Here is our second column calling special attention to alumni authors.
If you're an author, send us a copy of your book (or the dustjacket) as well as your publisher's news release. All material will be returned if you so indicate. Our address is Public Relations Office, Union College, Schenectady, N.Y. 12308-3169.
Richard J. Wagner '51 (with coauthors Christopher C. Roland and Robert J. Weigand) Do It … And Understand! The Bottom Line of Corporate Experiential Learning is an anthology on experiential learning and its application to the workplace written from the perspectives of provider, consumer, and educator. Included are international and multicultural training strategies that affect corporate development in a global environment. The casebound book is available by contacting Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company.
Thomas R. Zentall '62 Professor of psychology and director of graduate studies at the University of Kentucky, Zentall is the author of Stimulus Class Formation in Humans and Animals. The book chronicles his research on animal cognition funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and by the National Institute of Mental Health. The book is
available from Elsevier Press.
Martin Jay '65
Jay, professor of history at the University of California at Berkeley, is the editor or author of:
Vision in Context: Historial and Contemporary Perspectives on Sight (coedited with Teresa Brennan). This collection of essays covers such topics as vision and its effect on feminism, race, sexual orientation, art, and film. The publisher is Routledge.
The Dialetical Imagination discusses the impact of the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research on the sociological, political, and cultural thought of Germany and the United States from 1923 through 1950. The book and its Chinese translation are available from the University of California Press.
Robert E. May '65
May, a history professor at Purdue University, has collected essays into The Union, The Confederacy, and the Atlantic
Rim, which presents a fresh look at such subjects as the Civil War's impact on European and Latin nations and dependencies, Napoleon III's intervention in Mexico, the war's meaning to peoples all over the world, and Britain's refusal to recognize the Confederacy. The book, chosen for the history curriculum in many colleges, is published by Purdue University Press.
Neil Lewis '68
(with coauthors David Johnston and Tim Weiner)
Betrayal-The Story of Aldrich Ames, An American Spy, written by three New York Times correspondents, tells the story of the former CIA chief of counterintelligence who confessed to divulging the identity of over a dozen of the CIA's secret sources in return for payments from the KGs. One review describes the book as darkly hilarious-a cross between “Our Man in Havana and Monty Python.”
The book gives fascinating scenes of Ames letting his wife in on what he was really doing and the blundering investigation by the CIA. Actor Al Pacino is considering the role of Ames in a Twentieth Century Fox movie based on the Random House book.
Raymond Belliotti '70 Professor of philosophy at the State University of New York College at Fredonia, Raymond Belliotti is the author of:
Justifying Law, a critical survey of a number of philosophical approaches to law and judicial
decision making, shows the impasses that differing orientations create and offers suggestions for overcoming the dead-ends created by these debates. The book is available through Temple University Press
Good Sex is a discussion of sexual ethics or the “written and
unwritten laws” of sex in both a historical and contemporary context. He advances a new
five tier framework theory for sexual ethics and connects sexual ethics to sociopolitical theory and cultural philosophical concerns. The book is available through University Press of Kansas.
In Seeking Identity, Belliotti combines ethical theory and personal experience to explore community influences on individual behavior in an ethnic setting. The book is available from University Press of Kansas.
Warren F. Broderick '71 (with coauthor William Bouck) Pottery Works is a detailed history of earthenware and stoneware potteries in the Capital District and upper Hudson region of New York State from the seventeenth century to the early twentieth century.
Pottery Works, published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, is available from Associated University Presses or from Warren Broderick at P.O. Box 142, Lansingburgh, N.Y. 12182.
William Vitek '79 (with coeditor Wes Jackson) Vitek, associate professor of philosophy at Clarkson University, and Jackson have gathered thirty-two essays from authors in many walks of life to create Rooted in the Land: Essays on Community and Place. All the writings speak to the need for a sense of community and roots in contemporary American culture. Published in November, 1996, the book is available from Yale University Press.
Jim Spanfeller '79 left Union intending to write the great American novel.
He hasn't done it yet, but that may be because he's in the middle of the Internet world.
