Posted on May 1, 2002

Michele Angrist, assistant professor of political science, delivered papers relating to her book manuscript, Party Systems and the Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship: Explaining Regime Formation in Turkey, Iran, and the Arab World, at a workshop at Yale University and at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association.

Martin Benjamin, professor of photography, was the subject of an article in Photo District News, a New York City-based journal, about his Website featuring stock photographs of some 750 performers of modern rock (www.stockrockshots.com).

Robert Fleischer, research professor of geology, is the lead author of a paper, “Hiroshima Neutron Fluence on a Glass Button From Near Ground Zero,” published in Health Physics, the radiation safety journal. Fleischer and his Japanese colleagues measured uranium fission tracks in a piece of silicate glass that was at ground zero during the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic detonation to determine levels of radiation exposure.

John Garver, professor of geology, and Mike Bullen '97 are the authors of a paper in the Geological Society of America Bulletin that details their work on the evolution of the Tien Shan Mountains in central Asia.

Seth Greenberg, Gilbert Livingston Professor of Psychology, has received a National Science Foundation Research Opportunity award of $44,000 for his work on “Eye movement patterns during the reading
of highly familiar texts.” The goal of the project, being done in cooperation with Albrecht Unhoff of SUNY-Binghamton, is to study how readers' eye movement patterns change when they read familiar as compared with unfamiliar materials. Presumably, changes in eye movements reflect changes in processing and processing strategies of readers.

Robert Hislope, assistant
professor of political science, presented a paper, “The
Calm Before the Storm? The Influence of Cross-Border Networks, Corruption, and Contraband on Macedonian Stability and Regional Secu-
rity,” at the American Political Science Association meeting in San Francisco.

Vicky Brooks McDonald, campus Protestant minister, presented a workshop titled “Gen X: Can We Accept Their Spiritual Challenge?” at the international conference of the Association of Presbyterian Educators in Toronto.

William Murphy, Thomas Lamont Research Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature emeritus, was honorary chairman and keynote speaker at a recent conference, “The Prodigal Father: John Butler Yeats and His American Friends.” The Irish artist-father of William Butler Yeats and Jack Butler Yeats-was the subject of Murphy's 1979 biography, The Prodigal Father.

Chad Orzel, assistant professor of physics, had his research profiled in a recent issue of Optics and Photomics News. He and colleagues at Yale University developed a method to manipulate the quantum states of atoms, which could dramatically improve precision measurement and navigation systems.

Jon Sternglass, visiting assistant professor of history, is the author of First Resorts: Pursuing Pleasure at Saratoga Springs, Newport and Coney Island (Johns Hopkins University Press). The book is an unusual multi-site historical study spanning a century of American leisure.

Bill Thomas, director of international programs and professor of French, received a medal from Czech Technical University in Prague. The award recognized his work with the Czech exchange program, which annually sends about twenty Union engineering students to Czechoslovakia and brings to Union about ten of their Czech counterparts. The “CTU Medal, First Class,” was presented to Thomas at a special reception in Prague.

Tom Werner, Florence B. Sherwood Professor of Physical Sciences, had a paper accepted for publication in Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry. Titled “The use of neutral cyclodextrins as additives for the separation and identification of propoxyphene enantiomers,” the paper was co-written with Tania Magoon '01, Keiko
Ota '01, Jen Jakubowski '01, and Michelle Nerozzi '00.

Posted on May 1, 2002

The first thing you hear on the telephone is the circus music. Then comes the voice: “Hi, it's Nori. I'm on break so I have a few minutes to talk.”

“On break” means that she has just finished a series of double back flips off a thirty-five-foot ramp of plastic snow suspended from the rafters of an arena in Raleigh, N.C.

Just another day for Nori Lupfer '03, who took a leave of absence this winter term from her studies in the visual arts to perform with the “Max-Air Blizzard Battalion,” an aerial ski act in the Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey Circus.

Lupfer, a native of West Lebanon, N.H., has been doing ski acrobatics and aerial ski jumping since she was twelve, when she first appeared as an aerial freestyle jumper on the national circuit. She was a World Cup competitor in “acro” (ski ballet) until that sport was discontinued in 2000. After a switch to aerials, she found herself ranked eleventh at recent Olympic trials.

She worked in the circus act last summer and got an offer to rejoin just days before the College's winter term started. With some help from Dean of Students Fred Alford, she made last-minute arrangements to “run away and join the circus.”

The act consisted of a seven-member troupe of skiers and snowboarders who did a rapid-fire series of aerial stunts amid a dramatic display of lights and pyrotechnics. The ramp is made of a plastic material that is wetted with soap and water to simulate snow. Sometimes heat or dry air makes the surface slow, so skiers must make adjustments on each jump so they don't miss the wedge-shaped air bag on which they land.

Lupfer was in the circus's “red unit,” which made stops this winter in Jacksonville, Raleigh, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Baltimore, and Washington (the “blue unit” visited other cities). The circus moved from city to city on a train that carried everything-350 performers and crew; elephants, tigers, and horses; and about 500 tons of equipment. All meals were served in what circus folk call the “pie car,” and there also was a school for about twenty-five children.

