Posted on Apr 19, 2004

The College

Trustees approve budget, comprehensive fee

At its winter meeting in February, the College's Board of Trustees approved a 2004-05 balanced budget of $103 million that “maintains the qualities that define Union and allows for a few new programs,” according to Stephen J. Ciesinski '70, chairman of the board.

Total charges for 2004-05 were set at $38,703. Next year the College will implement a comprehensive fee system (tuition, room, and board rolled into one), which will provide for extended dining hours and allow students to enroll in an extra course annually for academic enrichment purposes, at no additional charge, provided that they meet certain academic prerequisites.

The budget provides a three percent increase in salaries and wages for employees, but freezes supplies, services, and capital budgets.

The yield on the College's endowment of about $275 million will generate about 14.8 percent of the 2004-05 budget, down from 16.8 percent this year. The endowment grew twenty-four percent for the year ending September 2003, placing Union in the top ten percent of all of its peer institutions. Results for the past three years were nearly as positive, Ciesinski said.

Enrollment for the first-year class was set at 560, with the House System and the renovated former Ramada Inn becoming fully operational by September 2004.

“Union's overall financial condition is strong,” Ciesinski reported after the meeting. “We continue to operate with balanced budgets through careful spending and by asking more of our talented faculty and staff. Even so, the weak financial markets have had their effect, and we must be more watchful than ever of the use of proceeds from the endowment. Therefore, much of our budget discussions centered upon long-range financial planning.”

In a letter sent to the parents of students, President Roger Hull noted that the College has taken a number of steps to contain costs. Several campus committees examined cost-saving possibilities in the College's main expenditure areas, and the president said he anticipates savings of about $1.2 million this year from cost-savings programs that were created.

The complete text of the chairman's board report can be found on the web at http://www.union.edu/About/Board/Archive/2004_02/

The privilege of shoulders

At the annual Founders Day celebration in February, writer Julia Alvarez paid tribute to all the people at Union-visible and invisible, past and present-who have helped students to find and reach their goals.

Alvarez opened her remarks with a Native American story about a woman who reaches the sky: Father Sky asks, “How did you get to be so tall?” And she replies, “I'm standing on a lot of shoulders.”

“Today we honor all those shoulders offered to all those students past and present who come here trying to reach their goals,” Alvarez said. “Or more likely, students who haven't yet seen that full sky of possibility, who don't yet know what to reach for.”

Alvarez, an award-winning novelist, essayist, and poet, teaches English at Middlebury College. She received an honorary doctor of letters degree from President Roger Hull. She was introduced by Professor of English Ruth Stevenson, who taught Alvarez at Abbott Academy in Andover, Mass., and recalled her former student as a “meteor blazing over Andover's often gray landscape.”

Alvarez grew up in the Dominican Republic in the 1950s during a dictatorship when reading was not encouraged and even considered politically dangerous. After she fled with her family to New York City, she said she struggled for seven years with a language and a culture she did not understand. With a scholarship to Abbott, which, she said, had a reputation for “taming wild girls,” the fourteen-year-old found herself in a classroom with Stevenson, “who closed the classroom door and said, 'Ladies, let's have ourselves a hell of a good time.' And we did, reading Austen, Dickinson, Eliot… until we understood that we'd come to train, not tame, the wild girls into the women that would run the world.

“That's why I'm here today, and I don't mean at this podium,” Alvarez said. “I mean as a writer. [Stevenson] was my beloved English teacher. She offered me a pair of shoulders and much more. She taught me by her passion for literature and her generosity of spirit to fall in love with books. Today I honor Ruth Stevenson and, through her, all the teachers who have offered their shoulders to those of us who needed a leg up. Without you we could never have become ourselves.”

Alvarez paid tribute to the founders of Union, who purposefully chose its name to send a message that the College would be a place where people who looked at the world in different ways could come together and learn.

“I didn't go to Union myself, but when I read a description of the founders' vision, I felt deep kinship with that vision,” she said. “The founders were confident, as we are today, that students would be better off for encountering variety, complexity, difference, and ideas that challenged them as they pursued their education. Especially in today's world, full of wars and rumors of wars, we celebrate a place where such a mission is embraced and embodied.”

Alvarez said it is incumbent on “those of us who have received the privilege of shoulders, the amazing privilege of attending the best institutions of learning this world has to offer … to pass this privilege on. 'Many times a day,' Albert Einstein wrote, 'I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of others both living and dead and how earnestly I must exert myself to give and return as much as I have received and am still receiving.'

