Olympics, organized by more than 100 students and run for Schenectady children; 
• Painting the City Mission as part of “Make a Difference Day;” 
• Girl Scout Troop 436, begun by students and staff, which meets weekly at the College; 
• UMED, a club that provides emergency medical support at the College and which now helps a local ambulance corps.

Posted on Sep 1, 1996

Alumni with children who are seniors in secondary school are encouraged to attend one of Union's fall open houses with their son or daughter.

The Columbus Day Open House on Oct. 14 offers prospective students the opportunity to visit classes, attend panels, and
meet current students while Union is in the midst of its beautiful fall foliage.

On Veterans Day, Nov. 11, an open house will be held for students interested in engineering, with a day of activities that explore engineering at Union.

Registration for both open houses will begin at 8:30 a.m. For more information on these open houses or any admissions activity, please call the Admissions Office at (518) 388-6084.