Posted on May 16, 2005

A boulder from near Seward Highway in Alaska recently traveled to Seward Place in Schenectady, N.Y., where it now rests in honor of William Henry Seward.

In 1820 graduate of Union College, William H. Seward is perhaps best known for engineering the $7.2 million United States purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. As a parting gift to the college and the city of Schenectady, the Class of 2000 set out to honor Union's most prominent alumnus. Five years in the making, the project is slated for completion in time for the 204th anniversary of Seward's birth on May 16.

The Class of 2000 will dedicate the memorial at its five-year reunion on May 21, at 2 p.m.

The memorial consists of an Alaskan boulder with two bronze plaques noting some of Seward's accomplishments. During his career, Seward served as New York State governor, U.S. senator and secretary of state under Abraham Lincoln. Seward helped write and sign the “Emancipation Proclamation.” One of the plaques features a commemorative bronze medallion of Seward's profile with famous quote by Seward foretelling of the Civil War: “It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces…” The plaques were cast by Century Monument Co. of Rensselaer, N.Y.

The 3,700-pound triangular boulder is five feet tall, four feet wide and 18 inches thick. It was originally located near Seward Highway in Alaska. This March the Class of 2000 purchased the boulder from Anchorage Sand & Gravel Co. Inc. in Anchorage, Alaska and had it shipped across the country to Union College. In May, it was placed in a park-like corner of the college at the intersection of Seward Place and Nott Street.

Duncan Crary, 26, of Troy, N.Y., is a member of the Class of 2000 who helped convince his classmates to honor Seward with their parting senior class gift. “After I learned of William Seward's connection to Union College, I was surprised that the college had no significant tribute to him,” he said. “Many students and residents of Schenectady have no idea who Seward Place is named after. And those who know of Seward usually only remember 'Seward's Folly' — a mockery of his Alaska purchase — which was not actually a folly.”

While the Class of 2000 was working to erect a permanent tribute to Seward, they also named the campus shuttle “Seward's Trolley.” The student shuttle is a refurbished trolley.

Cal Crary, 28, of Brooklyn, N.Y., is a member of the Class of 2000 who worked closely with the college's annual giving office to create the memorial. “It is important to remember historical figures like Seward so we can learn from them. It gives our own lives' perspective,” he said.

Palmer Fargnoli, assistant director of annual giving at Union College and a member of the Class of 1993, worked with Cal Crary to acquire the boulder and create the commemorative plaques. “This monument will provide a permanent educational landmark for Union students and alumni, Schenectady residents and everyone affiliated with the college,” Fargnoli said.

Contact Duncan Crary at (518) 432-7820 x 207 or (518) 274-2723; Cal Crary at (917) 596-2330; and Palmer Fargnoli at (518) 388-6369.

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Posted on May 16, 2005

“Christie” a champion for broad education, undergraduate research and international study

Christina E. Sorum, dean of faculty and a strong champion for Union's distinctive broad education, undergraduate research and international study, died early Monday morning after suffering a heart attack on Friday.

“As a college and community, we are devastated,” said President Roger Hull in an announcement to the campus community. “While words at times like this always seem meaningless, I know that Union is better because of Christie's contributions. As a colleague, teacher, scholar, mentor and friend, she had an impact on many, many people over the years.”

A memorial service was held on Thursday, May 19, at 3:30 p.m. in Memorial Chapel. A reception  followed in Hale House Dining Room.

Survivors include her husband, Paul; and daughter, Eve.

A native of Jacksonville, Ill., Sorum graduated from Wellesley College with honors in Greek and received a Ph.D. from Brown University (her dissertation was “Monsters and the Family: A Study of Sophocles' Trachiniae”). She was a visiting instructor at Union in 1973-1974, became an assistant professor at North Carolina State University, and returned to Union in 1982 as an associate professor and chair of the Department of Classics. She became the Frank Bailey Professor in 1992. She was named dean of arts and sciences in 1994, and acting dean of faculty in 1999. She was named dean of faculty and vice president of academic affairs in 2000.

