Posted on Jan 25, 2008

Posted on Jan 24, 2008

Students, faculty and staff will join more than 1,500 campuses Thursday, Jan. 31 for “Focus the Nation,” a national discussion on global warming and sustainability. The campaign challenges 50 faculty members per campus to spend 10 minutes discussing sustainability in their classrooms.

Suggestions may be found at http://www.focusthenation.org/.

Students have organized a water taste-test for Wednesday, Jan. 30 from noon to 2 p.m. in the Reamer Campus Center designed to raise awareness of the environmental costs of drinking bottled water. The test will compare bottled water, filtered tap water and regular tap water; results will be published in the next issue of Concordiensis.

“Because it’s perceived as being ‘hipper’ to drink bottled water, students think they prefer it,” said Jackie Cockburn, visiting instructor of Geology. The test is being organized by students in her Environmental Sciences and Policy Senior Capstone Seminar. “But the environmental cost involves more than just water resources and includes manufacturing the bottles and transporting the product to where it’s sold.”

Union will also present a live, one-hour Webcast, “The 2% Solution” 8 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 30 in Olin 115. This event is free and open to the public.

More than 20 College faculty have pledged to devote all or part of their classroom time to sustainability as well as to carpool, walk or take public transit to campus; bring their own mug to Dutch and Starbucks; and purchase locally-grown produce at the O3 Marketplace and Ozone Café.

In addition to faculty participation from the Biological Sciences, Economics and other related areas, Tim Olsen, associate professor of Music, has focused his Scholars Research Seminar on urban planning this term and will devote a class to sustainability topics. Assistant Professor of Russian Kristin Bidoshi will discuss what the Muscovites and the Russian government are doing in response to environmental issues and teach vocabulary and language relevant to the issue. Philosophy Professor Linda Patrik will discuss the ecological impact of modern technology in her Sophomore Seminar on “Cyberfeminism” and how global warming and other ecological disasters relate to Plato’s theory of the decline of the state in “The Republic.”

Steve Po-Chedley ‘08 is coordinating campus events at http://www.vu.union.edu/~sustain/focus/ which includes links to sustainability efforts at the College as well as a sign-up form and list of faculty who are participating in the “Focus” event.

“This is not just a problem for geologists and environmental scientists,” said Po-Chedley. “Every discipline relates to sustainability and climate change and should incorporate dialogue and initiatives into the curriculum. Students and faculty need to be aware of these parallels.”

Posted on Jan 24, 2008

Students, faculty and staff will join more than 1,500 campuses nationwide Thursday, Jan. 31 for the “Focus the Nation” teach-in for global warming designed to mobilize people beyond the discussion level to demand real solutions.

Focus challenges 50 faculty members on each campus to spend 10 minutes discussing sustainability in their classrooms.

Campus-wide activities kick off Wednesday, Jan. 30 with a live, one-hour Webcast of “The 2% Solution” in the F.W. Olin Center Auditorium at 8 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. Audiences will be invited to weigh in with cell phone voting.

Actor and clean energy advocate Edward Norton will join Stanford University climate scientist Stephen Schneider, green jobs pioneer Van Jones, sustainability expert Hunter Lovins and youth climate leaders in the Webcast discussion of global warming solutions. To access, go to http://www.earthdaytv.net/.

Steve Po-Chedley ’08 is coordinating Union’s student events. He has created a Web site, http://www.vu.union.edu/~sustain/focus/, which includes links to sustainability efforts on campus, a sign-up form and a list of participating faculty.

“This event not only encourages faculty to demonstrate a commitment to and foster an awareness of these imminent problems, it will allow them to reach out to a great deal of students on campus, shedding light on issues of sustainability and climate change,” Po-Chedley said.

Professors from all departments are devoting classroom time to sustainability. Linda Patrik of Philosophy, for instance, will discuss the ecological impact of modern technology in her Sophomore Seminar, “Cyberfeminism,” and talk about how global warming and other ecological disasters relate to Plato’s theory in “The Republic.” 

Students in Suzanne Benack’s Psychology seminar on adolescence will look at how today’s adolescents are responding to the global warming crisis.

And in his course in Animal Physiology, Leo Fleishman of Biology will present material on the widespread extinction of Central American highland frogs that has been directly linked to climate change.

