Posted on Mar 4, 2009

For spring term, the Sorum Book Club has chosen books that are paired with a film and a Proctor's show. Club participants will read the books over spring break and then discuss them over dinner before the accompanying event.

“Watchman,” by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, is a graphic novel that has been called "the best work of popular fiction ever written" (The New York Times). The book discussion will be followed by a night at the movie.   

Paula Poundstone's autobiography, “There’s Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say,” has been called a “hilarious and sometimes exhausting stream-of-consciousness confessional." (Amazon). It features biographies of legendary historical figures, including Abraham Lincoln, Helen Keller and Joan of Arc, that Poundstone uses as a springboard to tell her own story. Poundstone will give a one-woman show at Proctors Friday, May 1.

Tickets for the movie are free; the show is $10. Books are each $5. To participate, contact Professor Suzanne Benack at benacks@union.edu.

Posted on Mar 4, 2009

Do you know students who are excellent writers and have strong interpersonal skills? He or she may be a good candidate to become a tutor at the Writing Center.

"Writing is such an important skill in every discipline, and all students can benefit throughout their four years from the feedback and support in developing writing and thinking that the Writing Center provides," says Mary Mar, the center’s director. 

Mar is seeking sophomores and juniors in a variety of disciplines who have strong interpersonal skills and would be good at helping others improve their writing. Each student nominated will be invited to apply to the paid position as a tutor next year and will receive training in how to work with others to improve their ability.

“Tutoring is a wonderful learning experience, and most tutors really enjoy the intellectual challenge,” she said. 

To nominate a student, contact Mar atmarm@union.edu.

Posted on Mar 4, 2009

The Belcea Quartet, a young, British group considered one of the best quartets of its generation, will take the stage in Memorial Chapel Friday, March 6 at 8 p.m. Violinists Corina Belcea-Fisher and Laura Samuel, cellist Antoine Lederlin and violist Krzysztof Chorzelski will perform pieces by Haydn, Schubert and Britten.

The group, established at the Royal College of Music in 1994, has won numerous prizes, including first prize at both the Osaka and Bordeaux International string quartet competitions, Chamber Music Award of the Royal Philharmonic Society and Gramophone Award for best debut recording. Most recently, the group recorded the Bartok quartets, for which it was named Chamber Music Ensemble of the Year by Germany’s prestigious Echo Klassik Awards.

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

Posted on Mar 4, 2009

Kaitlyn O'Brien ’11 traveled with her advisor, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Rebecca Koopmann, to the second annual NSF-sponsored ALFALFA (Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA) Undergraduate Team Workshop at Arecibo Observatory recently. The observatory, located in Puerto Rico, is home to the 305-meter diameter Arecibo telescope, the largest telescope in the world. O’Brien joined 18 undergraduate students from 14 colleges and universities across the United States to learn about radio astronomy, observing at Arecibo Observatory, and applications to the study of other galaxies.

The multi-year ALFALFA project is a survey of a large area of the sky at radio wavelengths appropriate for the detection of neutral hydrogen gas in other galaxies. For her sophomore project, O’Brien is researching a concentration of galaxies within the ALFALFA survey area to determine which galaxies are gravitationally associated and how their proximity has influenced their evolution. The team workshop, made possible by an NSF grant to Union, was organized by Koopmann and collaborators.

Hilary Tann, the John Howard Payne Professor of Music, was a featured guest of the Harvard Festival of Women’s Choirs last weekend. Her composition, “That Jewel-Spirit,” was performed by the Radcliffe Choral Society, conducted by Jameson Marvin. The festival featured 12 choirs singing in three concerts, and included seminars for students, conductors, publishers and composers. In addition, the Harvard University Choir gave the U.S. premiere performance of “Paradise,” a setting of George Herbert’s poem first performed by the internationally known choir, Tenebrae, at the Gregynog Festivalin Wales. Two of Tann’s instrumental compositions have been released on a new CD from Beauport Classical, titled “Metamorphosis.” The CD features Tann’s “Like Lightnings” for oboe solo and “Kilvert’s Hills” for bassoon solo. Tann’s compositions have been selected for preview by NetMusicWorks (www.netmusicworks.com). She was composer of the month on Welsh Music Information Center’s Web site in February.

