Posted on Nov 1, 1999

When Hurricane Mitch hit Central America in 1998, Peace Corps volunteer Ahnya Mendes '96 was living in rural Honduras, working to improve the health practices of villagers.

Though most of Honduras was ravaged by the storm (nearly 9,000 people, mostly in Honduras and Nicaragua, died, and more than one million people lost their homes), Mendes found that the hurricane affected her life and work minimally. “I was living in the western edge of the country, which was not hard-hit by the storm,” she says. “It just rained for eight days, and we didn't lose electricity because we didn't have any to lose.”

A sociology and women's studies major at Union, Mendes was working as a health extensionist in Honduras when the hurricane struck. Upon returning to Honduras after being evacuated to Panama for safety reasons, she continued her collaboration with the Ministry of Health and worked with midwives and village health workers to improve the primary health care in her community by giving lectures and providing information about causes and treatments of common illnesses.

“My goal was to try to reduce the maternal and infant mortality rates, which are very high in Honduras,” she explains. “I gave small presentations called 'charlas' to different groups of people in my community in hopes of increasing their knowledge of how to prevent illnesses that are easily preventable, such as diarrhea and respiratory illness. I also worked with midwives to reinforce proper hygiene during labor and teach them how to better monitor the health of pregnant women.

“But my favorite part was working with a group of adolescent girls in the high school in my town, teaching a course called 'How to Plan My Life,' ” she continues. The course dealt with sexuality, reaching goals, planning for the future, self esteem, careers, parenthood, and preventing HIV/AIDS. The highlight of the course was when the students shared their knowledge of proper HIV and AIDS prevention with the entire school in individually-prepared lectures.

“With the girls, I could tell that I was making a difference, and that meant a lot,” Mendes says. She saw evidence of their increased self-confidence and understanding of the material she had presented.

Mendes enjoyed her time as a Peace Corps volunteer, but says that there were definitely ups and downs. “Getting over that initial cultural boundary was difficult,” she says. “It took some time to become comfortable with the people and with the fact that I would really be spending two years there.” Yet after the first year, the time passed quickly. “It was a great experience, and I highly recommend it for those even remotely thinking about it,” she says.

After completing her time in the Peace Corps in April, Mendes traveled for two months to Equador, Peru, and Boliva, e-mailing home travel updates of her journey. “It was a lot of fun, but I was ready to come home,” she says. Now, she's eager to pack her bags again as she searches for a job in an international organization, perhaps working on disaster relief. “I would like to live abroad again. You learn a lot about yourself and the world when you live overseas,” she says.

Posted on Nov 1, 1999

In just seven years, Emily Baer '92 has gone from directing The Odd Couple at Union to co-writing and directing an award-winning independent film.

Baer's first feature-length film, Chocolate for Breakfast, won a silver medal at the Houston Film Festival (a festival for independent films), and she is currently negotiating its distribution nationally.

Baer, a theater and history major, took a directing class at Union, loved it, and knew that she wanted to direct for a living. Accepted at the National Actors Theater in Manhattan as a director's intern, she assisted Broadway directors on their production. “It was a great way to learn from watching professional directors and professional actors take a production from rehearsal to performance,” she says.

After completing the program, she directed several plays before turning to film. “I really wanted to make a movie, and lots of people were making movies independently at that time, so I found a writing partner and did it,” she says. Before Chocolate for Breakfast, Baer had little experience in film. “I relied on instinct, watched a lot of films, read a lot, and had a great crew,” she says. “But I learned a lot by doing it. People are always surprised that I made a film and I never went to film school. My experience in the theater was a big help, since I had experience directing actors and I had learned a lot of what worked and didn't work.”

Film, she says, is a real director's medium. “You have the opportunity to tell a story completely. In theater, the director doesn't have as much control over the final product as in a film.”

