Posted on Feb 29, 2008

A company that imports fine wines and food from small Italian vineyards for sale in the United States took top honors Thursday night in the college’s annual business plan competition.

The plan by Steve Votto ’08 of Votto Vines Importing LLC beat out six other start-up companies proposed by Union students. Votto receives a free, one-year affiliation with the U-Start Business Incubator and a trip to New York City, where he will spend a night at the Cornell Club and have lunch with a business executive. He also receives a gift certificate from Staples.

Votto Vines Importing, based in Connecticut, plans to also import its products to Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island. The company also provides agritourism packages at selected Italian vineyards.

This marked the third year of the competition, sponsored by the College’s Entrepreneurship Club. Competitors presented a one-minute “elevator pitch’’ and a Powerpoint. The club’s advisor is Hal Fried, the David L. '39 and Beverly B. Yunich Professor of Business Ethics.

Second prize went to Rhe-Aux Technologies, created by Brent Blythe ’08, Margaret Callahan ’09, Cara Gallivan ’09, Nirav Shah ’08 and Steve Walker ’08. The company has designed an auxiliary braking system which can reduce heavy-capacity vehicles’ stopping distances by up to 30 percent.

Third prize went to ComDry, created by Rebecca Damberg-Mauser ’08, Ilya Aspis ’08, Jenna Monaster ’08 and Roni Brumberger ’09. The company produced a solar rice dryer that would modernize rice drying methods in Southeast Asia.

Allison Lacoff ’08, Ryan Cahill ’08, Shauna Keeler ’09 won a Staples gift certificate in the elevator pitch segment for their company, No Hands, which specializes in sinks operated by foot pedals.

Others who competed Thursday included Brittany Adam ’08, Alan Piekara ’09, Samuel Elias ’09, Andrew Kehl ’09 and Jenna Frisch ’09 (Crest Wave Energy Consulting); Jason Bye ’08 (Harmony Sauces); and Laura Eyman ’08, Harley Gorton ’08, Sam Posnock ’08 and Kristy Sonnenberg ’08 (Texture Technology Services).

Judges were Jon Stillman, a member of High Peaks Venture Partners and managing director of Assembla, Inc., an early stage software company; Laura Mann, co-founder of the venture capital firm Glenmont Partners; and Andrew Gibson, CEO of Celery LLC, a Troy firm that designs and markets software that makes a traditional fax machine able to send and receive e-mails, without the need for a computer or an Internet connection.

Posted on Feb 29, 2008

The second Union Notables exhibit opens Monday, March 3 in Schaffer Library Atrium, with the spotlight on laser pioneer Gordon Gould ’41, anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, Class of 1840, and screenwriter and director Phil A. Robinson ’71. The installation will remain up through Aug. 31.

Gould, a physicist, invented and coined the term laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation). He fought a three-decade battle to secure patent rights for the invention he began in 1957 as a graduate student at Columbia University. In 1991, he was elected to the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He died in 2005 at the age of 85.

Born in Aurora, N.Y. in 1818, ethnologist Lewis Henry Morgan was one of the first American scientific theorists in the field of anthropology. Returning to his hometown after graduation, he became interested in Native Americans, in particular the culture of the Iroquois nations and nearby Seneca tribes. He served in both Houses of the New York State Legislature from 1861 to 1869, where he advocated for legislation favorable to Native American tribes. He died in Rochester in 1881.

Robinson, who majored in Political Science, launched his career with his senior project, a documentary on the New Deal Coalition. Since then, he has produced award-winning works in numerous genres. He wrote and/or directed “Field of Dreams,” “Sum of All Fears” and “Sneakers” and co-directed the Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning first segment of HBO’s “Band of Brothers.”

Union Notables features a new trio of prominent alumni and faculty every six months. At the end of each exhibit, the displays are given permanent homes in classrooms, department offices and other campus spaces.

Coming up later this year (Sept. 1 through March 1, 2009): Sue Goldie ’84, public health researcher; John Bigelow, Class of 1835, who created the New York City public library system; and Professor Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865-1923), who was widely regarded as the leading electrical engineer in the United States.

For more information, go to: www.union.edu/Notables.       

Posted on Feb 28, 2008

A company that imports fine wines and food from small Italian vineyards for sale in the U.S. took top honors Thursday night in the college’s annual business plan competition.

The plan by Steve Votto ’08 of Votto Vines Importing LLC beat out six other start-up companies proposed by Union students. Votto receives a free, one-year affiliation with the U-Start Business Incubator and a trip to New York City, where he will spend a night at the Cornell Club and have lunch with a business executive. He also receives a gift certificate from Staples.

Votto Vines Importing, based in Connecticut, plans to also import its products to Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island. The company also provides agritourism packages at selected Italian vineyards.

This marked the third year of the business plan competition, sponsored by the College’s Entrepreneurship Club. The competition consisted of an “elevator pitch,’’ in which students had one minute to present their ideas, and a 15-minute Powerpoint presentation. The club’s advisor is Hal Fried, the David L. '39 and Beverly B. Yunich Professor of Business Ethics.

