Posted on May 27, 2009

Thursday, May 28 – Sunday, May 31 /Campus wide / ReUnion and Family Weekend 2009, featuring an array of events and activities, including dinners, discussions, lectures, theater, music, exhibitions, luncheons, tours, races, fireworks and more

Thursday, May 28 – Sunday, May 31, 8 p.m. / Yulman Theater / Play: House of Blue Leaves. General admission $10, with Union College ID $7. For reservations, call the box office at 388-6545 between 12:30 and 1:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.

Thursday, May 28, 4:30–6:30 p.m. / Hale House, Everest Lounge / Philosophy Speaker Series presents New York University Professor Ted Sider on meta-Metaphysics.  

Thursday, May 28, 5 p.m. / Grant Hall (Admissions) / Release party for "Aleph," a journal of global perspectives. Each year, student editorial boards at Union and Hobart and William Smith Colleges gather photographs, essays, poems and stories from students’ terms abroad. Event also includes the opening of the new Global Visions Gallery show, "Down at Albion; Images of England," featuring the photographs of James Morton ‘10, who studied in York, England last year.

Thursday, May 28, 6-8 p.m. / Blue House / ASU and Shakti present Asian Stereotyping Forum

Thursday, May 28, 6:30-8 p.m. / Memorial Chapel / Black Student Union presents 2^nd Annual Union Idol. Admission free, but donations will benefit the Building Up Ghana Project. To compete, e-mail alexisn@union.edu or pacea@union.edu

Friday, May 29, 3-3:45 p.m. / Visual Arts Building, Dance Studio / "An Intimate Afternoon with Dancers," honoring Mrs. Sue Davis and Dr. Gus Davis '59 

Friday, May 29, 4 p.m. / Reamer Campus Center Auditorium / Becker Career Center Alumni panel on advertising, event planning and public relations

Friday, May 29, 8 p.m. / Memorial Chapel / Union College and Community Orchestra and Chorale Concert, conducted by Victor Klimash and presented by the Department of Music; “Missa in Tempore Belli” by Franz Joseph Haydn with Deborah Rocco, soprano; Heidi Skok, mezzosoprano; Alex Schlosberg ‘09, tenor; and Steven Marking, bass

Friday, May 29 – Monday, June 1, 8 and 10 p.m. / Reamer Campus Center Auditorium / Film: “Friday the 13^th”

Saturday, May 30, 1-2 p.m. / Reamer Campus Auditorium / Alumni presentation by Chris Sheridan ’89, writer and executive producer of Fox’s hit TV show “Family Guy”

Saturday, May 30, 2:15-3:15 p.m. / Taylor Music Center / Alumni presentation by Scott Siegler ’69, partner at Zelnick Media, specializing in the areas of television, film and news media.

Saturday, May 30, 3:30-4:30 p.m. / Taylor Music Center / Alumni presentation by Alan Horn ’64, President and COO, Warner Bros. Entertainment

Saturday, May 30, 3:30-5 p.m. / Blue House / Jeffrey Winsoff ’74, director of the Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery and associate professor of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics at the New York University Medical Center, lectures on pediatric neurosurgery; co-sponsored with Pre-Health Society

Monday, June 1, 2:30-4 p.m. / F.W. Olin Rotunda / Lower Mohawk River Watershed Assessment poster sessions, featuring work by students in Watershed Hydrology and Quantative Chemistry.

Monday, June 1, 5 p.m. / Taylor Music Center, Emerson Auditorium / Student recital

Tuesday, June 2, 9:30-11 a.m. / F.W. Olin Rotunda / Lower Mohawk River Watershed Assessment poster sessions, featuring work by students in Watershed Hydrology and Quantative Chemistry

Thursday, June 4, 7:30, 10:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. / Reamer Campus Center Auditorium / “Coping with Change” workshop addressing issues of change in the workplace or in personal lives; coordinated by Human Resources

Friday, June 5, 5 p.m. / Taylor Music Center, Emerson Auditorium / Senior recital: Alex Schlosberg

Posted on May 27, 2009

The 2009 Senior Invitational is open now through Sunday, June 14 in the Nott Memorial’s Mandeville Gallery.

The show, running for the second year, features work by Union’s most accomplished graduating artists. Interested seniors are required to complete an application process and studio visit before being accepted into the Invitational.

“Our goal is to introduce students to the real-world exhibition process, and to mirror the rigors and requirements which confront professional artists,” said Rachel Seligman, Mandeville Gallery director.

This year, 15 students will display work in a variety of styles, including painting, photography, prints, sculpture, videos and installation art. Participating artists are Michael Bono, Justin Blau, Ian Brennan, Megan Chiriani, Katherine Cissel, Kelly Craparotta, Catherine Davis, Eleanor Hazlett, Alexandra Lindsay, Tobias Leeger, Brandon McArdle, Sarah Mueller, Emmaline Payette, Sarah Scott and Megan Sesil.

A closing reception will be held Saturday, June 13, 2-4 p.m., in the Nott. During this event, a Union College Permanent Collection Purchase Prize will be awarded. Other accolades to be presented include a Judith Gardner Ainlay Prize and two Curator’s Choice prizes.

For more information call 388-6004 or visit www.union.edu/gallery.

