Posted on Aug 31, 2006

It's been a great summer of recognition for the College. The New York Times called us a gem. We've been on several other “top” lists.

And closer to home, Metroland magazine's “Best of 2006” edition cited Union as Best Classical Music Venue (Memorial Chapel) and Best Classical Music Series (the popular Concert Series).

“Memorial Chapel adds a degree of intimacy, and its underrated acoustics are similarly superb. From solo instrumentalist to chamber orchestra, every note is crisp and clear,” the paper wrote.

As for the series itself, “Year after year, Dan Berkenblit puts together a series of artists and ensembles ranging from the renowned to the unknown – and you can bet that those unknown ensembles will hit the big time soon. Subscribe to the series. They're all winners.”

This year's series includes 15 gala concerts and kicks off Oct. 4 with Leon Fleisher, Piano, followed by the Florestan Piano Trio on Oct. 22.

Other programs are: Parker String Quartet (Nov. 3); Pei-Yao Wang, Piano and Friends Nov. 19 (3 p.m.); Boston Camerata (Dec. 3); David Finckel, Cello and Wu Han, Piano (Jan. 7); Christianne Stotijn, Mezzo Soprano and Joseph Breinl, Piano (Jan 21); Emerson String Quartet, Part I (All-Beethoven, Feb. 4); Ysaye String Quartet (March 3);

Marc-Andre Hamelin, Piano (March 18); Musicians from Marlboro (March 25); Julia Fisher, Violin and Milana Chernyavska, Piano (April 5); Ingrid Fliter, Piano (April 18);  and ECCO (String Chamber Orchestra, April 28.

The concert series wraps up with the Emerson String Quartet, Part II (May 10).

Posted on Aug 30, 2006

He was known as “The Gentleman Boss” and the “Dude President.”

Gore Vidal called him “that most elegant of all presidents.”

While history has recorded only modest political achievements for U.S. President Chester Alan Arthur, Union Class of 1848, he's well regarded for his sense of style in everything from his impeccably tailored clothes to his refurbishing of the White House by noted interior designer Louis Comfort Tiffany.

From his early days in Schenectady to his life in Washington, Arthur “built a reputation for fashionable clothes and carriages, tasteful surroundings, lavish entertaining and impeccable social skills,” said Rachel Seligman, curator of “Chester Arthur: The Elegant President,” now on view in the Mandeville Gallery at the Nott Memorial.

The exhibition, which runs through Oct. 15, features a colorful and sometimes amusing array of Arthur artifacts.

In addition to political cartoons, photos and newspaper accounts, such items as calling cards, cigar bands, a gabardine suit, and his walnut and leather writing desk (rumored to have a secret liquor cabinet) all paint a personal picture of the 21^st president.

The son of a Baptist minister, Arthur grew up in Union Village, N.Y. (Greenwich, N.Y.) In 1845 he entered Union, where he was a member of Psi Upsilon and the Delphian Institute debating society. He was elected into Phi Beta Kappa his senior year.

From his Union years, the Mandeville exhibit includes a handwritten speech to the debating society, and, showing a less studious side of his nature, a window sill fragment from North College with his carved initials. Arthur and many of his classmates were “fined for damage to college property, for being absent from prayers, and for writing in ink in a book,” according to one exhibit note.

Later, while practicing law in New York City, Arthur was influenced by the strong anti-slavery views of his father and of Eliphalet Nott, and he worked on several important anti-discrimination cases.

In 1859, Arthur married Ellen (Nell) Lewis Herndon, an upper-class southerner who died before he became president.

A Republican, Arthur held several positions in New York state government and was nominated to be James Garfield's vice president in 1880. He was sworn in as president on Sept. 20, 1881, a day after Garfield died from a gunshot wound.

Arthur ordered extensive renovations to the White House before and after taking up residence. Interior designer Tiffany (of stained glass fame) and his partners introduced decorative painting and luminous tile and glass work featuring Asian and Islamic influences to many White House rooms.

Arthur's sophisticated taste extended to his appearance. One photo, for instance, shows him at a White House reception in frock coat, dark blue necktie and pearl-tinted glove.

While he appeared robust, Arthur secretly suffered from a terminal kidney ailment. He died on Nov. 18, 1886, a year-and-a-half after leaving office, at his home in New York City. He is buried near his wife in the Albany Rural Cemetery in Menands, N.Y., some 20 miles from his alma mater. 

In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered a complete interior redecoration of the White House, eschewing all of Arthur's late 19^th century décor in favor of the neo-classical style compatible with the building's architecture. Aside from a few vases, china and fireplace irons, no Tiffany decorations were preserved.

Still, Chester Arthur's legacy lives on. As Seligman observes: “His impression of sophistication, polish and style were so strong that it set him apart from those presidents before and after him.” 

Note: A closing reception for “The Elegant President” will be held Thursday, Sept. 28, 5-7 p.m., at the Nott Memorial.

