Posted on Oct 24, 1997

Faculty members are voting this week on four options for starting dates in the fall of 1998. Ballots are to be returned by Monday, Oct. 27. The faculty vote will be one of many considerations used in determining the starting date, said George Butterstein, acting chair of the Faculty Executive Committee.

Start date options are:

1. Start on Labor Day, Sept. 7. Classes end Friday, Nov. 13.
Weekend reading period. Finals Monday through Friday, Nov. 16-20.

2. Start on Wednesday, Sept. 9. Classes end Tuesday, Nov. 17.
One-day reading period. Exams Thursday and Friday, Nov. 19 and 20; and Monday and Tuesday,
Nov. 23 and 24. (Two days will have three exam periods.)

3. Start on Monday, Sept. 14. Week of Oct. 19 off. Thanksgiving
week off. Students return for final week of classes, Nov. 30-Dec. 4. Finals Monday through
Friday, Dec. 7-11.

4. Start on Monday, Sept. 14. Monday and Tuesday, Oct. 19-20,
off. Wednesday through Sunday, Nov. 25-29 off for Thanksgiving. Finals the week of Nov.
30.

Posted on Oct 24, 1997

o Oct. 24, 9 p.m., Reamer Campus Center. Celebration of successful conclusion of the Bicentennial Campaign.

o Oct. 27, 7:30 p.m., Nott Memorial. Author and columnist Katha Pollitt on “Why I Hate Family Values.” (Story this issue.)

o Oct. 29, 4:30 p.m., Nott
Memorial. State Comptroller H. Carl McCall on “The State of New York's
Economy.” (Story this issue.)

o Oct. 29, 8 p.m., Yulman
Theater. Opening of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, directed by Prof. Sara
Chazen. The play also runs Oct. 30, 31, Nov. 1, 5-8, all at 8 p.m.

o Nov. 3, 8 p.m., Memorial
Chapel. Boris Berezovsky, the 1990 Tchaikovsky gold medal pianist, will perform works
by Scriabin and Rachmaninoff. Berezovsky is returning for his second performance in
the Schenectady Museum-Union College Concert Series.

o Nov. 4, 7:30 p.m., Nott
Memorial. Jane Marla Robbins portrays Marianne Mozart's complicated and profound
relationship with her brother, the genius composer, in a one-woman play titled
“Reminiscences of Mozart By His Sister.”

o Nov. 6, Nott Memorial. An
exhibit featuring the life and works of scientist Joseph Henry opens in Mandeville
Gallery. (Story next issue.)

o Nov. 7, 8 p.m., Reamer
Campus Center Auditorium. Journalist Tony Brown on “Integration: A Strategy Gone
Wrong.” Presented by Alpha Phi Alpha and ALAS.

Posted on Oct 24, 1997

Katha Pollitt, feminist author, poet, and columnist for The Nation will give a talk titled “Why I Hate Family Values” on Monday, Oct. 27, at 7:30 p.m. in the Nott Memorial.

Pollitt's “Subject to Debate” column appears every other week in The Nation and has been called by the Washington Post “the best
place to go for original thinking on the left.” The column is also frequently reprinted in newspapers across the country.

Critics have raved about Pollitt's book, Reasonable Creatures:
Essays on Women and Feminism, published in 1994. The New York Times Book Review
said: “Funny and furious … Pollitt takes on the most compelling issues of our day
concerning the sexes and turns them upside down. Along with her razor-sharp wit and her
impatience with sound-bite solutions, what sets Ms. Pollitt apart from other feminist
writers is her concern for social justice …. Cunning and complex.”

Pollitt is the winner of several writing awards, and her essays and
poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Harper's,
and The New York Times, among others.

The lecture is free and open to the public. A reception, sponsored by
the Women's Commission, will be held in Old Chapel immediately following the talk.

Posted on Oct 15, 1997

Boris Berezovsky, the 1990 Tchaikovsky gold medal pianist, will perform a program of works by Scriabin and Rachmaninoff on Monday, November 3, at 8 p.m. in Union College's Memorial Chapel.

The concert is part of the Schenectady Museum-Union College Concert Series. Berezovsky is returning for his second performance in the Series after a sensational debut last year.

Born in 1969, Berezovsky began his studies at the Moscow Conservatory of Music and later studied privately with Alexander Satz. After winning the Tchaikovsky competition in 1990, he performed with other Tchaikovsky winners in a concert that was telecast worldwide. He regularly performs with major orchestras including The Philharmonia, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Halle Orchestra, the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. In addition to performing solo, Berezovsky has also given joint performances with longtime friend and colleague, violinist Vadim Repin. He records exclusively with Teldec Classics, and has released six discs.

On the program are Alexander Scriabin's Six Preludes, Op. 13, and Twelve Etudes, Op. 8, as well as Rachmaninoff's Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 28.

Memorial Chapel is located near the center of the Union campus. Parking is available on campus and on nearby sidestreets.

This performance is made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.

Tickets, at $20 ($8 for students), are available in advance at the Schenectady Museum (518)382-7890 and at the door at 7 p.m. For more information, call 372-3651.

Posted on Oct 10, 1997

An article by Yoshimitsu Khan, assistant professor of modern languages and literatures, “Tips for Doing Business in Japan,” appears in the 1997 issue of Global
Business Languages published by the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, Purdue University. His recent project “Inoue Kowashi and the Dual Images of the Emperor of Japan” has been accepted for publication by Pacific Affairs Journal
published by the University of British Columbia. His essay traces the course of
establishing and legitimizing Imperial rule in Meiji and pre-war Japan.

William Finlay, associate professor of theatre and director of the Yulman
Theatre, choreographed “Guys and Dolls” at the Park Playhouse in Albany this
past summer. He also served as combat choreographer for Shakespeare's “As You
Like It” at The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in Hudson, N.Y. As the artistic
director of Proctor's Too, the professional theatre series run in collaboration with
the College, he was recently honored by Metroland magazine when the series was
given a major award as “Best Experimental Theatre” in the upstate Capitol
region.

Robert Baker, professor of philosophy, has published “Crisis, Ethics and
the American Medical Association: 1847 and 1997” with Arthur Caplan, Linda Emanuel,
and Stephen Latham, in the July 8, 1997 issue of Journal of the American Medical
Association. He also made three recent conference presentations: “Doctor
Chase's Patent Truss and the Origins of American Medical Ethics” (with Dana Katz
'97), at the annual meeting of the American Association of Historians of Medicine;
“History of the Goals of Medicine” at The Goals of Medicine: Priorities for the
Future Conference in Naples, Italy; and “Revolutionizing the Researcher-Patient
Relationship: A Historical Analysis,” at the annual conference of the European
Society for Philosophy, Medicine and Healthcare in Padova, Italy. Also, he was
commissioned to co-edit, with Prof. Laurence McCullough of Baylor College of Medicine, a
925-page multi-authored volume, “A History of Medical Ethics,” for Cambridge
University Press. The volume will be the first history of medical ethics published in
English in the 20th century. Anticipated publication date is 2002.

John M. Spinelli, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer
science, has published a paper “Self-Stabilizing Sliding Window ARQ Protocols”
in the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking. The paper discusses ways to improve the
reliability of communication protocols such as those used on the Internet.