Chocolate for Breakfast tells the story of four female friends who share an apartment and how one roommate's pregnancy affects them all. Baer showed the screenplay to countless friends and acquaintances, and the response was good. After approaching a few producers who wanted to create an expensive film with big-name stars, Baer decided to raise the money herself. “We realized that it could take years to produce the film that way, so we decided to take the script ourselves and make the film for less money.”

The result was eighteen days of shooting in New York City and Los Angeles and a film described by Variety as “a lightweight but extremely likable comedy,” praised for its “wry human and vividly drawn and well-played roommates,” its “sharp dialogue and fine performances.” Even so, as of mid-summer, the film had not yet been distributed, but Baer was still hopeful.

Since Chocolate for Breakfast, Baer has been busy with other films. Last fall, she shot a yet untitled comedy about three men in New York City, and she just completed a screenplay for a murder mystery. Showtime is scheduled to show four short scenes that she wrote and directed. The shorts, which are about a married couple and three single women living in an apartment complex in Los Angeles, may develop into a pilot if they are well received.

Baer says that she has to work at staying busy in the film world. “If you want to be working all time, which I do, you have to be constantly trying to get work,” she says. Thus she often moves between New York, which she loves, and Los Angeles, where she can find more work. “I love being able to tell a story on film,” she says. “It's a great opportunity to create something from nothing. It all starts out as an idea that you hope people can connect with.”

Posted on Nov 1, 1999

Growing up, Roger Summerhayes '78 always knew that his grandfather, Irving Langmuir, had won the Nobel Prize in 1932.

He just didn't know what that meant. “I thought it was sort of like winning a science fair,” he says.

Now, Summerhayes is well aware of the importance of Langmuir's work and his Nobel Prize — so aware that he has made an award-winning documentary film about the General Electric scientist's life. Called Langmuir's World, the film was shown at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and has also been shown locally on WMHT-TV, the PBS member station.

The idea for the film came to Summerhayes while he was at Union. A chemistry major, he began to understand the significance of the discoveries that Langmuir had made in his chemistry courses. But the real trigger was his grandfather's sixteen-millimeter family films.

“My grandfather had shot all of this film that sat in a closet in the Langmuir house where I grew up,” Summerhayes explains. “My father would occasionally pull out a reel and we would watch it. It was beautiful stuff.” There were eighteen hours of film dating from 1923 to 1957 of Langmuir relaxing in Lake George, playing with his children, skiing across the frozen lake.

“But then I started to look more closely,” Summerhayes says. “Among the family films was one of my grandfather at a conference in Brussels with Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and Niels Bohr. That's when I began to become excited about it; I knew that this was a story that needed to be told. The volume of Langmuir's discoveries was just phenomenal, but no one has ever heard of him.”

Summerhayes notes that although the applications of Langmuir's discoveries are very common, his discoveries themselves were very esoteric. Among his accomplishments are improvements to Edison's design for the light bulb, which led to the creation of the incandescent light bulb; his theory of plasma as the fourth stage of matter, after solid, liquid, and gas; and his discovery of atomic-hydrogen welding.

After graduating from Union, Summerhayes kept his grandfather's films in mind, especially when he attended Stanford University to study documentary film. But he did not find the funding for a film about Langmuir until 1995, more than ten years after he began teaching chemistry and physics at St. Croix Country Day School in the U.S. Virgin Islands. (Prior to teaching in St. Croix, Summerhayes spent two years teaching in Fiji with the Peace Corps). That year, he won the Christa McAuliffe Fellowship, receiving enough money to take a year's sabbatical from his teaching job.

Summerhayes discovered that he needed more than just his grandfather's films. Not wanting to have a narrator simply tell the story, he decided to seek out Langmuir's colleagues. Among those whom Summerhayes interviewed was Bernard Vonnegut, who had worked with Langmuir at General Electric's Research and Development Center. “You might want to talk to my brother, the writer; he wrote a book about your grandfather,” Vonnegut told him. Unbeknownst to Summerhayes, Kurt Vonnegut had based a character in his novel Cat's Cradle on Langmuir, and a central element of its story reflects Langmuir's idea that a type of ice might remain solid at room temperature.