Spanfeller was recently named publisher of Yahoo! Internet Life, a new and highly-successful national magazine devoted to the World Wide Web.
A joint effort between Yahoo Corporation, which operates one of the
most popular directories on the World Wide Web, and ZiffDavis Publishing, Yahoo! Internet Life is an entirely new dimension in publishing. It brings the Internet to the newsstand (or vice-versa), offering reviews of Web sites as well as tips on navigating the Internet and enjoying the information superhighway.
Spanfeller says, “We are attempting to be the Rolling Stone of the Internet. Yahoo!
Internet Life is a chronicler of places to go that are cool and fun. But even more so, we are involved with the culture and entertainment-the lifestyle, if you will-of the Internet.”
Beginning as a quarterly in February 1996 with a circulation of 100,000, Yahoo! Internet Life moved to a monthly format in September, and Spanfeller has announced plans to increase circulation to 300,000 by March 1997.
Working for such a non-traditional and quickly-growing magazine offers new challenges for Spanfeller, whose experience is with more traditional magazines such as Newsweek. The on-line version of the magazine can be updated daily, allows readers to chose their own depth of coverage by exploring or avoiding additional links to more information, and is a quickly searchable venue.
Most importantly, Spanfeller says, is that its format is interactive. “You can work with someone to give them what they want,” Spanfeller explains.
Spanfeller's position of managing circulation, sales, and the overall business success of the magazine seems removed from his original
goal of writing a novel. So how did he get there?
After Spanfeller left Union, he says he “went the Hemmingway route” and decided to become a journalist. He began writing for Soho Weekly News, but soon realized that he could influence more people as a publisher.
So he switched to the business side of the paper, advanced quickly, and, after travels in Europe, took a job at AMP Marketing Systems. He was soon recruited by Newsweek to be the publisher of Newsweek On Campus, a publication targeting college students. From there, he went on to Newsweek, then Playboy, and finally Inc., a magazine for small, mid-size growth companies. There he was recruited by Ziff-Davis to join the staff of Yahoo! Internet Life.
Perhaps the most danger-ous-and exciting-aspect of Yahoo! Internet Life is its dependence on the Internet. To critics who say the Internet is a fad that will lose popularity within a few years, Spanfeller says, “I think the Internet is going to change the world.”
Noting that it is five years old and already has 28 million users, he says, “We are still in the embryonic stage of growth.” Its impact, he contends, will be greater than the introduction of television.
If Spanfeller is right, his magazine has great potential.
Is he ever going to have time to write that great American novel? “I ask myself that question all the time. I certainly hope so.”
After more than a decade of research, writing, and dealing with publishers, Paul Turner's book on the architect Joseph Ramée has finally appeared in print.
As an architectural historian, Turner was prompted by professional reasons to undertake the project, but there was also a personal motive: a desire to contribute something to his alma mater by answering an often asked question about Union College's history: .
Who was this mysterious French architect who created the Union campus?
In this account, Turner discusses his project-what caused him to begin it, how he carried it out, and some of the discoveries he made in the process. One of them, by the way, was that the architect should be called Joseph Ramée, not Joseph-Jacques Ramée, as he is often referred to. He used various names in his early years, but in his later life-including his period in America-he called himself simply Joseph Ramée.
The “Mystery Building,” drawing for Union College
Turner says he hopes his book will prove beneficial to Union by filling a gap in its history, revealing the importance of Ramée's design for it, and promoting appreciation and enjoyment of its splendid campus.
I was familiar with the Union campus even before I was a college student. Born and raised in Schenectady, I often walked or bicycled through the campus as a child, and was impressed by the old buildings that faced each other symmetrically across the broad field with the great domed structure at its center. In retrospect, I think this was probably one of the early experiences that sparked my interest in history and architecture.
As an undergraduate at Union, I learned of the architect who designed the campus in 1813, and heard that almost nothing was known about Ramée's life or his other works. After graduating in 1962, I pursued graduate degrees in architecture and art history, wrote a doctoral dissertation on modern French architecture, and went to Stanford University in California to teach the history of architecture. Like Union, Stanford has a beautiful campus based on an orderly design, and I developed there a special interest in the history of American college and university planning, which resulted in my book, Campus: An American Planning Tradition, published in 1984.
