Posted on Aug 1, 2001

Francis L. Lambert,
professor of physiology and biophysics emeritus, died April 27 at Ellis
Hospital in Schenectady. He was seventy-seven.

Born in Staunton, Va., Professor Lambert graduated from George Washington University and earned his Ph.D. from Harvard. He joined the Union faculty in 1955 and taught courses ranging from marine biology to neurophysiology. He retired in
1989.

During his years at Union, he was chairman of the Biology Department, a member of the College's Academic
Affairs Committee, president of the College's chapter of the American
Association of University Professors, treasurer of the Union chapter of Sigma
Xi, and executive secretary of the premedical training committee. His
professional memberships included the American Society of Zoologists, the New
York Academy of Science, the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, and the American Institute of Biological Sciences. In 1960 he was
named a Jacques Loeb associate in marine biology at the Rockefeller Institute in New York and its Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass.

Survivors include his wife, Sangvon “Tiu” (Wannavong) Lambert; a son, Peter K. Lambert, of Santa Cruz, Calif.; a brother, Peter B. Lambert, of Richmond, Va.; and a sister, Sue Winstead, of Weems, Va.

Raymond Eisenstadt, professor of mechanical engineering emeritus, died May 28 at the Daughters of Sarah Nursing Home in Albany. He was eighty.

A native of Brooklyn, Professor Eisenstadt graduated from the City College of New York and earned his master's degree and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He joined the Union faculty in 1954 after teaching at Lehigh University, and he retired in 1988. He was a former chairman of the Hudson-Mohawk section of the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers, a fellow of the American Society for
Mechanical Engineers, a National Science Foundation Faculty Fellow, and the author of more than two dozen technical papers. He taught courses in nearly every area of mechanical engineering, developed a series of short summer courses for the continuing education of local scientists and engineers, and was a consultant for the General Electric Co., NASA, and the U.S. Army.

Survivors include his wife, Beverly Stein Eisenstadt; two sons, Neil Eisenstadt, of Israel, and Lowell Eisenstadt, of Waukegan, Ill.; two daughters, Janice Cove, of Somerset, N.J., and Marcy Freeman, of Sharon, Mass.; a brother, Seymour Eisenstadt, of Scarsdale, N.Y.; and eight grandchildren.

Posted on Aug 1, 2001

In its heyday, 3 Library Lane was the home of Alpha Delta Phi fraternity and one of the most imposing
residential structures on the Union campus.

Today, after two years of planning and construction, the building has recovered the grandeur of its early days, and on June 15, it was dedicated as the Grant Hall Admissions Center, named in honor of William R. Grant '49, whose gift made the renovation possible.

President Roger Hull; David Chapnick '59, chairman of the board; and Dan Lundquist, vice president for admissions and financial aid, expressed delight at creating an admissions building that is, as the president said, “second to none.” Added
Lundquist, “It's a pleasure to think of what a great impression this will
create for our many visitors.”

In his remarks, Grant said, “Having my name on a campus building is an honor indeed. But as I told Roger when I committed to the gift, if a few years hence the College can activate another contributor, don't be embarrassed about changing the name again. My commitment is to the College, not to a building. I'm a strong believer that every alumnus has an obligation to one's predecessors and institutions of historical personal influence. We may not like all the changes that subsequently occur, but that doesn't obviate a responsibility to support
your selection of Union as part of the private sector education.”

Today's visitors to 3 Library Lane will see a building that, from the front, looks much the way it did when it was used by Alpha Delta Phi. Painted a pale yellow, with a gracious porch and large windows, the building sits at a busy crossroads near the Payne Gate entrance to campus. Inside, however, fraternity décor has been transformed into an airy and open welcoming center. Two dozen admissions and financial aid staff members, accustomed to cramped quarters and little storage space in Becker Hall, now have three full floors, with additional work and storage areas in the basement. All told, the office's space  goes from about 7,000 square feet in Becker Hall to 12,000 square feet.

The beginnings

Although the first fraternity at Union appeared in 1825, it took nearly seventy years before a fraternity had its own residence house on campus.

Those early fraternities met in dormitories and later established the custom of holding dinner meetings in Schenectady hotels and taverns. By the late nineteenth century, several fraternities had permanent meeting rooms in downtown Schenectady, and several had created fraternity eating clubs, usually meeting at boarding houses.

