Posted on Sep 14, 2009

Click here to read a PDF version of the President's Message.

Posted on Sep 14, 2009

Through Sept. 20
Mandeville Gallery
Nott Memorial
Green Light

This seventh annual juried exhibition for emerging artists with disabilities was organized by VSA arts and sponsored by Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. The 15 participating artists were asked to consider the motivations behind their work and the infinite possibilities that creativity provides. They were also encouraged to contemplate the relationship between life, art and disability. Closing reception Friday, Sept. 18, 5-9 p.m. in conjunction with Art Night Schenectady.

Through Sept. 27
Wikoff Student Gallery
Nott Memorial
A Perfect Press, Printed by Union Students

Featured prints were created in “Printmaking: Etching,” taught by Sandra Wimer in the spring. The pieces employ a variety of techniques: etching, aquatint, soft-ground, pigmented inkjet and polymer photogravure printing. Many of the final prints combine several different techniques to create a single image.

Through Oct. 16
Schaffer Library
Thelma and Kenneth Lally Reading Room
Degas’ Contemporaries

Coinciding with the “Degas & Music” show currently on display at the Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, N.Y., this exhibit features work from Union’s Permanent Collection by peers of famed French impressionist Edgar Degas.

Through Nov. 14
Visual Arts Building
Arts Atrium
Greg Eltringham, Paintings and Drawings

This exhibit features the work of Greg Eltringham, professor of painting at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Ga.

Through March 14
Schaffer Library Atrium
Union Notables

Union Notables celebrates the great men and women who have studied and worked at the College from its founding in 1795 to the present day. Every six months, a new group of three notables is featured. Currently featured are assistant professor and janitor Charles Frederick Chandler (1836-1925);  actor, playwright,  journalist and producer John Howard Payne (1791-1852); and College Librarian Ruth Anne Evans (1924-2001).

Posted on Sep 10, 2009

Following is a list of upcoming events on campus. For a more complete schedule, including Minerva-sponsored activities, please go to www.union.edu/News/calendar.

Friday, Sept. 11, 4-7 p.m. / Burns Visual Arts Atrium / Gallery talk and artists’ reception for Gregory Eltringham of Savannah College of Art and Design, whose paintings and drawings are featured

Friday, Sept. 11, noon-1:30 p.m. / Old Chapel / Ozone Café

Friday, Sept. 11 – Monday, Sept. 15, 8 and 10 p.m. / Reamer Campus Center / Film: “Star Trek”

Saturday, Sept, 12, 1 p.m. / Frank Bailey Field / Football vs. Ithaca College

Saturday, Sept, 12, 3 p.m. / College Park Field / Women’s soccer vs. SUNY Cortland

Saturday, Sept, 12, 6 p.m. / Men’s soccer vs. Rochester Institute of Technology / College Park Field

Sunday, Sept. 13, 3 p.m. / College Park Field / Women’s soccer vs. St. John Fisher                                

Thursday, Sept. 17, 7 p.m. / Nott Memorial / “Race, Politics and the Supreme Court,” lecture on American constitutionalism by Lucas A. Powe Jr., the Anne Green Regents Chair in Law at the University of Texas School of Law. One of the nation’s leading Supreme Court historians, Powe has clerked for Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas and has written many award-winning books and articles, including “The Warren Court and American Politics.” He was one of the principal commentators on PBS's four-part documentary on the Supreme Court. Free and open to the public.

Friday, Sept. 18, 5-9 p.m. / Mandeville Gallery and downtown establishments / Art Night Schenectady, an arts, business and cultural showcase   

Friday, Sept. 18 – Monday, Sept. 21, 8 and 10 p.m. / Reamer Campus Center Auditorium / Film: “Up”

Posted on Sep 10, 2009

 Lucas A. Powe Jr., an expert on the history of the U.S. Supreme Court and a respected First Amendment scholar, will present Union’s second annual lecture on American Constitutionalism on Thursday, Sept. 17.

His talk, entitled “Race, Politics, and the Supreme Court,” will be in the Nott Memorial at 7 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

Powe, a professor of government who holds the Anne Green Regents Chair in Law at the University of Texas School of Law, was a principal commentator in a 2007, award-winning PBS series on the Supreme Court. He is the author of three award-winning books, and prior to 1971 when he became a professor, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

Assistant Professor of Political Science Brad Hays is pleased Powe’s coming to campus.