In the process of writing Campus, I came to realize for the first time how unprecedented Ramée's design for Union College was, and what an important role it played in the development of the American campus. This is when I conceived the idea of trying to reconstruct Ramée's entire career, in order to understand how he came to design Union College the way he did. But I had no idea what a complex and lengthy project I was getting myself into.
I should say something here about what was known of Ramée when I began this work. In 1932, Union professor Codman Hislop discovered Ramée's long-forgotten plans for the College in the attic of Old Chapel (the drawings now preserved in the archives of Schaffer Library), and this discovery led Professor Harold A. Larrabee to look for information on the obscure French architect. By various means, such as correspondence with a researcher in France, Larrabee collected some facts and documents, the most important of which was a short article on Ramée published in 1830 when the architect was sixty-six years old. It revealed that besides his sojourn in America (from 1812 to 1816), Ramée lived and worked successively in Belgium, Denmark, and several cities and principalities in Germany, as well as his native France-an amazingly international career.
Larrabee also found that Ramée had published three collections of engravings and lithographs of his designs-a copy of one of which, Parcs et jardins, was located and acquired by Union. (For some unknown reason these publications are unbelievably rare. Only two copies of Parcs et jardins, for instance, are known to exist in the world.)
In the 1930s, Professors Hislop and Larrabee wrote several articles reporting their discoveries about Ramée, and later some research on the architect was done by other American scholars. It also turned out that Denmark was the only other country in which there was knowledge of Ramée, due to the fact that several fine country houses designed by him near Copenhagen survived and were documented. (See illustration p.18.)
But there were vast gaps in the story of Ramée's life and career, and puzzling questions.
Why did he move so often from country to country?
What kinds of work had he done in each of these places?
Did any of his works still exist, besides the ones known in Denmark and the United States?
My desire to answer these and other questions induced me to embark on my Ramée project, although I realized that there was little chance of discovering much about a forgotten architect after nearly 200 years.
In the summer of 1983, while visiting Paris, I went to the Archives Nationales to try to follow up on clues that indicated that Ramée had designed buildings there before he left France as a young man during the Revolution. After only a couple of days of going through old catalogues and documents and enlisting the help of the archive's librarians, I began to make some remarkable discoveries, which suddenly raised my hopes that the reconstruction of Ramée's lost career might actually be possible.
Recounting one of these discoveries may suggest the excitement of this kind of archival detective work. A petition Ramée wrote to the French government in 1800 referred to some of the architect's early works, including a house for a man named Berthault on the Rue du Mail in Paris. Going through dusty boxes of eighteenth-century building permits (French archives save everything!), I found an application by a Monsieur Berthault to build a house on the Rue du Mail, dated in early 1789. To my amazement, this application was the only one in its box that had drawings attached to it, and these drawings-with notes on them in Ramée's handwriting included an elevation drawing of the street facade of the proposed house.
Although I realized that this design had perhaps never been constructed, since the building application was dated just a month before the fall of the Bastille, I made a quick sketch of Ramée's design, left the Archives, and hurried to the Rue du Mail in the Marais district of RightBank Paris. Walking down this narrow and now somewhat seedy street, I experienced a thrill as I came upon the Berthault Housestill looking exactly as Ramée had designed it. (See photograph p.17.)
Later, I found that this house is recognized by French historians as an important architectural work of the period, but that its architect had previously been unknown. Designed by Ramée when he was twenty-five years old and just beginning his own career after an apprenticeship with an established architect, the house shows Ramée already using the simplified neoclassical style that would characterize his mature work, including the buildings at Union College.
The Berthault House and other discoveries spurred me on to pursue Ramée vigorously in the following months and years, both through investigations I could conduct at Stanford and through research trips to all the places where Ramée had worked. In the process I corresponded with hundreds of people, visited sites and worked in libraries and archives in six countries, and accumulated thousands of documents and records that are stored in boxes which clutter my Stanford office and my home. The project became almost an obsession and definitely a labor of love, fueled by the archaeologist's pleasure in uncovering a forgotten part of the past.
