Posted on Apr 18, 2003

Admissions staffers this week got
a touching validation for the “red carpet” treatment they give to accepted
candidates and their families:

“With this note, [my daughter] is
confirming her enthusiastic commitment to enroll at Union
College as a freshman in September
2003,” wrote one mother after Monday's accepted candidates day. “As we were
sitting in the panel presentation … a very happy smile came over her face. She
said, 'I have made my choice, Mom, can you guess?' Not wanting to predispose or
guess incorrectly, I paused. 'It's definitely here,' she said.

“On behalf of our family, we thank
you for accepting [our daughter] and we all think Union
College is a wonderful place for
her to pursue higher education. The educational program, faculty and overall
resources of the campus offer so much. We look forward to visiting more.”

The College hosted over 700 of  “our closest friends” for lunch in the Memorial
Fieldhouse on Monday, according to Dan Lundquist, vice president for admissions
and financial aid. Visitors came from Colorado,
New Hampshire, Washington,
Connecticut, Texas,
Massachusetts, California,
Vermont, Oregon,
Maine, Maryland,
Europe … and Schenectady.

The next accepted candidates' day
is Monday, April 21. Again, to make room for visitor parking, Campus Safety will be directing employee vehicles to peripheral lots.

Posted on Apr 18, 2003

Adrienne Rich, one of the leading
American poets, will read from her new and published works on Thursday, April
24, at 7:30 p.m. in the Nott
Memorial.

She won the 2003
Bollingen Prize for Poetry, among the genre's most prestigious prizes. Other accolades include the National Book Award, the Fellowship of
American Poets, and the Poet's Prize.

But, as she puts it, she is a “woman
with a mission not to win prizes, but to change the laws of history.” An early
feminist and an outspoken lesbian, she has fused politics with poetry, and has
served as a role model for a generation of political poets and activists.

A reception will follow in Hale
House.

Posted on Apr 18, 2003

Jane
S. Richardson, the James
B. Duke Professor of Biochemistry at
Duke University, will speak on “Bioinformatics in 3D” on Monday,
April 21, at 5 p.m. in the
F.W. Olin Center
Auditorium.

The talk by Richardson, who is
visiting Union through the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting
Scholar Program, is free and open to the public.

Now that entire genome sequences
are known for many organisms, the challenge is to understand their
commonalities and differences, the evolutionary processes that brought them
there, and especially the interactions and functional consequences of these
genes.

 Since selection acts almost entirely on the
expressed proteins rather than the DNA and since the 3D structure is what
confers biological function on those proteins, a crucial part of the current
bioinformatics challenge involves the determination, comparison, and functional
analysis of 3D protein structure. At the simplest level, the patterns of
conservation seen at individual amino-acid positions yield extra information,
and some surprises, when their structural roles are considered.

Jane Richardson and her husband
have worked together for nearly 40 years on research to understand the 3D structure
of protein molecules. Richardson
pioneered ribbon drawings for representing protein structures. She first
described many of the common features of overall folds and their local motifs and
has been active in spreading molecular 3D literacy. 

She earned a B.A. degree from Swarthmore
College, and without the benefit of
a Ph. D., has become a biochemist, a MacArthur
fellow, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences. She
received the Emily M. Gray Award of the Biophysical Society in 2001.

Posted on Apr 18, 2003

Dan Lundquist, vice president for admissions and financial
aid, is soliciting input in the development of the College's logo, with
meetings to be announced in early May.

“I have been impressed with the level of interest that many
have expressed in the visual identity project and I want to include the
thoughts of any and all who wish to be involved,” he said.

The College collaborated with the Baltimore
design firm GCF to produce a new lead admissions publication, which recently
won a medal in a national competition. Out of that project came the idea to
begin developing a broader “visual identity” program for Union,
Lundquist said.

“In the absence of a logo – Minerva is the College seal – we
began developing one for marketing and communications purposes,” Lundquist
said.

“We vetted several versions through small focus groups of
students, alumni, faculty, staff and trustees. Now, with much of the basic
design work completed, we are taking the process to the 'larger public' phase.

“We are happy to receive input and reactions before settling
on a final version.”

Comments may be sent to Lundquist or to the College's
Communications Office.

For more on the logo, and access to a feedback form, visit: http://www.union.edu/logo/

Posted on Apr 18, 2003

The College is moving ahead with plans to create an independent
graduate college to offer programs currently under the Center for Graduate
Education and Special Programs, it was announced by Sue Lehrman, dean of the Center.

The new college, which could be
chartered this summer by the state Board of Regents, would offer graduate
programs in educational studies, engineering (electrical and mechanical),
computer science, business administration, health administration and bioethics.

Those graduate programs are now
administered by Union's Center for Graduate Education
and Special Programs, which would be re-organized to become the graduate
college. Union College
officials are working with the State Education Department and various
accrediting bodies to ensure a seamless transition.

The new college has tentatively been named the Graduate
College of Union University. It would have three schools – management,
engineering and education – and the Center for Bioethics. The graduate college would have
its own board of trustees.

 “An independent graduate college would allow
for the expansion of our programs through targeted marketing, fundraising, and
recruitment to meet the growing regional demand for full- and part-time
graduate study,” said Lehrman.

 “This is an important and exciting time for
our students, our faculty and our graduates,” she said. “We have seen
substantial growth in our programs, and expect to see even more growth with the
opening of Sematech and other regional high
technology initiatives. The establishment of an independent graduate college
would also help us to further strengthen and expand the partnerships with
businesses and other organizations that have been so important to the success
of our programs.”

The graduate college would have a
unique academic relationship with Union
College through a lease arrangement
in which faculty and students would continue to have access to all Union
College facilities and ancillary
services. The program offices would remain in Lamont House on the Union
College campus, with classes and
labs at Union.

The graduate college has
petitioned to be affiliated with Union
University, a federation of
independent undergraduate and graduate institutions. It currently consists of Union
College, Albany
Medical College,
Albany Law
College, Dudley Observatory and
Albany College of Pharmacy. Established in 1873, Union
University has a board of governors
comprised of representatives of the member institutions' boards of trustees.
The president of Union College
serves as the chancellor of Union University.

Educational Studies, one of the
few secondary education teacher programs that requires a full year of student
teaching, has a placement rate of nearly 98 percent in Capital Region schools,
an area that does not have a teacher shortage. The program also has a 78
percent pass rate on the National Teachers Certification Exam, compared to the
48 percent national average.

The College's MBA program, the
largest full-time program in the Capital Region, has seen a 25 percent increase
in students over the last two years. The MBA job placement rate is over 90
percent. The Health Systems MBA is one of only 21 dually accredited programs in
the country, and one of only 4 accredited programs in the state. The Global MBA
programs attract students from nearly 20 countries.

The Engineering Division, which
features small class sizes and a mix of practical and theoretical curriculum,
has partnered with a consortium of engineering companies to ensure its programs
meet the needs of the changing Capital Region economy.

The Center for Bioethics offers
one of the nation's two distance learning programs, a joint venture with Albany
Medical College
designed with the flexibility to serve working healthcare professionals.