Finally, in 1892, Psi Upsilon built its own residence house on campus –nearly twenty years after the trustees had voted to allow fraternities to build on the college side of Union Avenue. Three years later, work began on a new home for Alpha Delta Phi, which had been established in 1859. The building was completed by Commencement in 1898, at a cost of $19,332. All told, nine fraternities built houses on campus in the twenty-five years after Psi Upsilon opened.

For the first 125 years of the fraternity system, the College built no dormitories (at one point, in 1910, there were 110 students living in fraternity houses and 99 in dormitories). Beginning in 1950 (with West College), the College began to
add new residence halls. Today, about 1,700 of the College's 2,000 full-time
undergraduates live on campus – some 330 in Greek housing, 170 in theme houses, and the remainder in independent residence halls.

Upgrading admissions

As the College's admissions efforts gained momentum in the 1990s, it became
increasingly obvious that Becker Hall simply wasn't big enough. In 1991, for
example, admissions held one fall open house and one accepted candidates day in
the spring; within half a dozen years that had grown to two fall open houses, two open houses just for high school juniors, and three accepted candidates day, with individual interviews and group information sessions offered six days a week. Similarly, the number of responses to admissions mailings doubled, and the increased activity meant that boxes of recruiting material lined the hallways because of inadequate storage.

Lundquist, who often visits the colleges with which Union competes for students, said that he was struck by how poorly Union “shows” against its peers. “Our outgrown, cluttered facility was not conveying a message of quality,” he said. “In fact, we had people waiting in their cars for campus tours.”

In 1996, a Campus Planning Advisory Committee was established, and in 1997, the group (comprising three students, four faculty, and two staff members) recommended that the Admissions Office relocate to the Alpha Delta Phi building. Committee members visited several colleges with which Union competes for students, such as Hamilton and Trinity, and concluded that Union clearly needed a building that would have the location, size, and attractiveness to say “tradition” and
“excellence” to visitors.

Initial reaction from many fraternity members was dismay and anger, and representatives of the College and the fraternity entered into extended negotiations. On October 1, 1998, the fraternity agreed to relocate to Fero House, and the College agreed to complete necessary building modifications to accommodate the
fraternity's residential and social needs. During Commencement Weekend in 1999, departing fraternity members caused extensive damage to the building and, after an investigation, the College placed the fraternity on probation. Members of the fraternity will move into Fero House this fall.

Work on Grant Hall got under way last October. Nearly everything in the building except the walls and the roof was old, inoperable, or failed to meet current codes (even some floor joists had to be replaced or strengthened). An addition that contained the kitchen and some bedrooms was removed and replaced with a new addition that matches the architecture of the original building, right down to the cornices. An elevator was added, the two fireplaces in what is now the reception area were spruced up, and there is a new stairway from basement to third floor. After nearby parking space is rearranged to eliminate cars on Library Lane, the Grant Hall Admissions Center will frame the Nott Memorial and provide a dramatic new look to the campus's main entryway.

As for Becker Hall, it is about to become the center of a good deal of the student advising that happens on campus. Moving in will be the Career Development Center as well as several faculty members who advise students on graduate and professional schools and graduate honors and fellowships.

Posted on Aug 1, 2001

When Mark Zimmerman graduated in 1990, his goal was to land a job in sports.

An economics major, he was sports editor and a columnist on Concordiensis, assisted in the
College's Sports Information Office, and wrote a senior thesis on free agency
in major league baseball.

Hired by Sports News Network to
scour sports statistics for interesting tidbits to use on college football
broadcasts, persistence has taken Zimmerman from making $5 an hour in Virginia to an office on Park Avenue in New York City.

Three months after starting at the
Sports News Network, Zimmerman landed a position as a production assistant for
ESPN, where he logged games and produced highlights for SportsCenter. “It was pretty fun to be twenty-three-years-old and have the announcers read what I wrote on the show.”

Wanting to work on the Barcelona Olympics, Zimmerman took a job at NBC Sports in January of 1992.  Hired to produce a three-hour highlight tape of the American athletes for NBC affiliates, he was assigned to work at the track and field venue as a production assistant when the crew
arrived in Barcelona. “That was an
incredible experience, and after the Olympics I was hired full-time to produce sports promos.”

