Posted on Sep 14, 2000

A group celebrates at a six-week Big Brothers-Big Sisters summer program at the College. With the campers are
counselors Mario Cruz '00 (left), Devon Wimberly '01 (top), and Caroline Fink
'01 (center). The program served about two dozen youngsters of disadvantaged
backgrounds with activities ranging from trips to amusement parks to community cleanups. “These kids come in here all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but we don't see what these kids live with every day, not having someone at home all the time,” said Wimberly, who this year become a “Big” to one of the campers.

Posted on Sep 8, 2000

The College this fall welcomes 25 new members to the faculty. Some of them are introduced below. The remainder will be introduced in future editions.

Michelle Angrist, instructor of political science, earned her master's and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University. Her interests include state and regime formation, regime change and democratization and political parties in the developing world.

Sherrilyn Billger, visiting assistant professor of economics, received her master's and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research and teaching interests include labor economics, industrial organization and public economics.

John Cramsie, visiting assistant professor of history, holds a Ph.D. from the University of St. Andrews (Scotland). He is interested in Medieval and early-modern Europe, especially intellectual history; Britain, Ireland and the Atlantic community; modern European social and cultural history; and undergraduate writing.

Posted on Sep 8, 2000

May 29, 2000 (last meeting of spring term)

1. The minutes of the May 8, 2000 meeting were approved.

2. Minutes of the Subcouncil on Courses and Programs were discussed. The following courses were approved:
FRN 138 (Women on Top: Great Women Writers and Characters of French Narrative Fiction); FRN 149/MLT42 (West African Oral Literature); FRN 139 (Identifying Desire, Desiring Identity: French and Francophone Non-narrative Literature); ATH 021 (Puppet Theater Design and Performance); ATH 19 (Introduction to Costume Design and Make-up); ATH 65 (Special Topics in Theatre); MLT 052 (Traditional Chinese Medicine and Healing); GER 174/MLT 032 (Modern Language in Translation: “Metropolis Berlin”); PHY 14 (Freshman Seminar)

3. The Committee discussed the proposed course changes to the 8- year medical curriculum. The courses were approved contingent on changing ECO 253 to MED 253.

4. The committee discussed the proposal on college credit for distance learning courses. The issue was tabled to the Fall.

5. Pass/Fail policy was discussed. A motion was passed to table this issue until the fall when Dean Sorum will distribute the pass/fail policies of other schools.

6. The committee discussed a proposal from Dean Sorum to move a tenure line from Civil Engineering to Computer Science. The AAC supported this proposal.

Posted on Sep 8, 2000

Campus colleagues are mourning the loss of Joseph E. O'Connor, who served as a campus safety officer for 19 years.

O'Connor died at his home in Glenville on Aug. 25 after a long illness. He was 53.
He also held positions as a bus driver for Scotia-Glenville school district for 10 years. He was an emergency medical technician for Schenectady Ambulance Service and taught CPR and first aid for the American Red Cross. He coached basketball for the Scotia Methodist Church, and soccer for Scotia-Glenville schools and Highland Club of Scotia. He was a member of the Beukendaal Fire Department and an auxiliary member of the Scotia Police Department. He was a foster parent for 12 years.

A loyal Union athletics fan, he was a fixture at hockey games.
Survivors include his wife, Katharine Heiner O'Connor; a son, Joseph Jr., and two daughters, Katharine and Christine. Contributions may be made to Community Hospice of Schenectady, 1411 Union St., Schenectady 12308.

Posted on Sep 8, 2000

Union has launched a new design for its Web site with a home page that incorporates a contemporary look aimed to attract prospective students. The main photo on the home page features a different aspect of Union life every time the page is visited or reloaded.

“Building a site that is user-friendly for all the people who visit our site is a real challenge,” said Thomas Smith, Web site director. “When you consider that alumni, students, parents, prospective students and faculty all visit the site regularly, and are looking for different things, you've got to make sure that the site gives them what they want.”

The site features several new areas designed to make the site more user-friendly, according to Smith. The new Visitor's Center will make the first-time visitor to the Union Web site feel at home, and will give campus visitors everything they need to plan their trip. A “quick navigation bar,” which provides an easy-to-use drop-down list of the most commonly visited Union sites, appears on every page of the site, a feature that previously appeared only on the home page.

Links to the main sections of the site now appear in a consistent position at the top of the page, and users are able to see a trail of “breadcrumbs” showing every step back to the home page. The new Web Site Index is similar to a book's index: it provides quick links to the most common “topics” that a user would look for in Union's site. The Site Index provides an alternative to the search engine.

Because of improvements in site architecture and page layout, pages will load, on average, about 50 percent faster with the new design, Smith said. This improvement will be especially noticeable to off-campus users, who typically access the site using a dial-up modem. The faster download times have been achieved by several technical improvements in the site, such as using javascript for navigation, reducing image sizes, reducing the number of unique elements on each page, and installing cascading style sheets.

“Union has always had an attractive, easy-to-use site,” Smith said. “We just built on the strengths of the site and took advantage of some technologies that weren't available just a couple of years ago,” said Smith.

Two new members have joined the Web team in the Communications office. Erik Espana (Union Class of 2000) joined as Web programmer, and Cathy Burbules joined as Web coordinator. Erik and Cathy will be focused on enhancing the interactivity, usability, and quality of the official college Web site.