“Toni Morrison put it another way: 'the function of freedom is to free someone else.' ”

Alvarez closed by urging the audience “to give back, to pass it on, to make places like Union College available and accessible to the many for whom the skies have no star.”

No ordinary term paper for him

Scott Snyder '04 went into his internship in Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's Albany office expecting to do the usual intern-type work-answering phones, replying to mail, and so on.

But he took his internship well beyond that, as he organized a conference that featured Sen. Clinton and alerted the city of Schenectady to the fact that it was eligible for millions of dollars through a federal program aimed at revitalizing cities.

Not bad for a political
science major from Pennsylvania whose main interest heretofore had been international politics.

Here's how it came about:

For several years Union students have been stalwart volunteers at Sen. Clinton's regional office in Albany, with each student providing at least twelve hours a week of staff support. In addition to pitching in on the daily routine, the interns are encouraged by Ken Mackintosh, the senator's regional director, to come up with special projects that both satisfy their academic requirements and benefit the area.

Snyder expressed interest in doing a project involving Schenectady. Mackintosh encouraged him to find out the city's status vis-à-vis a federal program called the Renewal Communities Initiative, which through the next decade could mean as much as $22 billion to forty designated communities nationwide, including Schenectady. Snyder discovered that the city was not taking advantage of the program, and he and Mackintosh quickly agreed on an assignment-organize a conference that would get the word out about the federal program.

“When I first started my internship, I thought I was going to end the term by writing a twelve-page paper,” Snyder says. “But Ken asked me to keep working on this. I was really lucky. This taught me so much about dealing with people and how public policy works. But best of all is to think that I might have made a difference to Schenectady.”

The conference, held in the Nott Memorial in mid-February, brought together the mayors of Schenectady, Buffalo, Lackawanna, Jamestown, Niagara Falls, and Rochester as well as officials from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the State Conference of Mayors, Fannie Mae, and other state and local economic development organizations. The renewal program provides up to $12 million for each community in tax incentives for business expansion and development, and symposium participants exchanged information on successful approaches to using the federal aid.

The event attracted hordes of reporters and photographers, including the wire services and CNN. Although the headlines were not favorable as far as the city was concerned-“Incentives were there; Schenectady didn't act” read one-the city's new mayor and a number of local business people found the conference well worthwhile.

So did Snyder and Mackintosh.

“For two months I did a lot of research and a lot of phoning,” he says. “I talked with representatives of the other renewal cities, and it was great to hear how excited they were that they were helping their cities. And it was a thrill to meet Sen. Clinton and her people in Washington, since I'd talked so often to them.”

Says Mackintosh, “What Scott accomplished was to take a concept, turn it into a significant research effort, and then turn it into a reality that accomplished what it set out to do. He did quite a job.”

Attendance at the symposium was not limited to government officials. A couple of dozen Union students-interns in the senator's office and political science honors students-also were on the invite list. Clinton met briefly with them before the symposium, happily shaking hands and at one point telling them that her Albany office wouldn't be able to function if it weren't for all their help. When the symposium was over, she toured the Nott Memorial briefly and came out to be greeted by students shouting “Hillary! Hillary!”

Wind power wins award

The College has been recognized for its use and support of wind power by two environmental groups, an energy developer, and a state energy agency.

Last fall, Union joined four other colleges as well as ten municipalities and six commercial businesses in New York State to convert a portion of their energy purchases to power derived from windmills. Although wind power costs slightly more than traditional sources (about two cents more per kilowatt hour), there is no pollution produced and no fuel needed in its production. The College is purchasing five percent of its energy from wind at an additional cost of about $17,000 in its annual electric bills. The wind power, which is part of the state's energy grid, is produced at the Fenner Wind Project in Madison County, New York's largest wind farm.

President Roger Hull called the purchase “just another example of Union's commitment to improving the environment.” He added, “It is part of our obligation as an institution of higher education to be ahead of the curve and to help set a community standard. As an emissions-free, natural energy source, wind power clearly must be considered by all energy consumers.”

The award came from Community Energy, Inc., the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, Environmental Advocates of New York, and New York Public Interest Research Group.

Leavitt named dean of students

Steve Leavitt, professor of anthropology and interim dean of students since September, is the College's new dean of students.

President Roger Hull, announcing the appointment, said, “Having served very well in the capacity of interim dean for the past eight months, Steve was the clear choice of the search committee and me.

“Not only will Steve bring an unusual academic perspective to the position, but he will also be able to view things in a way that most people in the position cannot,” the president said. “I believe that both of these attributes are of tremendous import at this point in Union's history.”

