Posted on Apr 19, 2007

Gretchel Hathaway Tyson, director of Affirmative Action and Community Outreach, was invited to present at Sage College’s Diversity Leadership Conference in Albany earlier this month. Her lecture was titled "Teachable Moments: Responding to Uncomfortable Situations."

The Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal devoted its March issue to a paper by Robert Baker, the William D. Williams Professor of Philosophy and chair of the Rapaport Ethics Across the Curriculum Initiative, and Laurence McCullough of the Baylor College of Medicine. The paper, "Medical Ethics’ Appropriation of Moral Philosophy: The Case of the Sympathetic and Unsympathetic Physician," uses historical examples to challenge the conventional representation of the relationship between philosophy and medical ethics.

In addition, Baker recently became the director of the Union Graduate College-Mount Sinai School of Medicine Bioethics Program when the Mount Sinai Board of Trustees approved an agreement to offer a graduate program in bioethics with Union Graduate College.

In March, one of Baker’s students, Katherine Matho ’07, presented a paper, "International Bioethics and Physician Force-Feeding of Detainees at Guantánamo Bay" at the 10th Annual National Undergraduate Bioethics Conference at Michigan State University.

Brenda Wineapple, the Doris Zemurray Professor of Modern Literary and Historical Studies, has published an essay, "The Politics of Politics; or, How the Atomic Bomb Didn’t Interest Gertrude Stein and Emily Dickinson," in the South Central Review.  The essay is based on the invited talk Professor Wineapple delivered at Yale University’s Biography Conference in fall 2005. 

Posted on Apr 19, 2007

 A biting wind blew across the Union College campus Tuesday evening, making it feel like it was freezing. 
   The wind made it impossible to light candles at a vigil for victims of Monday’s massacre on the Virginia Tech campus hundreds of miles away. Still, more than 300 people came out to pay their respects and ultimately lock arms and encircle the Nott Memorial in solidarity with their fellow students in Blacksburg.
   “It’s pretty cold outside,” Union College senior Charles Holiday noted to the crowd, “but I can’t imagine how cold those parents feel knowing their children aren’t coming back.”
   Holiday spoke as a student, but also as a victim of campus violence. He was stabbed in February 2006 in a racially motivated incident while visiting Cornell University. His attacker is in prison.
   Students attending Tuesday night’s vigil joined those from colleges around the country in honoring those who died at Virginia Tech. Thirty-two students and faculty members were killed in the bloodshed, the worst mass shooting in the country’s history. The gunman also killed himself.
   The Union College vigil was planned by several students, including ceremony leader Brian Gulask, a senior from Rochester.
   He described the scene he saw from the top of the Nott’s east steps, students who may not even know each other coming together. “It’s horrible that it comes to this type of event for that to happen,” he said.
   Also on the steps was a maroon and orange Virginia Tech flag and sweatshirt. Union residence life Director Todd Clark proudly wore his Tech sweatshirt as he spoke to the crowd. He is a 1995 Virginia Tech graduate.
   He repeated accounts of heroism in the ordeal. Resident adviser Ryan Clark “ran into the fire” responding to the initial disturbance at the residence hall. He was one of two people killed there. Professor Liviu Librescu also “ran into the fire” by holding off the shooter as his students escaped. He died also.
   “More so than ever in my life, I am a proud member of the Virginia Tech community,” Todd Clark said.
   Clark read e-mails he’s received from friends. He choked up over a line in one letter from a friend and staff member in the alumni office at Virginia Tech: “I never thought I’d listen to my son utter the words, ‘Is my daddy dead?’ ”
   He read the line as his own 2-year-old son, Owen, donning his miniature Hokie sweatshirt, wandered around his feet.
   Then there was Schenectady resident Paul Farrell, a 1949 graduate of Virginia Tech, who climbed the east entrance stairs to express his pride as a graduate.
   Farrell told the crowd he studied engineering in the same Norris Hall where most of the killings took place 60 years later. He’s lived in this area for 40 years.
   Union College President Stephen Ainlay is in California, but sent a letter commending the students for their show of support.
   Following the vigil, hundreds locked arms around the memorial at a nearly 50 foot radius from the building.
   Afterward, sophomores Tony Morello of Greenwich, Conn., and Brett Huntley of Kingsboro, Mass., said they came out simply to show support.
   They came from a play rehearsal they cut short so they all could attend.
   “We all decided that this was more important,” Morello said. “We just wanted to give as much as we can to the families of everyone in Virginia.
   “It’s a terrible, terrible tragedy.”