Not all was excitement and discovery, of course. The great bulk of the work was plodding and there were seemingly endless frustrations and wild-goose chases. But gradually the outlines of Ramée's forgotten career were fleshed out, and answers to many of the questions about his life and work emerged.
Design of country house for Duke of Saxe-Gotha, 1796, with side building similar to later Union College structures
It became apparent, for example, that Ramée's almost nomadic migrations from country to country were due largely to bad luck-especially the architect's unfortunate tendency to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. After establishing an architectural practice somewhere, he was repeatedly forced to give it up and move because of war, economic collapse, or other calamities in this turbulent period of the French Revolution and its aftermath in Europe.
I also discovered that Ramée's flight from France in 1793, which began his years of wandering, was due not to his professional connections with the aristocracy, as historians had previously assumed, but to his involvement in a disastrous plot to overthrow the French government-a story I was able to reconstruct in some detail.
Living for brief periods in many countries, Ramée often had trouble getting architectural work because of his status as a foreigner. In the United States, for instance, he entered the competition in 1813 for a Washington Monument in the city of Baltimore; although his proposed design (cover illustration) was the most skillful and sophisticated entry, it did not win the prize, evidently because the jury felt that the commission should be given to a native-born American architect.
One would think that Ramée, leading such a difficult and unstable life, could not have had a very successful or influential architectural career. But as I found out more about him, I came to realize that he was actually a much more significant architect than historians had realized-precisely because of his nomadic life. Moving frequently, Ramée transmitted new architectural ideas and styles from one country to another, and he often created a unique synthesis of the artistic trends of the period. His design for the Union College campus is a good example, as it introduced to America new notions of planning, in particular a type of environmental design that integrated buildings, formal open spaces, and informal gardens-a concept far ahead of its time in the United States.
I was also struck by the diversity of Ramée's clients and associates, among whom were some of the most remarkable figures of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They included the Marquis de Lafayette, members of the French royal family, the eccentric English author William Beckford, prominent merchants and bankers in Germany and Denmark, the author Goethe, various dukes of Saxony and other German regions, the Danish poetess Frederikke Brun, the international financier and adventurer David Parish-and, of course, Eliphalet Nott.
Since records of Ramée himself were scarce, these famous clients proved invaluable for reconstructing his career. By examining the papers, diaries, and other records of many of these individuals, I found references to the architect and clues to other aspects of his career. And I gained insight into the dynamics of the architect-client relationship Ramée had with these strong-willed people.
The Union College design again is an example. My reconstruction of the evolution of Ramée's plans for the College revealed a creative give-and-take between him and President Nott that contributed much to the final design for the campus.
By analyzing closely Ramée's many drawings for the Union buildings and grounds, I was also able to solve some mysteries that had puzzled previous scholars. One of these was the identity of a large and elegant building represented in several of the drawings, which is different from any of the structures shown in Ramée's overall campus plans. (See illustration 1).16. )
Some observers had suggested that this unidentified building was not even the work of Ramée. But various clues led me to the realization that this building was part of a first plan that Ramée presented to Nott, later superseded by the plan that was eventually executed. (One of the clues is that fragmentary parts of this “mystery” building are drawn on the backs of several of the drawings of the final campus plan, revealing that Ramée recycled some of the sheets of paper from his first design by cutting them up and turning them over to use for the later design.)
Mausoleum of Helena Paulowna, 1806
Ramée's Union College drawings constitute the largest group of his drawings for a design or commission. I found additional drawings by the architect in several places in Europe and America, but the total number of his known drawings is still small-only about sixty. From the beginning of my study, one of my hopes was to discover somewhere a cache of his personal papers and drawings, perhaps in the possession of descendants of his. This got me involved in genealogical searches, but although Ramée did have a family (his wife and young son accompanied him to America, and the son later had an architectural career himself), it turned out that no Ramée descendants exist.