In 1995 he was tapped to head the newly-formed online department at NBC Sports. Working closely with the National Football League, Zimmerman was the first producer of a Super Bowl cybercast, and in 1998 he was hired by the league to join NFL.com as the senior manager of programming. He oversees the editorial content of NFL.com and the NFL Internet Network,
which includes all thirty-two team sites. Dealing with players, coaches, teams, NFL Films, NFL Publishing, and third-party content providers, he describes himself as a “kind of editor-in-chief” of NFL.com.

“The most fun I ever had was during my time at NBC Sports,” he says. “I got to work on Super Bowls, the World Series, the NBA Finals, golf tournaments, the Barcelona and Atlanta Olympics … you name it. I was in my twenties and traveling all over the world, getting paid to watch sports. I was incredibly lucky.”

The opportunities at the NFL
are not to be underestimated. “In my job now I deal with a lot of players,
coaches, and team management. 
Everything that I'm doing now is exactly what I wanted to do as a kid.  If you just keep at it, eventually
you'll get to where you want to be.”

Posted on Aug 1, 2001

President Roger Hull has asked a
faculty committee to review the proposed elimination of civil engineering and make recommendations to him by October 1.

Tom Werner, the Florence B. Sherwood professor of physical sciences and chair of the Faculty Executive Committee, said the civil engineering committee was formed to assure that the issue is addressed according to the faculty governance system.

The future direction of engineering has been the subject of intense discussion on campus over the past several months, ever since a committee began examining how the College could sharpen its focus on engineering. The committee – comprising two trustees, two engineering faculty members, the head of the faculty, the dean of
the faculty, and the dean of engineering – worked with a group of consultants. At the same time, the dean of engineering, Robert Balmer, began to examine the allocation of resources within engineering.

The committee quickly determined that retaining engineering was vital, but that the College should develop programs that deal with the problems that emerge from the convergence of computer science, electrical and mechanical engineering, biology, chemistry, and physics. Under such an approach, students would graduate
with a strong foundation in the engineering fundamentals but also would have the experience of studying and working on projects that bridge the disciplines. President Hull, in a letter sent to engineering alumni in April, said that the College will focus on these “converging technologies” because “the important innovative work in engineering is happening at the intersections of the science and engineering disciplines.”

The proposed phasing out of civil engineering is an issue tied to financial constraints. Engineering – through higher faculty salaries, greater student financial aid,
and equipment – requires a disproportionate amount of Union's resources, the president said, and the College's use of six to eight adjunct faculty members each year in computer science and engineering “more closely resembles a large state institution than it does an excellent small liberal arts college that emphasizes faculty-student interactions.”

Given limited resources, the desire to improve meant that there would have to be changes in the current academic program.

“Why civil engineering and not another engineering program or a part of the liberal arts curriculum?” the president said. “Because civil engineering is more highly structured and therefore less easily integrated into the rest of the engineering programs, because the remaining parts of the engineering division fit more logically together, and because we are primarily a liberal arts institution (we have 1,700 students in the liberal arts and 300 in engineering).”

Throughout the discussion, the president and other administrators emphasized the College's commitment to a strong engineering program. “Engineering is – and will remain – a distinguishing feature of Union,” President Hull said.

The proposed phase-out of civil engineering, if approved by the Board of Trustees, would occur after students in the program have completed their requirements, and faculty (the civil engineering department has four tenured faculty members) would continue to hold positions at the College, where they would teach a variety of courses.

Posted on Aug 1, 2001

Dr. David Kessler the former commissioner of the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration, who led the agency's effort to regulate the tobacco
industry, told graduates at June's Commencement to “be willing to pay the
price for something that is right.”

Kessler delivered the Commencement address and received an honorary doctor of laws degree.

“Are you willing to take risk, endure insecurity, and sacrifice comfort to take on something that matters?” Kessler asked the more than 600 students receiving degrees.

Kessler, now the dean of Yale University School of Medicine, said that a young public affairs officer at the FDA first suggested that the agency “take on tobacco.” But a number of people within the FDA — including Kessler himself — thought initially that the fight would be too difficult, perhaps even unwinnable.

One of those who convinced Kessler to
pursue the issue was a colleague who said, “If you're willing to take on
tobacco, I'm willing to spend the rest of my career working on it.”