Leavitt and his wife, Karen Brison, joined the College's Anthropology Department a decade ago. Together, they served as co-directors of the Union Scholars Program and also led several term abroad programs to Fiji.

Leavitt earned his bachelor's degree at Swarthmore College and his Ph.D. at the University of California at San Diego. He has written on religious movements, family relations, sexuality, adolescence, and responses to bereavement. He previously taught at Washington University in St. Louis.

Works in progress

William Thomas, director of international programs and professor of French, was named an honorary fellow of York St. John College in England at graduation ceremonies there recently, honored for his “outstanding contribution to international education.”

The citation read at the York ceremony said Thomas is “committed to ensuring students receive an international experience, forging links for Union College with [higher education] institutes across the globe, to the great benefit of students worldwide. [He] has overseen the exchange of over 400 students from the USA to York alone and has looked after over 200 students from York St. John in America during the 25 years since the start of an exchange program between the two institutes. He has also passed his experience on, advising through his links with the National Association of Foreign Student Advisers and has been awarded a medal for his contribution to international education by the Czech Technical University in Prague.”

The College's International Programs, under Thomas's direction, has consistently been recognized nationally over the years. The Institute for International Education recently ranked the program seventh in the nation in terms of the number of students who study abroad.

Robert Fleischer, research professor of geology, is the author of an article on etching of recoil tracks in solids in the December 2003 issue of Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, the journal of the Geochemical Society. Fleischer writes that isolated places of atomic disorder in minerals, called recoil tracks (caused by radioactive decay of uranium and thorium) are important to a variety of fields, including radiation damage, disposal of nuclear waste, radiometric dating of minerals, ion implantation, isotopic irregularities in nature, disordering of minerals on planetary surfaces, and radon release from the earth.

John Garver, professor of geology, is coauthor of a paper, “Downstream changes of Alpine zircon fission-track ages in the Rhône and Rhine rivers,” in Journal of Sedimentary Research. With former Union student Brandi Molitor, the paper details a new methodology of understanding how mountains grow and erode with time. Garver also is part of an NSF-funded project aimed at understanding the Earth's crust along the San Andreas Fault, and he and A.V. Soloviev, of the Institute of the Lithosphere, Moscow (Russia), have received a grant from the U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation for the Independent States of the Former Soviet Union (CRDF) to develop a fission track dating lab at the Institute of the Lithosphere of Marginal Seas (ILMS) in Moscow, and then to embark on several projects with scientific collaborators, including continuing their ongoing work on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula.

Ashraf Ghaly, associate professor of civil engineering, has been elected a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), a distinction held by only five percent of ASCE's more than 133,000 members. ASCE fellows are “legally registered engineers who have made significant technical or professional contributions to the profession and who have made notable achievement in responsible charge of engineering activity for at least ten years following election to ASCE,” according to the organization's bylaws.

Christine Henseler, assistant professor of Spanish, has had her book, Contemporary Spanish Women's Narrative and the Publishing Industry (University of Illinois Press), selected as a CHOICE Outstanding Book of the Year. Also, she was editor of a book, En Sus Propias Palabras: Escritoras Españolas Ante El Mercado Literario (Ediciones Torremozas), which has just been published in Spain.

Teresa A. Meade, professor of history and director of the Center for Women's Studies, is co-editor (with Merry Wiesner-Hanks of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) of a new book, A Companion to Gender History (Blackwell Publishing, 2004). The book surveys the history of women around the world, studies their interaction with men in gendered societies, and looks at the role of gender in shaping human behavior over thousands of years. Meade is also the author of “Civilizing” Rio: Reform and Resistance in a Brazilian City (1997) and A Brief History of Brazil (2003). She is working on a project on marriage on the Alta California frontier, 1769–1860.

Daniel O. Mosquera, assistant professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies, has written an article, “Reconstituting Chocó: The Feast of San Pacho and the Afro Question in Colombia,” to be published in Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies. This article is part of an ongoing project examining popular religion, politics, and national identity in the Afro-Colombian region of Chocó. The project includes a video documentary titled “San Pacho, para quién? [St. Pacho, for Whom?].”

Linda Patrik, professor of philosophy, published a paper based on her research work at the Nitartha Institute in E-ASPAC, an electronic journal in Asian Studies sponsored by the East/West Center of the University of Hawaii. The paper, “Transplanting Tibetan Philosophy,” describes three North American schools that translate and teach Tibetan philosophy to westerners. Her paper, “Perilous Sitting: Krishnamurti's Criticisms of Meditation Practice,” is forthcoming in the Krishnamurti Monograph series. This paper discusses the distinction between meditation practice and true meditation, which was drawn by the twentieth-century teacher, Krishnamurti.