Posted on Apr 19, 2007

Virginia Tech graduate student Frank Arcuri had just finished a 90-minute defense of his master's thesis and left the building next door to the site of Monday's massacre minutes before a gunman opened fire.

The 24-year-old Union College alumnus from Utica was walking to his grad assistant office on Main Street shortly after 9:30 a.m., a five-minute walk away from the bloody siege inside Norris Hall, at roughly the same time the carnage was taking place.

Arcuri did not hear any gunshots and had no idea what was happening until he saw a stream of police cars and ambulances racing down Main Street past his office.

"I'm just numb. It hasn't really sunk in yet," said Arcuri, who spoke by phone Tuesday afternoon from his office. With the names of the victims still being released, he had just learned that he knew a professor and a graduate student who were among the 32 killed by a gunman who turned the gun on himself, bringing the death toll to 33.

"It's a very somber atmosphere on campus," Arcuri said.

Earlier Tuesday, he walked across campus with a few other grad students, stopping at makeshift memorials, sharing stories and impromptu displays of grief and mourning with fellow Hokies.

"It's quiet, gloomy and eerie," he said.

The aftermath of the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history carried grim echoes of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, which occurred when Arcuri was a freshman at Union College. That cataclysmic event set him on his career path.

"I had the same feeling yesterday as on 9/11," he said. "It just didn't seem real. It was all chaos and confusion."

Similarly, Monday's deadly violence managed to bring out the best in people. "'This has brought everyone together like on 9/11. Every shop window has signs of support. People stop to talk and ask how you're doing. Nobody's walking alone today," he said.

Another sad reminder of 9/11 was a profusion of Internet message boards seeking information about students not yet accounted for.

"It really hit me when you see those message boards and there's no response, there are more messages left and still no response," he said.

Arcuri will graduate in May from Virginia Tech with a master's degree in civil engineering. His concentration is in construction management.

In August, he'll start work for Fluor Corp. at ground zero, rebuilding the World Trade Center destroyed in the 9/11 attacks on the twin towers.

"I came to Virginia Tech to do construction management to get on a project that mattered and to make a difference," he said. "There's no bigger project in the world than rebuilding ground zero."

Arcuri grew up in Utica. His mom, Wanda, works for the Utica school district and his dad, Frank, is a retired city firefighter. He followed his sister, Michelle, to Schenectady. A 2003 Union graduate, she works for the state and lives in Albany.

Arcuri graduated magna cum laude in 2005 with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering at Union. A 6-foot-1 right-hander, he was a starting pitcher on the Union baseball team. He plans to return to Schenectady this weekend with other baseball player alumni to watch the Dutchmen play RPI two games, Saturday and Sunday.

Arcuri spent Monday and Tuesday answering dozens of worried e-mail messages and cellphone calls from family, friends, Union alumni and his girlfriend, Alicia Gifford, a 2006 Union grad who is an actuary in Stamford, Conn.

"It's hard being 600 miles away from family when something like this happens," he said. "I've wondered why the gunman chose that building and realize it could have been me."

Arcuri chose Virginia Tech for grad school not only because of its top-ranked civil engineering program, but because the locale reminded him of upstate New York.

"It seemed secluded and safe, up in the mountains," he said. "You never know what might happen."

For Arcuri, Monday began with a sense of elation. His master's defense went well and a professor told him to "prepare for a celebration."

The day ended in mourning.

"It's going to be really hard and uncomfortable here for the next three weeks, dealing with this and waiting for graduation to come," he said.

Posted on Apr 18, 2007

William R. Grant ’49, venture capitalist, investment banker, philanthropist and longtime Union benefactor whose name graces the Office of Admissions, passed away on Sunday, April 15. He was 82.

Grant earned a B.S. in chemistry at Union and a master's degree in economics from New York University in 1960. He received an honorary LL.D. from Union in 1983.

He was named an Emeritus Trustee in 1992 following 18 years of service on the College’s Board of Trustees. 

In 1999, Union presented him with the coveted Alumni Gold Medal for his distinguished service to the College.

