Posted on Feb 4, 2009

Cybil Tribié ’11 began cleaning up the local park on the corner of Park Place and South Avenue as a volunteer during Union’s annual John Calvin Toll Day. But even after she and others spent many hours there, the park was still in poor condition.

The environmental science and policy major from Haiti worked closely with the Kenney Community Center to see what else could be done. Donald Austin, Kenney’s community outreach coordinator, steered her toward the Carter Academic Service Entrepreneur (CASE) Center, a program sponsored by the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Partnership Foundation to recognize excellence in academic service-learning.

Tribié pursued the opportunity and recently was awarded $1,000 for her winning proposal to fix up the small park near campus.

“As long as we are students here, we are also a part of the community, and it is partly our responsibility to maintain it and be an active part of it,” Tribié said. “The park has been neglected for quite some time, but it is right here on our own street.”

Tribié is one of four grant recipients in New York chosen from more than 50 campuses. The grant money will help her buy supplies to clean up the park and make it safe for families and children.

“This project adds another element of cooperation between the College and the community at large,” said Prof. Deidre Hill Butler of Sociology, an advisor to the project.

As a bridge between Union and local residents, the park restoration offers the chance for both groups to work together and learn more – through academic lectures and assignments, and focus group discussions – about the benefits of community-building partnerships.

Other involved groups include the Union College Community Outreach Department, the Park Avenue Community Stewardship Project and the College Park Neighborhood Association. Work is expected to begin on Earth Day, April 22.

“We feel this would be a great day to launch the project since this is about restoring the park to a beautiful condition,” said Tribié.

To get involved, contact the Kenney Center at 388-6609.

Posted on Feb 4, 2009

The crushing demand of the Great Depression in the early 1930s turned many charities in the U.S. from opponents to supporters of public welfare. While in previous years, they argued that charities, not government, were the best source of relief for the impoverished, their inability to meet the unprecedented demands of the unemployed  led them to welcome the creation of the welfare state.

With this transformation came realignment: the public sector would provide the financial safety net, and the voluntary sector would focus on specialized therapy services such as marriage and family counseling.

Linton Swift, president of the Family Welfare Association of America, which represented thousands of community voluntary agencies across the country, was one of those converts who coined the phrase that describes the new division of labor: “New Alignments.”

These new — and ultimately unstable — alignments between charities and welfare through the 1970s is the subject of a new book, "The Limits of Voluntarism: Charity and Welfare from the New Deal through the Great Society" (Cambridge University Press, 2009), by Andrew Morris, assistant professor of history.

By the end of the period studied by Morris, the New Alignments had been eroded by President Johnson’s War on Poverty, new federal policies that infused public money into non-governmental organizations and the competition among charities for donations. Charities now were expected to deliver services previously offered by public agencies, and the stage was set for the current debate over public funding of faith-based charities.

Many charities and nonprofits now rely heavily on public funds, stirring debates over where the line between public and voluntary actually stands; in this earlier era, charities preferred to advocate for welfare, but to keep their own organizations distinct from public programs.

Some of Morris’ most memorable research took place in the basement of one social service agency with records dating back 100 years, as he rooted through minutes of old meetings to try to discern how the agency’s conservative board of directors made their peace with these new social policies.

“Having taken my share of minutes on various committees, I'm keenly aware of how little of what actually gets said, much less the tone of the conversation gets translated into the written record,” Morris said.

He was grateful, he said, any time a writer broke from a tone of organizational neutrality to expose a problem or conflict.

Among Morris' discoveries were records, from the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota, of a 1950s pilot project in St. Paul, Minn., in which charities collaborated with public welfare organizations to deal with what they called “multi-problem families.” The program, which made intensive use of social worker’s counseling skills, was influential in both the voluntary sector and in plans for reform of public welfare. “It amazed me to discover the extensive impact of this one little project,” Morris said.

The cover photo of Morris’ book, courtesy of the University of Minnesota archive, depicts a trio of social workers reading a booklet titled “Patterns of Change in Problem Families.”

Morris joined Union in 2003. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Brown University, and a master’s and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, where he received a Miller Center Fellowship in National Politics. He has published several articles including “The Voluntary Sector’s War on Poverty,” which received the 2006 Ellis Hawley Award for best article by a junior scholar from the Journal of Policy History.

Posted on Feb 4, 2009

A year ago, organizers of the College’s Winter Ball wanted to help victims of HIV/AIDS in Africa.

The event was a huge success, raising nearly $6,000. With help from Robert C. Daly ’71, an executive at Toyota Motor Sales, and a boost from an anonymous donor, the money helped provide a new Land Cruiser for the Foundation for Hospices in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The foundation, which was co-founded by another alum, Phil Di Sorbo ’71, donated the SUV to a hospital in Tanzania on the front lines of the fight for palliative care. The vehicle, decorated with the Union logo, shuttles medical workers and supplies around a region devastated by AIDS.

So what is the College planning for an encore?

This year’s Winter Ball is scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 7, from 8 p.m. to midnight in the College Park Hall Ballroom. Proceeds from the ticket sales ($7 for students, $15 for individuals, $25 for couples) again will go to the Diana Legacy Fund. The fund, which works with the foundation, is named after the late Diana, Princess of Wales, who supported AIDS causes.

Organizers hope to raise enough to help purchase a second vehicle for the region, which encompasses nearly 50 countries south of the Sahara.

“The great thing about collaborating with the Diana Legacy Fund is that a small amount of funds can have a positive effect on a large amount of patients,” said Shanique Kerr ’09, co-chair of UNITAS, who along with the Minervas, is a co-sponsor of the ball. “Since the purchase of the first vehicle, we’ve seen the increase in hospice care in Tanzania. The SUV also provides encouragement for the victims and reminds them that they are not alone in their fight against the spread of HIV/AIDS.”

