Posted on Feb 20, 2005

The
Union College women's swim team,
which earlier this year broke a 20-meet losing streak, capped its Cinderella
season by winning the 15-team New York State Women's Collegiate Athletic
Association Championship over the weekend.  The
Dutchwomen scored 1,086 points to get past Le Moyne (1,011) and Ithaca (1,007)
in the three-day meet, which was held at Nottingham High School in Syracuse,
New York.  It was the first state title
for the Dutchwomen since 1994 and just the third in the 20-year history of the
sport (the other coming in 1990).

“Every single lady
competed on the final night to bring our team to the victory,” said head coach
Scott Felix, who was named the “Coach of the Year” by his peers.  Diving coach Aaron D'Addario was named
“Diving Coach of the Year.”

 

“We were a very focused team going into the meet,” Felix
explained.  “In fact, it was the
most focused I've seen them since I was named head coach.”

Sophomore Sydnie Wells swam a 2:07.44 in the 200-yard butterfly to set a championship meet record (breaking the old mark of 2:08.17) as well as a Union College mark and in doing so qualified for the NCAA Championship meet, which will be held in March.  Wells also finished second in the 200 and 400 yard Individual Medley races. Wells also swam the third leg of the winning 200 and 400 medley relay teams and the third leg of the 800 freestyle relay team, which finished fourth. 

Union's quartet of divers earned a total of 200 points toward the team effort.  Senior Sarah Steuer, who earlier in the year earned a provisional score for the NCAA championship, won the one meter title and finished third in the three meter event.  Freshman Molly Freeman took second in the one meter and fourth in the three and sophomore Tara Campbell was eighth on the one-meter board and sixth on the three.  Freshman Jamie Dughi, who did not place among the top eight on the one meter, earned her team 22 points by picking up an eighth place finish on the three meter. 

“I knew going into the meet that our diving crew was our biggest asset and they really came through,” explained Felix. 

Sophomore Brianne Phillips captured the
100 breaststroke championship, was seventh in the 200 IM and second in the 200 breaststroke.  She also swam the second
leg of the winning 200 and 400 medley relay teams. Phillips, who is on the bubble in terms of qualifying for the national championship meet, is the country's 19th fastest swimmer in the 200 breaststroke.

Other top performers for the Dutchwomen included senior Chrissie Duff, who finished third in the 500 freestyle and fourth in both the 200 and 1650 free, freshman Christa White, who took second in the 50 free and was fourth in the 100 freestyle, and rookie Ashley Braniecki, who took second in the 100 backstroke and fifth in the 200 back.

 

The Dutchwomen's two state champion relay teams each have qualifed for the NCAA “B” cut. Union is 22nd in the country in the 200 medley relay.

“We knew exactly what we had to do every single moment of the meet and we went out and executed,” said Felix proudly. “It was one of the best team efforts I have ever been associated with as a swimmer or a coach. I won seven total confeence championships in my career as an athlete and a coach and this is probably the best one because we are the only ones who thought we win it when we walked in the building.”

 

 

 

2005 Women's NYSWCAA Swimming
Championships – 2/17/2005 to 2/19/2005

FINAL Team Rankings

Place School Points

1 UNION 1,086;  2 Le Moyne,
1,011;  3 Ithaca, 1,007;  4 Nazareth, 902;  5 Vassar, 745;  6 William Smith, 651;  7 Alfred, 608;  8 Hartwick,
605;  9 Rensselaer, 598;  10 St. Lawrence, 476;  11 Clarkson, 342;
12 RIT, 305;  13 Utica, 214; Skidmore,
202; 15 WELLS, 120

400 Yard Medley Relay

1 Union College Swimming 'A' 4:00.79 B

1) Braniecki, Ashley FR 2) Phillips, Brianne SO
3) Wells, Sydnie SO 4) White, Christa FR

200 Yard Medley Relay

1 Union College Swimming 'A' 1:50.52 B

1) Braniecki, Ashley FR 2) Phillips, Brianne SO
3) Wells, Sydnie SO 4) White, Christa FR

800 Yard Freestyle Relay

4 Union College Swimming 'A' 8:08.59

1) Henry, Elizabeth SO 2) White, Christa FR
3) Wells, Sydnie SO 4) Duff, Chrissie SR

