Colleagues, friends and family gathered recently to dedicate Sorum House in memory of the energetic dean of faculty who used a combination of support and admonishment to bring about the Minerva Houses.
Christina Sorum died last spring after suffering a heart attack.
“Christie was convinced that [the Minervas] were the way to bridge undergraduates' intellectual and social lives,” said James Underwood, interim president. “This is a lasting monument to her career.”
Suzie Benack, professor of psychology and Sorum House faculty representative to the Minerva Council, described her late colleague's ability to cajole pressured students who worked to create the Minervas. “The students on the committee were so scared, and Christie would always offer comfort and support,” Benack said. “But she said, ‘You have to have the courage to do this.'”
With the Minervas, Benack said, “Union is doing something unique in a way that Christie was unique.”
Matt Roginsky '07, Sorum House student representative to the Minerva Council, announced that the house's popular coffeehouse would be renamed Christie's Coffeehouse.
Meanwhile, the Christina Elliot Sorum Guest Professorship in Classics has been established with an anonymous gift.
“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,” said Therese McCarty, interim dean of faculty.
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.
Sorum joined the College in 1974, spending her teaching career in classics. She was named dean of faculty and vice president of academic affairs in 2000.
ReUnion ’05 garners award
Union's ReUnion 2005 program has received special recognition from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).
CASE presents its District II Accolades Silver Award to the College's Office of Alumni Relations at its annual conference this winter in Pittsburgh. Winning entries will become part of a multimedia showcase event.
“This is a wonderful recognition for the College and our ReUnion programming,” said Nick Famulare '92, director of alumni relations. “More importantly, it is a testament to the hard work of our many alumni volunteers who make ReUnion so special.”
Nearly 1,500 alumni attended the annual alumni gathering last May. About 40 percent of the 50th ReUnion class attended for events ranging from a medallion ceremony to the handshake with members of the graduating class.
Thirty-five percent of attendees graduated in the last decade. Total giving from anniversary classes was nearly $3 million, with a participation rate of 43 percent.
The CASE awards entry was prepared by Betsy Seplowitz '96, associate director of alumni relations, who directs ReUnion programming. “Betsy has done a terrific job with ReUnion, and she represented the effort well in the entry to CASE,” Famulare said.
Plans are under way for ReUnion 2006, set for May 18-21.
Alumni can look forward to another full slate of activities, including a golf outing, foot race, medallion ceremony, class photographs, alumni parade and family picnic.
Group peers through world’s biggest scope
With a diameter of 1000 feet, the Arecibo radio telscope is the largest telescope in the world. Mahmood and Koopmann used it to detect the neutral hydrogen gas in nearby galaxies as part of the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) survey.
Mahmood participated in the project through a summer research fellowship and a Scholars sophomore project. His research fellowship and travel were made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Last summer, Union hosted the first NSF-sponsored ALFALFA undergraduate workshop to give undergraduates involved in the project the opportunity to exchange experiences with their peers from throughout the country.
In addition to Mahmood, participants included Michael Gillin '08, Jay Read '07 and Luther Vucic '07.
“The highlight of the meeting was a two-hour remote observing run at Arecibo, in which the undergraduates operated the telescope from a Union College physics and astronomy classroom,” Koopmann reported. “The students targeted a group of galaxies to search for evidence of gravitational interactions between the galaxies.”
Works in progress
Robert Baker, professor of philosophy and chair of the Alden March Bioethics Institute, has been appointed to the American Philosophical Association Committee on Philosophy and Medicine. He also was reappointed chair of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) Affinity Group on the History of Medical Ethics. His article, “A Draft Model Aggregated Code of Ethics for Bioethicists,” is in a recent issue of American Journal of Bioethics. The article was presented at the ASBH spring meeting on “The Ethics of Bioethics” at Albany Medical College and on campus.
Seth Greenberg, the Gilbert Livingston Professor of Psychology, has been elected a Fellow of the American Psychological Society in recognition of his “sustained outstanding contributions to the advancement of psychological science.” This prestigious honor is given to the most prominent psychologists in the field.
Better Than Both: The Case for Pessimism by Peter Heinegg, professor of English, has been published by Hamilton Books. The collection's 20 essays in popular philosophy cover a broad range of social, cultural and intellectual issues, from environmental degradation to the breakdown of religion.