Megan Ferry, director of East Asian Studies and associate professor of Chinese and East Asian Studies, gave a talk at an interdisciplinary conference, "The Status of Theory in Contemporary Chinese Film and Visual Culture," at University of Maryland-College Park. Ferry’s paper is titled, "Between Realism and Romanticism: Queering Gender Representation in Cui Zi'en's Night Scene."

George Bizer, assistant professor of psychology, has been awarded a grant from the Marketing Sciences Institute to apply his research on the valence-framing effect to the business world. Bizer has been studying how negative conceptualization of political attitudes enhances the relative strength of those attitudes, leading to greater certainty, resistance to persuasion and behavioral intention. His new research will assess whether the impact of such framing attitudes can be generalized in a marketing context, using competing brands rather than competing candidates.

Posted on Mar 4, 2009

The Daily Gazette featured an interview with Miryam Moutillet, dance program and concert director, as she prepared for this year’s student winter dance concert. This year's show,“Theatre of Worlds: The Voyage”, features the music of Nine Inch Nails.

To read the story, click here (registration may be required).

Posted on Mar 3, 2009

Forty years ago this spring, Professor Frederick Klemm, an intrepid traveler with an unflappable manner and a knack for details, led a group of 28 students to Vienna, and launched a signature program that today sends 60 percent of Union students on study-travel programs across the globe.

Inspiration struck Frederick A. Klemm in 1968 in the middle of the Vienna Museum of Art.

Union’s professor of German paused among the Rubens, Rembrandts and Vermeers to announce an idea to his wife, Eleanor. “I would like to bring a group of students here to share this experience.”

Her response: “Why don’t you do something about it?” So was born Frühling in Wien (Springtime in Vienna), which Klemm would later call “Union’s first organized inva- sion into classrooms abroad.”

It wasn’t an easy delivery. When Klemm returned to Schenectady with his proposal, President Harold Martin was lukewarm, mostly out of concern about the budgetary implications of lost tuition revenue, Klemm said. None- theless, the president turned it over to the faculty.

The vote was nearly evenly split, mostly along the lines of humanities and social sciences in favor, science and engineer- ing against, Klemm recalls. The tie-breaker came from a new member of the biology department, Will Roth.

With his narrow victory, Klemm moved ahead, negotiating an all inclusive price of $1,200. All scholarships would apply.

He then set about recruiting students, a task made more difficult since the College had just dropped the language requirement. Students needed an intermediate level of German, good academic standing and the approval of their advisor.

Like Klemm, the students were aware of their pioneering role. “We knew this was kind of an experiment,” said Steve Ciesinski ’70. “We all wanted to make it work.” Said Ira Rutkow ’70: “We were like the Mercury astronauts. We were pioneers. We knew this would change Union College.”

In March of 1969, just a year after he brought up the idea (“Surely a record in the world of academe,” he said.), Klemm, his wife and the students left JFK Airport on an overnight flight to Hamburg, Germany. After an hour layover, they flew to Berlin, the first city on their itinerary.

The group passed Checkpoint Charlie on a drab, cold day. “We were shocked at how poor and desolate and gray East Berlin was,” recalls Ciesinski, adding that tower guards trained their guns on some members of the group who got too close to the wall.” By several accounts of the incident, Klemm was remarkably calm.

A stop in Munich included sampling of art and beer, Klemm recalls, and a stay at a hostel that was a gathering place for a wide cross section of transient young Europeans.

The group arrived in Vienna over the Easter holiday to an orientation that included welcomes from the Austrian Ministry of Education, the deputy mayor of Vienna, and Ambassador Douglas MacArthur, nephew of the general, who briefed the group on conditions in central Europe as seen by U.S. intelligence sources.