400 Yard Freestyle Relay

7 Union College Swimming 'A' 3:49.69

1) Duff, Chrissie SR 2) Dunn, Christine SO
3) Donlan, Colleen SO 4) White, Christa FR

Event 18 Women 200 Yard Butterfly

1 Wells, Sydnie SO Union 2:09.36 2:07.44 Y A

4 Braniecki, Ashley FR Union 2:17.38 2:15.45

8 Bernstein, Heather SO Union 2:18.80 2:22.95

200 Yard IM

2 Wells, Sydnie SO Union 2:12.10

7 Phillips, Brianne SO Union 2:17.19

400 Yard IM

2 Wells, Sydnie SO Union 4:43.89

200 Yard Breaststroke

1 Phillips, Brianne SO Union 2:25.77 B

100 Yard Breaststroke

2 Phillips, Brianne SO Union 1:08.22

1 mtr Diving

1 Steuer, Sarah Union 358.62

3 Freeman, Molly FR Union 354.44

8 Campbell, Tara SO Union 284.45

3 mtr Diving

3 Steuer, Sarah SR Union 368.95

4 Freeman, Molly FR Union 365.95

6 Campbell, Tara SO Union 339.00

8 Dughi, Jamie FR Union 307.00

500 Yard Freestyle

3 Duff, Chrissie SR Union 5:12.38

8 Bernstein, Heather SO Union 5:31.57

200 Yard Freestyle

4 Duff, Chrissie SR Union 1:57.93

1650 Yard Freestyle

4 Duff, Chrissie SR Union 17:55.18

100 Yard Backstroke

2 Braniecki, Ashley FR Union 1:01.15

200 Yard Backstroke

5 Braniecki, Ashley FR Union 2:13.68 2:15.69

50 Yard Freestyle

2 White, Christa FR Union 24.92

100 Yard Freestyle

4 White, Christa FR Union 54.47

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Posted on Feb 18, 2005

This year's SAT, though, will be dramatically different. Why was the test changed?

Is the new test easier or harder?
It's not supposed to be either. It's supposed to be more relevant. The College Board, which administers the test, promises that it'll do a better job of sorting out who will succeed in college. For many students, the good news is that the verbal section no longer contains the widely feared analogies (“gas” is to “car” as “food” is to blank). That section, renamed “critical reading,” will now consist mostly of questions that will test students' ability to interpret passages of text. But the price of deleting the analogies is that the new test is longer-three parts instead of two-and will take 45 minutes more to complete.

What are the other sections?
A new writing section will require students to compose a brief essay and sweat through a battery of multiple-choice grammar and sentence-completion questions. The math section will be largely the same, but will, for the first time, have some problems requiring knowledge of advanced algebra. The grading is different, too: A perfect score is now 2400, up from the old 1600.

What's the point of these changes?
They're the culmination of decades of fierce debate. The SAT has been widely used by colleges since shortly after World War II, when returning GIs began applying in huge numbers. Admissions officers found they needed a standardized test to help cut through stacks of applications. They settled on the Scholastic Aptitude Test, originally created by a Princeton psychologist named Carl Brigham, as an IQ test for the Army. Tens of millions of students took the SAT through the 1950s and 1960s, and it became a rite of passage for ambitious teens. But by the 1970s, a backlash had set in.

What were the complaints?
Critics charged that the test remained, in essence, an IQ test largely divorced from high school curricula and real-world learning skills. Some also contended that the SAT was inherently unfair to minority students, who consistently scored lower than whites. “It's just pregnant with cultural connotations about what intelligence is, who is smart, who is capable,” says Peter Sacks, author of Standardized Minds: The High Price of America's Testing Culture. Educators found that some students with great SAT scores floundered in college, while others with mediocre results thrived. In 1994, the College Board responded by declaring that “SAT” would simply be a generic name and no longer stand for “Scholastic Aptitude Test.” That might have been the extent of the changes, if not for a fellow named Richard Atkinson.

Who's he?
Atkinson is the president of the University of California and a leading cognitive psychologist. In 1999, he sat down to take the SAT and found most of it irrelevant. “What the hell are these analogies?” he asked. He grew more outraged when he discovered that many high school students from affluent families were taking expensive SAT classes, where they were coached on analogies and other specific test content. “The SATs have acquired a mystique that's clearly not warranted,” Atkinson declared. “Who knows what they measure?” In February 2001, he recommended that his university's nine campuses no longer require that applicants submit SAT scores.

