Milestones John J. Litynski, director of campus planning at the College from 1977 to 1989, died July 21 at his home in Scotia, N.Y. He was sixty-four.
A graduate of the State University College of Forestry at Syracuse University, he was a founding principal of The Saratoga Associates, where he directed master planning and building and site projects at more than seventy-five colleges in the Northeast. At Union, he assisted in the management of the College's physical programming, budgeting, and planning.
For his work during his career he received the National American Society of Landscape Architects award and the American School and University award and citation. His professional affiliations included the Society for College and University Planners and the American Society of Landscape Architects.
Survivors include his wife, Anne; a son, James; three daughters, Judith Rightmyer, Diane Litynski,
and Carolyn Litynski-Holzman; and four grandchildren.
Women and Union In a project for the College Archives, Gail George is doing research on women connected to Union in anyway from 1795 through 1970-wives, daughters, sisters, custodial and administrative staff, community members, donors, honorary degree recipients-anyone at all.
From this information will come “Minerva's Daughters,” described as a docudancedrama performance, which will be held in the fall of 1997, and a book containing the script and many of the women's stories. Gail is looking for personal accounts, diaries, poems, letters, photographs, and memorabilia of women connected to the College before it became coeducational.
Her address is 603 Wagner Rd., Schenectady, N.Y. 12302; her telephone and fax number is (518) 393-0629.
The trustee nominating committee of the Alumni Council, chaired by Suzie Wilder Danziger '84, will select up to three candidates to run in an alumni body election next spring for the position of alumni trustee.
The alumnus who is elected will serve a four-year term through June, 2001. Trustee Larry Gordon '74 has decided not to seek a second four-year term.
In addition, any graduate of the College under the age of sixty-seven may elect to run as a petition candidate. To do so, a petition must be obtained from the Alumni Programs Office and signed by fifty alumni. The
signed petition must be returned to the Alumni Programs Office along with:
a recent five by seven, black and white, head and shoulders photograph;
a brief biography;
a statement from the candidate detailing why he or she wishes to serve as a trustee.
The material must be received at the College by Feb. 1, 1997. Petition candidates will automatically appear on the election ballot, if duly certified. Petitions may be quested from the Alumni Programs Office, Union College, 807 Union St., Schenectady, N.Y. 12308.
It wasn't the Academy Awards, but one movie shown on campus this summer got plenty of applause, praise, and positive feedback.
Not bad for the novice writers, directors, actors, and actresses from nearby Schenectady High School.
The movie, Diversity Camp, was based on the reflections and experiences of twenty-three young men and women who spent two weeks in Union's first Diversity Camp. The
students male and female, ethnic minority and Caucasian-came from the General Electric Scholars Program at the high school.
Initiated by President Roger Hull, Diversity Camp was created to help students learn to communicate in an increasingly multicultural and interdependent world. The camp aimed at promoting the exchange of personal experiences while instilling a sense of individual and group accomplishment.
Assistant Dean of Students Edgar Letriz 91, who served as the program's director, said, “The camp was not designed as sensitivity training. We did not try to convert anyone or challenge anyone. The purpose was to provide a nurturing environment where students could explore issues without being judged.”
To instill this sense of individual and group accomplishment, the students were given the task of making the film to document the learning process of diversity and understanding.
Each morning the studentsall in their first and second year of high school-took a film appreciation course in which they learned theories of filmmaking. They then viewed and discussed films based on cultural issues and prejudice, such as Do the Right Thing and Philadelphia. The students then had the chance to put theory into practice
through hands-on technical experience. The final product was their film, which they wrote, directed, acted, and produced.
The final step was to show the film to an audience that included the students' parents, camp staff members, and teachers. All were impressed with the film, which blended personal reflections and experiences with brief biographies of John F. Kennedy, Simon Bolivar, Gandhi, Native American leaders, and others.
Although the film was the camp's main project, the students had a number of other activities to keep them busy. Because the camp was established as a cooperative project between the College and Schenectady, each afternoon was devoted to a community service project. The students helped run a three-day Kids Olympics for Schenectady children and worked on cleaning up Vale Park and other areas in the city. There were also field trips, sports and arts, and semi
nars on career choices, college admissions, and computer skills.