Lupfer says she loves working with performers and living
on a train car. “It's a little soap opera. Everyone knows everyone else.” She had her own compartment on the train, complete with stove and refrigerator, with a bathroom down the hall. Since only three of the performers were Americans, she said the train cars were filled with a range of languages, cuisines, and customs.

This spring, Lupfer is involved in an independent study project with Professor of Photography Martin Benjamin, based on the photographs she took of fellow performers and crew.

“I'm used to being on the road,” she says. “I love the lifestyle. It's a good job and it's nice to be on the move in a different place every week. I'm learning a lot about people, and I'm getting an education in the circus and working on my art.”

Posted on May 1, 2002

The man charged with developing the College's new House System brings a strong sense of community to his role.

Tom McEvoy grew up in the small villege of Hoosick, N.Y., located between the Capital District and Vermont, and he still lives there.

“It's one of those towns where everybody sort of knows everybody,” says McEvoy, whose own sense of community has led him to serve as head of the board of trustees of the local library, a board member and coach in youth soccer, and a member of the strategic planning cabinet of the local school system.

Encouraging that same kind of sense of community will be a major goal in his
new role as dean of social and residential life.

“Students, like the rest of us, can often think about themselves more than they think about the community,” he says. “So, in my years in this line of work, I've tried to do a lot of community development. Students need to think in the broad terms of the campus community.

“Part of being at college is sharing a particular time and place with people who may not be like you,” he continues. “I think we would be letting our students down if we didn't try to encourage an openmindedness about the different styles of life we have in society. Frankly, if we don't do this as a college, we're not preparing them for the world they're going to live in.”

McEvoy arrived at Union in early February after serving as the director of housing at Williams College for thirteen years. Before that, he was associate director of housing and residential life at Rensselaer.

His career choice, he says, is a serendipitous one.

A graduate of the State University of New York College at Geneseo, he was a social worker in Troy when he entered Rensselaer to work on an M.B.A. Figuring that it would cost less to get his degree if he got a job at the institute, he joined the housing office-and stayed nine years. It was, he says, a matter of finding the field of residence life “more interesting.”

“Obviously, a lot of education in college takes part outside the classroom, in particular, where students live,” he says. “It didn't take me long to realize that, as a student, I hadn't plugged myself into college as well as I should have, and the whole issue of how students spend time outside the classroom intrigued me.”

He believes firmly that colleges have a strong responsibility to student life-“Our job is not to admit them and get out of the way, but to make sure they are developing into the full persons they can be.”

Accomplishing that means a free exchange of ideas.

“The old stereotype of the dean as authority figure is changed,” he says. “Not that
I don't worry about a student having a candle in his room-I do-but we need more. We need to be concerned about whether students are living as good members of the Union community. That's one reason I'm very happy that Union looks at residential life and student activities as interrelated. Real synergies can develop from that connection.”

The exchange of ideas
also will involve students and faculty, which, in turn, means recognizing changes that
have occurred.

“Students are coming to college with a different set of problems and issues from twenty years ago,” he says. “Then, for example, you couldn't go to college if you were suffering from depression. Now, with medicine, you can, but you may need a support system on campus, including students who are trained by the College and who live in the residence areas and serve as student mentors.

“Students today have high expectations for quick service, and we as administrators have to get out there and earn their trust,” he continues. “Another huge issue we're up against is technology. It's very easy, with cable television and VCRs and the like, for students to bunker up with their friends. It's hard to develop a community when they're doing that, and it means that we're going to have to be extremely creative about the events we have in the houses.”

Faculty life also has changed, from the increasing attention given to scholarship and research these days to the fact that more faculty spouses work outside the home, creating more pressure on faculty members to pitch in at home rather than on campus. But without strong faculty involvement, McEvoy says, the House System will not be as successful as he thinks it can be (all faculty members will have a house affiliation under the plan).

McEvoy understands that some students may be skeptical, but notes that his hiring is one strong signal that the College is serious about improving residential life and the social scene. More evidence will come when renovation work begins soon on South College (the renovated residence hall is scheduled to reopen in the fall of 2003). The role of resident advisor is being looked at, with an eye on finding students who can build communities, and McEvoy is working with the Alumni Office to set up visits to alumni clubs around the country.

Perhaps the strongest evidence, though, is the fact that McEvoy plans to leave his lifelong community in Hoosick and move into a College-owned house on Douglas Road. His family will join him next June, after his oldest son graduates from high school, and, he says, he looks forward to getting together with students on his front porch.

“You need to share a little bit of your personal life with students,” he says.

He would like to hear from you

Tom McEvoy, the College's new dean of residential and campus life, has spent his first weeks at Union meeting with on-campus groups, and he is eager to hear from alumni and parents. His e-mail address is
mcevoyt@union.edu.

A House System update

The College's new House System is designed to give every student access to a social group and to good social and residential space. All students will be assigned randomly to membership in a house, and all houses are expected to contribute intellectual, cultural, and social events to the campus.