After orientation, formal studies began. The academic program resembled Union’s three courses: German language, in which Klemm managed to have all students reach a degree of fluency; an art history course with visits to galleries, museums, churches and palaces; and an independent project modeled after the Union requirement then known as Comprehensive Education.

The latter course, Klemm said, was perhaps the most rewarding for students, and topics covered a wide range. Ciesinski, a double major in German and engineering who would go on to a career as a venture capitalist and chair of the College’s Board of Trustees, studied the Viennese subway system. Rutkow, who became a surgeon, biographer and medical historian, had arranged to assist a Viennese professor with his study of one-celled algae plants in the Alps. (Klemm smuggled some of Rutkow’s samples on the return flight.) Richard Reid ’71, who passed away in 2001, was a professor of political science at the U.S. Air Force Academy. He studied the Russian-Austrian Peace Treaty of 1955.

Throughout the term, the group took a number of excursions: Budapest, Salzburg, Lower Austria and Burgenland. Many students traveled on weekends to Prague, Zagreb, Rome, Florence, Venice, Innsbruck and Zurich.

Many of the students took solo adventures. Frank Felts ’70, made frequent hitchhiking trips to Prague. On one, with a dearth of cars (and rides) behind the Iron Curtain, he walked for miles before accepting an invitation to join a family bonfire and celebration. “The farmer asked me to stay the night,” he said. “He kicked his wife out of bed. I slept on one side, he slept on the other.”

In Vienna, students took advantage of Stephlätze (places for standees). For the equivalent of a mere 48 cents per ticket, the Union men took in dozens of concerts, operas, plays and movies.

Predictably, perhaps, the most enduring experiences took place out of the classroom. Ciesinski recalls the Gemutlichkeit, the warm intimate discussions that took place in Vienna’s many coffee shops. “It’s ingrained in the culture,” he said. “People were naturally friendly and wanted to have deep discussions.” He also was impressed by the Austrians’ high regard for the experience that comes with age. “They really put their elderly on a pedestal,” he said.

“We came to realize that Vienna is more than just a city,” Klemm wrote in the spring 1970 issue of Union College Symposium. “It is a living being, a spiritual entity that is greater than the sum of its inhabitants.”

The night before the group was to return, Klemm was in the 12th century St. Stephen’s Cathedral listening to an organ concert. Through the darkness, he could recognize his students, there to share the artistic and divine ambience of the Gothic setting. “It gave me a warm feeling of satisfaction to see them there,” he wrote in Symposium. “It made insignificant the petty problems, the annoying logistics, the sometimes seemingly unnecessary hindrances that mark any new undertaking.”

What of the long-range effects of Frühling in Wien? For Ciesinski, who has sought out companies that require international travel, “This was a springboard for those of us who wanted to travel and immerse ourselves in other cultures.”

For Rutkow, who stayed after the term to hitchhike his way through Europe for three months, “It opened up the world to me. It changed my life.” N

Frederick A. Klemm

Frederick A. Klemm, professor emeritus of German, taught at Union from 1947 to 1978. He was director of Terms Abroad from 1970 through 1977.

He also served as chair of Modern Languages, and chair of Humanities Division. When he was director of the Extension Division of evening classes and the GE apprentice program, Klemm got to know a number of rising engineers and Navy officers. One was future President Jimmy Carter, who trained for eight months under the Union-GE program.

As a scholar, Klemm did research on German dramatist Gerhart Hauptmann, author of the novella The Heretic of Soana. He wrote articles in Germanic Review, the German Quarterly, Modern Language Review, American-German Review and Monatshefte.

He was married to the late Eleanor G. Klemm.

He earned an undergraduate degree from Dickinson College, a master’s degree from Duke University, and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. He served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1946.

Klemm, 96, lives in Slingerlands, N.Y., a suburb of Albany, and makes occasional visits to campus. He was honored last winter (with Edward Craig ’45, dean of engineering emeritus, and Chris Schmid, former coach of basketball, football and lacrosse) at a tribute dinner for a former student, Stephen J. Ciesinski ’70, outgoing chairman of the Board of Trustees.