Eventually, the FDA proved that for years the tobacco industry knew that nicotine was addictive, that it knew how to make tobacco more potent, and that it knew how to attract new users. Under Kessler's leadership, the FDA placed new restrictions on tobacco vending machines and advertisements in an effort to stop children and teens from smoking. He also led the way to other FDA regulations, such as improved standards for mammography, improved nutritional labels on products, and speeding up the drug approval process.

Kessler cautioned the students that they will not always find a clear path to their goals and dreams. And to be
successful, he added, there is a question that everyone must face – “Is the challenge worth the price? That is something each and every one of you will
have to decide for yourself.”

The citation for Kessler noted that he had, as an undergraduate at Amherst, realized that he was interested in broad
scientific, social, and legal issues. “The ideal of healer took you to medical school; the ideal of the advocate took you to law school; the ideal of spokesman for the greater good took you to service in government and, now, to one of the country's most distinguished medical schools. Skillful with words as well as scalpel, organizer of others as well as self, you expanded the outreach of your concern and conviction as a leader for greater and better medical research and service. Perhaps there is no better example of your concern, conviction, and moral courage than your willingness to challenge the tobacco industry. We honor your devotion to the afflicted, and we present your dedication not only to admire but to inspire.”

Commencement notes

— The College awarded 262 bachelor of arts degrees, 157 bachelor of science degrees, 17 bachelor's of civil
engineering, seven bachelor's of computer systems engineering, seven bachelor's of electrical engineering, seventeen bachelor's of mechanical engineering, one bachelor of arts/bachelor of science in mechanical engineering, and 143 graduate degrees. One degree was awarded posthumously, to Lee Nicolai, an engineer with the General Electric Co. in Schenectady who died two weeks before Commencement. He had been taking courses part time over the past ten years and had fulfilled the requirements for his degree in electrical engineering.

— Twenty-four students graduated summa cum laude, thirty-two were magna cum laude, and eighty-five were cum laude. Thirty-five graduated having been elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

— The co-valedictorians were Mariya Gueorguieva, who transferred to Union in 1999 after a year of study at the American University in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, and Mark Ando, a thirty-nine-year-old native of Schenectady who has spent the last ten years working toward a bachelor's in electrical engineering, first at Schenectady County Community
College and, since 1995, at Union.

Gueorguiva said she was most excited about having her parents at the ceremony. “It's their first time out of the country and their first visit to the U.S.” After graduation, Gueorguieva took her parents on a tour of New York City. She majored in managerial economics and minored in German, and accepted a position as an investment banker at J.P. Morgan Chase in New York City. Ando earned his degree while working full-time as manager of a materials testing laboratory for Knolls Atomic Power Lab in Niskayuna. He and his wife, Anne, have two children — Chris, who just received an associate's degree in industrial technology from Hudson Valley Community College, and Lisa, who in May earned a bachelor's degree in business from the State University College at Oneonta.

— The salutatorian was Tania Magoon, a chemistry and classics major who reads the Iliad – in Greek – to relax. A native of Pittsfield, Mass., she received the Robert M.
Fuller Prize for experimental work in chemistry and the Robert G. O'Neale Prize for the highest standing in classics. She will use a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship to pursue her Ph.D. at Harvard University.

— The student speaker, Jon Tower, offered words of advice gleaned from conversations with alumni — follow the idea of “just do it,” have passion,
learn how to take responsibility, don't fear attention and recognition of
ability, recognize the significance of family, dream, strive to attain
knowledge about oneself and others, and always give back to the institutions
that nurtured and cultivated your mind. A magna cum laude graduate, he received
a bachelor's of science degree in biochemistry and was selected to speak by a committee of students and faculty.

— James P. “J.P.” Sletteland
'01, of Lawrence, N.Y., is believed to be the College's first “double
legacy.” Both his parents — Jeryl (nee Proce) and James P., Sr. — graduated in 1974. But what may be more surprising is that both father and son
had the same advisor — James Underwood, professor of political science. “I see a lot similarities between them,” recalls Underwood. “If
you give them a hard job to do, they will go out and do it.” Mrs.
Sletteland, an American studies major, also knew Underwood quite well. While
students, the elder Slettelands were babysitters for Underwood's children, and James Sr. helped around the house when the professor was laid up with back
problems.