Posted on Sep 18, 2003

Rebecca Brown, author of Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary, will read from her book and discuss a writer's relationship with small press on Thursday, Oct. 9, at 7:30 p.m. in Union College's Nott Memorial.

Her talk, free and open to the public, is being held in conjunction with the exhibition “Girl Printers: Talented Women Strut Their Stuff!” a show of the work of 37 women printers at the Mandeville Gallery in the Nott Memorial.

The author of several novels and short story collections, including The End of Youth (City Lights 2003), The Gifts of the Body (HarperCollins 1996) and Annie Oakley's Girl (City Lights 1993), Rebecca Brown has been the recipient of the Lambda Literary Award and the Boston Book Award for Fiction. Her books have been translated into five languages, adapted for theatre and performed internationally.

The work of nearly 40 women printers nationwide is
showcased in the show through Sunday, Dec. 7.

As curator of the show, Carol Blinn is in a perfect position to
assemble such special talents. She has been designing with type, illustrating,
letterpress printing, binding by hand, publishing books and doing commercial
printing work for 30 years. For nearly 20 years, she has been proprietor of the
Warwick Press in Easthampton, Mass.

Many of the women in the show she counts as friends and
some have been highly recommended by others in the book arts field. All are
professionals — some at the beginnings of their careers and some far along the
printing path. All have stories to tell.

Girl Printers:
Talented Women Strut Their Stuff is an invitational show highlighting a
sampling of women printers' ephemera, printing, and book arts. Gallery hours
are Monday to Thursday 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.;
Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday noon to 5 p.m.;
and Sunday noon to 10 p.m.

Blinn invites women printers and exhibit visitors alike to
“celebrate what we do best … make things by hand and machine, needle and
thread, computer and lead.”

Posted on Sep 18, 2003

Thomas N. Bonner, the
15th president of the College and a distinguished scholar of the
medical profession and medical education, died Sept. 2 in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 80.

Bonner was
appointed to the Union presidency in March 1974, coming here from three years
as president of the University of New Hampshire. During his first year
at the College, he announced several major gifts, such as a $250,000 Mellon
Faculty Development Grant and $230,000 for a new computer center; and appointed
two task forces, the President's Commission on the Status of Women and the
Campus Commission on Race Relations, both intended to improve the quality of
life on campus. But he became embroiled in controversy about the direction of
the men's ice hockey program, and by 1977 the campus was in turmoil. He
resigned in May 1978 to become president of Wayne State University in Detroit. He returned to
teaching in 1982 and soon reestablished his scholarly reputation. His seven
books in the field of American medicine were widely praised, and at his he
retirement from Wayne State in 1997 as the
Distinguished Professor of History and Higher Education, he became a visiting
scholar in history and biology at Arizona State University.

He is survived by his wife, Sylvia Firnhaber
Bonner of Scottsdale; a son, Philip Bonner,
of Columbus, Ohio; and a daughter, Diana
Bonner, of Glendale, Ariz.

Norman P. Auburn, acting president of
the College in 1978-79, died July 21. He was 98. A graduate of the University of Cincinnati, he served in a variety
of offices at Cincinnati and was named president
of the University of Akron in 1951. There, he
oversaw the creation of four colleges, the law school, and several doctoral
programs. After his retirement in 1971, he joined the Academy for Educational
Development and served as acting president of several colleges.

Posted on Sep 18, 2003

Aerogels, those space-age,
ultra-light materials, may hold a lot of promise as insulators. But they are
hardly the stuff of music.

Until now.

Meet Liz Lax '05, a member of this
summer's aerogel research team, who felt so moved by her research experience
that she is setting it to music.

The “Solgel Song” –
still a work in progress – captures the trials and tribulations of this
summer's Aerogel Research Team. (An aerogel is a type of solgel.)

An accomplished musician, Lax has
been playing guitar and singing for eight years. That's when she isn't studying
biochemistry, her major.

On a recent day, the sweet notes
of her guitar (“an old Fender that I drag around”) could be heard
wafting down the hall from a lab where Lax sat plucking out notes, one eye on a
computer program. “It's a great way to pass the time in the lab,” she
said. “When you're doing research, sometimes you have to wait around for
results.”

Some of the lyrics are:

“Here in the bat cave, we
play around with chemicals
Give me TMOS, methanol and ammonium hydroxide
Stir for ten minutes, don't forget the water
We're making sol-gels.”

Other members of this summer's
team were Shira Mandel '05, ME and chemistry; Yadira Briones '04, chemistry and
French; Bobby Dunton '05, ME and computer science; Jessica Grondin '05,
biochemistry; and Jan Konecny, an exchange student from Prague who is majoring
in mechanical engineering.

Project directors are Professors
Ann Anderson, mechanical engineering; and Mary Carroll, chemistry.

