Posted on Jul 1, 1997

Late last year, The New York Times reported that the United Nations was sponsoring research to slow the transfer of the HIV virus from new mothers to their newborns.

At about the same time, Jonathan Becker '98 was interning at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, working on a project that discouraged HIV-positive mothers from breastfeeding to lower the risk of spreading the disease to the child.

Such timely student scholarship has become standard at the Steinmetz Symposium, Union's annual celebration of student scholarship, research, and creativity. This year's symposium-the seventh-provided the following stories:

Several students who took part in the Kenya term abroad program ended up working with one of Africa's biggest health concerns: the threat of the AIDS virus.

About one in seven workers in Nairobi is HIV positive, and the Kenyan government, the World Health Organization, and various relief agencies are trying to educate the Kenyan public about the spread of the disease. Joining that effort last fall were Becker, Clarisa Buckner '98, and Gregory Reiser '98. Verdinia Washington '98 was involved in another aspect of Kenyan health-obstetrics.

Becker, a combined biology and math major at Union, was interested in working in health-specifically, pediatrics-and found a place at the Kenyatta National Hospital, working in outpatient clinics. He became involved with a project that tracked mothers with HIV and the transmission of the disease to their children through
breast milk. Each week, participants in the project came to the clinic, where Becker took each baby's blood and blood pressure and measured the baby's growth by taking its height and weight. With this data, doctors could track the growth of the child and monitor the transmission of the disease from mother to child.

“It was just an enlightening experience,” Becker says, emphasizing that he encountered situations that he would only have read about in textbooks back here.

Buckner, a chemistry major, also interned at the Kenyatta National Hospital and worked on the same project. Because of her interest in laboratory research, she focused on testing blood (some of which Becker might have drawn) for the HIV virus and other STDs.

Buckner had already done AIDS research in the United States. The summer before she studied abroad, she worked at the University of Pennsylvania researching a possible DNA vaccine that was based on a part of the HIV- I genome. At first mildly disappointed to be testing blood in Kenya, she soon discovered that AIDS research isn't as extensive there as in the
United States. “Their research isn't developing a cure but trying to control numbers,” she explains.

Washington, a biology major, was also able to see the differences between Kenyan and American health systems during her internship. Interested in obstetrics and gynecology, she worked alongside the head mid
wife in the labor ward at Kenyatta National Hospital.

Washington, who had never seen an actual birth before observing fourteen births in Kenya, says that she learned a great deal very quickly in her internship. She found that the facilities and the procedures were different from American
facilities – midwives handled most births, anesthesia was
rarely used, and the mothers, rarely accompanied by family members, often left the hospital about six hours after giving birth.

Washington loved the experience. “It was incredible,” she says. “It was so different from what you see in
America, but this is how they do things and this is how they survive.”

A political science major, Reiser was interested in the human rights issues of Kenyan people infected with the HIV virus. Discrimination against HIV-positive people is severe in Kenya-the discrimination seen in the film Philadelphia “times ten,” he says. In his internship, Reiser worked with the Kenya AIDS Society, the first self-help group for persons with AIDS run by Kenyans. In fact, all Kenya AIDS Society employees are
HIV-positive, and Reiser was the first to be involved in the group who is not HIV-positive.

Reiser developed a brochure dealing with confidentiality issues in Kenya, where privacy rules are somewhat unclear. Trying to describe the human effect of discrimination, Reiser interviewed twenty-five people with AIDS and conducted extensive research.

The results of his survey were startling, he says. Most people said that when others learned of their disease, they were rejected and hated. Even doctors were afraid to touch them, and some even went untreated because of
the discrimination. Every person interviewed agreed that laws to protect confidentiality should be enforced. Reiser's brochure, which was based on the interview, made this point and was distributed at World AIDS day in Nairobi.

Other Steinmetz highlights included:

Kira Sobczak, a senior civil engineering major, presented in two diverse categories: engineering and dance. A dancer since she was “able to walk”, Sobczak sees dance as “playing a sport.” After her performance she quickly changed to present a talk on her virtual term abroad, in which she teamed up with another Union student and two Turkish students to compete in a design competition.