Kristin Peterson-Bidoshi, assistant professor of Russian, is co-director (with David Galloway and Kristen Welsh of Hobart and William Smith Colleges) of a project, “A Dynamic Application for Producing Language Exercises,” which has been selected for funding by the Center for Educational Technology, a regional technology center for Mellon-supported colleges in the Mid-Atlantic and New England region (MANE). Reviewers said they selected this project because it explores the creative uses of technology to enhance Russian language learning.

M. Fuat Sener, assistant professor of economics, presented a paper, “Intellectual Property Rights and Rent Protection in a North-South Product Cycle Model,” at the Southern Economic Association Meetings in San Antonio, Texas. Sener also has written a chapter (with Elias Dinopoulos), “New Directions in Schumpeterian Growth Theory,” for an upcoming book, Elgar Companion to Neo-Schumpeterian Economics (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2004).

Carol S. Weisse, director of Health Professions, published a paper in the Journal of Pain with Rachel Dominguez '02 and Dr. Paul Sorum of Albany Medical Center, called “The Influence of Gender and Race on Physicians' Pain Management Decisions.”

Frank Wicks, professor of mechanical engineering, is the author of articles in Mechanical Engineering on the anniversary of two notable achievements in technology. His article “Trial by Flier,” which chronicles the history of human flight, was the lead article in a December special supplement to the magazine. (Wicks was a guest at the celebration of 100 years of flight in Kitty Hawk, N.C., on Dec. 17.) Wicks also wrote “Nuclear Navy” in the January issue of the magazine about the 50th anniversary of the launch of the Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine.

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Posted on Apr 19, 2004

For more than thirty-five years, Union art students have had two remarkable teachers-Walter Hatke and Arnold Bittleman.

Hatke, a Kansas native with master's degrees from the University of Iowa, joined the Union faculty in 1987 and is now the May I. Baker Professor of Fine Arts.

Bittleman, a native of the Bronx, started to draw at age five, copying drawings in books. After beginning college at the Rhode Island School of Design, he earned his B.F.A. and M.F.A. from Yale. After teaching at the Yale School of Art and Architecture, the Parsons School of Design, the Minneapolis School of Art, and Skidmore, he joined the Union faculty in 1966. He was artist-in-residence and lecturer in the arts when he died in 1985, at the age of fifty-one. This spring a show of his work will open at Gallery 100 in Saratoga Springs; the show will come to the Mandeville Gallery in the Nott Memorial in the fall.The show's catalogue is being designed by Jill Korostoff '77, with financial support from Andy '71 and Abby '74 Crisses and Harris Suzuki '77.

Bittleman was a nationally-known artist, and his works were in the collections of such major museums as the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn and Whitney Museums in New York City, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. After a one-man show in New York City, The New York Times called his work “remarkable, disquieting, and many-layered.”

Jim Lowe '69, one of the owners of Gallery 100, says he got the idea for the show in a dream. “I was back at Union, and Arnie was leading the charge against the Vietnam War. Although I wasn't an art major, Arnie and I connected on this issue and many others. He was an exceptional teacher, a true friend to his students, and a brilliant artist.”

Bittleman once said that drawing is “a celebration of human seeing, of the sensuous joy of sight itself. It enables me to experience my most personal thoughts, visions, my hopes, dreams, fears, my humanity and my kinship to generations past and future.”

In December 1983, Alexander F. Milliken, of the Alexander F. Milliken Gallery in New York City, visited Bittleman's studio in Cambridge, N.Y., to pick up work for an exhibition. He later wrote about the thrill of discovering some new Bittleman work:

“…I didn't really know what I was looking for. I think I hoped something would just hit me. It didn't for more than four hours and probably over 300 drawings.

“They were in the fourth drawer of a cabinet-folded. Arnie does lots of drawings of thickets and underbrush. They are all quite wonderful and intense, and I thought that I was looking at another one, when a face emerged from the center of a thicket. My heart skipped a beat when I saw the crown of thorns and recognized the head of Jesus. I unfolded another and saw numerous faces, not obvious ones, but clear. Arnie said there were a group of them he'd done some years ago during a 'demonic' period when he'd been actively upset about the Vietnam War. He'd been thinking about putting them in book form-thus the folds….