“For people like me, who study the constitution, this is a great chance to bring someone to campus who can present students with a perspective of constitutional law that they may not get otherwise,” he said.

Posted on Sep 10, 2009

Union welcomes 25 new faculty members to campus this year. By department, they are:

ANTHROPOLOGY: Elizabeth Garland, assistant professor, received her Ph.D. in socio-cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago. She has participated in principal field research in Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Previously, she taught at Dartmouth, Smith, Amherst and Mt. Holyoke colleges. She is fluent in Kiswahili.

Elana Shever, visiting assistant professor, earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, with a dissertation on “Powerful Motors: Kinship, Citizenship and the transformation of the Argentine Oil Industry.” She has taught at Brown and Northeastern Illinois universities and the University of Chicago.

BIOENGINEERING: Jennifer Currey, assistant professor (formerly a visiting assistant professor in Mechanical Engineering at Union), earned her Ph.D. at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in biomedical engineering. As a research assistant in the Biomechanics Laboratory at RPI, she designed an implant system for use in an in vivo implant micromotion study in a mouse.

BIOLOGY: Jennifer Thompson Bishop, visiting assistant professor, received her Ph.D. from North Carolina State University. She has taught courses at Simmons College, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Wake Technical Community College and North Carolina State University. Currently she is working on a project that examines the ecology of the Bahama and Common Yellowthroat.

CHEMISTRY: Andrea Peters, visiting assistant professor, received her Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Alberta and has served as the lead research chemist for the GE Global Research Center in Niskayuna, researching development of electrically and thermally activated chromic coatings for anti-theft technology on optical media. Previously, she taught at Simon Fraser University and the University of Alberta.

CLASSICS: Randall Childree, visiting assistant professor, received his Ph.D. from the University of Florida. His research interests include Roman elegy, Roman rhetorical theory, Epicureanism and Greek lyric. He has experience teaching at Earlham College, Furman University and the University of Florida.

Kristen Gentile, visiting assistant professor, earned her Ph.D. in Greek and Latin from The Ohio State University. Her dissertation was titled, “Reclaiming the Role of the Old Priestess: Ritual Agency and the Post-Menopausal Body in Ancient Greece.” She has experience instructing elementary and intermediate Latin, as well as elementary Greek, Greek literature and classical mythology.

COMPUTER SCIENCE: John Rieffel, assistant professor, earned his Ph.D. in computer science from Brandeis University. He has taught at Tufts and Cornell universities, Brandeis and Swarthmore College. At Tufts, he was engaged in a multidisciplinary effort to understand and model the biomechanics of the tobacco hornworm caterpillar to create a completely soft-bodied robot.

Andrea Tartaro, visiting instructor, received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University. The recipient of numerous awards, she has coordinated activities to promote awareness of participation of women in computer science. She has taught at Northwestern and Brown universities.

ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING: Sara Hooshangi, visiting assistant professor, received her Ph.D. from Princeton University. She has taught “Bioinstrumentation by Design” at George Mason University, as well as “Introduction to Cellular Computing and Synthetic Biology” at the University of Maryland. She has received numerous honors, including the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Fellowship from Princeton.

ENGLISH: Brian Hauser, assistant professor, earned his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University specializing in film and television, popular culture, American literature to 1900, the gothic, detective fiction, trauma studies and narrative theory. He has taught courses at Ohio in film history, reading popular culture, American literature and varying levels of composition.

MATHEMATICS: Jennifer Blue, lecturer, holds a Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she has taught in the departments of Mathematical Sciences, Computer science, and Philosophy, Psychology and Cognitive Science, and in the School of Engineering. She also was an adjunct professor at Union. She has authored and co-authored numerous articles and presented at a number of undergraduate conferences and seminars.

Christopher Hardin, visiting assistant professor, earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from Cornell University. He has taught at Wabash College, Smith College and Cornell University. The author and co-author of articles in numerous publications, he has given talks around the country in his areas of research, which include mathematical logic, theoretical computer science, logics of programs, Kleene algebra and epistemic logic.