Five students presented the database they created from daily observations of waterbirds at Collins Lake in Scotia, N.Y., collected by Carl George, professor of biology, and his students. The database allows the user to track the population of each species of waterfowl encountered over the nine-year study. George says that this is one of the longest daily censuses of waterfowl in North America.

Posted on Jul 1, 1997

Two seniors-Jessica Bernstein and Zane Riester – won prestigious Thomas J. Watson Traveling Fellowships this spring.

Their success brings to forty-two the number of Union students who have been named Watson Fellows since the program began in 1969.

Jessica Bernstein '97 never thought her formidable skill in Tae Kwon Do would do her much good in an interview. But there she was,
in front of the Watson committee, performing a series of kicks and punches.

Her demonstration of the ancient Korean martial art-combined with her thoughtful analysis of its meaning for women in modern culture-earned her an $18,000 Watson Fellowship. Starting in August, she will study female Tae Kwon Do artists in South Korea, Great Britain, and Norway.

“I want to find out what these women's stories are, how Tae Kwon Do is helping them in their lives, how they are training, what their goals are,” says Bernstein, a philosophy major. “The web of communication in women's Tae Kwon Do is not established at all. I just want to put together a piece of literature releasing these women's voices so that someone who has the same questions I have can find out something about it.”

Bernstein says she wants to find out why so few women practice Tae Kwon Do, why so few attain levels of authority in the sport, and what draws women into the sport. A first-degree black belt who hopes one day to become an instructor, she also wants to learn how westernization and competition have affected the 2,000-year-old art form.

As a teenager competing in Junior Olympic national tournaments across the country, Bernstein witnessed political clashes between organizations, disagreements between instructors, and parents who protest referee decisions. She also found what she thinks is a product
driven approach-” belt factories”-that accelerate students through the ranks.

She also has found that many schools use fear to draw women into classes. “Self defense is an aspect of Tae Kwon Do, but it's not the most important thing
that women can gain from it,” she says. “There's a whole other spiritual side of it that is very empowering.”

During her Watson fellowship, Bernstein will spend six months in South Korea, visiting a Buddhist temple that is a shrine to Tae Kwon Do statuary as well as a number of the 1,100 institutes that teach the martial art. She then will spend three months in England, observing women Tae Kwon Do artists in a western country, followed by three months in Norway, a country whose progressive and liberal views she expects will provide an interesting contrast.

“I knew that I wanted to apply for the Watson and that it had to be a good idea,” she says. “Rather than search
outside of myself, I looked at my personal experience in Tae Kwon Do and the questions that I've wanted to answer. It's a beautiful and amazing art form. When I teach Tae Kwon Do, I want to be the best teacher that I can be.”

Waiting for his train back to Union at the end of winter break during his sophomore year,
Zane Riester '97 saw on the wall of Penn Station a photo of what he thought was St. Peter's Church in Rome.

He had just studied the grand and beautiful example of Renaissance church architecture in his Introduction to Architecture class. Then he read the caption: Pennsylvania Station, 1906.

“It was the first time I realized that the original Penn Station had been destroyed,” the senior recalls. “I couldn't believe what I saw-it was as if they were taunting me with pictures of this grand original structure in such a dismal, atrophied place.”

That moment and subsequent “rediscoveries” of Grand Central Station stirred in Riester a fascination with the architectural similarities between Renaissance churches and turn-of-the-century Beaux-Arts train stations. So began an obsession that recently earned the New York City native an $18,000 Watson Fellowship to carry on his investigation next year at churches and train stations in Italy, France, and the United Kingdom.

“These buildings share so much in common in terms of an architectural vocabulary
columns, symmetry, temple fronts, a grand hall-and the emotional response they invoke in the viewer,” says Riester, a political science major and history minor. “They are awesome, amazing, and humbling.”

