Posted on Aug 22, 2006

Union College is among the 25 “best neighbor” urban colleges and universities who are being recognized for their positive economic and social benefit to their communities.

The list of “Saviors of our Cities'' includes the University of Southern California, the University of Pennsylvania and George Washington University. It was compiled by Dr. Evan Dobelle, president of the New England Board of Higher Education and former president of Trinity College in Hartford.

Schools were selected based on 10 criteria, including the institution's longstanding involvement with its urban community; the real dollars invested through its foundations and annual budgets; the presence felt from payroll, research and purchasing power; and faculty and student involvement in community service.

“We have a long and solid relationship with the City and the Capital Region more generally and will continue to look for opportunities to partner,'' said Union President Stephen C. Ainlay.

“We are very gratified by this recognition of the College's contributions. Much of this credit goes to former president Roger Hull, who understood early on that the interests of the College and the city of Schenectady and the region are inextricably linked.''

A report commissioned by Union and completed by the Capital District Regional Planning Commission in August 2004 concluded that Union's positive economic impact on Schenectady County exceeds $185 million annually; the impact on New York state tops $211 million each year.

Union employs roughly 800 people with a total annual payroll of $36 million. According to the report, Union's direct and indirect impact on annual employment in the county accounts for more than 1,700 jobs.

Recent construction projects at the College have totaled more than $38 million, including the renovation of the former Ramada Inn into a residence hall and conference center,  remediation of the associated brownfields and revitalization of the College Park neighborhood.

 The list:

1. University of Southern California – Los Angeles, California

2. University of Pennsylvania – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

3. University of Dayton – Dayton, Ohio

4. IUPUI – Indianapolis, Indiana

5. Rhode Island School of Design – Providence, Rhode Island

6. Case-Western University – Cleveland, Ohio

7. Clark University – Worcester, Massachusetts

8. Virginia Commonwealth University – Richmond, Virginia

9. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee – Milwaukee, Wisconsin

10. Emerson College – Boston, Massachusetts

11. Trinity College – Hartford, Connecticut

12. University of Chicago – Chicago, Illinois

13. Mercer University – Macon, Georgia

14. Middlesex Community College – Lowell, Massachusetts

15. George Washington University – Washington, DC

16. Carnegie-Mellon University – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

17. Portland State University – Portland, Oregon

18. University of Pittsburgh – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

19. College of Charleston – Charleston, South Carolina

20. Springfield College – Springfield, Massachusetts

21. Emory University – Atlanta, Georgia

22. Union College – Schenectady, New York

23. University of Missouri – Kansas City – Kansas City, Missouri

24. Miami-Dade College – Miami, Florida

25. Creighton University – Omaha, Nebraska

“The extraordinary efforts of these and other colleges have made higher education one of the great growth industries in America,'' Dobelle said, “and have given a sense of confidence and hope as well as stability to cities that would otherwise be struggling in a world of mergers, downsizing and global outsourcing that has eroded the traditional urban economic base.”

Union College is also included in the top tier of the country's leading liberal arts colleges, according to U.S. News and World Report's annual rankings. The College is ranked 39th out of 215 schools in the 2007 edition of America's Best Colleges. Last month, the New York Times included the College in its list of 20 “hidden gems” in the higher education landscape.

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Posted on Aug 18, 2006

Union College is included in the top tier of the country's leading liberal arts colleges, according to U.S. News and World Report's annual rankings.

The College is ranked 39^th out of 215 schools in the 2007 edition of America's Best Colleges (issued Monday, Aug. 21). Highlights of the rankings are also included in the magazine's Aug. 28 issue.

The College was ranked 36^th last year and 40^th two years ago.

“We are pleased, of course, to once again be listed among the best national liberal arts colleges,'' said Union President Stephen C. Ainlay. “Even a cursory review of the list should impress upon readers the vast array of educational opportunities available to today's students.

“Small movement, either up or down, within the list says more about the tight clustering of schools than actual differences between them,'' Ainlay said.

Schools were ranked based on such key measures of quality as peer assessment, graduation and retention rates, faculty resources and student selectivity.

