Posted on Mar 1, 1997

First-year student
Jordanna Mallach came to Union via Israel and Guatemala

Every so often last year, Vice President of Admissions Dan Lundquist received a postcard from Israel or Guatemala-all sent by Jordanna Mallach '00.

Mallach, of Maplewood, N.J., was taking a year off after high school, deferring her admission to Union. During that time, she had some remarkable experiences-from living in Israel at the time of Prime Minister Rabin's assassination to helping educate poor Guatemalan children.

Mallach began in Israel, living in a small neighborhood for a few months to immerse herself in Israeli culture. “What overwhelmed me was the generosity,” Mallach says. Alone in a small apartment, she was inundated with invitations of hospitality, she says.

As a volunteer at a community center, she taught English to children and helped lead the Teenager Adventurers Group, teaching Israeli teens how to rock-climb.

When Rabin was assassinated, Mallach began to reexamine her own Jewish identity.

“I always knew about Israeli politics,” she says, “but when the guys I was going to the movies with were waking up the next morning, putting on their uniforms, taking out their
machine guns, and heading up to patrol the border, it really had a big impact on me.

“The whole experience was unbelievable,” she continues. “They had no more life experience than I did, yet what they were dealing with and what they were facing was something far beyond what I could comprehend.”

During the night of Rabin's funeral, Mallach and some friends went to the assassination site, where she was overcome by the number of candles and memorials from all nations. “That had a great impact on me-just the fact that there is such great support of Israel and the Jews at large,” she says.

Her destination for the next five months was Guatemala. Her plan was to attend a language school and do a little traveling, but that changed when she met the students helped by El Proyecto (the project), a small
not-for-profit group associated with her language school.

“I absolutely fell in love with the children in this organization,” she says. After she was offered a job working for the group (for food and shelter), she changed her plans.

When Mallach arrived, El Proyecto was a new organization sponsoring eight children so that they could attend they public school. By the time
Mallach left, the group was sponsoring sixty children.

In Guatemala, many families cannot afford to equip their children with the necessary supplies and uniforms to attend school, and many children work to support the family. El Proyecto sponsored children by providing for their supplies and also giving the family the money (for food and medicine) that the child might have earned instead of going to school.

The staff of El Proyecto – Mallach and one other woman – also provided tutorials, adult education classes, group games for children too young for schooling, and classes on
women's issues.

“It was long hours and really hard work but I loved waking up in the morning and going to sleep at night feeling that I had contributed to the lives of these people,” Mallach says.

By the time she left, she was proud of her ability to carry on her head the amount of water
that a six-year-old girl could normally carry. And she was touched by the spirit she found. When a little boy at a pizza party sponsored by El Proyecto offered her some of his pizza, she was overwhelmed by his generosity. “This boy probably gets to eat pizza twice a year, yet he was offering me a bite with this huge grin on his face,” she says.

Mallach says that returning to America and beginning college was difficult. “When I came back from Guatemala I went to the supermarket, stood in front of the shampoo isle, and almost cried,” she says. “I wish everyone could leave the environment in which they feel safe and secure to spend some time in a place where people don't have enough to eat and don't take anything for granted because they don't have anything.”

And after Union? “If I get a degree and go to work in diplomacy, then I can go down there and help change the educational policies of Guatemala,” she says. Instead of helping sixty children, perhaps she can help all the four million children of Guatemala.

Posted on Mar 1, 1997

The much-anticipated renovation and expansion of Schaffer Library is underway, and library patrons have been urged to plan ahead.

The first phase of the project began in early February when demolition of the 1974 wing on the building's east side started. A temporary wall was installed a few feet inside the east wall of the 1961 building so that library operations could continue.

The demolition was expected to take three weeks. Then, crews were to begin driving piles to depths of twenty-five feet, an operation that was expected to continue through mid-March. Since the pile-driving was expected to create noise audible on most parts of campus, work was restricted to weekdays between 7 a.m. and 3:30 p.m.