“I know I speak for many when I express my deep appreciation for Bill Grant’s support, dedication and generosity to this College through the years,” said President Stephen C. Ainlay. “It is people like Bill who embody Union’s spirit and its values.”

Said Dominick F. Famulare ’92, director of Alumni Relations: “We have lost a loyal son of Union who will surely be missed by all who knew him.”

Grant had a half century of experience in the investment banking and risk-capital fields. He was the vice chairman and co-founder, in 1989, of Galen Associates in New York, a $1 billion venture capital firm focusing solely on the health-care industry. Galen has financed and assisted in the development of some 45 health-care companies.

“The firm has helped me to create interesting medical devices, services and drugs for society,” Grant said in a 2003 interview for Accolades, the magazine that chronicles the $200 million “You are Union” campaign. “I like building effective management teams. I’ve always had a diverse intellectual curiosity, an eclectic curiosity.”

Grant spent 25 years with Smith Barney, where he was elected president and then vice chairman. He is a former director of SmithKline Beecham, the pharmaceutical manufacturer (now GlaxoSmithKline). He also served as chairman of New York Life International and president and chairman of MacKay-Shields Financial Corp., and he served on the boards of Advanced Medical Optics Inc., Massey Energy Co., Quest Diagnostics, Vasogen Inc. and other private companies.

He was a Trustee Emeritus of the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust and a member of the General Electric Equity Advisory Board.

At Union, Grant played basketball and lacrosse. Among his most memorable moments, he told Accolades, were making the winning basket against Trinity in his last basketball game and going on lacrosse trips. “Coach Fred Wyatt always thought we were better than we were,” he said. “We lost one game 23-0. Unfortunately, I was the goaltender.”

Grant funded the rehabilitation of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity house, now Grant Hall for Admissions.

His philanthropy included many other educational causes, as well. He donated substantial free time and funds for support of inner city schools and created a grant for poetry.

“The best way to communicate with children is poetry,” he once said. “They come out of their shadows, but you must participate.”

In his spare time, Grant played tennis, squash and golf. He liked to read histories.

Grant’s death comes after a year’s illness from metastatic melanoma. He is survived by his wife, Adele (Reilly); daughters Deborah Grant and Elise Grant Seeley Lauinger; son Byron A. Grant; and two grandchildren. He is predeceased by his wife of 43 years, Dorothy Annetta Grant; son Gregory Scott Grant; and daughter Melissa Grant Davis.

Posted on Apr 17, 2007

The Alpha of New York Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa at Union College, established in 1817, recently admitted 30 new members. The chapter along with the East Asian Studies Program and Department of Economics hosted a talk from Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Thomas G. Rawski Thursday, April 19.

Rawski, professor of economics and history at the University of Pittsburgh since 1985, presented “What Can Economists Learn from China’s Long Boom?”

His research focuses on the nature and implications of recent developments, and long term changes, in the economy of China and he teaches courses on the Economics of China, Japan and East Asia. He has published in a wide variety of journals and his book, with co-author William W. Keller, entitled “China and the Balance of Influence in Asia” is forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press.

John Myers, catalog librarian at Schaffer Library and chapter secretary for Phi Betta Kappa stated, “I am profoundly impressed by both the outstanding accomplishments of our nominees and [the faculty’s] roles in their attainment. College and campus alike are blessed by your mutual presence and efforts.”

Five members from the class of 2008 were elected this year: Kaitlin A. Canty, Dionna M. Kasper, Michelle Elyse Koo, Ali A. Qureshi and Jacquelyn N. Raftery. Inductees from the class of 2007 include Kelly L. Bayne, Alessandro Carini, Carolyn A. Castagna, Jessica M. DiMarco, Risa C. Dubow, Colin W. Foard, Sean P. Geary, Michael A. Grady, Kathryn M. Grant, Brian C. Gulack, Leigh Ann Holterman, Robert F. Larimore, Carli A. McNeill, Cara M. Murphy, Alexandra R. Paul, Brianne E. Phillips, Lindsay C. Quereau, Gnana S. Simon, Nathaniel R. Standish, Jessica L. Steger, Kaitlyn M. Tagarelli, Kelly M. Testa, Albert W. Vanderlaan, Jonathan R. Young and Christopher T. Zona.

The group joins Craig S. Ferguson ’07 and Julia A. Mathew ’07 who were elected last year.