Hubert Noussi, visiting assistant professor, received his Ph.D. from New Mexico State University with a dissertation on feedback linearization and stabilization of competition models in the chemostat. He taught algebra, trigonometry, pre-calculus and calculus at the university.

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING: Stephen Kalista, visiting instructor, has a master’s of science degree from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). He is working on his Ph.D. in macromolecular science and engineering from the university. He has taught classes in physics and engineering at Washington and Lee University and for the American Chemical Society. One of his major areas of research centers on self-healing of poly(ethylene-co-methacrylic acid) ionomers.

MODERN LANGUAGES: Charles Arndt, visiting assistant professor of Russian, holds a Ph.D. in Russian literature from Brown University with a dissertation on “Dostoevsky’s Engagement of Russian Intellectuals in the Question of Russia and Europe: From Winter Notes on Summer Impressions to The Devils.” He has teaching experience from Rhodes College, Connecticut College and Brown.

Huei-Cheng Lin, visiting instructor of Chinese, taught Chinese as a Heritage/Foreign Language at UC Berkeley Extension. She earned a master’s in anthropology from Rutgers University. She has taught in New York, California and Massachusetts and has worked as an editor and translator.

Hui-Ju Lin, visiting assistant professor of Chinese, earned her Ph.D. from Georgetown University with a major concentration in applied linguistics and a secondary concentration in theoretical linguistics. She taught several levels of Chinese at Georgetown and general English at Chinese Culture University and at Chun-Yuan Christian University in Taipei. She is a native speaker in Mandarin and Taiwanese and has intermediate skills in Japanese.

Graham Ignizio, visiting assistant professor of Spanish, received his Ph.D. in Spanish-American literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he has taught many levels of Spanish classes. His major research interests include contemporary Latin American literature, with a strong focus on Cuban Diasporic literature and a secondary focus on Caribbean, contemporary peninsular and Latino/a literature.

Ashley Passmore, visiting assistant professor of German, earned her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and received the Best Dissertation of the Year Prize by the Austrian Society of Germanists. Her teaching interests include German-Jewish literature and history, religion in literature, Austrian studies, minorities in literature and culture, 19^th and early 20^th century German literature, and contemporary German literature and film. Previously, she taught at the universities of Nevada, Portland (Ore.) and Chicago.

Stephanie Silvestre, visiting assistant professor of French, received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University. Her teaching and research interests include contemporary French and Francophone literatures and cultures, French and Francophone cinema, Caribbean studies and Black Diaspora studies. She has taught at The Ohio State University and Northwestern University.  

PHILOSOPHY: Leonardo Zaibert, associate professor and department chair, earned his Ph.D. at the State University of New York, Buffalo, where he received the Perry Dissertation Award for outstanding doctoral dissertation. He holds a law degree from Universidad Santa Maria in Caracas, Venezuela, where he practiced law. He previously held posts at the University of Wisconsin, Parkside; Grand Valley State University, Michigan; SUNY Buffalo Law School; Universidad Simón Bolivar, Caracas; and Amherst College. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. His research interests are the philosophy of law, ethics and political philosophy, and he has published widely in these areas.

POLITICAL SCIENCE: Phil Nicholas Jr., visiting assistant professor, earned his Ph.D. from Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany. His dissertation was titled “The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Shareholder Proposal Rule: Agency Administration, Corporate Influence and Shareholder Power, 1942-1998.” He currently is working on “From Administrative Power to Advocacy Coalition: The SEC and Shareholder Democracy 1942-2008,” which is under contract with Lexington Books. He has taught at Clark University, University of Scranton, University at Albany, Siena College, the State University colleges at Geneseo and at Oneonta, and Saint Michael’s College.

Matthew Scherer, assistant professor, holds a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. He specializes in modern secularism, religion and politics, liberalism, constitutionalism, and political theology. He has taught at Johns Hopkins and the University of California, Berkeley. He is fluent in German and reading competent in French and Ancient Greek. He joins the faculty in January.

PSYCHOLOGY: Florian Fessel, visiting assistant professor, received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana, Champaign, where he has taught a number of courses. He is interested in psychological distance and level of aspiration, counterfactual thinking, propensity effect, hindsight bias and egocentrism, and in the broader realm of social cognition, motivation and comparative judgments.