Before the demolition and construction work began, the library staff had worked feverishly on plans to minimize disruption to library operations. A substantial portion of the library's collection of 500,000 volumes had to be moved to off-campus storage, so librarians devised a prompt and regular retrieval system. Books are usually available within a day of a request. Off-campus storage was restricted to materials that have not circulated since 1988.

All library operations that deal directly with patrons have been consolidated in the original 1961 building. Technical services and inter-library loan administration have been relocated to North Colonnade (the former Psychology Building; the Psychology Department is now on the third floor of Bailey Hall).

The work had an impact across campus, of course. With the number of study spaces in the library reduced by half, the College made alternate study space available in several other buildings. The area between Alumni Gymnasium and the library has been closed to pedestrians to allow access for equipment and supplies. Construction vehicles are using the Union Avenue gate, and a wheel washing station inside campus gates will remove dirt and debris from trucks before they enter city streets.

Work on the library is being done by the Pike Company, a general construction/construction management firm located in Rochester, N.Y. The company's recent projects include a technology center on the RIT campus and a campus center and business school at Alfred University.

The $18.25-million Schaffer Library project will increase the size of the library from 65,000 to 98,000 square feet. Completion is expected in the summer of 1998. The second phase-the renovation of the original 1961 building-is expected to begin in early 1998.

Those who want to follow the library project can check the “What's New at Schaffer Library” page on the College's web site at
www.union.edu/computing/library/library.html.

In the meantime, preparation work was done for the F.W. Olin Center, the $9 million high technology and classroom building to be erected on a site bounded by the library, the Social Sciences Building, the Reamer Campus Center, and the Science and Engineering Center. During December, crews moved steam, water, sanitary, and telecommunications lines to make room for the building.

Visitors are reminded that no parking is allowed on campus roadways unless otherwise designated-a restriction that will be especially important during construction of these two major projects.

Posted on Mar 1, 1997

In his Founders Day remarks, President Roger Hull took issue with the expression “If it isn't broken, don't fix it.”
A better way, he said, “is to improve that which is not broken, to tinker with that which appears to be working well.

“Why? Because when things are going well, institutionally or individually, one has the opportunity to make change in
a planned, thoughtful fashion,” he continued. “Otherwise, one finds oneself reacting to events and being forced to act in a hasty, unstructured, unimaginative manner.”

If Union's many strengths are to be made even stronger, we must continue to ask uncomfortable questions,” he said.

The theme of creativity was taken by the Founders Day speaker, Catharine Stimpson, who is director of the Fellows Division of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago. Each year the foundation makes substantial and unsolicited grants to a group of accomplished individuals.

Her job, she said, is to shepherd the process of identifying and rewarding exceptionally creative individuals, whom she called “gifts of history.”

But, she quickly noted, the fact is that every individual
does something creative every day, even if it is as “invisible” as improvising a song that lulls a child to sleep.

One of the ironies of the United States today, she continued, is its refusal to nurture creativity. “We begrudge funding
for basic research, we sneer at the arts, we refuse to nurture many of our children, we permit our schools to crumble around them.

“If we are to survive in our democracy, each of us can and must do what we can in creativity,” she said.

One of what she called the “nurturing environments” of creativity is a community, since no one works entirely alone.

“We can't be innovative until we've studied the tried, the settled, and the true,” she said. “We need deliberative communities such as Union to serve as sites of conversation for the new. Communities such as this will make sense of the creative acts that have entered-often unbidden-into our lives.”

Stimpson is on extended leave from her position as University Professor of English at Rutgers University. Author of more than 150 monographs, essays, stories, and reviews, she is a former president of the Modern Language Association, current chair of
the National Advisory Committee of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship, and a member of the board of PBS and several educational institutions.

She was honored by the College with a Doctor of Letters degree. Her citation noted that in her role at the
MacArthur Foundation she is in a unique position to encourage creativity. “The role is particularly appropriate for you, since creativity has been a hallmark of your career. With professional attainment notable for its imagination and invention, you now take enormous satisfaction in being able to encourage those qualities in others,” the citation said.

