An academic symposium on a subject near and dear to the heart of Union College's new president Stephen Ainlay will be part of the two-day celebration surrounding his formal inauguration.
The symposium will be titled “Bridging the Academic-Social Gap.” The keynote address will be given by Richard Light, director of the Harvard Seminar on Assessment at Harvard University, for the Friday, Sept. 15 event.
Ainlay will be formally installed the next day as the next president at the Schenectady college.
Ainlay said Wednesday that he wants to see Union students better balance the academic side of their experience at college with the social side. The college's Minerva Houses are designed to combine the academic and social lives of students by giving them a place to hang out, study and talk to each other more. Ainlay said the Minerva House model may be one that is useful to other colleges across the country.
In the past, fraternities have caused Union some embarrassment. Ainlay said he has talked to fraternity leaders and they have been receptive to his desire to boost intellectual interaction among students. Ainlay said that was the original intention of the creators of the fraternity and sorority systems, to make students conversant in the major moral, ethical and political issues of the day.
In places where colleges have succeeded in elevating the quality of discussions among students, Ainlay said there is some suggestion that the excesses of the fraternity life are diminished.
“We're looking at the whole matter of Greek life with keen interest,” Ainlay said.
He said he does not foresee a situation where Greek life would be banned on campus. He noted that some of the original chapters of national fraternities were first founded at Union, which is 211 years old.