“I didn't realize until I was on [my train] that my adrenalin was still pumping and that the thrill of discovering what I had was the cause. I now had in my possession a collection of drawings, unified in theme, and originally intended to be together. They not only evidenced extraordinary draughtsmanship, but were packed with meaning. And I wanted to exhibit them immediately.”

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Posted on Apr 19, 2004

The 2003-04 basketball season was the last to be played in Memorial Fieldhouse, and the men's and women's teams did their part to give the forty-eight-year-old building a royal sendoff. To wit:

• A combined record of 44-11.
• The first Upstate Collegiate Athletic Association's regular-season and tournament championships for the women's team.
• The first NCAA tournament appearance by the women's team.
• Another ECAC Upstate New York tournament appearance by the men's team.
• And, for the first time in the same year, the fieldhouse was the host site for both the NCAA Division III National Championship Tournament and the ECAC Upstate New York Tournament.

---

Constructed in 1955 as a tribute to America's war veterans, Memorial Fieldhouse's dirt floor was covered in the early 1970s with a Tartan surface, allowing the men's basketball team to move from Alumni Gym. Under construction, to be ready for the 2004-05 season, is the two-story Viniar Pavilion, made possible by gifts from the Viniar Family Foundation and David Viniar '76. The new building will include two basketball practice courts and one performance court, with spectator seating for 1,000. It will be located southeast of Memorial Fieldhouse, with connections to the fieldhouse's locker rooms and equipment facilities. The fieldhouse will continue to be the home of the indoor track teams and the spring teams, which begin their preseason practices in February.

“There are a lot of great memories in this building,” said former coach Bill Scanlon, whose 300 victories are the most in the men's basketball program's history. “There were a lot of great games, a lot of great teams, and most importantly, a lot of great individuals who played in Memorial Fieldhouse. The Tartan surface and the atmosphere of the field house certainly gave us a true home- court advantage. But it is time to move on. Union is one of the last schools to play on a court other than wood.”

Current head coaches Bob Montana and Mary Ellen Burt agree that they are looking forward to moving into the Viniar Pavilion.

“I am very appreciative of Dave Viniar for his generosity and continued support of the men's basketball program and his major gift of the Viniar Pavilion,” Montana says. “I know the kids are impressed with the gift of the Viniar family and are excited to be able to play on a wood surface next year.”

“I'm excited about moving into the Viniar Pavilion next year,” adds Burt. “Not only will it be a great place to play, it will be an outstanding recruiting tool for our program and for the College as a whole.

“It was nice to have won the last game we played here,” she continues. “Since Union is my first head coaching job, this building holds some good memories for me.”

This year certainly is one of them. The Dutchwomen enjoyed the best season in their twenty-nine-year history with a record of 24-4. In addition to winning league regular season and tournament championships, the team hosted Mount Saint Mary in the first women's national tournament game in the fieldhouse, beating the Knights 78-47. The year capped a string of five-straight .500 or above seasons that have produced a record of 92-42.

The men's team enjoyed a 20-7 season and was the top seed for the ECAC Upstate New York tournament. This year's winning record marked the third time that the Dutchmen have enjoyed at least six consecutive winning seasons. Montana, who just completed his eighth year as head coach, has a career record of 121-94 and led his team to an NCAA berth in 2001-02.

Montana recalls two games that stand out among the many he has been a part of in Memorial Fieldhouse.

“My second game, which was my first year with Bill (Scanlon), as his assistant, was winning the Capital District tournament against Albany State in triple overtime. It was a great win for us. I remember the Albany State pep band playing our fieldhouse, which I thought was strange. That win seemed to give our kids confidence, and they went on to our first NCAA bid.

“The other game that comes to mind,” Montana continues, “was when we hosted our first NCAA game on Feb. 28, 2002. Seeing Memorial Fieldhouse packed, seeing our players get our first NCAA win against Lasell-it was a great reward for the kids to play in that environment and have that crowd support them.”

The memories of Memorial Fieldhouse, and the anticipation of basketball in a new home, were summed up by Montana when he said, “It always comes back to the people. Our new facility will be the same; it will be the people who make the facility special.”

Improved sports web site debuts

Thanks to a new web site, all the Union scores and sports stories are just a few mouse clicks away.

The site (http://www.union.edu/Athletics) was the result of a months-long redesign by the Office of Communications and the Department of Athletics.

With a garnet background and topped with regularly-changing photos of Union student-athletes, the site has a convenient summary of recent scores with links to game recaps, a schedule of upcoming events, feature stories, links to team pages, and a fan poll.

