Posted on Jun 9, 2005

Schenectady, NY (June 9, 2005) – A pair of road games against Division I newcomer Boston University of Hockey East kicks off the 2005-06 season for the Union women's hockey team. The 29-game schedule includes other non-league tilts against Sacred Heart, Rensselaer, and Robert Morris, who also starts its inaugural season. Union, entering its seventh season of NCAA competition, will play 14 home games.

“We are very happy with the way the schedule has come together for the upcoming season,” second year head coach Tim Gerrish said. “It gives us a chance to match up against some established teams as well as some teams that are starting out at the Division I level.” Union plays Boston on October 4-5 before a four-game home stand that starts on October 29-30 against ECACHL opponent Clarkson and ends against Sacred Heart on November 4-5.

Union enters just its third season as a Division I member of the prestigious ECAC Hockey League. A league that saw three of its teams in the 2005 NCAA Women's Frozen Four. The Dutchwomen will face two of those three teams in Harvard and St. Lawrence during an 11-game road trip November 11-January 7. They face off against the Crimson on December 2-3 before heading to Canton, NY the following weekend to play the Saints, December 9-10.

The road trip will commence against first-year league member Quinnipiac on November 11-12. The Bobcats replaced Vermont in the ECACHL after the Catamounts made the move to Hockey East. “We are sad to see our good friends from Vermont leave but we are indeed happy with the addition of Quinnipiac, a team that we have a great rivalry with,” commented Gerrish. After that Union reunites against Sacred Heart for a single game on November 22.

The Dutchwomen will play a pair of exhibition games up in St. Catharines, Ontario against Brock University December 14-15 before wrapping up the road trip against cross town rival Rensselaer to ring in the New Year on January 6-7. “We were fortunate to be able to schedule games on the road while our student body is on break,” said Gerrish. “We were also able to offer our Canadian Athletes a chance to play in Canada just before Christmas.” 

Following its lengthy road trip Union returns to Messa Rink for eight straight starting with a two-game series against CHA member Robert Morris on January 14-15. That series will conclude non-league play as the Dutchwomen host Brown the following weekend on January 20-21 before facing 2005 Frozen Four participant Dartmouth on January 27-28 and wrapping up the homestand against Cornell February 4-5.

Union will play its home finale against Princeton February 17-18 in between a pair of road trips against Yale February 10-11 and Colgate in the regular-season finale on February 24-25.  

For single game and season ticket information contact the Achilles Center Ticket Office at 518-388-6134.

Posted on Jun 7, 2005

Union College's 17th president, Roger H. Hull, who is stepping down after leading the College for 15 years, will give the keynote address at Commencement on Sunday, June 12 at 10 a.m. in Library Plaza.

Hull will receive an honorary doctor of laws degree as well.

A native of New York City, Hull earned his B.A. degree from Dartmouth College, his law degree from Yale Law School, and his master's degree in law and his Doctor of Juridical Science degree from the University of Virginia.

From 1967 to 1971, he was an attorney with White & Case in New York City. In 1971, he became special counsel to Gov. Linwood Holton of Virginia, responsible for the administration's legislative program. Three years later, he joined the National Security Council's Interagency Task Force on the Law of the Sea as a special assistant to the chairman and deputy staff director.

In 1976, Hull joined Syracuse University, where he served as vice president for development and planning and as adjunct professor of international law. He served as president of Beloit College for nine years and was inaugurated as the 17th president of Union College in the fall of 1990.

Hull will be remembered by the Union College community for his commitment to five key areas:

·        Integrating the liberal arts and technology;

·        Enhancing academic, social and residential life;

·        Increasing international education;

·        Expanding undergraduate research; and

·        Encouraging community service 

Within this framework, the College launched a major initiative called Converging Technologies to better integrate the liberal arts and technology. In addition, Hull was instrumental in spearheading Union's Minerva Houses, which offer a new approach to academic, social, and residential life that combines a house system with traditional residence halls, theme houses, and fraternities and sororities.

Long interested in international education, Hull has expanded terms abroad and exchanges to two dozen countries. Today, more than 65 percent of Union's students study abroad at some point, a figure that ranks Union among the top dozen international programs at American colleges. Opportunities for student independent study and research have expanded significantly as well, and Union regularly sends one of the largest student contingents to the annual National Conference on Undergraduate Research.

Committed to cooperative efforts between college and community, Hull was co-founder of Schenectady 2000, an extensive revitalization project for the city of Schenectady, and created the Union-Schenectady Initiative, a plan to revitalize the neighborhood to the immediate west of campus. The College has invested more than $26 million in projects, including the renovation of the former Ramada Inn into College Park Hall, a residence for 230 upper-class students. Through the College's Kenney Community Center, more than 60 percent of Union's students perform volunteer service in the local community and schools.

For more information, see www.union.edu/commencement/2005.

Posted on Jun 7, 2005

Cash is usually the easiest and fastest way to help a charity. Sometimes, though, well-meaning donors offer the contents of their basements and attics, which can lead nonprofit managers to ask:

What are we supposed to do with a slightly scratched cellphone?

Or a collection of golf clubs?

Or a plastic statue of Yoda?

Selling them on eBay, the Internet's largest and most successful auction Web site, is an easy answer, but it's deceptively tricky.

Nonprofits don't often have the time or expertise to organize, catalog and ship their unwanted items to buyers.

There are “trading assistants” who will help, professional sellers who sell items on eBay on behalf of owners for a hefty commission — frequently between 20 percent and 40 percent. But there are few companies that focus on providing the service for nonprofits.

