Posted on Jan 24, 2002

Gerard Neumann '36, a former trustee of the College
and recipient of the Founders Medal, died Jan. 15, at the age of 87.

Neumann, formerly of Great Neck, N.Y., was past
president and chair of Spearin, Preston & Burrows Inc., a New York
City construction firm.

Neumann, who earned his bachelor's degree in civil
engineering, was first elected to the board of trustees as an alumnus in
1970. He later served as term trustee and life trustee. He received
the Founders Medal in 1986 and was named trustee emeritus a
year later.

His wife, the former Alice G. Burrows, died in 1983.
Survivors include his son, George '67, and daughter, Jeanne O'Neill '76.

Posted on Jan 23, 2002

Schenectady, N.Y. (Jan. 23, 2002) – Austrian lyric baritone Wolfgang Holzmair, acclaimed for his uncommon sensitivity to text, and voice of refinement and beauty, will appear with pianist Russell Ryan at Union College's Memorial Chapel Feb. 1, at 8 p.m.  As part of this performance, Anne Turner, director of the Opera Workshop at Skidmore College, and noted lecturer, will present a pre-concert lecture in Memorial Chapel at 7:15 p.m. The lecture is open to the public.

This performance will feature works
by Schumann, Schubert, Brahms, Wolf, and Mendelssohn.

In addition to countless recitals in
Europe's major venues the 2001-2002 season includes his ninth North American
recital tour. Widely credited with helping revive the intimate art of the song recital on this continent, his invitations include New York's Alice Tully Hall, Frick Collection, Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As well as the premier series in San Francisco, Montreal, Cleveland, Detroit, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Louisville, Houston, Fort Worth,
Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver, Santa Fe, Denver and Philadelphia.

Mr. Holzmair's Philips Classics
releases include Beethoven Folk Songs with Trio Fontenay; Ernst Krenek's Reisebuch aus den österreichischen Alpen;  Mélodies françaises with pianist Gérard Wyss; and five collaborations with pianist Imogen Cooper. A Grammy winner for the Brahms Requiem with Herbert Blomstedt and the San Francisco Symphony, he has also received “Best Opera Recording”
nominations for Braunfels' Die Vögel, Busoni's Arlecchino, and Weber's Der Freischütz. Forthcoming are recordings of more Schumann
Lieder and a “live” performance of Pelléas et Mélisande with Bernard
Haitink.

Mr. Holzmair first came to
international attention for his interpretation of Hans Scholl in Udo
Zimmermann's Die weiße Rose at both the Vienna State and Zurich Operas,
and as Debussy's Pelléas – his “signature” role – recently reprised in Paris with the Orchestre National de France under the direction of Bernard Haitink. With conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt he has appeared at the Salzburg Festival (Monteverdi's Poppea and 1610 Vespers), Vienna Festival (Haydn's L'anima del filosofo) and Berlin Festival (Weber's Der Freischütz).  Collaborations with Seiji Ozawa include his Japanese opera debut (Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tirésias at the Saito Kinen Festival, also a
Philips recording), and concerts with the Boston Symphony in Boston's Symphony
Hall and New York's Carnegie Hall. Among the other conductors with whom he
collaborates are Pierre Boulez, Riccardo Chailly, Christoph von Dohnányi, Ivan Fischer, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Kent Nagano, Sir Roger Norrington, Julius Rudel and Pinchas Zukerman.

Born in Upper Austria, Mr. Holzmair
graduated from the Vienna University of Economics, subsequently studying
singing at the Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts.  Major awards include Holland's Hertogenbosch
International Vocal Competition and the Vienna Musikverein International
Competition for Lieder Singers. He
appears by arrangement with Matthew Sprizzo.

Russell Ryan began his piano studies at age six in Grand Forks, North Dakota, where he was born. A graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory, he has also attended master classes at the Juilliard School and studied at the Vienna Musikhochschule, graduating
with honors in the field of piano chamber music under Professor Georg
Ebert.  As soloist, accompanist and
chamber musician, he has appeared frequently in the United States, Israel, Europe and Japan. For four consecutive seasons, he appeared as soloist/accompanist at the San Francisco Bach Festival. In
addition, Mr. Ryan has been featured in numerous radio and television
productions in Austria, Scandinavia, Japan and the United States.

Tickets at $20 ($8 for students) are available in advance at the Office of Communications, Union College (518) 388-6131 and at the door at 7 p.m. For more information, call 372-3651.

The Union College Concert Series is made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency; additional support comes from the Times Union Newspapers. Memorial Chapel is located near the center of the Union College campus. Parking is available on campus and nearby side streets.

Posted on Jan 22, 2002

Schenectady, N.Y. (Jan. 22, 2002) – Dr. Gregg Meyer, director of the Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, Rockville, Md., will speak on “Keeping Patients Safe” on Wednesday, Feb. 6, at 4:15 p.m. in Humanities 019 at Union College.