Posted on Aug 28, 2006

When Amy Bass '06 took Professor Kara Doyle's Senior Seminar on Jane Austen, she knew she had found a topic for her senior thesis.

“I read Emma one summer on my own, but taking the Austen seminar with Professor Doyle greatly influenced my decision to write my senior thesis on Austen” says Bass. “My Jane Austen thesis was the most worthwhile experience of my undergraduate career.”

The thesis has also helped Bass get her own work published. The English major from Needham, Mass., recently won first prize in the undergraduate division of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) Essay Contest for a selection of her senior honors thesis titled, “'You Have Shown Yourself Very, Very Different': Mansfield Park's Radically Reserved Heroine.”

The prize includes free membership to JASNA and an all-expenses paid trip to Loew's Canyon Resort in Tucson, Ariz., for the group's annual meeting in October.

“I'm looking forward to meeting one of the speakers at the meeting,” says Bass. “Claudia Johnson was one of the main Austen critics I cited in my senior thesis.”

Founded in 1979, JASNA has approximately 3,000 members. Most are professional scholars or well-read amateurs from across the U.S. and Canada, though Janeites are represented from 13 other countries, stretching from Japan to the Netherlands.

This was the 15^th year for the essay contest, which attracted 75 entries. Judges of the contest include professors and Austen experts. Bass was encouraged to apply by Annette LeClair, associate librarian and head of technical services at Union. LeClair is a member of JASNA and will be attending the conference in October.

Associate Professor of English Kara Doyle served as an advisor on the essay.

“Professor Doyle has a knack for asking the tough questions. She encouraged me to look deeper into the text, the criticism and my own ideas of Austen,” says Bass.

The essay has been published online and can be viewed from JASNA's website, www.jasna.org.

Bass was also the recipient of the College's William F. Allen (1895) Essay Prize this year for her full-length thesis, which offered a critical reassessment of women's roles in the novels of Jane Austen. Her advisor was Professor Bernhard H. Kuhn, director of the honors English thesis. The prize is awarded annually to a senior in any department for a non-fiction essay.

Bass was a writing tutor for three years in the College's Writing Center.

She will soon head to University College London to pursue a graduate degree in English. She plans to become an English professor.

Posted on Aug 24, 2006

Gazing at the sky was required this summer for a number of Union students and visitors from other colleges who used the world's largest telescope to search for hidden galaxies and galaxy interactions.

The group operated the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico from computers in Room N304 of Science & Engineering via a remote observation system.

“Students controlled the telescope through an Internet connection,” said Rebecca Koopmann, associate professor of physics and astronomy. “They targeted an area of the sky with a relatively high density of galaxies to search for evidence that the galaxies are interacting with one another.”

Koopmann is the recipient of an NSF grant that funded a two-day ALFALFA (Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA) Undergraduate Workshop in July. (ALFA, a new detector at the Arecibo Observatory, stands for Arecibo L-Band Feed Array.)

The workshop was part of the ALFALFA survey, a large project to map one-sixth of the sky at radio wavelengths appropriate for the detection of neutral hydrogen gas in other galaxies.

The survey itself will last six years and is expected to detect as many as 20,000 galaxies as far away as 750 million light years.

“One of the main goals is to discover low mass, ‘starless' galaxies, which contain hydrogen gas but have not formed stars,” said Koopmann, who has joined with astronomers from around the world on the collaboration.

Union hosted the first ALFALFA workshop last summer. 

“The NSF grant supports my involvement in the project's first two years and was specifically written to include undergraduate outreach for the project,” said Koopmann.

One of some 50 astronomers from 34 institutions in 13 countries involved in the project, she is spending this academic year on sabbatical at Cornell University, where many of the scientists are based. In conjunction with the NSF, Cornell operates the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, including the Arecibo Observatory.

On the Union campus this summer, the 26 student and faculty workshop participants included Michael Gillin '08, Bilal Mahmood '08 and Jay Read '07 (all of whom took part last year), and 10 other undergraduates and their advisors from Colgate, Cornell, Lafayette, Rochester Institute of Technology, St. Lawrence, Skidmore, Wellesley and Wesleyan.

 “Modern astronomical projects involve large collaborations, which is something we wanted our students to experience,” Koopmann said. “The remote observing is collaboratively planned and proposed by the students in the same way as any other professional observation at Arecibo. On top of that, it's a fun and memorable experience for the students to observe with the largest telescope in the world.”

As the largest single-aperture telescope ever constructed (the huge “dish” is 1,000 feet in diameter and 167 feet deep and covers about 20 acres), the visually striking Arecibo telescope has starred in two films – Contact and the James Bond thriller, Golden Eye. 

Union students and their peers spent weeks planning their research before the actual observations took place, then jointly wrote and submitted a proposal for the observing time to Arecibo Director Robert Brown.

They continued to analyze data throughout the summer.

