Posted on Feb 6, 2008

Brown University President Ruth J. Simmons, a prominent national leader in higher education and the first African-American president of an Ivy League institution, will be the featured speaker at Commencement, College officials announced today.

Approximately 500 students in the Class of 2008 are expected to receive their degrees during the ceremony, scheduled for 10 a.m. Sunday, June 15, on Hull Plaza.

Simmons, who will receive an honorary doctorate in humane letters, is noted for her commitment to diversity and engineering, two key initiatives that are also integral to the Union campus.

At Brown, Simmons has created an ambitious set of initiatives designed to expand and strengthen the faculty; increase financial support and resources for undergraduate, graduate and medical students; improve facilities; renew a broad commitment to shared governance; and ensure that diversity informs every dimension of the university.

Before becoming president of Brown in 2001, Simmons was president of Smith College, the largest women’s college in the United States. While there, she launched a number of strategic initiatives to strengthen the college’s academic programs, including the creation of the first engineering program at an American women’s college.

Union College President Stephen C. Ainlay praised Simmons for her educational vision and leadership.

“I am absolutely thrilled that Ruth Simmons will be our Commencement speaker,” Ainlay said. “She has been an important leader in American higher education for many years and we are honored that she has accepted our invitation.”

Simmons was born in 1945 in Grapeland, Texas, where her family worked as sharecroppers in the cotton fields. It was a time of segregation, and Simmons was told to step aside when a white person approached, and never to answer them back.

“I very quickly became socialized into believing I was worthless,” she recalled in a 2006 interview. “Grapeland was the kind of small, east Texas town where blacks got murdered if they stepped out of line.”

When she was seven, the family moved to Houston, where opportunities opened up.

“People bothered to insist I went to school and I loved it,” she said in the interview. “There was a calm and order that was missing elsewhere in my life. But, above all, there were books. My parents were deeply suspicious about my reading, but for me it opened a window into a different reality, where it was possible for someone like me to be accepted.”

A 1967 graduate of Dillard University in New Orleans, Simmons received her Ph.D. in Romance languages and literatures from Harvard University in 1973. She is fluent in French and has written on the works of David Diop and Aime Cesaire.

In 1983, after serving as associate dean of the graduate school at the University of Southern California, Simmons joined the Princeton University administration. She remained at Princeton for seven years, leaving in 1990 for two years to serve as provost at Spelman College. Returning to Princeton in 1992 as vice provost, she remained at the university until June 30, 1995.

Simmons is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, and the Council on Foreign Relations. She serves on a number of boards, including the Howard University Board of Trustees, Texas Instruments, and the Goldman Sachs Group. She holds honorary degrees from numerous colleges and universities, including Amherst College, Howard University, Princeton University, Dartmouth College and the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Simmons is the recipient of a number of prizes and fellowships, including the German DAAD and a Fulbright Fellowship to France. In 2004 she received the ROBIE Humanitarian Award, given by the Jackie Robinson Foundation; the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Medal; and the chairman’s award of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. She was selected as a Newsweek “person to watch” and as a Ms. Woman of the Year in 2002. In 2001 Time magazine named her America’s best college president. In 2007, she was named one of U. S. News & World Report’s top U.S. leaders and — for the second time — a Glamour magazine Woman of the Year.

She has been a featured speaker at the White House, the World Economic Forum, the National Press Club, the Association of American Universities and the American Council on Education. In September 2001 ABC News tapped her to serve as a respondent during its live telecast following President Bush’s address to Congress.

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 of high academic promise and strong personal motivation. Union, with its long history of blending disciplines, is a leader in educating students to be engaged, innovative, and ethical contributors to an increasingly diverse, global and technologically complex society.

The first liberal arts college to offer engineering, Union will host a national symposium on integrating engineering, technology and the traditional liberal arts May 9-10, 2008.

Posted on Feb 4, 2008

Students will help celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the worldwide V-Day movement with two performances of “The Vagina Monologues” Friday, Feb. 15 at 7 p.m. and Saturday, Feb. 16 at 2 p.m. in the Reamer Campus Center Auditorium.

V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls, has raised more than $50 million through benefit productions of playwright Eve Ensler’s award-winning play.

“The play draws a mixed crowd and is meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek,” said Kaitlin Canty ’08. “But we also address serious issues and things about the female anatomy that aren’t typically talked about.”