I did, however, eventually find a family in France that had inherited some Ramée material in the nineteenth century, including a group of lithographic prints of cottages designed by the architect late in his career. (See illustration p.19.) Some of these cottage designs had previously been unknown. They are remarkable because they show Ramée, late in his life, creating fantastic and whimsical picturesque structures that are completely different in character from the simple, neoclassical forms of his earlier work such as the Union College buildings. This and other discoveries reveal Ramée to be a much more complex creative figure than previously suspected.
One of the most agreeable things about my Ramée project was, of course, the research trips it required to far-flung places in Europe as well as America. But the geographical dispersion of the architect's work also created problems. In the early stages of the project, I conducted research in France, Belgium, Denmark and West Germany, but my attempts to work in East Germany (where Ramée was said to have been active in several cities) were frustrated because some of these places were difficult or impossible for Westerners to visit. I was able to acquire some information through correspondence with archives in the East German cities of Weimar, Erfurt, and Schwerin, but I felt that more could be discovered if I were there in person. In 1990, after I had finished most of my research and was concentrating on writing the book, the Berlin Wall fell, and I arranged to return to Germany to work in the newly opened East. There I made some discoveries that fully justified this last-minute excursion.
One of these finds illustrates the serendipity that occasionally aided my project. The small hill town of Gotha, in Saxony, was one of the places where Ramée had reportedly worked, laying out a park for the Duke of SaxeGotha in the 1790s. I traveled there and spent a day in the archives of the former ducal castle but could find no records concerning Ramée. In the late afternoon, accepting defeat, I left the archives, and as I was finding my way out of the castle I passed a door inscribed as the ducal library. Although this was a less likely source of information on Ramée than the archives, I entered and asked the lady in charge if there was anything there relating to the architect. She consulted various old catalogues, found a reference to an item she said she had never heard of, went into a back room, and eventually emerged with a slim volume. Bound into it were five exquisite watercolor drawings-each signed and dated “Ramée, 1796”-with plans, elevations, and perspective views of a splendid country house, evidently designed for the duke but never built. (See illustration p.16.)
Ramée was an extremely talented artist; his watercolor drawings, in particular, are superb, and these Gotha drawings are among his best. They are also significant because of the nature of the country house represented, revealing the architectural influences on Ramée's work at this point in his career-and, incidentally, employing arcaded walls remarkably similar to those of Ramée's buildings at Union, seventeen years later.
Another East German city, Schwerin, yielded further discoveries. A nineteenth-century article on Ramée states that he built a mausoleum for the young princess of MecklenburgSchwerin (a daughter of Czar Paul of Russia), but nothing else was known about this structure. In Schwerin I found that the mausoleum-a large and magnificent building-still stands in the forested park of the former ducal palace at Ludwigslust.
More important, I discovered in the Mecklenburg State Archives a voluminous correspondence between Ramée and Mecklenburg court officials, recording the design and execution of this building. This correspondence is the most complete document of one of Ramée's works, giving an intimate view of the architect-client relationship, the construction process, financial complications, problems with the work force, and other details.
Besides the geographical range of Ramée's work and the diversity of his clientele, I came to appreciate the multiplicity of his talents. Besides being an architect and an accomplished watercolor artist, he was an important landscape designer (introducing new park and garden concepts to Germany, Denmark, and the United States), a fortification engineer, and a designer of furniture and other decorative arts.
Wallpaper designed in Philadelphia, 1815.
Regarding this last sphere, it was known that Ramée established a furniture factory in Hamburg and designed wallpaper at various times in his career, but no examples of these products were known to survive. Another bit of serendipity changed that. Toward the end of my research, an acquaintance of mine at the Library of Congress in Washington informed me that he had just inventoried an unusual collection of early American wallpapers (actual rolls of wallpaper that had originally been submitted to the government for copyright purposes), and that they were identified as the work of Ramée, manufactured in Philadelphia in 1815. This revealed an aspect of the architect's career that had been completely unknown, his production of highly innovative wallpaper designs-several of which are just now being reproduced and marketed again.