Posted on May 27, 2009

“Shakkei,” an oboe concerto by Hilary Tann, the John Howard Payne Professor Department of Music, has been selected for the opening concert of the 15th World Saxophone Congress in Bangkok, July 8. Performing will be the Thailand Philharmonic with soprano saxophone soloist Susan Fancher. The following day, Tann's alto saxophone concerto, "In the First, Spinning Place," will be premiered by Debra Richtmeyer in a reduction for alto saxophone and piano. Richtmeyer, president of the North American Saxophone Alliance, was soloist for the original orchestral version of the concerto in Tucson, Ariz. at NASA 2000. Later this summer, she will record the work for CD with Kirk Trevor and the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Cay Anderson-Hanley, assistant professor of psychology, recently presented research from her cybercycle study on videogame-enhanced exercise for older adults at the annual meeting of the Society of Behavioral Medicine in Montreal. She was joined by several Union students, Paul Arciero, associate professor of exercise science at Skidmore, and two Skidmore students. Anderson-Hanley, John Nimon ’07, Sarah Westen ’09, Lyndsay DeMatteo ’10 and Skidmore’s Naoko Okuma  presented on neuropsychological effects of videogame-enhanced exercise. This same group, along with Skidmore’s R. Klein, presented on physiological effects. Nimon, Anderson-Hanley, Arciero, Westen, DeMatteo and Okuma discussed the theory of planned behavior, and Westen, Anderson-Hanley, Arciero and Nimon presented on mediating effects of BDNF and IGF-1 on cognitive outcomes from the study.

Katherine Lynes, assistant professor of English, will present a paper at the conference for the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment in Victoria, B.C., in June. The paper is titled, “‘Maybe, In Fact, It Is Especially for them’: Audience and Nature Poetry Anthologies.” She will participate in a seminar at the Futures of American Studies Institute at Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., in late June. Recently, an article by Lynes, “The Ecologies of African-American Poetry Collections,” was accepted for publication and is forthcoming in “Comparative American Studies” (June 2009). In addition, Lynes participated in a seminar on “Remapping the Harlem Renaissance” at the Modernist Studies Association conference in Nashville.

The Edward Villella Fellowship was awarded to Lisa Crescenzo ’11, who will pursue a summer internship at the National Museum of Dance in Saratoga Springs, N,Y. She will be an assistant for exhibit and research programs and also attend workshops with the Paul Taylor Dance Company. The fellowship, created in honor of Edward Villella through the gifts of Charles D. Lothridge ’44, was designed to expand the experience of dance beyond Union.  Villella, founder of Miami City Ballet, was a principal dancer with the New York City ballet.

Posted on May 22, 2009

A memorial service for William M. Murphy, the Thomas Lamont Research Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature at Union College and a noted Yeats scholar, is set for Saturday, May 30 at 3 p.m. at the First Unitarian Society of Schenectady, 1221 Wendell Ave.

Prof. Murphy died Sept. 26, 2008. He was 92.

Murphy taught in Union’s English department from 1946 until his retirement in 1983. He began at Union as an assistant professor of English. He was named associate professor in 1948 and full professor in 1960, and he became the Thomas Lamont Professor in 1978. In 1983, he received the Faculty Meritorious Service Award from the Alumni Council.

He married the former Harriet Doane on Sept. 2, 1939. Survivors also include a son, Christopher; and daughters, Deborah Chase Murphy and Susan Doane Murphy Thompson.

Memorial contributions may be made to Schaffer Library at Union College.

Murphy was well-regarded internationally among Yeats scholars and researchers. In 1978, he published Prodigal Father: The Life of John Butler Yeats, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and was a National Book Award finalist. He later published a companion book, Family Secrets: William Butler Yeats and His Relatives, which The New York Times described as one of the finest biographies of the Yeats family.

Murphy had a lifelong passion for politics, and was a close friend of U.S. Rep. Samuel S. Stratton, himself a former Union philosophy professor. The Murphy and Stratton families have remained close. In 2007, the Congressman’s son, Schenectady Mayor Brian Stratton, presented the Murphys with Patroon Awards, the highest honor bestowed by the city.

Murphy made unsuccessful runs for Congress in 1948, state Senate in 1956 and state Assembly in 1959. He was appointed in 1956 by the elder Stratton, then Schenectady mayor, to fill an unexpired term on the Schenectady County Board of Supervisors. He was a member and chairman of the Schenectady Municipal Housing Authority, which, with Stratton, had instituted a policy of desegregation in the city’s public housing.

Murphy served on the New York State Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He was part of the mayor’s “kitchen cabinet,” and later, a part-time staffer in the Congressman’s Schenectady and Washington offices.

Murphy was born Aug. 6, 1916 in Astoria, Queens, and raised in Flushing. He would go on to study at Harvard University, earning bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees there. He taught for three years at Harvard, then served another three years as secretary of Harvard’s Committee on Educational Relations. He served in the U.S. Navy for three years, specializing in anti-submarine warfare, before he joined Union College.

Posted on May 22, 2009

There’s nothing particularly special about Ron Herout’s dorm room in West College. It's got bunk beds, the odd sweatshirt dangling on a doorknob, two small desks and a book shelf stocked with new flicks and classic novels like “Catch 22.”

But it also has something unique.

“It’s a kind of weird and kind of cool coincidence that I’m living in my grandfather’s old room,” Herout ’12 said with a laugh.

His grandfather is thrilled.

“I think it’s great,” Ron Strahan ’56 said. “I knew he was going to be in West, but I didn’t know his room number, and I couldn’t remember exactly what room I’d been in.

"Then my freshman roommate, Bill Cooper, and I looked at a yearbook,” he continued. “It said we were in 410, the same room Ron’s in now.”

The two share more than bloodlines and a dorm room. During his time at Union, Strahan earned degrees in mechanical engineering and economics. Herout is also a mechanical engineering major, and he is glad his grandfather introduced him to the College at a young age.

“He brought me here when I was about 12, and the campus made an impression,” Herout said. “It’s still making an impression.

“I like that we have a good engineering program, but that we’re not all engineers,” he added. “I really value the variety of people and interests at Union.”

Strahan couldn’t be happier about this.

“I very much liked what I got out of Union, and I’m glad Ron’s enjoying it too,” he said.