Jennifer Mitchell delivered a talk
on “Tensions and Opposition of the Artists in Texts of Virginia Woolf.”
Jackson Reed gave a paper on
“Neutral Meson Photoproduction from the Proton.”
Jaclyn Sisskind presented on “A
Cross-Cultural Look at the Medicalization of Post-Partum Depression and
Alternatives to Present Therapy.”
They were among the 28 students
who returned on Sunday from the 18th National Conference on
Undergraduate Research, hosted by Indiana University-Purdue University
Indianapolis.
The Union group represented one of
the larger contingents, said Ashraf Ghaly, associate professor of civil
engineering, who accompanied the group.
“I was impressed with our
students' confidence and complete command of their research topics,” said
Ghaly, who attended 23 of the Union presentations. ” It was fabulous to see our
students answering the questions with such great confidence. They represented Union
very well. I would say that Union got its money's worth
and more.”
Ghaly gave a presentation at a
concurrent conference of the Undergraduate Research Network titled “Transforming
Successive Education to Concurrent Learning Through Research.” He described a
course in which he had students research and present examples of structures
that failed, asking them to describe what they would do differently.
Also traveling to NCUR were Ann
Anderson, the Thomas J. Watson Sr. and Emma Watson-Day Associate Professor of
Mechanical Engineering, a member of the NCUR Board of Governors; and Tom
Werner, the Florence B. Sherwood Professor of Physical Sciences, former chair of
the NCUR Board of Governors.
The campus was abuzz this week after a recent episode of The Sopranos in which the character Bob
Wegler told Carmela Soprano, A.J.'s mom, something like “Union
College took a chance on me, and I
turned out alright.”
Which prompted another question: how did the College
arrange that bit of publicity?
Well, it helps to have alumni among the producers and
friends of HBO's hit show. Ilene Landress '83, an executive producer on the
show said that while she cannot take full credit, the influence may have come
from her or from Scott Siegler '69, a movie executive who is good friends with
another Sopranos producer.
“Whatever the origin,” wrote Ilene, “enjoy the free
publicity.”
What kind of publicity the mention represents may depend
on whether Union stays in the story line. Said one
alumnus this week, “I'd love to see [father] Tony Soprano and A.J. watching The Way We Were as another fun way of
hyping A.J.'s interest in Union.”
Entering their second season as a Division I program, the Dutchwomen ice hockey team will play 33 games during the 04-05 campaign, 17 of which will be home contests at Messa Rink.
Union will open their season at ECAC newcomer Clarkson on October 16 and 17 before taking on Sacred Heart in their home opener on October 23.
Union's 13-game non-conference schedule will include home and home two-game sets with independents Sacred Heart and Quinnipiac, and a pair of two-game series with Niagara on the road and Wayne State at home. Both Niagara and Wayne State are members of College Hockey America (CHA). The Dutchwomen will play a single game versus a Division III opponent, hosting Rensselaer, who finished 19-5-3 last season, on October 30.
The Dutchwomen's home league schedule will feature visits from Yale, Brown, St. Lawrence, Vermont and Colgate. Union will take on ECAC foes Clarkson, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard and Princeton on the road. The Dutchwomen will close their 2004-05 regular season on the road with the Tigers on February 25-26, one week after finishing their home schedule versus Colgate. Union will once again host the ECAC Women's Hockey Championship, scheduled for March 12-13.
For 2004-05 ticket information, please contact the Messa Rink Box Office at (518) 388-6134.
For nearly five decades, Donald S. '46 and Armand V. '42 Feigenbaum have been initiating and implementing quality control and management systems at some of the world's largest corporations.
Donald is one of the acknowledged world leaders in systems management and systems engineering and co-author with his brother, Armand, of the very successful recent book, The Power of Management Capital, from McGraw-Hill, with editions also in China, Brazil, Japan, Korea and many other countries.