Canty, who is returning for her third season, is co-producing the show with Meagan Keenan ’09, this year’s organizer.

Students pull together the 90-minute production in five weeks with only two rehearsals. V-Day guidelines dictate the number of performances allowed and prohibit memorizing the script in an effort to recruit activists instead of theatrical performers.

Director Keegan Peters ’08, a Theater and Philosophy major, is the only student with formal acting training.

This year’s cast also includes: Christina M. Cerqueira ’10, Deanna A. Cox ’10, Elizabeth C. Culp ’10, Rachel R. Curtis ’08, Colleen M. Easton ’09, Katherine Friedman ’10, Dana R. Goldsmith ’10, Ewodaghe Harrell ’10, Genevieve St. Hilaire ’10, Eyleen L. Iraola ’11, Carley S. Jacobson ’10, Emma S. Labrot ’09, Jamie B. Luguri ’10, Victoria A. Mathieu ’11, Tehtena B. Tenaw ’09, Aria D. Walfrand ’11 and Samantha L. Zayas ’10.

The play is open to the public, with tickets $5 in advance and $7 at the door. It is sponsored by the Women’s Union, Union’s Women’s Commission and the Women’s and Gender Studies Program.

Tickets will be on sale, along with hand-made chocolate lollipops, domestic violence awareness bracelets and T-shirts, Feb. 11-15, 10 a.m.-3 p.m., in Reamer. On Valentine’s Day, students can use their declining balances to make a donation in $5 increments.

Ninety percent of the proceeds from the show and merchandise sales benefit the Schenectady YWCA Domestic Violence Shelter. The rest goes to the national V-Day chapter’s charity of choice. This year, the money will benefit women in New Orleans who have been affected by the hurricanes.

For more information, visit http://www.vday.org.

Posted on Feb 4, 2008

Robert Baker, the William D. Williams Professor of Philosophy and program director and professor of Bioethics of the Bioethics Program at Union Graduate College, was recently quoted in the Sunday Gazette in a story on student cheating.

Baker talked about the College's "Ethics Across the Curriculum" initiative, which helps prepare students to face the world of tough decisions and to empower them to exercise moral leadership, by providing extensive training in everyday Ethics. The program is supported through the generosity of Michael Rapaport '59.

To read the story, click here (registration may be required).

Posted on Feb 4, 2008

James Spanfeller '79, the president and CEO of Forbes.com and Mark Walsh '76, CEO of Genius Rocket, recently returned to campus as part of the Chi Psi Leadership Series. They were joined by Peter Handy '79, general partner of Star Media Group.

The Business Review spoke with Spanfeller and Walsh about advice they would give to college seniors looking for a job.

To read the story, click here (may require registration).

Posted on Feb 4, 2008

A theater company that’s been getting rave reviews across the country for helping professors improve multicultural teaching and learning comes to campus March 2-3, thanks to a Mellon Four-College Faculty Development grant.

The University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) Players is an interactive theater group dedicated to engaging faculty in discussions of multicultural teaching and learning and institutional climate.

Their sketches are based on research concerning the experiences of underrepresented students and faculty, such as women faculty and students in science and engineering, students of color, and students with disabilities.

“I have heard rave reviews from colleagues at other colleges who have seen them perform, and I’m thrilled that they are coming to Union,” said Dean of the Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs Therese McCarty.

The Mellon funding means faculty from Colgate University and Hamilton and Skidmore colleges will join their Union colleagues in continuing discussions about diversity that were held last winter at Skidmore. 

The CRLT Players will perform two shows, each about two hours long, in Emerson Auditorium in the Taylor Music Center. 

“Student Conflict in the Classroom” will be held after a dinner on Sunday, March 2.

It focuses on a classroom conversation that turns contentious, exploring questions surrounding students’ backgrounds and conflicting perspectives, instructor responsibility, and what does or does not constitute subject-appropriate discussion in the classroom.

“The Faculty Meeting” is set for the next morning, Monday, March 3. This sketch depicts a faculty discussion involving an important topic (a faculty search) and how gender dynamics and faculty rank influence the conversation and affect the participants. It is designed to improve the recruitment and retention of women faculty in science and engineering.

Department chairs are asked to contact Judy Ludwig (x6102 or ludwigja@union.edu) to report who will represent the department. Other interested faculty members are also encouraged to contact Ludwig.

For more information, visit: (http://www.crlt.umich.edu/theatre/theatre.html).