There are still some gaps and unanswered questions in the story of Ramée's life. But the remarkable diversity, quality, and significance of his work has now been documented. In particular, it can now be seen that Ramée was a major player in the transmission of artistic innovation from country to country in Europe and America in the period following the American and French revolutions. Ramée's plan for Union College epitomizes this phenomenon in its introduction to America of a new type of environmental design.
With this understanding of Ramée's career, the influence of his work can now be assessed. In the case of the Union design, we can appreciate the extent to which it helped shape the subsequent development of the American college and university campus.
One example is of special interest. For many years, historians have pointed out the similarity between the Union design and Thomas Jefferson's plan (of four years later) for the University of Virginia-both having groups of neoclassical buildings arranged symmetrically around a courtyard, linked by arcades or colonnades and dominated by a central rotunda. But it remained an open question whether Jefferson was influenced by, or even knew of, Ramée's plan for Union.
When I wrote my book Campus and mentioned this question, I felt it was inconclusive. Now, however, I have determined that Jefferson was indeed influenced by Ramée, especially in the use of a domed rotunda as the centerpiece of a campus plan. The University of Virginia later became the most popular model for American college and university campuses, and Union College thus helped shape hundreds of institutions throughout the country.
Several years ago I recognized another, quite unexpected influence of the Union plan. The central campus of Stanford University, where I work, is a large quadrangle of buildings linked by arcades, conceived in the 1880s by Frederick Law Olmsted (creator of New York's Central Park) and the university's founder, Leland Stanford.
The architectural style of the Stanford buildings is very different from that at Union, but I was struck by the similar concepts of arcaded linkage around a formal courtyard. The possibility that Ramée's Union plan influenced the Stanford design seemed remote-until I found that Leland Stanford had been born and raised between Albany and Schenectady, and thus must have been familiar with the Union design. Olmsted also knew Union College. It seems likely that Stanford and Olmsted drew partly on Ramée's design, consciously or unconsciously, in planning the new campus on the other side of the continent.
As I pursued my research in the library and my office on the Stanford campus, I sometimes thought of the coincidence that this place, inspired partly by Ramée's work, was now the site of my reconstruction of the mysterious French architect's life and career.
What is it about the word “lecture” that makes us groan and roll our eyes? Perhaps it reminds us of naughty childhood episodes-being lectured for fighting with siblings or neighbors.
Perhaps it conjures up memories of sleeping through uninteresting speeches.
Whatever the reason, the word “lecture” is one that many people would place on the negative side of the language spectrum.
But why?
Why the groans, when lectures can be fun, enlightening, inspiring?
Steve Sargent, professor of history, suggests that the lecture is such a “real aspect” of our culture that we hear the word all the time. Perhaps then we associate it with what we “should do” and not with what we “would like to do.” Just the mention of the word can turn us off, even if just for a moment.
Two other faculty members offer similar ideas.
“The image a lecture evokes is somebody up front, droning on about uninteresting things in an uninteresting way,” says Christina Sorum, dean of arts and sciences and professor of classics.
“I think that when we hear the term `lecture' we're likely to think we're being lectured to, with one person working and the rest not,” says Brad Lewis, associate dean of undergraduates and professor of economics.
Defending the lecture
In academia today, controversy surrounds the lecture. It is too passive, critics say, and no longer an effective way to prepare students for
the complex tasks they will face after graduation.
But students have been listening to lectures for years-more than 800 years, in fact-and the lecture is still a common form of teaching.
Professor of Mathematics Bill Zwicker stands behind the lecture. “In my own subject, I don't think it is ever going to disappear,” he says. “The lecture is the most efficient means of transmitting information.”
Zwicker acknowledges that his students
will learn only a fraction of the material he presents, but argues that they master the material outside of class as they are challenged to apply key concepts.
“I think that everybody recognizes that students have to go back and forth between active and passive,” he says. His lectures require this, he says.
Carmen McMurtry, a senior mechanical engineering major from Columbia, Md., says that approximately ninety percent of her classes have been lectures, and she, like Zwicker, is a supporter of the lecture, concluding that the lecture is the most effective way to teach engineering.