Armand – known as “Val” – is the originator of Total Quality Control and Management, an approach to quality and profitability that has profoundly influenced business management strategy. His book on the subject has been published in many languages and is the basic text on quality systems and improvements.
Natives of Pittsfield, Mass., both received their undergraduate degrees at Union, Val with a B.A. in industrial administration and Don with a B.S. in electrical engineering. Their many honors include honorary doctorates from the College and other institutions.
Several years ago, a Business Week profile summed up Armand V. and Donald S. Feigenbaum's approach to quality control and management in two sentences: “Never Mind the Buzzwords. Roll Up Your Sleeves.”
For nearly three decades, the magazine noted, the two former General Electric Co. engineers, working behind the scenes, have been streamlining operations at such corporations as Tenneco, Union Pacific, Citicorp, Pirelli, Fiat, Johnson Controls and 3M.
“Their advice is pragmatic, and it saves companies big bucks,” the magazine said admiringly.
You might assume that the two men who have the ear of leading executives around the world would operate out of high-powered offices in New York City.
You would be wrong.
Instead, the two brothers share an attractive suite in the headquarters of the company they founded, General Systems, Inc. It looks out over the city square in Pittsfield, the city in the Berkshires where they were raised and where they returned to live. Val is the company's president and chief executive officer and Don is executive vice president and chief operating officer. Together, they form General Systems' executive office from which they manage the company's global operations.
That Val and Don Feigenbaum eschew the fancy trappings of the big city comes as no surprise when you talk with them. Soft spoken and unassuming, they take a conservative approach with their customers (they don't use the word client). Shunning quick fixes or slash-and-burn tactics, they get to know each customer individually as they seek to eliminate inefficiencies and instill a commitment to quality.
Every inefficiency and disconnect eliminated, they say, reduces total product costs and improves end user satisfaction. Every company committed to total quality is a company that is being managed to serve its customers – and it is the customers who, in the end, decide the quality of a company's products and make their purchase decisions accordingly.
CREATING RESULTS AND RELATIONSHIPS
Armand V. and Donald S. Feigenbaum
The brothers do not see themselves as consultants, a word that connotes an outside advisor, nor do they see their company as a consulting company.
“General Systems is an execution company – an implementation company, an engineering company – in a broader sense than the word is typically used,” Val says. “We think of ourselves as systems engineers or systems managers. What we want to do is create results and relationships with customers.”
Adds Don, “We don't advise people. We work with people to build something. Most people think of systems as computers. We see people, machines, and information that have to be integrated. We build the internal processes.”
And it works. When the Feigenbaums and General Systems were called in by Tenneco, the company reported failure costs of $2.9 billion a year. The chief executive officer of Tenneco, in a recent book, has written that in three years the Feigenbaums' Cost of Quality approach created $2 billion of savings – real margins without sacrificing the core businesses or the company's valuable people.
The CEO said, “We called it 'soft restructuring,' but really it was our 'silver bullet.' ”
And it is principles such as these that the Feigenbaums emphasize for their corporate customers throughout all of the 24 industry groups that General Systems has served.
The brothers note that they have worked for two “generals” in their lives. One, of course, is General Systems, which they founded in 1968. The other is General Electric, where together they put in 42 years of experience before striking out on their own.
CONNECTING, NATURALLY
The General Electric connection is, in a way, a natural. Their mother's father had gone to work at GE in Pittsfield at the start of the 20th century. (“He knew Charles Steinmetz and spoke about him,” Val recalls fondly.) Their mother, Hilda, was a concert pianist, and their father, Samuel, was a CPA who ran his own accounting firm.
Val was an apprentice toolmaker at GE right after graduating from Pittsfield High School, but came to Union after he was told it was a good place for someone who wanted to become a balanced engineer.
“If you look at the unique character of Union – its small size and its blend of the liberal arts and engineering – that appealed to me,” he says. “It was the right decision – a place where I could spend all afternoon in a lab and edit the college paper at night.”