Robert Hislope, associate professor of political science, has a book review in the summer issue of The Review of Politics. “The Rational Ethnic Voter” reviews Kanchan Chandra's Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Ethnic Head Counts in India (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
Judith Lewin, assistant professor of English and member
of the programs in Women's and Gender Studies and Religious Studies, gave a paper at the 31st annual 19th-Century French Studies Colloquium in Austin, Texas. “Sublimity, Virginity, Infinity: Balzac's Belle Juive as Virgin Magdalene Aux Camélias” describes Honoré de Balzac's Jewish courtesan, whom he marks with symbols of a paradoxical “sexual virginity.”
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. It has also been translated into Korean and Portuguese.
“The Local Performance of Global Sound: More Than the Musical in Japanese Hardcore Rock,” by Jennifer Milioto Matsue, assistant professor of music, has been accepted for publication in the forthcoming edited volume, Performing Japan: Contemporary Expressions of Cultural Identity. Also, Matsue was to give the paper, “Just What is the ‘Popular' in Popular Music?: From Taiko to Techno in Contemporary Japan,” at a meeting of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music.
Cheikh Ndiaye, assistant
professor of French, gave a paper on at the 59th annual Convention of the Rocky Mountain Modern Languages Association in the Coeur D'Alene, Idaho. The paper, titled “Je parle, tu écris:
Survivance de l'oralité dans l'écriture dans Solibo Magnifique de Patrick Chamoiseau,” examines the vestiges of West African oral traditions in Caribbean literature through Solibo Magnifique,
a book by Chamoiseau, the 1992 Prix Goncourt winner from Martinique.
Beth Post, director of financial aid, received a Citation of Appreciation Award “for continuous and outstanding support” at the 37th annual New York State Financial Aid Administrators Association Conference, held in Hauppauge, Long Island, recently. The award goes to association members involved in activities that support the organization's goals. Post was cited for her advocacy of student financial aid programs through legislative efforts and for years of service on the association's Government Relations Committee.
Andrew Rapoff, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, recently received a grant from Medtronic Sofamor Danek to support his proposal, “Biomechanical Load Sharing Study: Atlantis ACP, Premier ACP and GAPP Graft Containment Device.” This research involves determining the compressive load sharing characteristics of bone grafts and plates used in cervical spine surgeries. In addition, Rapoff and colleagues Jinhua Huang of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and Raphael Haftka of the
University of Florida
recently published a paper, “Attracting Cracks for Arrestment in Bone-Like Composites,” in the journal Materials & Design.
Robert Sharlet, Chauncey Winters Research Professor of Political Science, 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.
Jill Suzanne Smith, visiting assistant professor of German, won the Coalition of Women in German's Annual Prize for a 2004 Dissertation for her study, “Reading the Red Light: Literary, Cultural and Social Discourses on Prostitution in Berlin, 1880-1933.” At the same time, Smith was elected to the Coalition's national steering committee.
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. 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.
Alan Taylor, the Marie Louise Bailey Professor of Mathematics, has published a book titled Social Choice and the Mathematics of Manipulation (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Also appearing last fall was the seventh edition of a book, For All Practical Purposes (Freeman), of which Taylor is one of seven authors, and two journal articles: “A Paradoxical Pareto Frontier in the Cake-Cutting Context” (Mathematical Social Sciences) and, (with Nikhil Srivastava '05), “Tight Bounds on Plurality” (Information Processing Letters). Srivastava is doing Ph.D. work at Yale University.
A third paper by Taylor, “Borel Separability of the Coanalytic Ramsey Sets,” is forthcoming in a special volume of the Annals of Pure and Applied Logic.
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EXHIBITS
Through April 30 Mandeville Gallery, Nott Memorial Charles Steckler: Stage Design A retrospective of stage designs crafted by Steckler, professor of theater and designer-in-residence, as well as drawings, construction models and artifacts.
Through April 15 College Park Hall
2006 High School Regional Juried Art Exhibition Showcase of works by students in Albany, Schenectady and Rensselaer counties, including painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, photography, ceramics and textiles.
