Posted on Feb 11, 2010

Hungry families. Heaps of unserved college food. Student leaders who want to get involved in their adopted communities.

It all comes together as Campus Kitchens, and it’s a recipe for success – for combating hunger in towns and cities across the nation.

A Union chapter is now up and running, bringing fresh-cooked meals to the City Mission each Saturday.

“The first day, all kinds of volunteers came to College Park Hall’s beautiful kitchen facility,” said Jillian Falchi ’10 of Ozone House, who launched the program at the end of January with other house members. “We made 150 meals consisting of meatballs, baked ziti, salad and cookies. There was a bit of chaos, but I hope to perfect the process.”

“This program fills a big need in our community,” said Dan Detora, director of Dining Services, which is supporting the student-run, nonprofit venture by donating food and a van for meal delivery. “The first weekend was great. We had frozen items that we didn’t need on campus, and the student volunteers, working with one of employees, were able to produce enough food for a large group. The City Mission was thrilled.”

“Being in college, it’s easy to turn a blind eye toward issues of poverty in our surrounding community,” said Rebecca Robinson ’12, a volunteer. “ This program really makes you open your eyes to what good you can do by not only preserving good food, but also helping others who need a hand.”

Nationwide, Campus Kitchens is now active on about 20 campuses, “training the next generation of leaders to implement innovative new models to combat hunger.” Students plan the menus, salvage the food, cook in shifts and organize the deliveries to their communities.

One of the biggest ingredients for the program’s success is creativity. Much like on television episodes of “Iron Chef” or “Chopped,” the student-cooks must pull together a nutritious, appetizing meal from an assortment of random ingredients each week.

“We try to incorporate a little bit of this or a little bit of that,” said Detora. “One weekend, we had a surplus of peas. We made a vegetarian quiche.”

All of the participants are certified in food safety, and Union chefs taught students how to calibrate thermometers, handle knives and use cutting boards safely.

With this basic prep out of the way, “now we’re getting more into the meat and potatoes of the program,” Detora said. “In the coming weeks, there’ll be an educational piece on helping the community understand nutrition.”  

In addition to Ozone House, student volunteers come from the Environmental Club, TVUC, Culinary House, fraternities and sororities. Don Austin, assistant director of the Kenney Community Center, helped coordinate administrative details with the national Campus Kitchens Project, based in Washington, D.C.

“It is a great feeling to know that we are preserving perfectly good food, as well as putting food on people’s plates,” said Robinson.

Posted on Feb 10, 2010

Christopher Chabris, assistant professor of psychology, is the co-principal investigator on a $173,908 grant for a three-year, collaborative research project on measuring and modeling collective intelligence. The grant is part of the $787 billion federal stimulus recovery package enacted a year ago. The money, which is being distributed through the National Science Foundation, will enable Union researchers to investigate the concept of “collective intelligence,” or the idea that groups, like individuals, can be more or less intelligent, and why this is so. Chabris is collaborating with faculty from Carnegie Mellon University and MIT. 

Teresa Meade, the Florence B. Sherwood Professor of History and Culture, has been elected president of the Board of Trustees of the Journal of Women's History. The largest journal devoted to women's history in the world, it is published quarterly by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Meade will serve a five-year term as president.

Joanne Kehlbeck, assistant professor of chemistry, has been awarded the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Inc. Special Program in the Chemical Sciences grant. The $26,000 grant will support her project entitled “Culinary Chemistry: Developing Laboratory Modules for General Education and Outreach.” The Culinary Chemistry course is designed to engage non-science majors by introducing scientific concepts and methods in the context of food preparation by combining lecture and laboratory experiences with exercises in the traditional chemical laboratory setting and a typical kitchen setting. Students will employ their new expertise in the science of cooking by participating in outreach activities for elementary and secondary school students and the general public with demonstrations on how science impacts our everyday lives.

