Posted on Jan 31, 2002

The College's Annual Fund was 3.1 percent ahead of
last year's pace at the halfway point of the drive on December 31,
with nearly $1.4 million raised toward the $3.5 million goal.

The number of alumni donors was up more than 10 percent from last year to 3,027
for the first half of the 2002 fiscal year, but with a slight drop of
3 percent in dollars raised – $907,000.

The number of overall donors climbed nearly 10
percent from 4,201 at this point last year to 4,607 this year.

Parent donations were up almost 14 percent to $164,000.

Posted on Jan 30, 2002

Schenectady, N.Y. (Jan. 30, 2002) – William D. Phillips, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, will
speak on “Almost Absolute Zero: The Story of Laser Cooling” on Thursday,
Feb. 7, at 7:30 p.m. in Union College's Nott Memorial.

His talk, free and open to the public, is part of the College's “Perspectives at the Nott” lecture series.

Phillips, a leading researcher in ultra-low temperature atomic physics at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, received the 1997 Nobel Prize.

The cooling and trapping of atoms, a discipline that emerged in the mid-1970's with the advent of laboratory lasers, have allowed scientists to observe and measure quantum
phenomena in atoms that seem to defy the physical principles governing our
tangible room-temperature realm.

Contrary to intuition, we can cool a gas by shining a laser on it. We can now do this down to less than a millionth of a degree above absolute zero. Atoms this cold exhibit weird and wonderful properties and are being used in applications ranging from super-accurate atomic clocks to new quantum devices like atom lasers. Phillips' lecture, aimed at the nonscientist, describes how laser cooling works.

For calendar listings:

Speaker: William D.
Phillips, winner of Nobel Prize in physics, and researcher in ultra-low
temperature atomic physics at the National Institute of Standards and
Technology

Topic: “Almost Absolute
Zero: The Story of Laser Cooling”

Date: Thursday, Feb. 7

Time: 7:30 p.m.

Place: Union College's Nott Memorial.

Cost: Free and open to public

Information: 518
388-6131

Posted on Jan 25, 2002

Robert Sharlet, Chauncey Winters Professor of
Political Science, participated in three conferences during November.
He presented a paper “Moscow and Palermo, or Russia's Hard
Road to `Civil Society'” at an international conference on
“The Development of Russian Civil Society” held at
Wittenberg University; co-presented a Festschrift
to which he contributed, “International and
National Law in Russia and Eastern Europe,” to George Ginsburgs at
a conference at Rutgers University Law School at Camden;
and served as the commentator for three papers on
“Constitutional Jurisprudence in Russian Law”
at the National Slavic Studies Conference in Washington.

Posted on Jan 25, 2002

Martin Benjamin, professor of visual arts, was the subject
of an article in Photo District
News, a New York City-based journal on photography about his Web
site featuring stock photographs of some 750 artists of modern
rock (www.stockrockshots.com). Another issue of the same
journal featured an article about new portraitists including
Tim Archibald, a former student of Benjamin's who cites his
teacher's influence in getting him to think of photography as a form
of sociology, psychology and anthropology.

Posted on Jan 25, 2002

Wilfried Wilms, visiting assistant professor of
German, presented two papers
at the annual national convention of the Modern
Languages Association (MLA)
in New Orleans. He was invited to present “No Refuge in the
Private _ Lessing's Philotas” by The Lessing Society. The second
paper, titled “`Our Fantastic Homesickness'-
Heine's Modernity,” was part of a panel organized by
the North American Heine Society.