Through the efforts of Tom McEvoy, associate dean of students and director of Minerva Programs, and James Underwood, the Chauncey H. Winters Research Professor of Political Science, the College has developed a strong partnership with Di Sorbo’s foundation. Jeremy Fritzhand ’10 and Sara Jacobson ’10 are spending the winter term on an Independent Study Abroad that includes an internship at South Coast Hospice in Port Shepstone, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

The College’s commitment to the global community has not gone unnoticed.

At a ceremony last fall presenting the Land Cruiser to Itete Lutheran Hospital, Brighton Kilewa, the secretary general of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania, thanked Union for its help.

“Nearly 90 percent of Lutheran hospitals are in the peripheral areas of the country, where transport is a major stumbling block, but also where palliative care is much needed,” Kilewa was quoted in the Guardian newspaper.

Saturday’s ball is open to all faculty, students, Trustees, staff and other members of the Union community. Dress is semi-formal. There’ll be entertainment from the Ballroom Dance Club and the Union Dance team, dinner and a cash bar, raffles and a DJ. Tickets are available in advance at Reamer Campus Center this week (11a.m.-2 p.m.) and at the door.

Those who would like to make a cash contribution can send a check made out to the Diana Legacy Fund to the Office of the Minerva Programs, Room 303 of the Reamer Campus Center.

Posted on Feb 4, 2009

Thursday, Feb. 5, 4:30 p.m. / Schaffer Library, Phi Beta Kappa Room / Philosophy Speaker Series presents: Louis Loeb, University of Michigan, on "The Story of British Empiricism”

Thursday, Feb. 5, 7:30 p.m. / Taylor Music Center, Fred L. Emerson Foundation Auditorium / Department of Music presents: A Trio of Trios, Florence Piano Trio with Sarah Briggs Cornelius, violin; Volcy Pelletier, cello; Monica Jakuc Leverett, piano in program of Haydn, Tann, Turina, Brahms; free and open to the public

Friday, Feb. 6 –  Feb. 9, 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. / Reamer Campus Center Auditorium / Film: “Changeling” 

Saturday, Feb. 7, 2 p.m. / Alumni Gymnasium pool / Women’s and men's swimming vs. Ithaca

Saturday, Feb. 7, 7 p.m. / Messa Rink at Achilles Center / Men’s hockey vs. RPI (ECAC contest)

Saturday, Feb. 7, 8 p.m. – midnight / College Park Hall / Winter Ball, featuring music, food, dancing, entertainment and raffles; proceeds support the Diana Legacy Fund for Hospice Care in sub-Saharan Africa

Wednesday, Feb.11, 7 p.m. / Nott Memorial / 2009 Environmental Science, Policy and Engineering Winter Seminar Series presents: Geoff Garver, an environmental consultant and lecturer in law at Laval University, Quebec, on “Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy”

Thursday, Feb. 12 and Friday, Feb. 13, 7 p.m. / Old Chapel / "The Vagina Monologues," student-run performance to benefit YWCA of Schenectady and the national VM organization

Friday, Feb. 13, 7 p.m. / Messa Rink at Achilles Center / Men’s hockey vs. Yale (ECAC contest)

Friday, Feb. 13 – Feb. 16, 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. / Reamer Campus Center Auditorium / Film: “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”

Saturday, Feb. 14, 2 p.m. / Old Chapel / "The Vagina Monologues," student-run performance to benefit YWCA of Schenectady and the national VM organization

Saturday, Feb. 14, 7 p.m. / Messa Rink at Achilles Center / Men’s hockey vs. Brown (ECAC contest)

Sunday, Feb. 15, 8 p.m. / Memorial Chapel / Chamber Concert Series presents Trio: Wu Han, piano, Philip Setzer, violin, David Finckel, cello in an all-Schubert program

Posted on Feb 4, 2009

If you happen to be in the Science & Engineering Building at just the right time each morning, you might see a young woman carrying a huge (and overflowing) bowl of leafy greens.

“It's what I'm known as – ‘the lettuce girl,’” said Jen Granina ’11.

The supersize salad isn’t for her, though; it’s for the dozens of large, ravenous grasshoppers she feeds almost daily as part of her work-study job.

Measuring two or three inches long, the greenish-brown arthropods from the Southeastern U.S. are giants – at least compared to the typical grasshoppers found around here. Granina estimates that these hungry hoppers, which live in cages in Butterfield Hall, devour about nine heads of lettuce each day.

Keeping the insects well-fed is important to ongoing Union research.

“My students and I examine questions relating to developmental physiology,” said Scott Kirkton, assistant professor of biology. “We’re interested in how changes during growth affect oxygen delivery and muscle physiology.”

More specifically, Kirkton and two senior thesis students are investigating a change in oxygen usage that seems to occur as these animals age.

“The grasshopper jumping muscle is the only insect muscle known to produce lactic acid during activity, which is similar to our sprinting muscle,” Kirkton explained. “However, the smallest juveniles don’t produce lactic acid during jumping, so it appears the muscle undergoes a developmental shift from aerobic to anaerobic.

“We are trying to ascertain the cause for this switch.”

The grasshoppers, called American locusts (Schistocerca americana), are also used in a lab for Biology 101, in which students compare their own jumping performance to that of the leaping insects.

While Granina only feeds the grasshoppers and doesn’t participate in the research, she’s still happy to be “lettuce girl.”

“I’m double-majoring in biology and French. This allows me to get to know a lot about the Biology Department, and that’s going to help in terms of looking for professors to do research with.