“I was floored,” says Summerhayes. “I had no idea. I had read Vonnegut in a satire course at Union during my freshman year and was in awe of this man.”

Summerhayes did interview Kurt Vonnegut and many other colleagues and friends of Langmuir. “They were tremendous and one of the best parts of making the film,” he says. “Until that point, I had all of the pieces but I didn't see the puzzle. As soon as I gathered all of those interviews together, I saw that people kept referring to stories reflected in the silent film my grandfather had shot. Suddenly, things began to match up.”

The result, after more than a year of editing, is a film that was called “a fine historical portrait” by the selection chief for the Sundance Film Festival — and a film that Summerhayes hopes will communicate his grandfather's love of science. “It's not about memorizing facts; it's about the thrill of discovery,” he says.

Summerhayes has no plans to leave teaching and devote his life to making films. He loves teaching and sharing at least a piece of his grandfather's passion for science with his students. “He was so fired up about chemistry. I aspire to communicate some of that enthusiasm to my students,” he says.

Langmuir's World is available for purchase from Roger Summerhayes. For ordering information, call him at 518-761-3669.

Posted on Nov 1, 1999

As the women's soccer team aims towards its first NCAA invitation, junior forward Melissa Matusewicz has become a key player.

Before her arrival, the Dutchwomen had posted a record of 16-12-3 in Coach Brian Speck's first two seasons. Since then, Union has an overall record of 29-6-3 (as of late September), including an unbeaten streak of 17 games. The team won its first Upstate Collegiate Athletic Association title in 1998 with a 6-0-0 record.

As center striker, Matusewicz is one of the leading scorers. In 1997 she established a Union record for goals (14), assists (9), and points (37) in a season, and she was named UCAA “Rookie of the Year.” As a sophomore, she was second in team scoring with 10 goals, four assists, and 24 points; through the first five games this year, she again lead the squad with seven goals, two assists, and 16 points.

A two-year All-Conference first team selection, Matusewicz was named a New York State All-Star after her sophomore campaign and was also voted to the All-East Regional first team. This year she is Union's candidate for All-American honors.

“It is obvious that Missy is one of the key reasons that Union soccer has done so well the past two seasons,” Speck says. “She brings the entire package — athletic ability, strong soccer skills, leadership, and a desire to improve. She always gives you her best, and that is one reason she is one of the best players in the country.”

A native of Florence, Mass., Matusewicz has been involved in sports since the sixth grade, playing soccer, softball, track, and basketball. As her last season of soccer at Northampton High School came to a close, she began searching for a college where she could enjoy both athletics and competitive academics. The deciding factor was the campus; when she came to visit, “I just fell in love with the campus.”

For Matusewicz, last year's game against William Smith is her fondest memory on the field. “It was pouring rain, the score was 0-0, and I scored with 11 seconds left in the game,” she explains. “It was definitely my career highlight.” That game was the first time that Union has beaten William Smith, dethroning them as league champions.

When it comes to balancing academics and athletics, Matusewicz says that she does her best academically when soccer is in season. “I think I am better at organizing my time in the fall,” says the psychology major, who has a double minor in anthropology and Spanish. Eventually, she hopes to get her master's degree in elementary education.

For now, though, she and her teammates plan to build on the soccer foundation that they have laid the past two seasons.

Posted on Nov 1, 1999

Doug Klein, professor of economics and a member of the faculty since 1979, has been named to the new post of associate dean of information technology (IT).

Klein says he see his initial responsibility as helping to administer several grants the College has received recently to enhance the use of information technology in teaching and learning. He says he finds that Union faculty members are embracing IT and are eager to explore new ways to use it.

Klein is a graduate of Grinnell College and has his master's and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. He has taught a variety of courses, ranging from competing philosophies in U.S. economic policy to managerial economics — teaching the tools of financial and quantitative analysis essential to modern managers.