Posted on Sep 14, 2006

Posted on Sep 13, 2006

Those attending this weekend's Inaugural Gala Feast will be dining in style; historical style, that is. Saturday evening's event represents a span of culinary and fashion tastes over three centuries of Union's history.

The menu and costumes worn by servers and performers were created to reflect the College's history and to celebrate the promise of the future. In addition to contemporary fare, the cuisine features offerings that would have been served at the inaugurations of President Eliphalet Nott in 1804 and President Charles Alexander Richmond in 1909.              

Menu highlights include:

From the 1800s: Steamship round, roast pig, roast turkey, poached salmon, venison stew, roast duck.

From the 1900s: Celery, olives, radishes, almonds; hearts of romaine salad; fried oysters; green beans; creamed peas; pasta.

Present: Imported cheeses, sushi, seafood martini, mashed potato bar.

Posted on Sep 13, 2006

Faculty members are encouraged to honor students' observations of religious holidays this fall by refraining from scheduling exams or quizzes on these days and/or to make appropriate arrangements for students to make up missed course work.  The first holy day of the fall term is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which begins at sundown on Friday, Sept. 22. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, begins at sundown on Sunday, Oct. 1, and continues on Monday, Oct. 2. Some students will go home to be with their families on the 22nd and some will not be in class Oct. 2-3. Ramadan begins the weekend of Sept. 23. Muslim students may be fasting during daylight hours until Oct. 23. On Tuesday, Oct. 24, Muslim students celebrating Eid-al-Fitr may leave campus to be with their families. During the Hindu Festival of Lights, Diwali, is Saturday, Oct. 21, students may also observe with their families.

Posted on Sep 13, 2006

Lori Marso, director of Women's and Gender Studies and professor of Political Science, will be interviewed this week about her new book, Feminist Thinkers and the Demands of Femininity: The Lives and Work of Intellectual Women, on National Public Radio's “51%.” 

The interview airs on WAMC, 90.3 FM, this evening at 8 p.m., and again on Wednesday, Sept. 20, at 3 p.m. Marso will have a book signing on Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Book House at Stuyvesant Plaza, Guilderland. Marso's book examines the lives and works of historical and contemporary feminists, including Simone de Beauvoir and Ana Castillo.

Posted on Sep 13, 2006

Palma Catravas, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering who regularly merges music and engineering in her Union courses, has been awarded a prestigious Schiff fellowship for 2006-07 in support of her project, “Visualization of Information Content in Music Signals and Interdisciplinary Applications.”

The project aims to contribute scientific visualization tools to reveal patterns in data that could help with hypothesis generation in experimental work. 

“Successful implementation of the project depends on choosing a good test data source, one in which characteristic effects (such as harmonics, coupling of modes, etc.) that are important in many areas of physics and engineering are buried,” Catravas says. “The beautifully complex and informationally rich sounds from musical instruments and musical compositions satisfy this criterion.”

Catravas says that electrical engineering-based techniques are well suited to this study, “as elegant analogs exist among models in acoustics, circuits and electromagnetics, and a wide variety of electrical sensors, optical diagnostics and signal processing techniques can be used in experiments.

“This choice also encourages the connection of basic electrical engineering techniques and musician’s practices, including careful listening, tactile response, imagery and psychoacoustics.”

Catravas’ research plan has two phases. She will develop a suite of scientific visualization tools to illuminate specific effects in sound and/or music; and she will transplant these tools to other areas of research. She will investigate applications in nanotechnology, biology and other disciplines.

Catravas, of Silver Spring, Md., holds double bachelor’s degrees in Electrical Engineering and Piano Performance (1991) from the University of Maryland and S.M., (1994) and Ph.D. (1998) degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She did post-graduate work at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (1998-2002). She is on leave this fall and winter.