“Global warming has produced ideal growth conditions for a deadly fungus that is responsible for this mass extinction,” Fleishman said. “This story highlights the fact that climate change may impact human and animal populations by favoring the rapid spread of diseases to new locations that were formerly held in check by environmental conditions.”

For those still brainstorming classroom ideas, the following faculty have offered to help others prepare 10 minutes about sustainability: Jaclyn Cockburn, Geology; Jeff Corbin, Biology; John Garver, Geology; Kathleen LoGiudice, Biology; Laura MacManus-Spencer, Chemistry; Seyffie Maleki, Physics; Andrew Morris, History; and Richard Wilk, Mechanical Engineering.

“This is not just a problem for geologists and environmental scientists,” said Po-Chedley. “Every discipline, from physics to anthropology to psychology, relates to sustainability and climate change. Students need to be aware of these parallels.”

Students in Cockburn’s Environmental Sciences and Policy Senior Capstone Seminar are organizing a water taste-test for Wednesday, Jan. 30, noon-2 p.m. in Reamer Campus Center to raise awareness about the environmental costs of drinking bottled water. 

All Focus the Nation participants are encouraged to register at: http://www.vu.union.edu/~sustain/focus.php.   Other information is available at:  http://www.focusthenation.org/.

Posted on Jan 24, 2008

Second Breath Inc., a business group created by Union students, will participate in its second major entrepreneurial competition.

The company, created by Shane Hubbell ’08, Jay Shah ’08 and Gordon Single ’07, was named one of 10 semifinalists in the fifth annual Spirit of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development (SEED) National Collegiate Venture Forum.

Second Breath is offering Cric-Kits to aid in a cricothyroidotomy, an emergency procedure performed on patients suffering from an obstructed airway.

The SEED competition was sponsored by TechKnowledge Point, a California company that runs a subscription Web site, http://www.EntrePoint.com, which assesses colleges on their entrepreneurship education. SEED finals will be held in March in Santa Barbara.  

Shah and Hubbell, who are both majoring in biology and economics, are Second Breath's acting CFO and acting CEO, respectively. Single, who majored in mechanical engineering, is acting COO.  

Second Breath placed second in the Tech Valley Collegiate Business Plan contest last year and took top honors at Union’s annual business plan competition, sponsored by the College’s Entrepreneurship Club.

Posted on Jan 24, 2008

An article by Professor of Mechanical Engineering Frank Wicks, “50 Years of Nuclear Power,” was published in the November 2007 issue of “Mechanical Engineering.” It explains how the first nuclear-fueled electric power plants were inspired by the Atoms for Peace proposal that President Dwight Eisenhower delivered to the United Nations. It describes the types of systems that have dominated the global nuclear industry and notes that a potentially safer and more efficient gas cooled reactor is being designed by a team of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the leadership of Dr. Andrew Kadak '67.

Two works by Peter R. Bedford, the John and Jane Wold Professor of Religious Studies and director of Religious Studies, have been published. “The Persian Near East” appears in The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World (Cambridge University Press, 2007), edited by W. Scheidel, I. Morris and R. Saller. It is one of 28 chapters in this comprehensive survey of the economies of classical antiquity. Bedford’s article, “The Economic Role of the Jerusalem Temple in Achaemenid Judah: Comparative Perspectives” appears “Shai le-Sara Japhet:Studies in the Bible, its Exegesis and its Language,” edited by M. Bar-Asher, N. Wazana, E. Tov and D.Rom-Shiloni (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2007) The volume honors Sara Japhet, professor of Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and former director of the University and National Library.

Hans-Friedrich Mueller, professor and chair of Classics, presented the paper “Spectral Rome from Female Perspective: An Experiment in Recouping Women’s Religious Experience” at the annual meeting of the American Philological Association in Chicago. He uses inscriptions composed by women in honor of their deceased loved ones to test representations in classical texts (composed by men) of women’s beliefs about the afterlife. At that same meeting and in his capacity as North American Section head of the International Plutarch Society, Mueller organized a panel on “Plutarch as Antiquarian and Collector of Oddities.” This panel assembled scholars from the United States as well as the University of Sydney in Australia, University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands, Friedrich-Alexander-University in Erlangen, Germany, and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.