The only other liberal arts school in the region to be included among the top 50 was Skidmore.

But as is true of other listings, Ainlay observed, “some component measures in the U.S. News and World Report scoring system provide us with useful comparative guideposts that help us gauge our educational programs. 

“Every institution must weigh the significance of each composite measure to its educational mission,'' he said.

U.S. News also singled out Union's engineering program this year, placing it 20^th among undergraduate institutions accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology. Last year, the program ranked 21^st.

The first liberal arts college to introduce engineering in 1845, Union today leads the way in making sure its graduates are at home in both worlds under its Converging Technologies program.

The College is setting itself apart in other ways. The school does not offer a business major, yet students get a crash course in how the principles of entrepreneurship are at home in disciplines such as the Classics, Engineering and English. And this fall, the College will weave ethics lessons into existing courses across the curriculum.

This also marks the third year of the College's innovative Minerva system, in which all students are assigned to one of seven houses to live, learn, interact with faculty and enjoy a range of social activities together.

The recognition from U.S. News follows other publications that recently have lauded Union's academic quality.

The 2007 Kaplan/Newsweek “How to Get into College” guide includes Union among “America's 369 Most Interesting Schools,'' and in July, the New York Times included the College in its list of 20 “hidden gems” in the higher education landscape. The current issue of Washington Monthly also ranks Union in the top half of best liberal arts schools in the country.

The latest honors come at a time when Union enjoyed a record-breaking year in Admissions, including the largest number of applicants in the College's 211-year history. Nearly 4,400 students applied for 563 spots in the Class of 2010. In addition, more students than in years past selected Union as their first choice.

“We are proud that many of the nation's best and brightest are choosing Union more than ever before,'' said Union Dean of Admissions Dan Lundquist. “Union is pleased to continue to be one of the top-ranked colleges in the country, in the company of many superb schools.”

Union College, founded in 1795 as the first college chartered by the New York State Board of Regents, offers programs in the liberal arts and engineering to 2,100 undergraduates.

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Posted on Aug 15, 2006

Two Union College professors led a panel discussion on “Feminism and Ambition: Obstacles to Women's Achievement,” as part of a special visit Thursday by C-SPAN2's Book TV bus tour.

More than two dozen people participated in the event, which was held in the Sadock Women's and Gender Studies Center, Room 301, Reamer Campus Center.

Political science professors Richard L. Fox and Lori Jo Marso discussed their recent books on the topic and took questions from the audience.

Fox is the author of “It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don't Run for Office,'' (Cambridge University Press), co-authored by Jennifer L. Lawless, a Union alum and professor at Brown University who is also seeking a Congressional seat in Rhode Island. The book uses a national survey of 3,800 “potential candidates” to conclude that despite a number of high-profile women in office, including Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, there remains a wide gender gap in political ambition.

The authors demonstrate that women's attitudes about seeking political office are not determined by strategic opportunities, but instead by other factors, including early socialization and the role of family members. The result is that women are less likely than men to run for office, to be recruited to run for office and think they are even qualified to run for office.

Marso is the author of the just-published “Feminist Thinkers and the Demands of Femininity: The Lives and Work of Intellectual Women,” (Routledge). Her book examines the lives and works of historical and contemporary feminists, including Simone de Beauvoir and Ana Castillo, and how these thinkers have strived to balance politics, intellectual work and the material conditions of femininity.

Marso, who also directs the Women's and Gender Studies program at Union, argues that the theories of these feminists should not be divorced from the struggles and contradictions of their actual lives. The book also analyzes the memoirs of contemporary feminist thinkers to show that feminists struggle with the same difficulties today that were encountered by the women who came before.

Thursday's discussion coincided with an appearance by C-SPAN2's Book TV Bus, which was parked outside the Reamer Campus Center. Visitors were allowed to tour the studio inside the 45-foot long bus, participate in an interactive demonstration about Book TV programming and learn how a television show is produced.

Book TV features non-fiction programming each weekend, including author interviews, readings and coverage of panels at bookstores, libraries and college campuses across the country.

Book TV is carried by Time Warner Cable on Channel 52.

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