But this fall, her engineering seminar offered the opportunity for a discussion class. She and her fellow engineers, accustomed to lectures, were somewhat uncomfortable with the format, she says, and hesitant to voice their opinions.
Students suggest that lecturing works in some disciplines and not in others. Diane Sedita '97, an English/Spanish major from North Salem, N.Y., says that a very small percentage of her classes are lectures, a fact that she attributes to her area of study. But she says that she thinks lecture classes are appropriate and common in the sciences.
Yet, we found lecturers in nearly every discipline. Brad Lewis, associate dean of undergraduates, recognizes that one of the strengths of the lecture is the way it allows students to observe faculty members' passion for their work. “You can walk in here and find 165 faculty members who are interested in what they do-and that inspires students.”
When questioned about the place of the lecture in Union's classrooms, Steve Sargent, professor of history, says, “We are 800 years into this project [the lecture]. Anyone who says to me that the lecture will be dead in eight or ten or eighty years has the weight of the lecture against him.”
Students agree that there is a place for the lecture. “I think lectures are necessary, and I
cannot imagine it without them,” says Randall Pellish '97, a political science major and
seven year medical student from Pittsfield, Mass.
Eric Nathanson, a sophomore from Newton, Mass., questions how one might learn in any course without at least some sort of lecture. “I think a lecture is better than other forms because you get the input from the professor,” he says, explaining that he values his faculty members for their expertise.
Sargent explains that the lecture works as a teaching tool because the transmission of information is so clear. “Union students tend to view professors as experts of bodies of knowledge, and I try to give them the benefit of my expertise,” he says.
Sargent is quick to point out that a teacher's success in a specific teaching method is often linked to personality. “I hate it when students are bored in my class,” he says. “I feel it is my job to keep all the students awake, alive, and involved in the narrative-and that's a lot of work.”
Students seem to recognize faculty members who have such gifts. Professor Steve Berk in the History Department is a renowned lecturer, and his classes have been packed for years. Yet Berk recognizes that the lecture is only one way of teaching. “Generally the lecture is a well-structured, provocative way for me to present the
necessary material, which is always a good deal of information,” he explains.
While opponents of the lecture claim that lecturing in small colleges such as Union allows for little distinction from lectures at large universities, students and faculty members refute this.
McMurtry says that she gets extensive attention as an individual in her lecture classes. “Since there are so few students in general, you are much more likely to work with the professor,” she says.
Sargent adds, “Students learn quickly to get the individual attention they want.”
So is the criticism of the lecture overblown? D'Andrea seems to think so.
“I think the lecture has gotten a bad rap, and perhaps because it is so hard to do is the reason that some of us don't do it so well,” D'Andrea says.
More than just the form of teaching
Perhaps, though, the form of teaching is not the issue.
“The goal of a teacher is to engage students and have them learn a set of skills and be able to use them,” says Christina Sorum, dean of the arts and sciences. “I'm not sure the issue of method is very important at all.”
To Professor of Mathematics Bill Zwicker, the exchange of ideas in a classroom is like a patchwork quilt.
With the exchange of ideas, he explains, students develop pieces of the quilt, gathering insight from their teachers, each other, and their experiences.
Each class becomes a part of that quilt, no matter what teaching method is used-lecture, seminar, collaborative learning. “The lecture in college is only a piece of a learning system,” Zwicker says, pointing to homework problems and exams that demand a student actively engage in the material. “I think that what goes on inside the classroom is designed to set up fruitful work outside the classroom.”
If the lecture, in whatever permutation, is common at Union, it is still only one of several approaches faculty members take, and nearly everyone we talked to suggested that a variety of forms is best. Patrick Allen, director of the College's educational studies program, notes that students need to know how to work in teams and investigate problems independently, and even Steve Berk of the History Department, one of the legendary lecturers on campus, sometimes uses a discussion format in his classes.