“This new site gives our many fans a front-row seat to all the action by providing up-to-date results, news, features, and photos in an attractive and user-friendly format,” said Val Belmonte, director of athletics. “I'm thrilled to have this new site represent the College's programs and our student-athletes. It combines the proud tradition of Union athletics with the bells and whistles of the web.”Jim Feck, the College's web director, said that what may be most exciting is what visitors won't see. “The site displays scores, stories, and photos from a database, speeding the process by which information is entered and making it possible to share the very latest news-even in-game scores and recaps from road games.”

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Posted on Apr 19, 2004

After Jim Underwood retired last year as the longest-serving current faculty member, the Board of Trustees invited him to share his thoughts on more than forty years at Union. With his long experience, which included service as both a teacher and an administrator (e.g., dean of the faculty), he had accumulated lots of opinions. Here is some of what he said to the trustees:

Some things have not changed much in the forty years-the Ramée buildings, Jackson's Garden, two dozen walnut and several honey locust trees planted by Eliphalet Nott in the 1820s, commencement, the Memorial Chapel chimes, faculty and student suspicion of the administration, a collection of eccentric faculty who are in sufficient control of their eccentricities to allow them to function effectively in the classroom, to name just a few.

Obvious and important changes would include:

• Growth in the student body from about 1,250 to about 2,000 and the rise in the proportion of women from zero to about fifty percent;
• Growth in the size of the permanent faculty;
• Growth in the size of the administration, illustrated by a seeming plethora of vice presidents as opposed to exactly none in 1963;
• An across the board increase in staff, including explosive growth in areas such as security, development, and student life.
• Despite the loss of most elms, the campus looks much better: Campus plan-tings and lawns are lush, automobiles are gone from center campus, and most new and restored buildings are eye catching, witness especially the “new” Nott Memorial.

The nature of decision making is a second way in which the College has substantially changed. We are now far more bureaucratic in the sense of having decision- making processes that are more formal, “rational,” transparent, and bound by rules. Good examples can be seen in faculty evaluation processes, the budget process, and the process for making decisions regarding student discipline and academic dishonesty.

Curricular changes, some dramatic, have helped make Union a very different place-new departments (computer science, anthropology, and classics, for example), new interdepartmental programs (biochemistry and East Asian studies, for example), and several truly substantial College-wide programs (General Education, Writing Across the

Curriculum, vastly expanded study abroad opportunities, an honors program, greatly expanded opportunities for undergraduate research, for example). In addition, faculty were added in areas in which the College was embarrassingly shorthanded, most notably, the arts and modern languages.

One result of some of these changes is that the College became for the first time a genuinely balanced college, a state that had been a goal for seventy years or more.

Some of the more dramatic and positive changes are those in teaching methods and the intensity of the “professional” relationship between faculty and students.

There has been a general but by no means complete move away from the lecture toward various forms of so-called “active learning,” including, for example, simulations (such as a course on Congress in which students become the House of Representatives) and the use of electronic classrooms in imaginative ways to fully engage students in learning a variety of subjects. Many of these changes would not have occurred had it not been for a virtual revolution in which faculty, for the first time, began to come together in productive conversations and workshops on teaching, most sponsored by a committee on teaching created in the early 1990s.

Although there were examples of students and faculty working closely together when I came to Union, both the frequency and the intensity of such relationships began to steadily increase beginning in the 1970s. I believe that one very important factor is the increasing emphasis that the College began to place on independent undergraduate research and other forms of scholarly and artistic endeavor. Senior thesis and senior project requirements in many departments include such endeavors, and the National Conference on Undergraduate Research and our own Steinmetz Symposium provide opportunities at which students and their faculty mentors can aim.

Nothing pleases me more at retirement than the quality of the students I have taught for the last several years. Although we have always had good students, what I see is a higher proportion who are fully committed to learning than at any previous time-provided that they are challenged by faculty willing to demand their very best.

The quality of work that students have produced for me and many other faculty is truly impressive. One example comes from my “Civil Rights and Civil Liberties” course, in which students play Supreme Court Justices and Counsel. In a class of the most engaged, best prepared, and most aggressive questioners I had ever seen, one student serving as counsel managed a truly extraordinary performance, never hesitating, never wavering in the face of a seemingly endless volley of incisive and tough questions. She performed in a highly-articulate and convincing manner, not equaled in some tapes I have viewed of experienced lawyers before appellate courts, and I am confident could not be equaled even by many Union faculty. (To my regret, this student, an economics major, did not go to law school. She is a bond trader with a leading firm in New York City.)

I would be remiss not to include some observations on the administrations I have seen.

