Posted on Dec 22, 2005

The Christina Elliot Sorum Guest Professorship in Classics has been established with an anonymous gift, Therese McCarty, interim dean of faculty, has announced. 

“This endowed gift is a loving tribute to Christie and honors her many years of teaching, scholarship and leadership at Union College, as well as her expertise in classics,” McCarty said.

Each year's Sorum Guest Professor will be selected from among those who have gained distinction in classics, and will generally spend three to five days on campus working with students and faculty. The campus visit will include a public lecture for the wider college community, classroom visits or workshops for undergraduates and a seminar paper for faculty.

Posted on Dec 22, 2005

Union is, once again, in the cinematic spotlight.

The campus is featured in an independent film, “The Skeptic,” a supernatural thriller written and directed by area filmmaker Tennyson Bardwell and produced by his wife, Mary-Beth Taylor.

It stars Tim Daly, Bruce Altman, Edward Herrmann, Robert Prosky, Tom Arnold, Aida Turturro and Zoe Saldana – and Communications' very own Caroline Boardman, who has a walk-on in a classroom scene shot in the Reamer Campus Center.

“Movie-making is a fascinating process, more so, even than communications,” quips Boardman, communications specialist since 2004.

The film featuers a lawyer, played by Daly, who inherits a house, which leads to a variety of unsettling flashbacks, memories and spectral experiences. Most of the scenes were shot in and around Saratoga Springs over an eight-week period at the end of the year. Its producers hope to submit “The Skeptic” to the January 2007 Sundance film festival.  

Union College has appeared in film before, most notably in the 1973 hit, “The Way We Were,” featuring Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford.

Posted on Dec 21, 2005

Younghwan Song, assistant professor of economics, presented a paper titled “Working at Home: Perks or Toil?” at the International Association for Time-Use Research Conference in Halifax, Canada, in November.

More than 90 researchers from 24 countries attended the event. Using data from the 2001 Current Population Survey and the 2003 American Time Use Survey, Song's paper investigates determinants of the pay status and timing of work at home.

Posted on Dec 21, 2005

Chauncey Winters Research Professor of Political Science Robert Sharlet recently published a new book, Public Policy and Law in Russia (Boston/Leiden: Brill/Martinus Nijhoff, 2005), with co-editor Ferdinand Feldbrugge, professor emeritus of Leiden University Faculty of Law, the Netherlands.

In the book, an international group of political scientists and law professors trace the attempt to complete the creation of a unified legal and political system in contemporary Russia. In addition to serving as first editor, Sharlet is author or co-author of three chapters in the volume.

Posted on Dec 21, 2005

Raymond Martin, professor of philosophy, spoke on “Ironic Engagement,” focusing on personal identity theory, at Cambridge University in November. In addition, the fifth edition of his co-authored book, Wisdom without Answers, is being translated into Croatian for re-publication this year. Previously, it had been translated into Korean and Portuguese.