What was the reaction?
Those who regarded the SAT as a crude measuring stick were gleeful. But it was terrible news for the College Board, a private organization administering the test for 4,700 colleges and universities. Of the 2.2 million teenagers who take the SAT annually, 76,000 apply to the University of California-the College Board's largest single customer. If they no longer took the test, the Board would lose more than $2 million of the $141 million it takes in every year from test fees. “When the president of the University of California speaks up,” admitted College Board head Gaston Caperton, “the College Board listens.” So to satisfy Atkinson, and other administrators who were cheering him on, the SAT was retooled to more closely reflect what students are actually learning in school.

How is the new test being received?
With considerable trepidation. The biggest worries concern the written essays, which can't be graded by computer. Some 3,000 human scorers will do the job, ranking students' writing on a scale of 1 to 6. Their judgments, of course, will inevitably be criticized for subjectivity. Colleges are unsure how much weight to give the new scores, especially on the essay section, since they have no prior experience with them. And so many students are alarmed at the prospect of taking the new test that 430,000-60,000 more than usual-signed up for the old version when it was offered for the last time, in January. (The new test debuts in March.) But even when the transition is over, the SAT's problems aren't likely to end.

Why not?
Colleges are growing increasingly skeptical of standardized tests, however they're designed. About 280 colleges and universities across the country have already dropped the SAT as an application requirement; among them are such small, prestigious schools as Bowdoin, Mount Holyoke, Union, Dickinson, and Franklin and Marshall. Many other colleges are giving the test much less weight, as they look for students with leadership skills, quirky talents, and other intangibles. With SAT coaching now a $400 million–a-year industry, some critics say the test has become an end in itself, measuring nothing but the ability to take the SAT. “I worry most that it takes away from what students actually should be doing,” says Willard Dix, a high school counselor in Chicago. “Which is homework.”

How the famous fared
If you don't remember how you did on the SAT, or would prefer to forget, you're not alone. When asked what she got on her SAT, Jennifer Lopez replied, “Nail polish.” John Kerry has refused to release his SAT scores; so has Oprah Winfrey, one of the most successful women in the country. Here are a few SATs of some well-known Americans, based on their own recollections or press inquiries. By way of perspective, remember that a perfect score is 1600, and that last year's average score was 1026.

·  George W. Bush: 1206 (566 on the verbal)

·  Al Gore: 1335

·  Sen. Bill Bradley: 485 verbal

·  Bill Cosby: High 400s combined

·  Author Stephen King: 1300s

·  Author Amy Tan: 1100s

·  TV personality Meredith Vieira: 1300s

·  Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy: 1420

·  Bill Gates: 1590

·  Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen: 1600

 

 

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Posted on Feb 18, 2005

Honda's FCX hydrogen-fuel cell car, designed to operate in winter conditions, draws interest Wednesday outside Union College's F.W. Olin Center during a Capital Region Association of Energy Engineers' discussion of hydrogen technology projects. The FCX Honda was leased last fall by as part of a pilot project in conjunction with Latham-based Plug Power and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

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Posted on Feb 18, 2005

Who doesn't remember the dread of school tests? Some tests were a cinch, but there were always a few that got the butterflies going before breakfast, where the first sight of the test paper miraculously erased all memory of the topic, and where the stress didn't go away until hours after the exam ended.

 

But for some students, starting as early as fifth grade, it's a lot worse than a day of the jitters. At its worst, anxiety over tests can be so traumatic that students refuse to go to school.

 

Test anxiety isn't an official diagnosis of a psychological disorder, but for a small proportion of students it is a daily and unsavory aspect of school, said Rudy Nydegger, a local psychologist and Union College professor. “It's more than some people get more jittery than others,” Nydegger said. “These students may not be able to take the exam, or they may sub-perform and then obsess and worry about it afterwards.”

 

And it isn't always the best students who suffer. “More often than not it's the best students,” Nydegger said. “But for some of the not-sosmart kids, every test is an opportunity to prove how dumb they are.”