April Selley, senior lecturer in English, delivered a paper titled “Where Men Have Gone Before: The Nurturing Male in ‘Star Trek’” at the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association Conference in Queens, N.Y. She also chaired a panel. Selley’s review of Ina Rae Hark’s book, “Star Trek,” was published in the NEPCA Online Journal earlier this month.  “Star Trek” is one of a British Film Institute series of books in which authors provide analytical readings that seek to explain why a television show has achieved “classic” status.

Posted on Feb 10, 2010

Deborah Bial, founder and president of the Posse Foundation, which aims to increase student diversity at selective U.S. colleges, will deliver the keynote address at Founders Day Thursday, Feb. 25 at 12:45 p.m. in Memorial Chapel. The event commemorates the 215th anniversary of the granting of the College’s charter by the state.

The Posse Foundation identifies and recruits urban public high school students who might otherwise be passed over by the traditional college-admissions process and sends them in multicultural teams – or posses – to top colleges and universities like Union, the University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt.

The nonprofit foundation was formed in 1989 after Bial, a former youth leadership program worker in New York City, heard a young student say, “I never would have dropped out of college if I had my posse with me.”

More than 3,100 Posse Scholars have been awarded $330 million in four-year, full-tuition merit scholarships from the organization's 37 partner institutions.

Since 2006, Union has partnered with the Boston branch of the Posse Foundation, which also has sites in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Washington, D.C. The College’s first group of Posse Scholars will graduate in June.

In 2007, Bial was awarded a $500,000 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship. The “genius awards” are given to individuals who demonstrate “extraordinary originality and dedication” in their fields. The foundation described Bial as a person who is “addressing the challenges of college access for underrepresented populations by identifying and fostering latent talent and reframing college admissions into a more inclusive process.”

“We’re living in a society that’s changing demographically very quickly, yet you look at the most selective colleges, and you don’t see the diversity of the United States reflected in the student body,” Bial said in an interview after receiving the award. “If that doesn’t change, we’re going to continue to graduate a very homogeneous group, and the leadership of the Unites States will continue to be homogeneous. We think we have a chance to change that.”

A 1987 graduate of Brandeis University, Bial received her master’s and Ph.D. from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. She is also a founding partner of the consulting company Firefly Education LLC.

Also at Founders Day, Elizabeth Bossong, a Spanish teacher at Vestal Senior High School in Vestal, N.Y., will receive the Gideon Hawley Teacher Recognition Award. Bossong was nominated by Misty Shah ’12. The award is named for the 1809 graduate of Union who was New York state’s first superintendent of public education.

During the ceremony, Viki Brooks, director of Religious and Spiritual Life and Campus Protestant minister, will be awarded the Doctor of Ministry degree by Dr. Efrain Agosto, Academic Dean and Professor at the Hartford Seminary.

Union's Unity Quilt will also be on display for the first time. The theme of the quilt is “Celebrating 215 years of family history at Union College.”  The quilt consists of 173 squares designed by a number of campus groups, as well as alumni.

Past speakers at Founders Day have included Pulitzer Prize-winning author James M. McPherson; Paul LeClerc, president and chief executive officer of the New York Public Library and a former professor at Union; and Ira M. Rutkow ’70, a surgeon and author whose writing has focused on the history of American medicine.

Posted on Feb 10, 2010

It was Sandy Wimer’s idea to give her printmaking students access to contemporary prints. The result is a beautiful new show in the Burns Atrium Gallery, “Here and There: Two Degrees of Separation,” featuring 40 pieces by 20 printmakers.

Ten artists from the Capital Region invited an artist they admire from outside the area to participate, said Wimer, senior lecturer, printmaker and artist-in-residence.

The exhibit showcases prints made using traditional methods as well as newer, digital processes. It also includes letters from each area artist explaining their work and reasons for inviting their chosen peer.

“I have always liked the satirical caricature tradition of works from Francesco de Goya to Honore Daumier in art history. The genre has both sting and grace,” Sunghee Park said in her statement. “I was delighted to see Manny Guerra (of El Paso, Texas) make a series of small, satirical black-and-white etchings of Mexican-American stories. I not only love Manny’s work, but I thought the contrast of my contemporary Asian sensibility with his Meso-American images would be an interesting mix for the show.”