Christie, as she was known throughout campus, served the College in a variety of administrative capacities including department chair, and a member of the General Education Board, Faculty Review Board, Academic Affairs Council and numerous tenure and review committees.

She wrote extensively for both classics journals and academic administrative journals. She was a featured scholar in a History Channel program titled “Gods and Goddesses.” She wrote, with Tom Werner, Florence B. Sherwood Professor of Physical Sciences, an article, “Enriching Undergraduate Research and Scholarly Activity Opportunities in All Disciplines at Union College” which appeared in the June 2003 issue of the Council on Undergraduate Research Quarterly.

In an interview shortly after her appointment as dean, she said that one of her chief goals would be to continue to improve what the College does extraordinarily well — undergraduate research and international study. “Those experiences are the most transformative for both the personal and intellectual development of students, and they provide some of the best preparation for life after college — how to learn on your own, how to deal with difference,” she said.

She was also a strong advocate for the College's investment in arts and engineering. “Participation in the arts ought to be available to every student,” she said. “Few things are more rewarding after college than having an active interest in, and participating in, the arts.” Given engineering's strong tradition at Union, she said, “we need to ensure excellence. I want to continue to work with the dean of engineering and the rest of campus to discover the proper role of engineering on a liberal arts campus — how it can enrich the rest of the College, and how the rest of the College can enrich engineering.”

She said the College must continue to pay attention to the “more traditional” elements of education — communication skills, quantitative skills, a grasp of the elements that comprise the culture from which we came — and pay increased attention to academic and career advising. Other topics of great interest to her were enhancing the diversity of students and faculty, continuing to develop innovative ways to link the residential and intellectual life on campus, and revisiting the College's general education program.

Fundamental to all these objectives, she said, is an excellent faculty. “We no longer have a world where we can have our pick of faculty,” she said. “The overabundance of Ph.D.s from the 1970s and 1980s is gone. We have to be competitive in hiring, and we have to provide our faculty with the full opportunity to develop as teachers and scholars.

“Although we pride ourselves on our emphasis on teaching, I believe that faculty enthusiasm for teaching comes from being absorbed in a discipline,” she said. “I believe that having faculty active in a scholarly way is even more important at a small college than a large university. It's so easy to become intellectually isolated at a small place, where you may be the only faculty member teaching in a particular area. Faculty must participate in their disciplines outside the walls of the College, and we must provide the opportunity for them to do good scholarship and research.”

At the opening faculty meeting last fall, Sorum called on her colleagues to enhance interdepartmental programs through better coordination and focused hiring, and to reach a timely resolution for the reshaping of the General Education program. She cited the 2000 Middle States review, which said, “With four divisions and a 200-year tradition of 'union' learning, the potential for cross-disciplinary work at this College is considerable.”

Sorum said the College has a belief in the value of a broad education, as demonstrated by programs such as Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Bioengineering, East Asian Studies and GenEd. The prominence of Converging Technologies (also known as Converging Thought) is an important step, she said.

“I will be working this year with departments and with the Academic Affairs Council to ensure that our various programs are taken into account in the hiring process and in curriculum development,” she said. “The fact that we have 195 ID majors and 258 students doing minors indicates that a considerable number of our students are interested in a broad education.”

On GenEd, Sorum last fall asked her colleagues to “think of the students and what is essential to their education.” With Sorum, the faculty have spent much of the last academic year revising GenEd.

GenEd, she said, “is a curricular statement of what we think a liberal arts education must include. All types of schools have majors. We as a liberal arts college define ourselves not by our majors but by the broad learning we wish our students to gain.”

Sorum last fall asked senior faculty to work closely with newer members to include them in the intellectual community, a recommendation from the Middle States report. The Minerva Houses and a nascent faculty lounge will provide venues, but they are not sufficient, she said. “We who have been here many years are the ones who must step forward and nurture the redevelopment of an inclusive community,” she said. “We have much to offer the newer members, and they have much to offer us.”

