If you missed Kim Rohback '00 in any of her previous
eight stage appearances – or somehow missed her many appearances at
Prize Day — there's still time to see her in her last role as Germain
in Picasso at the Lapine Agile at the Yulman Theater.
Rohback, winner of the Josephine Daggett Prize to the
senior of the best character and conduct, has been nothing if not busy
during her four years at Union.
A political science major and Japanese minor from
Pittsburgh, her Union resume is one long list of student activities:
Mountebanks; president of Amnesty International chapter; president,
treasurer and head delegate of the International Relations Club; president
and member of Coffeehouse; co-editor of Ethos; a regular at a
number of Thurston House activities; term abroad in Japan.
“I wanted to get everything I could out of my four
years here,” she says. “Wherever there were opportunities, I
took them. I like school. I like to learn.”
Among her other prizes were the Oswald D. Heck—Irwin
Steingut Prize to the student who has consistently done the best work in
political science; the meritorious service award, President's Commission
on the Status of Women Senior Scholarly Activity Award; and the Horatio G.
Warner Prize, to the senior of high personal character with the highest
standing in the bachelor of arts program.
Rohback plans to attend law school this fall, and hopes
to earn a Ph.D. in political science to teach at a college like Union.
Kevin
Klose, president and CEO of National Public Radio, will be honorary
chancellor and deliver the main address at Commencement on Sunday, June
11, at 10 a.m. in Library Plaza.
Klose is to receive an honorary doctor of humane
letters.
A former editor, and national and foreign correspondent
with The Washington Post, Klose is an award-winning author and
international broadcasting executive. Prior to joining NPR in 1998, Klose
served successively as director of U.S. International Broadcasting,
overseeing the U.S. Government's global radio and television news
services (1997-98); and president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL),
broadcasting to Central Europe and the former Soviet Union (1994-97).
Klose first joined RFE/RL in 1992 as director of Radio Liberty,
broadcasting to the former Soviet Union in its national languages.
Prior to RFE/RL, Klose was an editor and reporter at The
Washington Post for 25 years. His various positions at the newspaper
included city editor; Moscow bureau chief; Midwest correspondent; and
deputy national editor.
Klose received a bachelor of arts degree, cum laude,
from Harvard University. A former Woodrow Wilson National Fellow, he
serves on the Board of the Eurasia Foundation in Washington. He is author
of Russia and the Russians: Inside the Closed Society, winner of
the Overseas Press Club's Cornelius Ryan Award; and co-author of four
other books.
Other events during Commencement weekend include a
reception for seniors and their families with President Roger Hull on
Saturday, June 10, from 3:30 to 5 p.m. in the Nott Memorial.
The Baccalaureate Commemoration will be Saturday, June
10, at 5 p.m. in Memorial Chapel.
Friday, May 26, through Monday, May 29, 8 and 10 p.m. Reamer Auditorium.
Film committee presents Cider House Rules.
Friday, June 2, and Saturday, June 3, 8:02 p.m.
Yulman Theater.
Proctor's Too presents Mump & Smoot in “Something Else.”
Tickets are $15 ($10 for students). For tickets and information, call ext.
6545.
Through May 28.
Yulman Theater. Picasso at the Lapin Agile
by Steve Martin,directed by Jon Galt. Admission is $7
(students/seniors $5). For tickets and information, call ext. 6545.
Through June 11.
Mandeville Gallery, Nott Memorial.
Exhibition featuring art works by Union College seniors.
Prize
Day was bittersweet for Mario Cruz '00, who received the Bailey Prize,
the College's highest honor for campus leadership and service.
For one thing, he was sad that a number of his peers
couldn't share the limelight. For another, his mother missed the
ceremony because of car trouble halfway down the Thruway.
“It's nice to be honored, but there are so many
other students who should get recognition but don't,” Cruz said.
“That makes it kind of bittersweet for me.”
While Cruz was marching onstage to accept the Bailey,
his mother was having her car towed from the Thruway at Kingston.
“For graduation,” says Cruz, “I'll make sure she arrives
the night before.”
Cruz came to Union four years ago, not at all sure he
wanted to be a doctor. But after internships in other fields, he chose
medicine, and he will enter Albany Medical College this fall.
He took a variety of courses his first year at Union,
and he quickly developed an interest in politics. But an internship in New
York City convinced him that political life wasn't for him.
He followed up that internship with one at a large
organization of public hospitals, but quickly concluded that he wouldn't
choose health administration either. “I realized that I am more of a
people person,” he says. “That experience confirmed my decision
to become a doctor.”
Richard F. Voss, a pioneer in physics and a popular speaker on fractals, will speak on Thursday, May 25, at 7:30 p.m. in the F.W. Olin Center Auditorium at Union College.
The title of his talk, which is free and open to the public, is “Mountains, Clouds, and the Music of the Markets.”
Voss, a former researcher with IBM (where he was a colleague of Benoit Mandlebrot) teaches at Florida Atlantic University's Center for Complex Systems.
The intricate shapes and ever-changing patterns of the natural world have long been an inspiration and model of beauty to artists, writers, and musicians. Mathematics and science, on the other hand, are often viewed as cold, dry, and uninteresting. If they possess a beauty, it is of a perfect symmetry that is irrelevant to the real world: scientists could send a rocket to the moon, or predict the perfect symmetry of carbon atoms in a diamond, but they could not describe a mountain, write a formula for clouds, predict financial markets, or capture a melody.
The mathematics of fractal geometry and the science of chaos are now bridging the gaps between math, science, art, and culture. They treat the messiness of the everyday world. They are based on natural self-similarity (a small branch of a tree reminds one of the entire tree) and observations of complicated behavior from simple equations. They provide a new mathematical language for capturing, manipulating, and simulating nature.
The lecture will illustrate the descriptive and creative power of fractals and chaos through computer generated images, animation, sounds, and music. Examples of practical applications of fractals to economics, DNA sequences, early Chinese landscape paintings, and x-ray mammograms will be presented. The unity of building mountains and clouds from mathematics and generating music from the stock market will be demonstrated.
Voss, an internationally-recognized physicist and popular lecturer on fractals, has presented over 150 major invited lectures on fractal geometry and has published over 80 scientific articles.
Born in Minnesota, Voss received a B.S. degree from M.I.T, a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California at Berkeley. For many years, he was a researcher at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center, where he collaborated closely with Mandelbrot (the “father” of fractals) and continued his research in condensed matter physics. His mastery of scientific computer graphics has been instrumental in the rapid acceptance of fractals as a useful language. His computer-generated images have appeared widely in numerous magazines, books, television shows, and IBM commercials.
In 1993 he was elected professor of applied physics at Yale University, where he taught a special undergraduate course on fractal geometry. In August 1995 he joined the Center for Complex Systems at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton with appointments as professor of physics and mathematics while continuing his association with IBM Research as a visiting scientist. His current research interests are applications of fractals and chaos to science and math education, financial time series, and medical imaging.