The participating artists come from California, Maine, Michigan, New Mexico, New York City and Canada. An opening reception will be held Thursday, Feb. 18, 4-6 p.m. in the Atrium. Printmaking student Elsa Perushek ’11 designed the show’s logo and catalog. The show runs through March 19.

Posted on Feb 10, 2010

Friday, Feb. 12, 6 p.m. / Viniar Athletic Center / Women’s basketball vs. Vassar College
Friday, Feb. 12, 7 p.m. / Messa Rink at Achilles Center / Women’s hockey vs. Dartmouth College; the third annual “Pink at the Rink” event (wear something pink), aimed at raising awareness of breast cancer and to help find a cure. All staff, faculty members and their families are invited to attend a pregame reception in the rink’s Garnet Room at 6 p.m. Please RSVP by Thursday, Feb. 11, to Elizabeth Taimi, taimie@union.edu. For more, click here.  
Friday, Feb. 12, 8 p.m. / Viniar Athletic Center / Men’s basketball vs. Vassar College
Friday, Feb. 12- Monday, Feb. 15, 8 and 10 p.m. / Reamer Campus Center Auditorium / Film: “The Men Who Stare at Goats”
Saturday, Feb. 13, 2 p.m. / Viniar Athletic Center / Women’s basketball vs. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Saturday, Feb. 13, 4 p.m. / Messa Rink at Achilles Center / Women’s hockey vs. Harvard University
Saturday, Feb. 13, 4 p.m. / Viniar Athletic Center / Men’s basketball vs. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Sunday, Feb. 14, 3 p.m. / Memorial Chapel / Chamber Concert Series: Pei-Yao Wang and Friends / Open to public; tickets cost $20
Monday, Feb. 15, 4-6 p.m. / Nott Memorial / Reception for Wikoff Student Gallery show, “A Geometric Mind”
Monday, Feb. 15, 4:30 p.m. / Taylor Music Center, Emerson Auditorium / “A Holistic Approach to Music-Making,” featuring Matthew Jones, violist and musicians’ health consultant
Wednesday, Feb. 17, 7 p.m. / Nott Memorial / The Environmental Science, Policy and Engineering Winter Seminar Series presents: Walter Hang, president of Toxics Targeting, an environmental database firm in Ithaca, N.Y., on “Trillion Dollar Payday or Bust? Grassroots Activism Versus Marcellus Shale Gas: How Toxics Targeting is Shaping the Future of the Largest Natural Gas Reservoir in the Nation.” Part of the theme, “Drilling in the Marcellus Shale: Toward Energy Independence or Environmental Devastation?”
Thursday, Feb. 16, 4-6 p.m. / Burns Arts Atrium / Reception for printmaking show, "Here and There: Two Degrees of Separation"
Thursday, Feb 18, 4:30 p.m. / Phi Beta Kappa Room, Schaffer Library / Philosophy Speaker Series presents: Christopher Hill of Brown University “Awareness, Representation and Qualia”
Friday, Feb. 19, 7 p.m. / Messa Rink at Achilles Center / Men’s hockey vs. Princeton University
Friday, Feb. 19, 7 p.m. / Memorial Chapel / “Dancing with U” fundraiser for the Diana Legacy Fund. Professors and administrators will be paired with students from the Ballroom Dance Club; audience will vote for the winners. Cost: $5.
Friday, Feb. 19-Monday, Feb. 22, 7 and 10 p.m. / Reamer Campus Center Auditorium/ Film: “2012”
Saturday, Feb. 20, 7 p.m. / Messa Rink at Achilles Center / Men’s hockey vs. Quinnipiac University
Sunday, Feb. 21, 3 p.m. / Memorial Chapel / Chamber Concert Series: Trio Cavatina with mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford / Open to public; tickets cost $20