Second prize went to Rhe-Aux Technologies, created by Brent Blythe ’08, Margaret Callahan ’09, Cara Gallivan ’09, Nirav Shah ’08 and Steve Walker ’08. The company has designed an auxiliary braking system which can reduce heavy-capacity vehicles stopping distances by up to 30 percent.

Third prize went to ComDry, created by Rebecca Damberg-Mauser ’08, Ilya Aspis ’08, Jenna Monaster ’08 and Roni Brumberger ’09. The company produced a solar rice dryer that would modernize rice drying methods in Southeast Asia.

Allison Lacoff ’08, Ryan Cahill ’08, Shauna Keeler ’09 won a Staples gift certificate in the elevator pitch segment for their company, No Hands, which specializes in sinks operated by foot pedals.

Other students who competed Thursday included Brittany Adam ’08, Alan Piekara ’09, Samuel Elias ’09, Andrew Kehl ’09 and Jenna Frisch ’09 (Crest Wave Energy Consulting); Jason Bye ’08 (Harmony Sauces); and Laura Eyman ’08, Harley Gorton ’08, Sam Posnock ’08 and Kristy Sonnenberg ’08 (Texture Technology Services).

Judges were Jon Stillman, a member of High Peaks Venture Partners and managing director of Assembla, Inc., an early stage software company; Laura Mann, co-founder of the venture capital firm Glenmont Partners; and Andrew Gibson, CEO of Celery LLC, a Troy firm that designs and markets software that makes a traditional fax machine able to send and receive e-mails, without the need for a computer or an Internet connection.

The winner of last year’s competition, Second Breath Inc., is one of nine semifinalists in the fifth annual Spirit of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development (SEED) National Collegiate Venture Forum, to be held in March in Santa Barbara.

The company, which offers Cric-Kits to aid in a cricothyroidotomy, an emergency procedure performed on patients suffering from an obstructed airway, was created by Shane Hubbell ’08, Jay Shah ’08 and Gordon Single ’07.

Posted on Feb 28, 2008

It may not look like it, but spring is just a few weeks away, and for many, that means thoughts of the Steinmetz Symposium, Union’s all-campus research festival.

Students planning to take part in the 8th Annual Charles P. Steinmetz Symposium May 2-3 should submit their presentations at http://www.union.edu/Steinmetz  by Thursday, March 6. Each student must have a designated faculty sponsor for her/his presentation.

Faculty members must approve the students’ abstracts by Thursday, March 13.
The spring event showcases students’ scholarly and creative activity, and includes oral and poster presentations, dance and music performances, art exhibits and more.
For general information, visit the Steinmetz Web site at http://www.union.edu/Steinmetz.

Posted on Feb 28, 2008

Ann Miller Marten came into Harry Marten’s life when he was five, marrying his father after his biological mother died.

“She brought her piano and her affection and made our worlds immensely better,” Marten said.

The woman who worked as an administrative assistant at a New York City high school and an advertising firm was “astonishingly organized, remarkably affectionate, very cultured and a fine pianist. Though I probably wasn't the most receptive audience, she shared her interests lovingly, taking me to the Metropolitan Opera and children’s concerts with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic.”

Now 95, Mrs. Marten remembers none of this, having suffered from progressive dementia since her late eighties.

“She lives in a world nobody can reach. I try to create it and imagine what that world would be like,” said Marten, the Edward E. Hale, Jr., Professor of English and chair of the English Department.

Marten’s observations and creative reconstruction of his mother’s dementia will be the focal point for a discussion and reading titled, “If the Sun is Up, It’s the Day,” Thursday, March 6, 4:30 p.m. in Everest Lounge, Hale House.   

The event, free and open to the public, is co-sponsored by the Catholic Chaplaincy and the Human Resources Employee Wellness Program.

Marten will read from “Shadowlands,” his evocative account of coming to grips with dementia in the only mother he has ever known. The essay is online in the August 2006 issue of Inertia magazine.

He also will share passages from his memoir, “But That Didn’t Happen to You: Recollections and Inventions.”  

“This reading will be of special interest to anyone who is a caregiver for a loved one with dementia, like Harry and me,” said Catholic Chaplain Thomas P. Boland Jr., who organized the event. “I believe strongly in the power of narrative to help us plumb the depths of our experience.”

For Marten, that narrative is consuming, as he and his wife, Ginit, care for mothers in advanced stages of dementia. Ann Marten is now in a nursing home in Sterling, Virginia, near her daughter, while Marten’s mother-in-law, Virginia Palmatier, lives in the Kingsway Nursing Home in Schenectady.

“Shadowlands,” subtitled “Portraits in Old Age,” is part of a collection of essays Marten is writing.

“Usually I pick my projects, but this one picked me,” Marten said. “I wanted to understand my mother and know this experience because it was coming at me all the time. The essays will offer voices to my mother and mother-in-law, who are now essentially voiceless. They’re my observations and thoughts, my imagined sense of what their lives are like. Both are inhabiting a kind of shadowland.  

“I wrote it because I couldn’t not write it. I wrote it so I could make a record of it, so others could read and identify.”

For more information about Thursday’s program, contact Chaplain Boland at ext. 6087 or bolandt@union.edu