Letriz says that the students loved the two-week camp and he has received letters of thanks from many of them. Watching the students interact, he says, was the best part of Diversity Camp. The most challenging task was learning to give the
students enough credit and not treating them like children. “Students responded very well to our discussions and explorations. They are quite aware of the issues around them, and they are very open to discussing these issues,” he says.
Another group of students on campus for two weeks this summer did a slightly different kind of exploration.
Twenty-one students from across the state participated in
the Howard Hughes Medical Institute workshop for high school students who are generally underrepresented in science.
Led by Professor Peter Tobiessen of the Biology Department, the institute encouraged students to explore topics and careers in
the sciences. Students took three mini-courses (cell motility, DNA techniques, and cell structure) taught by Union professors and also visited the New York State Police Crime Lab, Albany Medical Center, the New York State Department of Health, the GE Research
and Development Center, and Community Health Plan.
Several teachers from the Capital District also spent time at Union over the summer in four grant-sponsored teaching workshops run under the auspices the Union College Teaching and Learning Center, a professional development school aimed at bringing the most
up-to-date classroom strategies to area teachers.
Elementary and middle grade teachers learned new methods of teaching math, science, and technology through three different workshops funded by the Howard Hughes Foundation and NYNEX, the General Electric Fund, and a state-sponsored Goals 2000 grant. A Goals 2000 pre-service grant also gave several teachers from nearby Mohonasen High School the opportunity to gain professional development and critique the College's Master of Arts in Teaching program.
Excerpts of remarks by Lawrence W. Milas, President of the F. W. Olin Foundation, at the College's Opening Convocation
The F.W. Olin Foundation has a reputation for maintaining one of the most selective grant programs in America. In fact, our grants are often likened to a kind of Nobel Prize equivalent for colleges and universities. Each year the foundation selects only a tiny number of colleges for its grants from among hundreds of colleges which seek our support….
People often ask how we select grant winners…. We look at many of the obvious indicators of institutional strength like enrollment trends, student and faculty credentials, financial management, fundraising, and the like. I can tell you that our grants are made only to strong colleges because
we want to make strong colleges stronger. All of the indicators that I mentioned most be in the very positive range.
We also seek something more. Colleges which win our grants must have a vision of becoming better. We're looking for colleges which through their own strategic planning seek to become more competitive and move up the ladder of academic quality. Colleges which are content with who they are and what they've accomplished do not fit our profile. The essence and mission of our grant program is to advance all of higher education, and we seek to do that by identifying those colleges that we believe are on the move in academic quality, colleges which we believe will provide important leadership for other institutions in the years ahead….
Let me report to you what we've identified as some of the strengths of Union College:
Strong enrollments of academically superior students;
An exceptional faculty dedicated to teaching;
Strong and growing science programs;
Outstanding administrative and financial management;
Strong institutional planning which envisions an even stronger and better Union College;
A Board of Trustees which has undertaken an ambitious $150 million fundraising drive to provide the resources necessary for Union to enter the 21st century as one of our nation's leading colleges;
An alumni body
that has been extraordinarily supportive and generous ….
Our building grants are made because we believe they will have an impact far beyond the building itself. It's not a prize for an architectural contest. You may think we're giving Union a building, but I prefer to see our grant as a means by which Union can realize an important part of its future.
The F.W. Olin Foundation awards Union $9 million the largest
gift in the College's history for a stunning new high-technology classroom and laboratory building.
The F.W. Olin Foundation, Inc., of New York City has given $9 million to the College to construct and equip a high technology classroom and laboratory building.
The new 53,640 square foot technology center will support computer-aided instruction throughout the College's science and mathematics departments as well as in non-science programs. In addition, it will serve
as the home of the Department of Geology and the College's growing Environmental Studies Program. The building is expected to be used by nearly all Union students at some time in their undergraduate careers.
The grant was announced to an enthusiastic crowd at the College's opening convocation on September 8 in Memorial Chapel. The grant is the single largest gift in the College's history.