Into the void comes eWired Auctions LLC, the brainchild of two Union College undergraduates who plan to use eBay to sell items donated to nonprofits that the groups could not otherwise use.

The company, comprised of four people, is based at the U-Start Business Incubator in Schenectady.

Brian Selchick, 21, is eWired Auction's founder. The Menands native said the idea came to him while he recuperated from a long illness during his sophomore year. As he recovered, he began buying and selling college textbooks and unwanted videos on eBay.

Selchick said he always had a head for business — he earned a real estate license at 18 — but he also has many hours of volunteer work on his resume. While still in high school, he led a fund-raising campaign for the Latham-based Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York.

He calls his current project “moral entrepreneurship.”

“Yes, we're going to take a profit off this, but the main reason we're doing it is to help the nonprofits out there,” said Selchick, who plans to attend law school after he receives a history degree next year.

Instead of charging a commission, eWired will charge an annual subscription fee to the groups it works with, Selchick said.

The company — formed in September with partner Evan Gouzie and investor Robert Kristel — is just getting started. Because of Selchick's earlier volunteer connection, the Regional Food Bank has signed on as eWired's first client.

Mark Quandt, executive director of the food bank, which collects donations from the food industry and distributes them to charitable agencies in 23 counties, said he hoped eWired's services will be an incentive for people to give items they planned to otherwise throw away, now that they know the proceeds will go to a charity. The service also is useful when a truly odd item comes in.

A few years ago, he said, Yoda came into his life and wouldn't leave. A well-meaning donor gave the food bank a plastic statue of the green character from the “Star Wars” movies that stood several feet high.

“It was obviously of value to someone, but not to us. It sat in my office for a while,” Quandt said. Eventually, the food bank sold the Jedi master, but it would have been easier to let a third party take care of it, he said.

EWired isn't the only local company with a business plan that involves eBay. It is estimated thousands of people are so-called “power sellers,” who derive a chunk of their monthly income through sales on the auction site. EBay doesn't release figures on how many members are power sellers or where they live.

But they include Capital Region entrepreneurs like Tom Golding. The Colonie resident has sold tie-dyed T-shirts as PJL Distributors since 1988. He began selling shirts on eBay last year, and those sales now account for a small part of his business: 75 to 150 shirts a month.

“The thing that's surprising is where you are getting orders from,” he said. “Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, and that was just recently. … It's small, but I think there's a lot of potential there,” he said.

Posted on Jun 6, 2005

Therese McCarty, professor of economics, has been named interim dean of faculty and vice president for academic affairs effective July 1.

McCarty, a member of the Union faculty since 1987, succeeds Christina Sorum, who passed away on May 16. Her appointment was announced by Union President Roger Hull, who is stepping down June 30, and Interim President Elect James Underwood, who begins July 1.

“Therese is a well-published scholar and superior teacher who has served in a number of important faculty leadership positions at the College,” Hull and Underwood said in their announcement. “As chair and member of the Economics Department, she has played a key role in strengthening an already strong department. Recently, as a member of the Minerva Council and the Beuth House Council, she has brought energy and ingenuity to a venture that is key to the College's future success. We have the greatest confidence in Therese's abilities and the depth of her commitment to the College, the same depth of commitment that Christie Sorum brought to the role.”

“I thank my colleague Jim Underwood for this opportunity to work with Union's excellent faculty, staff, and students,” McCarty said. “I look forward to building on the work of Roger Hull and Christie Sorum. Their innovations — such as the Minerva Houses and Converging Technologies — have made Union an increasingly exciting place to teach and study.”

McCarty is a well-regarded professor with a range of teaching experience in economics courses including “Income Tax in Theory and Practice.” As part of that course, McCarty coordinated students' participation in the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program at the College's Kenney Community Center.

An active scholar who has authored a number of articles in well-respected journals, she specializes in state and local public finance and education finance.

She has an extensive record of College service including department and division chair; chair of the Faculty Executive Committee, the faculty governance body; and membership on the Minerva Council, which oversees the Minerva Houses, a College-wide initiative that blends the residential, intellectual and social spheres.

McCarty holds an A.B. degree from Bryn Mawr College and A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan.

She lives in Niskayuna with her husband, Johnny Willis, and their daughter, Helen.

Posted on Jun 3, 2005

Union College's 17th president, Roger H. Hull, who is stepping down after leading the College for 15 years, will give the keynote address at Commencement on Sunday, June 12 at 10 a.m. in Library Plaza.

Hull will receive an honorary doctor of laws degree as well.

A native of New York City, Hull earned his B.A. degree from Dartmouth College, his law degree from Yale Law School, and his master's degree in law and his Doctor of Juridical Science degree from the University of Virginia.

From 1967 to 1971, he was an attorney with White & Case in New York City. In 1971, he became special counsel to Gov. Linwood Holton of Virginia, responsible for the administration's legislative program. Three years later, he joined the National Security Council's Interagency Task Force on the Law of the Sea as a special assistant to the chairman and deputy staff director.

In 1976, Hull joined Syracuse University, where he served as vice president for development and planning and as adjunct professor of international law. He served as president of Beloit College for nine years and was inaugurated as the 17th president of Union College in the fall of 1990.

Hull will be remembered by the Union College community for his commitment to five key areas:

·        Integrating the liberal arts and technology;

·        Enhancing academic, social and residential life;

·        Increasing international education;

·        Expanding undergraduate research; and