Don had a variety of summer jobs while he was in high school, one as an assistant to the cutters in a local textile mill, one as an usher in the local theater. He came to Union intent on becoming an engineer, but left after two and a half years to join the Navy during World War II. After serving with the Seabees in the Philippines, he restarted his junior year at Union.
“I still wanted to be an engineer, but not one who sat in the corner pushing a slide rule,” he says. “I wanted a liberal, broad education.”
Both men rose quickly at GE. Val was director of quality at GE's huge Schenectady operations in his early twenties, and Don rapidly moved up to major management responsibility in the company's jet engine business before leaving to become general manager and chief operating officer of International Systems Co.
“We learned a great deal at GE, but we wanted to be our own boss as much as anyone can be,” Val says. When their paths crossed on a plane in Sao Paulo, they decided the time was right. Val left GE, where he was worldwide director of manufacturing and quality control in New York, and he and Don launched General Systems with headquarters in New York City.
Their first morning in business they received a call from Volvo of Sweden that led to their first assignment, a two-year project applying systems engineering techniques. Success there led to other work in Europe for such companies as Alfa Romeo and Renault, in Japan for major organizations, and back in the U.S., where General Motors and Bechtel were among their first customers.
Soon realizing that they were going to be traveling all over the world (half their business has always been international), they decided they may as well do that from the place they always called home, and they moved their company headquarters from New York to Pittsfield.
SERVING THE WORLD
Today, General Systems' list of companies served includes many American and global corporate leaders such as J.P. Morgan Chase, Cummins Engine, Ford, John Deere, SKF, Shell, Volkswagen and IBM, as well as organizations in Japan, Brazil, China and other countries. And the brothers continue to write. Their latest book, The Power of Management Capital, from McGraw-Hill, has been attracting a large number of readers throughout the world.
Both Val and Don point out that Pittsfield has a long history of success in technology and is a good environment for the headquarters of a company like General Systems. “Our international customers know the big U.S. cities as well as we do,” Val says, “but Pittsfield and the Berkshires are a welcome experience for them. They call Pittsfield the World Capital of Total Quality Management.”
Don mentions how their recent keynote speech to a major management conference in Dubai was delivered. “They sent a team from Germany to holograph us so we were speaking and walking and talking in Dubai, when we were in fact at our desks here.”
And the brothers emphasize these points with a wall clock in their outer office with a gold star placing Pittsfield at the center of the global business geography.
SERVING THE COMMUNITY
Meeting of the minds – Attending the Feigenbaum Forum are, from left, Doug Klein, director of the College's Center for Converging Technology; Charlotte Borst, dean of arts and sciences; and Armand V. and Donald S. Feigenbaum. This annual event encourages
The two say they feel a great sense of responsibility toward their hometown, and they have had leadership roles with the Berkshire Bank, the Berkshire Athenaeum, Hancock Shaker Village, Colonial Theatre and the Berkshire Museum, among other institutions. That level of involvement mirrors their years at Union, where their activities included a fraternity (Kappa Nu), the Student Council, Concordiensis and the Philomathean Society.
These days, the brothers give no evidence that they plan to slow their pace.
“Our grandmother always said that people rust out faster than they wear out,” Don says. “So we continue to get out among our customers and stay completely involved in helping transform the people we work with.”
Adds Val, “I like to recall another one of our grandmother's admonitions – the minute you close your mind is when you think your teachers have nothing left to teach you.”
Two unusual gifts have been received from alumni, one to create an endowed prize for senior projects in computer science and electrical engineering, and the second to establish a center to study entrepreneurship. Here are the stories behind the gifts:
Employed by Hewlett-Packard for more than forty years, Don Loughry '52 retired in 1998 as standards manager of the company's Information Networks Group. Active in research and development, engineering management, test and measurement, and computer systems, he had a natural interest in the same areas at Union. “It is important to encourage students to build a relationship with industry, even before graduation, if possible, to help build professional careers grounded in relevancy and productivity,” Loughry says.
