Posted on Feb 2, 2006

Would you like to improve your skills in writing letters of recommendation and critiquing scholarship and graduate school essays for your students? Maggie Tongue, director of postgraduate fellowships, can help.

Tongue will lead a workshop for faculty and administrators that will address these topics, including guidelines and best practices, on Friday, Feb. 10, 2-4 p.m., in F.W. Olin Center 107.

“Many of us have questions about how best to help students with these requests,” says Tongue. “We will work through and discuss some case studies, ranging from typical to difficult and unique situations.”

To register, RSVP, by Feb. 7, to tonguem@union.edu.

Posted on Feb 2, 2006

It all adds up: Union's Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program is finding that it's twice as successful in only its second year, with seven Union students helping low-income Schenectady County residents prepare and file tax returns at the Kenney Center, three nights a week.

The help will be availble through March 2.

“The program is doing incredibly well,” says Professor Mary O'Keefe, a public finance economist. “Our numbers are up 100 percent both in participation and refund dollars, in comparison to this point last year.”

Students Simi Koshy '07, Mu Dan Liu '06, Jared Levy '07, Justin Merolla '06, James Martin '07, Mark Susko ‘06 and Luke LaBella '07 all passed the basic level IRS certification exam. Some went on to pass the intermediate level exam, which certifies them to prepare returns for taxpayers with pension income.

The VITA initiative partners Union with the United Way, Schenectady County Department of Social Services, New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance and the IRS. Started last winter by Therese McCarty, dean of faculty, it is now part of a new economics course, “Tax: Policy and Practice.”

Posted on Feb 2, 2006

The recent Martinique mini-term led by Charles Batson, associate professor of French, proved to be a bon voyage, indeed, for Union students.

In November and December, Batson and seven students stayed with host families and took specialized classes on Martinican culture at the Université des Antilles-Guyane in the city of Schoelcher. On weekends, they took exciting excursions, capped off by a jeep tour through the rain forest.

The group also enjoyed some good press. They published an article in the Martinican campus newspaper, complete with several photos, and Batson wrote a piece for the faculty newsletter thanking the university for offering superb instruction in native dance, music and languages.

A lunch with Martinican students garnered attention for the College from the local newspaper, the “Actualités Schoelcheroises.”

“As a double major in anthropology and French, I found Martinique was the perfect mix of my two disciplines,” said Emily Clark '06. “I'm currently writing two theses and I was able to conduct valuable research during my stay.”

Posted on Feb 2, 2006

Barbara Boyer, professor of biological sciences, and Susan Hill of Michigan State University, presented a poster titled “The Role of Heterochrony in the Life Cycle of the Opportunistic Polychaete Capitella sp. I” at a fall conference on “The Developmental Basis of Evolutionary Change” at the University of Chicago.

Their presentation was featured in the Nov. 18 issue of the journal, Science. Boyer and Hill do collaborative work at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole on development of the locomotory systems in capitellid annelids.

Posted on Feb 2, 2006

Deidre Hill Butler, assistant professor of sociology, gave a talk titled “‘Othermothering' in Motion: The Parenting Challenges of African American Stepmothers,” at The Women's Center: An Anti-Racist Community Center for Women, in Cambridge, Mass., this week. This paper is part of a larger book project on the subject of African American stepmothering.