Sorum also was not shy about asking her colleagues to put modesty aside for the sake of the College. In typical humor, she once sent an e-mail urging faculty to “lay aside your normal reticence and senses of propriety” and to alert the Office of Communications when “you publish something, give a talk, win a grant, stage a performance or do anything that is a professional accomplishment.

“This is all a part of the campaign to ensure that the world knows what we do when we aren't in the classroom, to raise our College's academic reputation, to increase opportunities for funding, etc.,” Sorum wrote. “It is not just another imposition on your sensibilities or your time; it is important for the future of Union.” She concluded: “I write as a reformed sinner.”

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Posted on May 15, 2005

At Skidmore College, they say they want a revolution. Fear not. This revolution is culinary in nature and reasoned in approach, pursuing the simple goal of being able to eat more local farm products in the college dining hall.

Skidmore College isn't alone. Students at a growing number of colleges and universities are asking for eats that include local apples, potatoes, milk, cheese and honey. Colleges such as Williams, Bates, SUNY Potsdam, Oberlin and Yale have begun meeting that demand, embarking on programs that work with local farmers to size up local harvests and mix them into their recipes.

Union College in Schenectady is considering a similar project.

“It's an exploding phenomenon around the state, and around the country for that matter,” said Bill Jordan of the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, which wants all kinds of schools to consider using state farm products.

Next fall, three SUNY campuses – Delhi, Morrisville and Geneseo – will launch pilot projects using 13 fruits and vegetables that have been identified as being available when school is in session.

“We've tried to work with products with the longest growing seasons,” Jordan said. “It's a lot more challenging than it is in California [where] there is a year-round growing season.” From there, the department hopes to take the project to other colleges.

This fall, Vassar College in Poughkeepsie will hire one of its students for the unusual position of “part-time forager” to help expand its supply of local farm products. The forager will search the Hudson Valley for local produce and meats that can be added to campus menus.

At Skidmore College, organizers of what is called the Dining Hall Revolution started off by researching what local farms have to offer and how those products might mix into the Skidmore cuisine. The early results of that research, presented May 4 at the college's annual Academic Fair, show a significant number of farms within easy geographic reach of the Saratoga Springs college. Using local farm products will put more nutritional foods into the dining hall as well as establish strong connections with local farms, said Marissa Rossi, a sophomore working on the project.

Skidmore College President Philip A. Glotzbach said he supports the concept. “Having fresh locally grown produce is a value,” he said. “It really becomes a question of cost and dependability of the source.”

Skidmore students, for example, are already eating apples from Saratoga Apple, an orchard in nearby Schuylerville. Christine Gaud of Saratoga Apple said Skidmore's need for 20 bushels a week was a small, but welcome, bit of business. “We have tons of apples we pick in the fall,” she said, noting that the farm limits its operations to retail sales. “In a society where less than 2 percent of people live on the farm, many in that larger society have lost connection with where their food comes from,” Jordan said.

Using local farm products is also good for the environment in a number of ways, she said, including reducing pollution by reducing the fuel needed to ship products long distances. “It's important for Skidmore to recognize the need to be environmentally friendly,” Rossi said.

Lots of groups and agencies, including the state Department of Agriculture and Markets and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, support efforts to have schools make greater use of local farm products.

Aramark, a food service company with more than 420 colleges and universities as clients, has seen a significant increase in interest in this kind of program, said Kate Moran, the company's communications director. Aramark already has some of these programs in place. At the University of Pennsylvania, for example, students have access to local produce at campus food shops and, to some extent, in the dining halls. “It really varies by campus,” she said. “If it's something that's important for our customers, then it's something we work hard to develop,” Moran said.

There are some challenges, including making sure there's enough supply to meet the school's demand and working with the local harvest calendar. “It requires a lot of menu cycle planning,” she said.

