Rachel Seligman, director and curator, Mandeville Gallery, and curator, Union College Permanent Collection, recently attended “Core Matters: Students, Faculty, Collections” at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College. The symposium focused on the role of college and university art museums in their educational institutions, concentrating on the value and impact of direct experiences with works of art, and creating strategies for increased integration of museum/gallery programs with curriculum. Seligman attended a number of panel discussions and workshops that explored collection display, evaluation, student audiences and faculty outreach. Among these were “Object Lessons for Faculty Engagement Across the Curriculum,” “Learn by Doing: The Museum as Laboratory” and “The Challenge of the Student Viewer.”
Mechanical engineering professor Frank Wicks wrote an article entitled "The Oil Age" for last August’s issue of Mechanical Engineering, the monthly membership magazine received by all members of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The article traces how oil was discovered 150 years ago in Pennsylvania, how its initial use was primarily for lighting and thus how it helped save the whales that were being hunted to near extinction for lantern fuel. It describes how the development of oil using internal combustion engines revolutionized transportation on the land, sea and air, and the use of oil for plastics and other petrochemical products. It concludes by noting how the United States and the rest of the world have become overly dependent upon the oil that will be mostly depleted over the next century, and the resulting challenges of adapting to life after the oil age.
Union’s 2010 Edward Villella Fellowship Laureates, Krystle Gallo ’12 and Alyssa Simeone ’11, will attend dance classes and workshops in New York City this summer. Gallo will take part in the Pulse Dance Convention, which offers seminars, master classes and other dance events. Simeone will take classes in contemporary dance, ballet, jazz, hip-hop and ballroom at the Steps on Broadway and the Alvin Ailey Dance School. The recipient of the Hedda Hainebach Memorial Prize in Theatre, Bartosz Tomaszewski’10, plans to pursue his interest in video and filmmaking after graduation.