His talk is the first in a three-part series, “Wednesday Works in Progress,” sponsored by the Center for Bioethics and Clinical Leadership at Union College. All talks are free and open to the public.

On Feb. 13, Carol Weisse, associate professor of psychology at Union, will speak on “Pain.”

On Feb. 20, Robert Wells, professor of history at Union, will speak on “Facing the 'King of Terrors:' Living with Death in American Society.”

All talks are Wednesdays at 4:15 p.m. in Humanities 019.

For more information, call 388-8045. For information on the Center for Bioethics and Clinical Leadership visit www.bioethics.union.edu.

Posted on Jan 20, 2002

Schenectady – These are boom times for the graduate program in business administration at Union College.

As the economy has slowed, business schools nationwide are seeing an increase in applicants seeking master's degrees in business administration.

The Graduate Management Admissions Council reports a 12 percent increase in the United States in the number of people taking its standardized tests that are a basic requirement in most MBA programs. Globally the increase is 15 percent.

“This has been a banner year for us,” said Sue Lehrman, director of the Graduate Management Institute at Union. “Applications are up 123 percent compared to last year. [The number of] people that inquire about us is up over 50 percent. Enrollments are up 12 percent over this time last year.”

Accredited program

While Lehrman says the slowing economy is one factor in the increase, she adds that the school's MBA program last year received national accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate School of Business, making it the third school in the Capital Region to earn that credential.

The University at Albany and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute also have been accredited.

At the University at Albany “capacity…is becoming a problem” in many classes, said Richard Highfield, dean of the School of Business. “We are about at capacity in the number of people who can begin our evening MBA program,” he said, while applications for the full-time program also are up.

Rensselaer also has seen an increase in applications, according to Richard Burke, director of master's programs at the Lally School of Management and Technology. As of December, applications were about 10 to 15 percent above last year, he said.

“When the economy gets good, undergraduate enrollment goes up and graduate enrollment goes down,” Burke said. The opposite typically happens when the economy softens.

In good times, people will go to work rather than graduate school.

When the economy was booming, “we had a number of students admitted … and they got a job offer they couldn't resist,” said Lehrman of Union.

Often employers would get undergraduate students into cooperative education programs, where they spent part of their time at a job site, then make a job offer to the best ones upon graduation. But the job market isn't nearly as tight as it was a year or two ago.

Now workers may be looking at ways to improve their skills and make them more valuable in an increasingly competitive market for jobs.

“I suspect what's happening is that a lot of people are looking at an MBA as being kind of an insurance policy,” Burke said.

Highfield says applications from foreign students are coming in much earlier this year.

“Interested international students know they have to start the visa process earlier,” he said. Federal officials have been scrutinizing student visa applications more closely following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Dividing market

The three accredited programs locally have carved out different parts of the market. Union, for example, offers an MBA in healthcare management as well as a general MBA, where students can focus on marketing, international marketing or finance.

The University at Albany specializes in management information systems and human resource information systems, said Highfield. The first is the more technically oriented of the two.

At Rensselaer, the MBA degree emphasizes management technology. Information systems and entrepreneurship also are emphasized.

“Computer World [magazine] ranks us as one of the top 25 technology programs,” Burke said.

The dot-com slump has put “some notable bumps in the road” for technology graduates, Burke adds. Still recovery will come. “Technology is not a fad,” he says.

Both Lehrman and Burke say that they're getting highly qualified candidates applying. At Rensselaer, average GMAT scores, on a scale from 200 to 800 are in the 620s and 640s, said Burke.

Lehrman said Union is seeing more applicants with scores above 700.

Many of Rensselaer's students are coming in to the classroom with several years of work experience behind them, and “bring a lot of perspective” to classroom discussions, Burke said.

Many of Union's students also have some work experience.

“We like to see it,” said Lehrman. But, “we don't demand it. It's not something we require.”

At the University at Albany, the full-time MBA program focuses on management technology and information technology. Because technical expertise is more important than work experience, this program targets younger students, according to Highfield.

“The evening program – we're much more mainstream,” Highfield said. “We're helping people to advance in a career.”

The emphasis is on work experience, and the part-time program draws older students.

Several other Capital Region schools, including The Sage Colleges and the College of Saint Rose, also offer MBAs.

Suspending effort

But at least one area college isn't seeing any gains from the new interest in MBA programs.

Siena College, after struggling with the accreditation process and not attracting enough students, decided to suspend its program and hasn't accepted applications in more than a year.

“We decided to focus on the undergraduate programs and do them well,” said Thomas Conway, interim dean of Siena's School of Business.

The last of its MBA students will graduate this spring, he said.

Posted on Jan 19, 2002

In response to user feedback, About U will now be published every two weeks. The service, which was launched in November of 2001, had been published on a weekly basis.

Many subscribers expressed an interest in receiving a “richer” newsletter every two weeks, so the editors of About U elected to make the change.

Subscribers who prefer more frequent updates are encouraged to regularly visit the Union News site at www.union.edu, where all of the stories in About U can be found.