“It's interesting at the college level because a high proportion are contract managed,” said Jennifer Wilkins, director of Cornell's Farm to School Program. That means the process must involve working with big companies like Aramark. “They're hearing from an increasing proportion of their clients that they're interested in local products,” Wilkins said. “We see them as a potential partner, not an obstacle.”

The mission of Cornell University's Farm to School Program is to develop strategies to increase the amount of locally grown food served in New York's schools, colleges and universities. There's a strong belief that, especially with fruits and vegetables, local products are of higher quality and more nutritious, Wilkins said. “They're bound to be fresher because they don't have to be transported great distances,” she said. Higher quality foods are more likely to be eaten.

“And in line with dietary guidelines and the new [U.S.] food pyramid, we need to consume far more fruits and vegetables,” Wilkins said.

Local farmers benefit by securing a reliable new customer, one that usually buys in bulk. “By buying food from local farmers, [schools] are benefiting the community far more than they would through a national distributor,” Wilkins said.

There's a broader benefit as well, she said. By underscoring local production cycles, the programs help people unfamiliar with modern farming better understand how the nation's food system works, she said. At Williams College in western Massachusetts, a wide variety of foodstuffs from farms in the outlying countryside have been added to the dining hall in recent years.

“We live in the Berkshires,” said Mark Petrino, associate director of food services at Williams. “We think it's only fair to be good members of the community and to help sustain it as much as possible. We want to help as many local businesses as we can.” Like other Northeast colleges, Williams faced a timing problem when it considered adding local foods: its school year doesn't coincide with the local harvest of many fruits and vegetables grown in this region. When the strawberries are ripe, the peas at their peak and the zucchini overproducing, the campus is largely empty.

But dairy isn't seasonal, and Williams consequently lined up agreements with local farms for milk and ice cream. “We're trying to do our part to keep the local guy in business,” Petrino said. “We also want to instill that [philosophy] in our students and they can take it away with them when they leave here.”

Local foods were scheduled to be the theme of the college's annual community picnic, scheduled for this past Friday. It's a big event – open to the Williamstown community as well as college students and staff – that traditionally serves about 3,000 people.

Menu items included such things as hamburgers, kielbasa, potato chips and ice cream – all locally produced and a regular part of the college's menu. The Williams initiative began with composting, collecting most of its paper products and dining hall scraps and eventually sending them off to a nearby farm.

Over time, Williams' list of local products has grown to include honey, hamburger, mushrooms, sausages and kielbasa. Black River Produce, the company that supplies Williams, “jumps on whatever's local whenever they can because they know that's what we want,” Petrino said.

In terms of cost, local products are usually 20 to 25 percent more expensive, Petrino said. But there have been bargains along the way. The farm that supplies the college's milk, for example, was primarily focused on producing restaurant-quality butter and had no good outlet for its nonfat milk. That was just the kind of milk the students wanted, Petrino said. “It's a great deal,” he said.

Williams hopes that technology will eventually allow the college to offer local produce out of season. The college's new student center, slated to be finished by the end of next year, includes a kitchen with a blast-chill area. The idea, said Petrino, is to buy as much local produce as possible and blast-freeze it for use throughout the year. “It's something we're going to be experimenting with,” he said.

The first step in developing any farm-to-school programs is to become aware of what is grown locally, said Cornell's Wilkins.

For many, that can be a learning experience. “People go in a supermarket and there's this seasonless abundance of fresh produce,” Wilkins said. “It does obscure awareness of your local agricultural production.”

Cornell University's contract with the company that runs its dining hall includes, as a stated goal, the desire to use at least 20 percent New York state-grown produce. Incorporating local foods also requires a rethinking in college kitchens, Wilkins said. Colleges should think about developing seasonal menus – menus that in part reflect what local farms are producing or have stored at a particular point in the year.

Wilkins expects that there are some produce staples – like lettuce – that will remain major menu ingredients no matter what. But the idea is to capitalize on local crops when they're available, like tomatoes into September and root crops into the winter.