The project had its beginning
three years ago when Anderson and a former student, Ben Gauthier '02 (now at
Stanford), began experimenting with the process. Before long, they were
consulting with faculty in chemistry for help in understanding the chemical
processes involved.

Launched with a grant from the
National Science Foundation, the project moved into a new lab in Science and
Engineering this year.

Aerogels are ultra-light matrix
materials that are excellent insulators. The challenge for the researchers is
to devise a manufacturing method that will make production of the material more
cost effective. Current applications are limited mostly to the space program,
where aerogels have been used as an insulator on the Mars rover and to collect
comet dust.

The team is producing aerogels in
a hydraulic, heated press where they combine a mixture of tetramethylorthosilicate,
methanol, water and a catalyst. The mixture gels and the “wet” gel is
then brought to a “supercritical” phase in which there is no surface
tension between the liquids and solids. At that point, the wet gel can be dried
without degrading the solid matrix inherent in that form of aerogel.

The team is focusing on finding
improvements in the manufacturing process and on characterizing the properties
of the aerogels produced. They have applied for a patent on a process they call
a “Fast Supercritical Extraction Technique for Simplified Aerogel
Fabrication.”

Posted on Sep 18, 2003

Anthropologist Steve Leavitt, more
accustomed to doing field work in far-off places like Papua
New Guinea or Fiji,
this fall finds himself taking notes in what he calls “my ethnographic
playground” here on campus.

Leavitt, the acting dean of
students, also finds himself in a new position — working without his wife, Karen
Brison, who also teaches in the anthropology department.

“We've shared every job until
now,” Leavitt says. “Now, I'm dean of students and she's not and I don't know
what to do,” he jokes, adding that Karen, with her experience as a researcher
in political anthropology, seems to be able to recall “every
single interaction she has ever had with a student.”

The couple joined the College 10
years ago, and for the last three have served as co-directors of the Union
Scholars Program. They have led three term abroad programs in Fiji
in which students used the internet to share their ethnographic fieldwork with
their on-campus peers. For their first two years with the College, they lived
in the guest house on Lenox Road
(now Thurston House) and had the opportunity to be among the first to greet new
faculty colleagues and campus visitors.

Before joining Union,
the couple taught together at Washington
University in St.
Louis.

“I want to use this year as a time for all of us to assess
the good and not-so-good about student life here outside of academics,” Leavitt
said in a letter introducing himself to students. “This includes housing,
social life, psychological and social services, and, yes, parking.”

His goal, Leavitt says, is to seek
out and gather information for a report to his successor.

Leavitt says he fell in love with
the liberal arts college experience when he was an undergraduate at Swarthmore.
There, he majored in religion, served as a resident advisor, got up early to
sell copies of The New York Times,
and worked as a tour guide who also set up overnight stays for prospective
students.

He went on to earn his Ph.D. at
the University of California
at San Diego, where he met his
wife. He has written on religious movements, family relations, sexuality,
adolescence, and responses to bereavement. He and his wife did their doctoral
field research independently in 1984-1986, in two adjacent
societies of the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. Leavitt's
dissertation looked at how a contemporary religious revival movement was
informed both by local colonial history and by continued emotional conflicts in
family relationships.

Leavitt and Brison live in Schenectady
with their son, Jeffrey, now in third grade.

Posted on Sep 17, 2003

Just two weeks into the season and Union already boasts three UCAA Offensive Performers of the Week. Junior Corinne Hennessy and sophomore Erika Eisenhut each picked up the honor as the women's soccer team opened the year with a 4-0 record and junior tailback Chris Nappi got the other one as he helped the football team defeat St. Lawrence in the season-opener.

UCAA Soccer Offensive Performer
Of the Week

Corinne Hennessy
Junior Midfielder (Mahopac, NY)

Scored both goals, the second one coming with just 30 seconds left in regulation, to lead the Dutchwomen to a 2-1 win over Rhode Island College in the season-opener.
Came back the next day to hand out two assists as Union beat previously undefeated Plattsburgh, 3-2. Hennessy's first assist helped tie the game and her second came on the game-winning tally.

(Week of September 2 through 7)

UCAA Soccer Offensive
Performer of the Week

Erika Eisenhut
Sophomore Forward (Mohawk, NY)

Scored first two goals in a 5-0 win over Hartwick. Scored first two goals and added an assist in an 8-1 win over NYU as Union avenged last year's season-ending penalty kicks loss in the NCAA Eastern Regional.

(Week of September 8 through 14)

UCAA Football Offensive Performer
Of the Week

Chris Nappi
Junior Tailback (Scotia, NY)

Carried the ball 27 times for 164 yards (6.1 yards per carry) in Union's 22-11 conference win over St. Lawrence. Scored two touchdowns and returned 5 punts for 78 yards.

(Week of September 8 through 14)