Harold Martin (president 1965-1974) should be credited with four substantial accomplishments:

• He maintained a remarkably stable and civil campus in a very troubled time.
• He created expectations that faculty should be published scholars as well as good teachers. (This deserves to be labeled an important turning point in the recent history of the College.)
• He managed to add a badly-needed science and engineering building and a library addition to the campus.
• He gave to his presidency the highest level of integrity and dignity.

The administration of Tom Bonner (1974-1978) saw the decision to leave the New England Small College Athletic Conference. Done under a cloud of suspicion, that decision was a turning point; NESCAC was, and is, as much a club as an athletic conference, and membership translates almost directly to academic reputation.

The administration of John Morris (1979-1990) saw some significant achievements:

• Calm was restored and the College's financial situation was stabilized.
• The Reamer Campus Center was created.
• The Alumni Gym was expanded.
• There were also major additions to the academic program, including a substantial and innovative General Education Program and a Writing Across the Curriculum Program.
• Finally, at Morris's initiative, a dozen tenure-track additions to the faculty were approved, thus allowing an overdue reduction in the number of visiting faculty. Roger Hull (1990-today ) brought the sort of energy and ambition for the College that is rare, and the result has been an effort to move Union forward despite the challenge of relatively limited financial resources. Perhaps the most obvious accomplishments in the past dozen or so years are:
• An improvement in student quality, commitment, and energy that has been both steady and substantial.
• The astonishing number of new buildings, expanded buildings, restored buildings, and, most recently, acquisitions of buildings in “Seward Park” and the Ramada Inn property for conversion to student housing and social space.
• The academic area has seen rapid expansions in two endeavors central to the College's mission-study abroad and undergraduate research-and creation of the College's Honors Program.
• Finally, the House System that will be fully in place next year is an initiative that has the potential to transform student life in fundamental ways.

In summary, where do we stand? We are well led; a faculty of generally high quality brings intelligence and high competence to the research and artistic enterprises and energy and imagination appropriate for practicing teaching as a calling; students are the best I have seen in their commitment to learning-when properly challenged; student life is more vital than ever; our academic program has exceptionally strong elements, such as study abroad and undergraduate research (my own strongly-held view is that the senior project required or available in many departments is the single most valuable opportunity that we offer students).

This does not mean that we do not face problems and challenges. In my opinion, the biggest problem we face is that the degree to which we challenge students is not uniformly high. The most important lesson I learned in 40 years of teaching is that the higher one sets the bar, the better students perform. My personal preference is that Union set a goal of becoming the most challenging college in the Northeast.

The task of maintaining the College's hard-won momentum in the face of relatively limited resources is a formidable one. The demands on those resources are increasing. For example, providing financial aid sufficient to continue the improvement in the quality of the student body will be extremely difficult, and increasing or even maintaining the proportion of our students who study abroad will be very difficult. My one great fear, unfounded, I hope, is that in the face of limited financial resources we will grow faint-hearted and draw back just at the time we are poised to reach a new level. While we work to increase our resources, I believe that we can use the full force of our ingenuity and commitment to take carefully-considered initiatives that will continue to advance the College and its reputation.

A last word. Union is a warm and spirited place with a magnificent campus, dedicated and committed people at all levels, and students distinguished by their energy, their lack of pretension and cynicism, and their eagerness to learn when challenged. If that were not enough, I have been privileged to be at a place with faculty colleagues distinguished not only by their intellect and scholarship but by their committed practice of teaching as a calling. I consider myself blessed to have been part of this place.

Although retired, Jim Underwood teaches one course each year and, with his long-time colleague Bob Sharlet, holds an appointment as the Chauncey H. Winters Research Professor of Political Science.

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Posted on Apr 19, 2004

Sixty years after their surveying class, Ben Jakobowski '42 and a handful of classmates collaborated on a different kind of ReUnion project and a unique memento.

Their project – a bound set of first-person narratives with photos – gives insight into an era, and is an unusual volunteer effort that makes a valuable addition to the College archives. It's also proof that the connections people make at Union can last a lifetime.

Jakobowski, of Dayton, Ohio, took it upon himself to compile the collection. It was “a labor of love,” he says.

What gave him the idea? “I was looking through my copy of the 1942 yearbook, and I found a print of the photo of this group of civil engineering students that I had taken in June 1940, when we were at Prof. Warren C. Taylor's farm, continuing our instruction in surveying. This was a standard exercise for sophomore CEs before they left campus for summer vacation.”