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Posted on May 15, 2005

The graduates of Union College's Class of 2000 were thinking big when they voted to memorialize one of the Schenectady college's most accomplished alumni as their class gift to the school. And boy did they deliver.

A 3,700-pound boulder was trucked in from Alaska to serve as part of a permanent tribute to William H. Seward, an 1820 graduate of Union.

It was placed on an outer edge of the campus – right at the corner of Seward Place and Nott Street – and will be dedicated at 2 p.m. next Saturday [May 21] by Union alumni during reunion weekend events.

Some of the Alaskans who helped make the unusual memorial possible, including the folks at Anchorage Sand & Gravel, were sent invitations to the dedication, a college official said.

"Never have we ever shipped a stone across the country," said Dick Miller, owner of the Anchorage-based rock supply company Damco Paving Co., who actually found the boulder for the memorial.

"We sent a stone to Schenectady that came off the Seward Highway," Miller said in a phone interview last week. "We didn't do that by plan.

That's kind of where the source was – on the highway between Anchorage and Seward, Alaska."

'SEWARD'S FOLLY'

One of two plaques that will be affixed to the boulder list Seward's many achievements, including the negotiation of our nation's purchase of the Alaskan territory from Russia in 1867. The $7.2 million land deal, which critics at the time dismissed as a waste of money, came to be known as "Seward's Folly."

"It's monumental what he did for America getting Alaska," Miller said of Seward, an expansionist who pushed to extend America's borders. "And he was ridiculed for it."

Union grads say the big Alaskan rock and accompanying plaques are an honor befitting a man who was a two-term governor of New York state and served as secretary of state under President Abraham Lincoln and his successor, Andrew Johnson.

Seward was ardently opposed to slavery, arguing publicly that a "higher law" mandated its abolition in all states. He sheltered fugitive slaves in his Auburn home as part of the Underground Railroad and later helped author the Emancipation Proclamation.

"As a historical figure, Seward was so important and he really doesn't get much credit," said Duncan Crary, one of the student leaders involved in the five-year effort to create the memorial. "He's greatly overshadowed by Lincoln. Seward was one of the key players who shaped the America that we live in today."

Each of Union's graduating classes decide on a gift for the school and generations of students to come. For example, the courtyard clock near the student union building was a gift of the Class of 1997.

"This year's class is doing an outdoor classroom right outside the library," said Palmer Fargnoli, Union's assistant director of annual giving. "They're doing it in memory of classmates who passed away and another fellow in the Class of 2003 who passed away before he was able to graduate."

The outdoor classroom will be used by faculty and students who want to gather outside when the weather gets nice, perhaps including benches and some kind of partial covering.

"As an alumnus, I think this is a fantastic project," Fargnoli said of the Seward memorial.

He noted that his class – the Class of 1993 – erected a wrought-iron fence on a section of the Nott Street side of campus.

The idea for memorializing Seward developed when a group of students in the Class of 2000 became aware that the street next to campus – Seward Place – was named for the illustrious 19 th Century Union alumnus.

"It came out of town-grown relations series at Union . . . a gentleman made the point that the college has no lasting tribute of its relationship to Seward," said Crary, an Albany native who earned an English degree from Union. "It was a great idea. It actually lit a fire in me and my fellow classmates."

A handful of students, including Crary, his distant cousin Cal Crary, Phoebe Burr, Jeremy Newell and Erika Mancini took the lead on the project. At one point, the group made a pilgrimage to the statesman's longtime home in Auburn.

They held fund-raisers and solicited donations from fellow classmates, raising more than $10,000 from the alumni and their parents.

Jeremy Dibbell, from Union's class of 2004, organized an event for Seward's 200 th birthday.

Members of the Schenectady community got interested in the project as well and donated close to $2,000.

"We always wanted it to be a gift to the city and the college,"

Duncan Crary said. "We wanted it located somewhere in an area between the college and city."

They weren't exactly sure what kind of memorial they wanted, or what they could afford, so they created a list of options.