Thomas D'Andrea, professor of psychology, explains, “Clearly, people have different styles of learning and one technique may resonate for some but not for others. We don't really know
enough about learning to say that there is one [teaching] technique that all should employ.”
Chia-jung Chiu '97, a math major from Stratford, Conn., says that she is uncomfortable with the lecture. Approximately half of Chiu's classes have been lectures, but she says that she prefers smaller classes that include more discussion.
“It makes me feel more comfortable when I know a professor, and I tend to learn more when I am comfortable and am then willing to ask more questions,” she says.
Carmen McMurtry '97, on the other hand, is confident that she has established good relationships with faculty in lecture classes and feels comfortable asking questions. She says that much of the contact with those professors has been developed through out-of-class contact, such as office hours and research projects. She admits, however, that there is an entirely different atmosphere in the smaller, discussion classes.
David Pinkowitz, a sophomore from Newton, Mass., was surprised to discover that there is more than just lecturing at Union. “Before this year, I had seen lots of lectures,” he says, “but this year I am in two classes with very little lecture.” Pinkowitz says that he likes the new discussion classes he has encountered, and looks forward to more.
Because the lecture works for some students and not for others, Union and other colleges
have been widening their approaches to teaching and learning.
Mary Carroll '86, assistant professor of chemistry, teaches in a way that she rarely experienced as a student. “I see that we are getting further from the lecture,” she says. “I know that the way my colleagues and I teach is different from the way I was taught.”
Carroll uses some cooperative learning exercises in her classrooms, as does D'Andrea, yet both say they still believe the lecture is important. “In my own view,” D'Andrea says, “cooperative learning is an interesting and very effective way of teaching, but I don't think that it is ever going to replace the lecture.”
Basically, cooperative learning is students helping each other learn in small groups. It is based on the idea that talking about an issue or working on a problem more actively engages students in the learning process.
Brad Lewis, associate dean of undergraduate studies, a supporter of cooperative learning, also recognizes the importance of a variety in teaching methods, but suggests that the presence of the lecture in American classrooms may
be fading.
“I think that the ideal curriculum of the future would have some lectures, but not to the extent we have seen,” he says. He doesn't suggest that cooperative learning or discussion will entirely replace the lecture, but rather new methods may emerge such as technologically advanced or “canned lectures” that would present visually what is typically explained in a lecture.
D'Andrea explains that no teaching method can claim to be universally effective, so no form can be the “only way.”
Allen sums it up by noting that the people we call great lecturers have found a method, a medium, a language with which they can connect to their audience. The great teachers are those who can make those connections, no matter what form they use.
Eliphalet Nott as lecturer
Eliphalet Nott, president of Union College for sixty-two years in the nineteenth century, was known as a professor of “human wisdom.” One of his students who later became a college president was
of 1825, and here is how Tappan felt about a Nott lecture:
The lesson was never merely a bald recitation of the author's facts or opinions, and still less was it a mere question-and-answer exercise. Books were important
only as giving themes for discussion. Physics, mental philosophy, morals, political economy, all
were handled in the same way; the students were allowed their opinion but not limited to them; before the class closed, the President “would give a resume of
ant, and bring order out of the seeming chaos-presenting the question in a lucid aspect making it striking, with apposite illustrations, and impressing it with cogent arguments expressed in well-chosen, forcible words…. It
was the teacher's aim to lead young men to think for themselves, to become self-reliant, to distrust mere authority, where this stood in the place of independent investigation; to develop their own manhood.”
Jim Tedisco '72, a basketball standout from 1969 to 1972 and currently a New York State Assemblyman, has received the NCAA's Silver Anniversary Award.
The award honors the achievements of former college athletes on their 25th year after graduation.
Tedisco, a Republican, has served in the Assembly since 1982 and has been active in such groups as Big Brothers/Big Sisters, the Northeast Parent-Child Association, and the Schenectady Athletic Club, which donates clothing to children in need.
At Union, he led the basketball team to a three-year record of 44-21, was a two-time Small All-American (for players 5'10″ and under), and set a number of Union scoring records that still stand.
Tedisco and the five other recipients will be honored at the NCAA convention in January.