In making the announcement, the Foundation's president, Lawrence W. Milas, said that “Union College presented a compelling case for our support. The very high quality of its academic programs and faculty were evident throughout our review of its proposal. We were equally impressed with the College's management. All of this, when combined with its need for state-of-the-art teaching space, left no doubt in our minds that this grant would achieve important strategic goals of both the College and the Foundation.”
President Roger H. Hull, acknowledging the grant, said, “In one fell swoop, the F.W.
Olin Foundation has transformed this historic college. For more than 200 years, Union has been at the forefront of change and technology. Now, thanks to the F.W. Olin Foundation, Union will be able to maintain this emphasis in its third century of service.”
Second floor plan
The grant is a key element in the College's ambitious $150 million Bicentennial Campaign. It is expected to serve as an important leveraging opportunity for the achievement of the campaign goal.
The $9 million is expected to cover the total cost of constructing the building as well as the
cost of needed furnishings and equipment. The Kostecky Group, of Wormleysburg, Pa., is the architect. Construction will begin in early 1997 and should be completed in time for the start of classes in the fall of 1998.
The Foundation's highly competitive building grant program seeks to identify those institutions with building needs that, if satisfied, will enable them to achieve important institutional goals including improved quality and competitive position.
In selecting Union for the grant, the evaluation process included numerous meetings between the College and Foundation representatives, site visits, and the submission of substantial data documenting the facility need and the quality of institutional management.
The Foundation's grants are intended as a strong endorsement of an institution's programs and leadership. Institutions selected to receive building grants are seen as being “on the move” in terms of academic quality and the institutions with which they compete.
The F.W. Olin Foundation was established in New York in 1938 by Franklin W. Olin, the industrialist. The Foundation
has a current net worth of more than $300 million. Since its founding, the Foundation has made grants to fund the construction of seventy buildings representing more than 3.5 million square feet at fifty-six colleges and universities across the country. It is the only U.S. foundation that limits its grant program to the support of the physical facility needs of independent colleges and universities. Such grants cover the entire cost of constructing the new facilities as well as the furnishings and equipment needed to support the programs that will be housed in them.
In addition to Milas, who is based in New York City, the other directors of the Foundation include William B. Horn and William J. Schmidt of Minneapolis and William B. Norden, also of New York City.
The F.W. Olin Center will be located at the north end of campus on a grassy knoll bounded by the Murray and Ruth Reamer Campus Center, the Social Sciences Building, Schaffer Library, and the existing Science and Engineering Center.
The F.W. Olin Center will be U-shaped, with its main entrance facing Library Field, the primary central space of Joseph Jacques Ramee's original campus plan of 1811 (Union is the first architecturally-designed campus in America).
A three-story, cylindrical main lobby will lead, in all directions, to students engaged in learning activities in a variety of laboratories, computer classrooms, and a high-tech learning center. The shape of the main lobby echoes the rounded form of the Nott Memorial, the National Historic Landmark at the center of Union's campus.
Atop the lobby will be a cupola housing a sixteen-inch, remote-controlled telescope that will monitor, among other phenomena, ozone depletion for environmental studies. courses.
The building will contain:
Two “collaborative computer classrooms,” one for thirty-six students, the other for sixteen students; the students will sit and work in small groups, with part of classtime spent in lecture or demonstration and the balance in guided group work.
Laboratories and classrooms equipped for computer-
intensive instruction, with each student having individual computer access.
A multi-media auditorium equipped with the most modern electronics, including CD-ROM, VCR, videodisc, a large-format video-data display, and slide and overhead projection;
A variety of laboratory spaces specifically outfitted for instruction in physics, biology, chemistry, environmental studies, engineering, and mathematics.
A high-tech learning center intended for campus-wide use of computers and study spaces with twenty- four-hour-a-day access to Schaffer Library's instructional technology center.
A variety of conference, seminar, and small group study rooms. The exterior will combine the earth hues of brick, stucco, limestone, and sandstone with highly-engineered metal and precast panels.