One of the ideas was a statue. But the estimated price tag of fabricating a statue of Seward was in the $100,000 range, requiring the students to raise about $97,000 more than what the average class gift costs (most are about $3,000).

"We knew this project was going to take a while," Duncan Crary said.

"One of the immediate tributes to Seward we did was lobby the shuttle bus naming committed to name the trolley 'Seward's Trolley.' That was painted on the outside of the trolley in 2000."

The ambitious goal of erecting a statue went by the wayside as the alumni decided it would be better to establish some kind of memorial than to delay the project indefinitely.

"There was talk of changing the idea from a memorial to a scholarship at one point," said Cal Crary, a New York City-based freelance photographer who earned a degree in economics from Union. "We skirted around different ideas of what to do with the money."

Cal Crary said Union Professor Martin Benjamin, who teaches photography, came up with the idea of getting a rock from Alaska. Cal contacted the rock companies in Alaska about the project.

Miller, the rock supplier in Anchorage, e-mailed some photos of boulders he'd found that might be suitable for the memorial. The one they chose is a 5-foot-tall hunk of graywacke, a hard sedimentary rock that juts up out of the earth at the corner of Nott and Seward.

The Union alumni are pleased with the rock. And some say it even looks like Seward, a diminutive eccentric who had an usually large nose.

"It's funny because Seward was known for having a gigantic nose and this thing looks like a nose," Cal Crary joked last week. "He was only 5 feet tall. He was a tiny little redhead with a gigantic nose, which he was famous for."

One of the plaques that will be affixed to the boulder is a line from a famous speech Seward gave in Rochester in 1858:

"It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces . . . "

"That's, I think, Seward's most influential quote," Cal Crary said.

"It's in reference to the division of North and South over free labor, which was slavery."

The fruition of the memorial tribute may say more about the Class of 2000 than its honored subject.

"It's really exciting," Cal Crary said of the project. "I look forward to doing more projects with Union. All of us really love Union and are really excited to be a part of it."

 

 

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Posted on May 15, 2005

Wireless Internet access, courtesy of Albany company WiFiFee, now covers Pearl Street in downtown Albany from the Pepsi Arena to the Big House.

Meanwhile, Albany Bus Co., an independent operator providing low-cost service between Albany and New York City, plans to have wireless Internet access on its buses by the end of the month, a spokeswoman said.

The services are the latest signs of the growing popularity of Wi-Fi hotspots, as the wireless access points are called.

Each point, consisting of an antenna wired into a broadband connection sending a signal up to 300 ft. or more, allows laptop or handheld computers equipped with wireless cards to connect to the Internet.

In the case of Albany Bus, a cellular data network will be used to make the connection to the Internet.

The equipment has been tested and worked fine, said Rebecca Murtaugh, a spokeswoman for the company.

She expects the service to be available on weekday runs by the end of the month. Details will be posted on the company’s Web site, www.albanybus.com, when the service goes live.

Meanwhile, WiFiFee’s free access has been popular with customers.

Brian Epstein, the company’s founder, said the free downtown hotspots had 55,000 visits over a recent three-month period.

David Ward, WiFiFee’s marketing director, said the company plans to limit free access to one hour a day, and in a recent note to customers suggested those who need more access could sign up for a subscription.

The account can be used at 2,000 hotspots worldwide that are part of the Air-Path Wireless network.

The company also has installed wireless Internet access at several large apartment complexes in the Capital Region.

“We do the free hotspots to promote Wi-Fi usage,” Ward said. “Where we’ve concentrated is the residential communities.”

The privately held company expects to be profitable this year, Ward added.

WiFiFee has also met with Schenectady and Union College officials, but “Schenectady is kind of still in a holding pattern,” Ward said.

One place that has moved ahead with free Wi-Fi is Schenectady County Public Library. Its downtown branch has free wireless access to the Internet, and with its expansion, it expects to add additional hotspots, said Andrew Kulmatiski, the library’s director.

The Wi-Fi supplements the library’s own wired Internet terminals.

 

 

 

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