Acting on that belief-and with the support of Hewlett-Packard, which assists employees in the donation of HP products to educational institutions-Don and his wife, Alice, created an annual prize fund for students who had completed the best senior projects in computer science, computer systems engineering, and electrical engineering.
When Don retired, HP's support ended-but the students' needs and goals remained. “Setting up an endowment fund seemed like the right answer,” Don says. To establish an endowed fund that would produce enough income annually for the prize award, which totaled about $2,000, would require at least $40,000. In 2002, at Don's 50th ReUnion, they made an initial gift of $10,000.
Then, in 2003, Loughry received the Charles Proteus Steinmetz Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The award, one of the association's highest honors, cited his outstanding leadership and contributions in the development of computer interface standards and to the creation of the IEEE Standards Association. In addition to a medal, the award included a $10,000 honorarium-which Loughry promptly turned over to the College toward the endowment goal. “When the unexpected IEEE honorarium came my way, it was a natural step to add it to our endowed prize fund,” Don says.
“Meeting a few of the prize winners and having e-mail interchanges with them leaves no doubt in my mind that we are taking the right steps toward our long-term goals in a relevant way for emerging professionals from the College,” he says.
After graduating from Union, Michael Rapaport '59 earned a J.D. and an M.B.A. from Columbia, both in 1964.
Mike began his legal career as a solo practitioner in White Plains, N.Y., but was soon recruited to handle a special project for Rapaport Brothers, P.C., the general practice law firm founded in 1928 by his father and uncle. One project led to another; in addition, the economic downturn of the late 1960s demanded major changes for M. Rapaport Co., Inc., the real estate investors group that had been established in 1904 by his grandfather, Meyer Rapaport. Mike was recruited to manage that company as well.
For the next thirty years, Mike guided the law firm, specializing in trust and estates, elder law and real estate finance, as well as the separately-operated M. Rapaport Co., Inc. His unique approach to business development resulted in significant growth and success for both family-named entities and contributed to his longstanding interest in entrepreneurship and ethics.
Reflecting that interest, his recent gift has enabled the College to establish the “Center for the Analysis of Productivity and Entrepreneurship.” The initiative will allow the College to introduce the study of ethics into its undergraduate economics program and, Mike hopes, serve as a catalyst for integrating ethics into the curriculum across the board.
The entrepreneurship program will include:
A new course, “The Mind of the Entrepreneur,” designed to expose students to the role of the entrepreneur in guiding resource allocation in a market economy. The course will include a component on ethics.
A new course, “The Economics of E-Commerce,” which, again, will include ethics as an important component.
Revision of a seminar on public policy to include a more rigorous treatment of ethical issues.
Revision of the course “The Economics of Health” so that it now includes a combination of ethics and economics.
Support for the newly-formed student Entrepreneurship Club to bring in speakers.
Support for faculty to attend conferences that involve economics and ethics, and support for a Union-sponsored conference on teaching ethics and economics.
Support for an Economics Department seminar series to bring outstanding national speakers to campus.
Professor Hal Fried of the Economics Department says the initiative has far-reaching implications for Union and could serve as a model for other colleges.
Recent gifts to the College include:
An unrestricted gift upon the termination of a trust established by John Bovier '10, in memory of Asa P. Bovier, Class of 1872.
A distribution from a pooled life income fund established by the late Raymond H. and Jean D. Horstman. The proceeds were used to establish the Raymond H. Horstman (1923) Scholarship Fund.
An unrestricted bequest from the estate of Rachel F. Rowe, the widow of Harold N. Rowe '23.
A bequest from the estate of Mildred Benson, widow of Harold R. Benson '29.
A second charitable gift annuity was established by D. Vincent Cerrito '32, to eventually benefit the Nott Memorial.
An unrestricted bequest from the estate of Alexander M. Turner '34.
Alan B. Van Wert '37 made an addition to the scholarship in his name.