 

Among younger students, the best recourse is to follow a few simple steps. “I give them very specific things to do: Like get their studying done well before the test; limit study time the night before the test; in the morning talk about things other than the test; when the time comes to take the test, take it and then put the test down and walk away,” Nydegger said.

 

Nydegger said he also encourage students to put tests into perspective. “Kids will grossly overemphasize the importance of a test,” Nydegger said. “They'll project themselves all the way to 'I'm a failure in life.' “Sometimes he'll have students talk to their teacher and ask what would happen in the worst case, if the student got a zero on the test.

 

“Usually teachers will say 'I know the quality of your work, and if you do well on other things, it's not going to matter,' ” Nydegger said. Or he'll give some fatherly advice and tell students about his own experience of going to college and doing fairly well in life despite a few bad test scores. Having parents and teachers on board is essential.

 

Among older students, Nydegger emphasizes strategies over specific steps. “It's more conceptual and less behavioral,” Nydegger said. “We'll talk about when to study, what to study, and how to study.”

 

Recently, an elementary student Nydegger is treating said he'd walked into class to find a pop quiz. The boy, normally an A student, was completely unprepared and got a 40 on the quiz. But with Nydegger's advice, he took it in stride.

 

“I asked him how he felt and he said 'I was pretty nervous when they first told us we had a test . . . but my best is all I can do,' ” Nydegger recalled. “Six months ago this boy wouldn't have slept for two days.”

 

With college students Nydegger said it's also important to talk about how chemicals backfire. “If a person is anxious, an antidepressant can lower the arousal, but it comes back even higher than before,” Nydegger said. “Unless you go stoned or drunk into the test, it won't help. And that's not a good idea, either.”

 

In his private practice, Nydegger said that in most cases, test anxiety comes up as a secondary concern after students have sought help for another mental health concern. But as emphasis on tests increases, parents and teachers are becoming more aware of test anxiety among their children and students. Since he first started teaching at college level in the 1970s, Nydegger said test anxiety has become more common. “I can't quantify it, but I have the distinct feeling it's an increased percentage. It's not huge but more so than in the past,” Nydegger said. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted on Feb 18, 2005

Society is increasingly willing to
take on large-scale problems that require interdisciplinary teams, and
entrepreneurial academic ventures – like Union's
Converging Technology initiative – provide a rich proving ground for
introducing the model to future members of those teams, said Theodore Berger
'72 at Founders Day convocation on Feb. 17.

Berger, the David Packer Professor
of Engineering at the University
of Southern California,
described his experience in leading a team from diverse disciplines to develop “bionic”
replacement parts for the brain, novel sensor systems for homeland security,
and start-up companies for commercialization of those technologies.

The title
of his talk was “Educating the Mind to Build the Brain: The Power of
Integrating Liberal Arts with Science and Technology.” Berger was awarded an honorary
doctor of science degree from the College.

There is an enormous cost of
caring for some 4 million Americans with Alzheimer's and another 4.5 million
stroke survivors, Berger said, but there is still no strategy for repairing the
brain.

“To deal with such a huge problem,
you have to be able to put together a multidisciplinary team,” he said. “I have
to be able to convince someone that this should be interesting and that they
should work on it. You've got to put a team together that can look at all
aspects of a problem,” he said, “and this includes business people.”

Earlier in the day, Berger and his
wife, Roberta Diaz Brinton, professor of molecular pharmacology at USC, gave a
breakfast talk sponsored by the College and the Center for Economic
Growth.

Speaking to an audience of
business and industry leaders, the couple stressed the importance of scientists
collaborating with business and industry.

“There are a lot of things that you
know about that we don't,” Berger said. “People have cutting edge solutions to problems
and I don't even know what they are. It's really valuable to have someone who can
say, 'I know the answer to that.' That allows you to jump ahead by a couple of years.”

Brinton, founder of
NeuTherapeutics, which is researching preventative measures against Alzheimer's,
spoke about the importance of learning business. “I have an entire small
business in my laboratory that I have to manage,” she said.

“No one ever told me, 'Do a market
analysis,'” she said. “Thank God, I was interested in Alzheimer's disease and
not some bizarre little meaningless piece of science.”

“You need to have these
partnerships,” she continued. “Union and Schenectady
have a unique opportunity. You're in the building phase. Build what no one else
has done yet, which is interface the College with your efforts and your efforts
with the College.”

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