“It was a great opportunity to see how real scientific research is conducted,” said Mahmood, “and to work with other professionals in the field.”  

Posted on Aug 24, 2006

Off the Beaten Path

If you live and die by status, if the name Harvard, Yale, Stanford or Penn must hang etched in sheepskin on your wall, then read no further. There is nothing we can do for you here. The demographic bulge of college-age students has made the journey to a top-tier campus the most arduous, angst-ridden an 18-year-old can make.

“If you decide that there's only one place to go to college and it's Harvard, you are setting yourself up for rejection,” says Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

There are more than 2,500 four-year colleges and universities in the United States – an educational landscape unmatched anywhere in the world – yet only 25 or so of the usual suspects end up on high school seniors' lists. Higher education experts have this message for those squabbling over a handful of spots: you're probably not going to room with the next president anyway. Pay less attention to prestige and more to “fit” – the marriage of interests and comfort level with factors like campus size, access to professors, instruction philosophy. In their caliber of undergraduate teaching, many lesser-known campuses, in their opinion, are on equal or near-equal footing with brand-name universities, and in some ways are more three-dimensional.

“My view is that there is a very modest to zero correlation between general academic prestige and the quality of undergraduate experience available to students,” says Lee S. Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. “Those seeking hidden gems are very wise, especially if they are committed to coming to a campus and becoming very active students, taking advantage of faculty office hours, undergrad research experiences and the like.”

Colleges, too, want a more prominent seat at the national admissions table, and have been building up campuses, luring new faculty members and trying to raise academic standards.

“The difference in faculty quality between institutions is much smaller than ever,” Mr. Shulman says, “and the opportunities for students in smaller, less prestigious institutions has never been greater.”

Mr. Nassirian agrees: “There are numerous institutions that may not be household names or have the resonance of the Ivies but offer superb and sometimes better undergraduate experiences. But people are mesmerized with the usual suspects.”

Even the notion that a prestige degree unlocks doors and leads to higher earnings has been challenged. A 1999 study by Alan B. Krueger of Princeton and Stacy Dale of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation found that students who were admitted to both selective and moderately selective colleges earned the same no matter which they attended. The study suggested that the motivation and drive of the student mattered more than the college.

As parents and counselors clamor for relief from the high-stakes admissions battles, a handful of guides have thrown the spotlight on lesser-known colleges. “Far too often the conversation is about the inability to get in anywhere,” says Martha McConnell, an editor of “Colleges That Change Lives,” a 1996 book by Loren Pope profiling 40 oft-overlooked but worthy campuses. The concept of “hidden gems” has gained so much currency that the 40 have formed the C.T.C.L. coalition and promote themselves as a unit at college fairs. But, Ms. McConnell says, the Ivies-or-bust mentality is “a shame that tends to still be the way we think.”

Of course, whether a campus is known or not depends on vantage point. The Claremont Colleges, a consortium of seven institutions near Los Angeles, have long drawn the admiration of cognoscenti west of the Mississippi; two of the colleges, Pomona and Claremont McKenna, are now among the nation's most elite. Who outside of California can name the other five? Likewise, Grinnell and Carleton are selective institutions that are no secret to academic pundits, rankings-makers and high-achieving Midwesterners.

But stealth powerhouses outside the Northeast “simply don't have the brand names,” says David W. Breneman, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia and an expert on the economics of private colleges. Many “simply don't have the application pressure that the Eastern schools have.” So the Midwest is dotted with liberal arts opportunities. The West, in its relative youth, lacks the East's private school tradition but has a strong public presence.

The following colleges, compiled with help from a dozen higher education experts and counselors, stress undergraduate teaching, have established or rising scholarship, even if they come up short on standardized test scores, and are alternatives to the usual suspects. They're not a good fit for everyone, and represent just a small sample of America's riches. There are only so many miles a family can cover on campus visits. But from Ann Arbor, it's an hour and a half to Kalamazoo; from Berkeley to Oakland, 15 minutes.

UNION COLLEGE Schenectady, N.Y.

Undergraduates: 2,150

Acceptance rate: 47 percent

That's Union as in the union of science, particularly engineering, and the humanities. Consider this year's valedictorian, Mark Weston, who majored in computer science with a minor in classics. The salutatorian, Marisa Zarchy, was a biology major with a double minor in chemistry and art. More than 150 years ago, Union was one of the big four – right up there with Harvard, Yale and Princeton – before losing ground amid a scandal over college finances. Union began a revival in the early 1900's with the addition of an electrical engineering program, tapping a relatively new technology. Three years ago, Union embarked on another experiment. Worried that Greek life was dominating campus (the country's three oldest fraternities were founded at Union), administrators created the Minerva houses, after the Roman goddess of wisdom. Students, about 300 each, and professors are assigned to one of seven houses, where they study, hold discussion groups and just hang out; upperclassmen can live in the houses. Mr. Herndon-Brown lauds the new social climate for letting Union's “academic richness” shine through.