Posted on Apr 12, 2010

Holocaust survivor Herb Lewis, grandfather of Danielle Horowitz ’12, will speak at a Yom HaShoah service this evening at 6 p.m. in the Reamer Campus Center Auditorium.

Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, is a day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews who died during World War II as a result of the actions carried out by Nazi Germany. It also honors Jewish resistance and heroism.

Lewis, born Chaim Lazerowitz in 1926 in Wodzislaw, Poland, was sent to a work camp, Skarzysko-Kamienna, at age 15. He never saw his parents or siblings again.

He was an inmate of Skarzysko-Kamienna and the Chenstochova slave labor camps from 1941 to 1945. He was sent to Buchenwald and Flossburg before liberation in April 1945.

After the war, Lewis worked in Germany with the U.S. Army before coming to America and officially enlisting. Later, he went to college, married and owned a bagel bakery in Brooklyn. Now retired, he lives in Cedarhurst, Long Island.

Posted on Apr 9, 2010

Just when you thought there was nothing left to rank in higher ed, here comes RecycleMania, a benchmarking program that gives top marks to some of the College’s sustainability initiatives.

Through March 20, Union was ranked second in corrugated cardboard recycled per person with 20.82 pounds. Kalamazoo led the field with 22.65 pounds. Rounding out the top five, in order, were Franklin and Marshall College, Rutgers University and Wells College.

Union was ranked fifth in the “Per Capita Classic,” in which schools compete to see which can collect the largest amount of recyclables per person. Union had 43.6 pounds. The U.S. Coast Guard Academy led with 54.83 pounds.

RecycleMania is a friendly competition for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities. Results, updated weekly, are at: http://www.recyclemaniacs.org//Results.aspx

The recycling program is led by Terry Miltner, assistant manager of cleaning services, and U-Sustain’s Recycling Subcommitee. Miltner said that members decided this year to focus on corrugated cardboard. “This was the low-hanging fruit, something we could easily move,” he said.

Coach Paul Wehrum and the men’s lacrosse team led a successful cardboard drive last fall. On move-in weekend in September, the team collected 13.5 tons of cardboard, a 473 percent jump over the same weekend in 2008.

“It started there and it didn’t stop,” Miltner said. “This has been a real on-going group effort.”

Members of U-Sustain’s Recycling Subcommittee include Meghan Haley Quigley ’11, Erin Delman ’12, Prof. Jeff Corbin, Prof. Laura McManus, and Loren Rucinski, director of facilities.

Posted on Apr 9, 2010

The College will welcome a team representing the Middle States Commission on Higher Education who will be on campus from Sunday, April 11 to Wednesday, April 14, to meet with faculty, staff and students.

The visit is part of the College’s reaccreditation, which takes place every 10 years. Six working groups on campus, along with a steering committee led by David Cotter, associate professor of sociology and Therese McCarty, the Stephen J. and Diane K. Ciesinski Dean of the Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs, spent two years conducting a self-study of the institution. Sixty faculty, staff and students worked on the report, which focused on the implementation of the College’s strategic plan.

Middle States accreditation is an expression of confidence in an institution’s mission and goals, its performance and its resources.

The team visiting Union is chaired by Daniel Weiss, president of Lafayette College and includes: Alan S. Caniglia, senior Associate Dean of the Faculty and Vice Provost for Planning and Institutional Research, Franklin and Marshall College; Daniel F. Chambliss, Eugene M. Tobin Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Hamilton College; Lori M. Collins-Hall, professor of sociology, Hartwick College; Bronte Jones, treasurer, St. John’s College; Mary J.S. Roth, Associate Provost, Lafayette College; and Julie L. Ramsey, vice president for College Life and Dean of Students, Gettysburg College.

The Middle States Commission on Higher Education is a voluntary, non-governmental, peer-based membership association dedicated to educational excellence and improvement through peer evaluation and accreditation.

Posted on Apr 8, 2010

Jodi Dean, professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, will present a guest lecture Tuesday, April 13 at 5:30 p.m. in Arts 215, sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Studies Sadock Women in the Arts Grant as part of Union’s feminist film series.

 Dean’s talk, “Whatever Blogging,” will address whether blogging and other means of identity formation under communitarian capitalism can mount a left critique of our current political condition. The talk extends from blogging as a practice of teenage girls through blogging as a practice that is multiple and singular within the larger context of the mediated production of identity.

Dean is the author or editor of nine books and many academic articles, most recently “Democracy and other Neoliberal Fantasies” published by Duke University Press.

Posted on Apr 7, 2010

Pianist Jeremy Denk will close out the 38^th Chamber Concert Series when he returns Saturday, April 24 at 8 p.m. for his second Memorial Chapel recital.

A versatile pianist whose repertoire ranges from the standard works of the 18^th and 19^th centuries to more modern 20^th century pieces, Denk will present Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach and Sonata No. 1 by Charles Ives at the upcoming concert.

Denk, who has appeared as a soloist with such outfits as the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Houston Symphony and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, clinched the Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1998. This was a year after he made his first appearance at Alice Tully Hall as the winner of the Julliard Piano Debut Award.

An avid chamber musician, Denk has an extensive discography that includes the Tobias Picker Second Piano Concerto with the Moscow Philharmonic; works of Schubert, Bartok and Strauss with violinist Soovin Kim; and the Kirchner Duo with violinist Ida Levin.

Denk earned a doubled degree in chemistry and piano performance from Oberlin College and Conservatory, a master’s degree in music from Indiana University and a doctorate in piano performance from The Julliard School. He is a member of the faculty at the Bard College Conservatory of Music.

The concert is free to members of the Union community. General admission tickets cost $20, though area students may attend for $8. For more information, call 388-6080.