He sent a copy of the photo to Ben Leland, of Huntington Beach, Calif., and together they identified the others. He invited those they were able to track down to write about themselves and send photos. Nine alumni agreed to contribute to the “Life After Union” collection (in addition to Leland and Jakobowski): Don Brockwehl, of Loudonville, N.Y.; Frank Kilcoin, of Fort Wayne, Ind.; Fred Longe, of Saratoga Springs, N.Y.; Beal Marks, of Morehead City, N.C.; Bob Muther, of Needham, Mass; Mike Stanco, of Schenectady; and Henry Weisheit, of Lansdale, Pa. (Mike Stanco and Bob Muther have since died.)

A few tidbits from the collection:

Longe and Brockwehl began working together in 1947, as partners in McManus, Longe, Brochwehl, Inc., General Contractors (they still sit on the company's board). They built the first structures on the State University at Albany campus (Brockwehl helped architect Edward Durell Stone's office set up review procedures) and the cafeteria building at the State Office Campus in Albany. And in the 1970s and '80s, the firm handled several projects for Disney World.

Looking back on Union days, Brockwehl writes, “I was surprised at the number in the group picture who started as EE's – seven including myself. I had switched to CE after Freshman Electric Lab, when my team pulled a dead short, throwing all the breakers, reversing polarity, etc., with a huge BANG. Scared the – out of us!”

Fred Longe enlisted in the Navy as an ensign in 1942, attending Officers Indoctrination School at Dartmouth. Assigned to the USS Wilkes, a destroyer, as the anti-submarine warfare officer, Longe went to Sicily “to do shore bombardment prior to and during the invasion. Unfortunately (and for me, perhaps fortunately), when the Wilkes went into the channel at Bizerte under the guidance of a local harbormaster, we struck a ship that the Germans had sunk in the channel, damaging one of our props. The Wilkes was ordered to return to New York following the invasion.”

Jakobowski kept in touch with Beal Marks over the years because of a common interest in aviation and model airplanes. During World War II, Marks was air ordnance officer on the USS Guadalcanal, and, as officer of the deck on June 4, 1944, he reports, “I was on the bridge when our task group attacked and captured the German Sub U-505 on the high seas. This was the first capture of an enemy ship by the U.S. Navy since the War of 1812!”

During peacetime, he served as an installation engineer for IBM “in the military products division for Bomb/Nav systems in the B-47, B-52, B-58, B-70, and several of our test airplanes. Lots of formidable problems, as I recall. Now I keep life simple and fly radio control models only.”

Drafted into the Army in 1943, Stanco was transferred the following year to Columbia University to work with civilians as a physics lab assistant in the Manhattan Project for atomic bomb research. In peacetime, he served as Rotterdam (N.Y.) assistant town engineer, then formed his own engineering company, then retired though he continued to draw house plans for two local builders.

Weisheit reports that he retired after forty-two years at the Budd Co., “except for two years spent in the USNR on LST 397 during the invasions of the Philippine Islands.”

Jakobowski, a civil engineering major, comments, “Although I didn't use a lot of civil engineering in my career, I will always remember Professor Sayre telling us that an engineering training gives one the groundwork for taking a problem apart, down to its basic elements, and attacking each part to finally address the whole. I treasure the experiences I had in aerial reconnaissance and think often of Professor Sayre's teaching.”

Right after graduation, Jakobowski arrived in Dayton in response to a call for engineers for the war effort. “Since Wright Field was the nerve center of Army aviation, that's where I wanted to be.”

Eight years later, he was named chief of the specifications branch in the Aerial Photographic Lab. “In those early days, this lab was headed by General George Goddard, regarded as the father of aerial photography and who was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1976.” The lab had its own “air force” of seven aircraft and pilots to conduct flight tests, its own engineers and labs, its own wood and machine shops, all processing facilities, and everything to carry operational engineering projects to completion.

One of the most significant accomplishments, Jakobowski says, was the development of the aerial strip camera, and he was involved in installing three of these cameras in an RF-101 aircraft in October 1962. “This was the aircraft that took detailed high-speed, low-altitude (620 knots at 500 feet) pictures of the Russian missile sites in Cuba – pictures that President Kennedy confronted Khrushchev with at the UN, forcing the Russians to withdraw all missile equipment and installations.”

He is still into photography, putting together slide shows for various communities of his travels with his wife, Peggy, and offering photography seminars.

Concludes Jakobowski, “It was a lot of fun contacting the men and reading about their lives after Union. They have been involved in so many things, and all have done well. It makes me proud to have chosen Union.”

Note: We'd like to hear from other Garnet Guard folks who might be interested in taking on a similar project for their own class!

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