Change and creativity also were characteristics noted in three secondary school teachers honored with the Gideon Hawley Teacher Recognition Award. Named for the 1809 Union graduate who was New York State's first superintendent of public instruction, the award goes to teachers nominated by current Union students.

Preston Hayes, a chemistry teacher at Glenbrook South High School in Glenview, Ill., was nominated by Christina Rho, a sophomore seven-year medical education student and former student of Hayes.

Penelope Reed, chair of the dramatic arts department at the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, N.J., was nominated by Stephen Eichfeld, a Union freshman and 1996 graduate of the school.

Roger H. Richardson, a physics teacher at Friends Academy in Locust Valley, N.Y., was nominated by Sameer Sayeed, a freshman seven-year medical education student.

The nominators praised their teachers for having a major and continuing positive influence on their academic lives.

Posted on Mar 1, 1997

Remarks delivered at the College's Founders Day celebration on February 8

As we celebrate our 202nd birthday, we should all take to heart words which our speaker today once wrote. In an article, Catharine Stimpson made reference to an “appetite for change.” Nothing could be more important for us-institutionally or individually.

Change does not come easily. When one is part of an historic institution, there is,
in addition, an obligation not to change for the sake of change or to be frivolous when dealing with the past. Instead, one must embrace the past with all the passion and pride that it deserves, while at the same time recognizing that nothing-nothing-should be left unchallenged or unchanged.

Among historians, it is commonplace to say that those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it. Whether historian or political scientist, humanist or scientist, administrator or student, parent or child, the tendency is to leave things alone when they appear to be in good working order. Or, stated in the vernacular, “If it isn't broken, don't fix it.”

For me, though, it is time to rethink that expression, and that approach. A better way-a far better way, in my view-is to improve that which is not broken, to tinker with that which appears to be working well. Why? Because when things are going well, institutionally or individually, one has the opportunity to make change in a planned, thoughtful fashion. Otherwise, one finds oneself reacting to events and being forced to act in a hasty, unstructured, unimaginative manner.

Socrates is reputed to have said that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Whether in an institutional or individual sense, that way of focusing on life is essential. How do we improve, how do we grow, how do we make things better without taking a look at whatever options are available to us?

To some, merely suggesting change and looking at options leads to discomfort. Yet, as Catharine Stimpson has rightly argued, we need to encourage people to stretch their comfort zone.

Nothing is more contrary to Union's principle than an unwillingness to ascertain the pros and cons, the costs and benefits, of that which is available to us. While we need not do that which we pursue, the examination of options must always be explored. Indeed, the failure to do so is the ultimate failure, for it means that we will have obviated the opportunities-institutionally or
individually available to us.

We can all remember corporations that once were on top but that no longer exist, or have been merged. As for individuals, one can cite the rich or those in political power or the famous who once believed what others said of them or who felt that they need no longer strive, lost their edge and, in the process, their wealth, their power, their fame.

We need to keep the reasons for such failures in mind. We have incredible strengths, but if those strengths are to be made stronger, we must continue to ask uncomfortable questions.

A perfect example for us at Union is the use of technology in teaching. While we take justifiable pride at the College in the close personal relationships that are formed between student and teacher, we need to look thoughtfully at how we can use the astonishing new technology, and, at the same time, preserve those relationships that make us so special. Along those lines, we need more of what happened a few days ago, when four faculty members led a noontime discussion on the uses and misuses of computers in classroom teaching.

Personally, I can remember when all lawyers used yellow legal pads; you can recall when you typed away on Smith Coronas (which no longer exist). Lawyers today have Lexis and Nexis, and you, undoubtedly, relish the convenience of word processing on a computer.

Yes, an appetite for change is essential. No organization and no individual has ever been able to remain the best without constantly reexamining that which is being done. As we begin our 203rd year at this historic and marvelous college, we would do well to remember to stretch our comfort zone and not feel satiated.

ROGER H. HULL