The early planning stage for the new House System has focused on the first floor common space, which will include a living room large enough for parties, lectures, receptions, meetings, and “hanging out;” a kitchen; a seminar/workroom where a class or study group can meet; and an office where students can pick up or send e-mail, send a fax, or have a private meeting with an adviser or house member.

Planning for the residential section of the houses will focus on a mix of singles and doubles, and will look for logical ways to accommodate groups of friends.

Part of a $250,000 grant recently received from the Mellon Foundation will be used to support the transition to the House System. Next year, a committee of students, faculty, and administrators will examine House System governance, the role of faculty in houses, the assignment of faculty and students to houses, the integration of Freshman Preceptorials and advising into the houses, and the establishment of an intramural program.

Posted on May 1, 2002

What does it mean to be a global citizen in a militarized world? What does it take for women and men to be treated with dignity and included in public life? How does the international impact on the personal, and vice versa? Think about these questions, and then ask more questions. There can't be too much curiosity about how the world works.

That was the message brought by feminist teacher, scholar, and writer Cynthia Enloe to Founders Day 2002. At this celebration of the 207th anniversary of the founding of the College, Enloe received an honorary doctor of laws degree and gave a talk titled “What Does It Mean to Be a Global Citizen in a Militarized World? Some Feminist Clues.”

Enloe, professor of government and director of women's studies at Clark University, said that over the years she's learned never to stop asking questions. “I went to Berkeley when Berkeley was Berkeley,” she said, eliciting a laugh from the audience, “and I never heard the word 'woman' in discussions of politics. And I never noticed. I began to realize that I wasn't asking enough questions.”

In her travels abroad after graduating, Enloe began thinking about industrialization and how it came about, specifically, how young women were recruited to work the textile mills. At Clark, encouraged by the curiosity of her own undergraduate students, she began learning about, and then began teaching, women's studies. This in turn reshaped her curiosity about the military: “I had never thought to ask, where are the women? Not only where, but also, why they are where they are, who put them there, and how they feel about being there. I had to become more interdisciplinary to pursue my own feminist curiosity.”

Militarization, she said, is the process by which any person, group, or culture becomes dependent for its legitimacy on its usefulness to military endeavors. “So it's possible to militarize a school, or a country, or a skill. This realization took me into a wider range of explorations: What is it about militarization that so shrinks people's capacity to be a citizen? Militarization encourages a sense of isolation, insecurity, fear-often debilitating to real citizenship. It's almost impossible to be a citizen, for example, if you're a victim of domestic violence.”

Also honored at the Founders Day convocation was high school science teacher David Magnussen, who received the Gideon Hawley Teacher Recognition Award. He was nominated by Sarah Kidder '05, a former student of his at Cohasset (Mass.) High School. 

Kidder, now a biology major, said Magnussen not only encouraged her as the only tenth-grader in his anatomy and physiology class but also found creative ways of demonstrating complex topics such as taking the student on biological field trips to Belize, Guatemala, and Costa Rica. 

“Not only could Mr. Magnussen easily guide students through a dissection in the laboratory,” she said, “he could also guide students on a jaguar hunt through a dense jungle in Belize. With Mr. Magnussen, wearing his tan bucket hat, pilot sunglasses, and lots of sunscreen, leading the way, I was able to experience and understand amazing cultures and exotic ecosystems of unbelievable plants and animals.”

Posted on May 1, 2002

A recent grant of $1.25 million from the Freeman Foundation, of New York City, will strengthen the College's East Asian Studies program.

With the support of the grant, the College plans to:

• Add two new faculty members, one of whom will specialize in East Asian art history; 

• Enhance the study abroad programs in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam by using interactive digital technologies and by adding an arts study week to each program; 

• Provide support for East Asian Studies majors to conduct field research in Asia and for faculty to introduce or expand East Asian components into existing courses in a variety of disciplines; 

• Organize and conduct a major annual conference on culture, technology, and the arts in East Asia.

Joyce Madancy, associate professor of history, said the Freeman Foundaton grant will “give us a larger net to cast to bring students into our courses. Having an art historian in East Asian studies, for example, is a good introduction to getting students interested in courses in language, history, politics, and philosophy.”

The College also wants to build on the ideas begun by engineering students with their International Virtual Design Studio, in which Union students team with foreign students on research, and the Fiji project, which connects students who are doing field work in Fiji with students back on campus.

“It would be great for students in our course on modern Japan to follow a tour through the Hiroshima Peace Museum,” Madancy says. “The goal is not only to make the courses here more interesting and relevant, but to get students more interested in going on terms abroad.”

The College offered its first courses on China and Japan about twenty-five years ago, and terms abroad were introduced in Japan in 1984 and in China in 1986. The East Asian Studies program became official in 1988. The program focuses on the language and culture of East Asia and is designed primarily for students seeking careers in business, government service, law, or journalism, and for those intending to enter graduate school. Majors in the program must take fourteen courses that include anthropology, economics, history, modern languages and literatures, and political science. About a half dozen students graduate each year with a focus on East Asian Studies.