In his proposal to the Watson Foundation, Riester wrote, “While it risks blasphemy to compare a train to the grand significance of God, churches and stations are in their respective ways visions of power, strength, and glory. Train stations thus had to be large imposing structures much like the cathedrals and churches of Europe.” Train stations also were symbols of a town's prosperity, a function once served by churches, he notes. Because of their central importance, stations employed the highest degree of design and adornment, just as churches had done centuries before.

Stations, like churches, also serve a role in integrating members of society. “A lot of different people from different social classes come to a church for different reasons,” he says. “It's the same for the stations. The poor will go to the steps of a church just as they go to the steps of a train station.”

And stations, like churches centuries before, reflected the spirit of society. “In the previous generation, there was a sense of romance with travel, which was something new to society.
The trains were the first to play a role in connecting everything. It was more than just a railroad. It was about the development of society.”

Riester says his analysis will use black and white photography, interviews, and archival research. He plans to spend about four months each in Italy, France, and England. He hopes to share his discoveries through a Web site and possibly a CD ROM. “Nothing could be more fitting for a study of the technological progress of one age than to use the technology of my own,” he says.

After his Watson, Riester says, he would like to go to architecture school.

Posted on Jul 1, 1997

In April, more than sixty alumni, parents, and friends of Union joined Karen Jason '85 and Robert Israel '85 at the hit
off-Broadway show of “I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change.”

Karen's husband, Jonathon Pollard, is one of the producers of this hilarious musical revue. Karen, Rob, and Jonathon joined the Union family at a reception after the performance.

The event followed a meeting in March in which Steve Karotkin '73 welcomed nearly seventy alumni, parents, and friends to the General Motors Building to discuss the direction for the Greater New York City Club. The following have taken on leadership roles:

Lee Popper '94; president; Ruth Allen Cox '88, vice president/co-social and cultural chair; Neil Schwartz '77, co-social and cultural chair; Rob Danziger '89, networking events chair; Lyall Dean '43, educational events chair; Dawn Grande '95, club communication/co-young alumni events chair; and Susan (Gray) Maier '94, co-young alumni events chair.

If you are interested in getting involved or have suggestions for events, either in New York or at other alumni clubs across the country, please contact Joe Finocchiaro in the Annual Giving and Alumni Programs Office at (518) 388-6168 or email at finocchj@union.edu.

Posted on Jul 1, 1997

A number of students received special recognition at Prize Day in May for their academic achievements, community and college service, and athletics. Altogether, more than 100 prizes were awarded. Two who received multiple honors were:

Carmen McMurtry, a senior mechanical engineering major, received the Bailey Prize for the greatest service to the College in any field; the Warner King Prize for contributions to the
traditions and ideals of the College; and the Mortimer F. Sayre Prize for the senior with the best potential for furthering the ideals of the mechanical engineering profession.

She plans to enter a post-baccalaureate program at Bryn Mawr College to catch up on courses she needs to enter medical school and become a doctor.

Meredith Miller, a senior English and arts major, received the Josephine Daggett Prize for citizenship and character, the President's Commission on the
Status of Women Community Service Award, and the Meritorious Service Award, voted by the Student Affairs Council. A member of the Campus Action Board, she worked to coordinate political groups on campus and in the region, and she provided workshops on sexuality, racism, and multiculturalism to Union resident assistants. She plans to attend Brooklyn Law School.

Posted on Jul 1, 1997

One Union student group that makes a difference was honored by the city of Schenectady shortly before this year's commencement.

The group, We-Care-About-U-Schenectady, has played as big role in improving the city's housing stock. A group called Better Neighborhoods, Inc., uses paid contractors and volunteers, such as the Union students, to restore houses whose owners have walked away from them. Nine houses in the city have become known as “Union College houses” because the work was done primarily by Union students.

About forty percent of the College's students do some kind of community service each year, from acting as Big Brothers and Big Sisters to tending the
ill and injured with a local ambulance squad.