New buildings highlight bright future
Two wonderful new facilities came on line during the winter term at Union. One of these is the new Taylor Music Center, located in the renovated North Colonnade and celebrated in this issue. The other is the new Center for Bioengineering and Computational Biology in the newly renovated Butterfield Hall, which will be featured in an upcoming magazine. Walking through both spaces, one is reminded of what is so special about Union. Both represent state-of-the-art facilities. Taylor is an “All-Steinway” facility, a designation that tells the world that we are committed to the highest standards and serious about what we do here. Bioengineering bristles with sophisticated equipment, saying much the same thing about the work being done there. Both buildings provide the space necessary for close interaction between faculty and students, the cornerstone of a Union education.
The opening of these two important academic facilities once again reminds us of the genius of Union’s simultaneous commitment to the arts, humanities, social and natural sciences, and engineering. To tour these two facilities is to know the range of intellectual inquiry that takes place at Union. It is hard to imagine a prospective student leaving Union after seeing these new facilities without feeling excited and buoyed by the possibilities for discovery at this College.
While Union didn’t have a professor of music until 1926, during the administration of President Charles Alexander Richmond, the College graduated alumni who made enormous musical contributions. I am reminded of this every time I leave the President’s House and walk past Payne Gate, named after John Howard Payne, Class of 1812, author of “Home Sweet Home.” The portrait of George Washington Doane, Class of 1818, adorns one of the walls in the President’s House, reminding me of the enormous contributions of this noted hymnologist. The musical offerings of other Union alumni are well known to the world: Daniel Butterfield’s (Class of 1849) “Taps” and Edmund Hamilton Sears’ (Class of 1834) “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” are just two examples that immediately come to mind. At the same time the College produced these graduates, it produced others who were building great bridges, digging great tunnels, constructing great cities, and even starting new academic fields of study. What an amazing range of endeavors, what amazing graduates, and what an amazing college.
We can all be proud of this past and we should be as excited about what is happening at Union today. Like the prospective student who tours the new Taylor Music Center or the Bioengineering Center, we should be even more excited about the possibilities of our future. It’s a pretty simple equation: great facilities + world class faculty + talented students = exciting future. I, for one, am excited to be part of it all and can’t wait to see our next chapter unfold.