Unrestricted proceeds of charitable gift annuities established by the late H. Milton Chadderdon '33 and the late George P. Haskell '37.
Frederick F. Fagal '38 to the Henry Fagal Scholarship.
Dr. David Falk '39 made a gift to be added to the David and Elynor Falk scholarship.
Jean Fox, the widow of Herbert O. Fox '39, made a gift of seven rare illuminations from approximately the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. The illuminations originally were displayed in the President's House when Dixon Ryan Fox, Herbert's father, was president of the College. Mrs. Fox felt that the illuminations should once again become a part of Union College. The illuminations will be displayed and will be used in the study of art history.
A bequest from the estate of Stanley R. Liebman '39 to establish an endowed scholarship in memory of him and his wife, Jeanne.
Beverly Yunich, the widow of Dr. David L. Yunich '39, to establish the Yunich Family Fund.
Upon the death of Sherman W. Parry '40, the proceeds of the two charitable gift annuities that he established established the Jonathan Stanley Parry Scholarship in memory of his son.
Noble McCartney '41 established a charitable gift annuity, the proceeds of which will ultimately be used to establish the Noble McCartney, Class of 1941, Endowed Scholarship.
Paul E. Kummer '43 established a charitable gift annuity.
Unrestricted bequests from the estate of Winston A. Saunders '41 and the estate of Arthur E. Pitts, Jr. '43.
A charitable gift annuity established by the late Edwin D. Knight '45 was liquidated and the proceeds were sent to Union.
Albert K. Hill '46 supported the printing costs associated with the Encyclopedia of Union College History written by Wayne F. Somers '61.
Natalie Weinstein, the widow of Abbott S. Weinstein '46, a charitable gift annuity that ultimately will be added to the scholarship in her husband's name.
Dr. Wendell L. Bryce '48 established two charitable gift annuities.
Dr. William H. Meyer, Jr., '48 established a gift annuity. The ultimate purpose of this gift will be unrestricted and will be in memory of Dr. Meyer's father, William H. Meyer '28.
William R. Grant '49 made a gift to establish the William R. Grant '49 Fund.
A life insurance policy from Dr. Edward W. Carsky '50 and his wife, Patricia.
An unrestricted gift from the estate of Mitchell W. Rabbino '50.
Upon the death of Robert C. Sprong '50, a charitable gift annuity that he established was terminated and the proceeds were used to establish the Robert C. Sprong '50 and Anna Sprong Scholarship Fund.
Herman W. Nickel '51, Edwin E. Wheeler '51, and Elwyn V. Harp '53 established charitable gift annuities.
Paul F. Jacobs '60 established a charitable gift annuity, which will be used to establish the Margaret Veronica and Bertram Lawrence Jacobs Endowed Scholarship in honor of his parents.
Charles J. Loew '62 made a gift of his professional services.
Stephen J. Ciesinski '70 and his wife, Diane, have made a gift to the Adam F. Ciesinski '41 endowed scholarship in memory of Steve's dad.
Cindy Wolfson Sipkin '76 has made a pledge to the Music and Arts Building project.
Dr. David J. Becker '79 established a scholarship to commemorate his twenty-fifth ReUnion.
On his twentieth reunion, David M. Madden '84 established the Professors Edward Craig and Yu Chang Endowed Merit Scholarship Fund in recognition of two electrical and computer engineering faculty.
The Fred L. Emerson Foundation recently awarded Union a challenge grant of $500,000 to renovate and expand the arts and music facility. This grant, the foundation's fourth to the College, requires Union to raise $2.5 million before December 1, 2004. In recognition of the foundation's support, the College will name the recital hall in the renovated facility the Fred L. Emerson Hall.
The Northrop Grumman Foundation awarded the College a three-year, $90,000 grant to support the innovative Educating Girls for Engineering (EdGE) Summer Workshop. The workshop is designed to encourage talented high school sophomores and juniors to consider majoring in engineering or computer science in college and becoming practicing engineers or computer scientists.
