Posted on Jul 1, 1997

After serving Union for a combined sixty-two years, Professors Carl George and Twitty Styles of the Biology Department said farewell by creating a fund aimed at “unifying the Union community.”

At a grand retirement party on June I that the pair called “A Celebration of Transition,” the two chose to avoid boring retirement dinners and gold watches in exchange for leaving a memorial in their name.

During an afternoon of music, festivities, and celebration of diversity, George and Styles launched UNITAS-the
Styles-George Endowment Fund which will be devoted to promoting diversity and unifying the Union community. Each donated $5,000 and encouraged guests to contribute to the
fund, which was then matched by the College.

“UNITAS is our legacy to the College,” Styles says. “We hope that as we leave, UNITAS will inspire others to think about and address the problems that exist here.”

The two professors hope that UNITAS will help bring unity to all facets of the campus community. “It's not just the importance of diversity, but also how we can make the diverse elements work together,” George says.

Styles and George say that Union's demographics will soon change and that the College must learn to
adapt to those changes. “We hoped that this
event would catalyze other faculty members and students to really address diversity and community for many years in the future,” Styles explains. “Let us make it the best place that we can for the time we're here-the best place for learning, sharing, growing, and caring.”

[Contributions to UNITAS may be sent to the Office of College Relations at the College.]

After thirty-two years of teaching at Union, Professor Twitty Styles looks forward to being in the classroom after his retirement-but this time as a student.

In his many years of research in parasitology all over the world, Styles has developed a love of art, which he hopes to revive in Union's classrooms.

Taking some art classes is just one of the activities he plans for a busy retirement:

• He hopes to share all that he has learned on his trips throughout the world with senior citizen groups, showing slides and presenting his “scientist's travel log.” 
• He plans to play golf. 
• He will share an office in Whitaker House with colleague Carl George, compiling the history of the Biology Department at Union. 
• But most of all, Styles looks forward to catching up on his non-academic reading. Before retirement, he says, he was always reading about biology to remain current in his field. With
  a chuckle, he says, “I look forward to sitting down, getting a good novel, and enjoying it.”

Styles says that his travels associated with academic research and Union terms abroad have been the most intellectually enjoyable times of his career at Union. Visiting the U.S. Embassy, the National Institutes of Health, and local hospitals with students in Bogota, Colombia, was “exhilarating and exciting,” he says, as were trips with students to Mexico and Costa Rica.

Styles founded and chaired the College's AIDS Committee, and watching members of the College community teach others about AIDS has been highly rewarding; he thinks the programs have really saved lives.

“I have learned as much from my students as I have taught them,” he says. “Not only have they been students, but now they are friends. I feel a very close attachment to them.”

Now, through his collaboration with Carl George on the creation of UNITAS, Styles hopes to continue to touch lives and strengthen the cohesion of the Union community.

During retirement, Professor Carl George vows to keep his collection obsession under control.

During more than thirty years at Union, George has come to be known for his collections of specimens, artifacts, and
knowledge – from fish to
birds to early American rafts to the details of the Nott Memorial. Recently, he donated his collection of early American tools and artifacts of the Mohawk Valley to the Schenectady Museum and Schenectady County Historical Society.

“It became such an invasion on our home that we had to do it,” he says, pointing out that there were many thousands of pieces in the collection.

Now, George has become fascinated with early American naturalists, an interest directly related to a course he team teaches-and plans to continue teaching even after
retirement with faculty from the Arts Department. In the course on the illustrated organism, students learn to provide graphic and written analysis of plants and animals.

Taking advantage of his shared office with Twitty Styles, he plans to organize a conference on the role of the senior faculty member in the American academy. In addition, he will continue to monitor the wildlife at Collins Lake in nearby Scotia, a project that he and his students have carried out for more than nine years. Because of this and other projects, he is regularly cited as the local expert on the ecology of the Mohawk Valley.

George cites the 1995 renovation of the Nott Memorial as a high point of his years at Union. “I had been a gadfly on the Nott Memorial for many years, and now, other than teaching students, it would be the Nott Memorial that I am most proud of in terms of my contribution to the College.”

He concedes that, in retirement, he will miss the contact with students most. “Contact with young people is continually vitalizing. Their energy is contagious and it has certainly helped me keep my own viewpoint of life fresh,” he says.

Posted on Jul 1, 1997

Lorraine Marra, coordinator of student activities and a familiar face to thousands of Union students, is retiring this year after thirty-five years of service.

Marra began at Union as a temporary worker in the Annual Fund office. She did so well she was asked to stay, and in short order she moved into student activities. “Her energy, enthusiasm, and helpfulness have gotten countless students through an amazing variety of difficulties, and we are going to miss her tremendously,” said Fred
1l ford, dean of students.

Marra still keeps in touch with many of the students she has come to know over the years, and she loves hearing about their lives and achievements. She plans to travel and do volunteer work, and adds that she's willing to help out in student activities “if they need me.”

Other employees retiring this year include: 

• George Richards, director of personnel; 
• Rita Michalec, secretary of the History Department; 
• Nancy Angus, administrative assistant in the Office of the Dean of Students; 
• Jeanne Cutrone, executive secretary in the Office of the Dean of Faculty;
  Jack Hogle, department assistant in physics; 
• Linda Cutler, counselor; 
• Esther Lindemann, night cleaner.

Posted on Jul 1, 1997

One of Hana Yamashita's earliest memories is climbing up the family piano to join a visiting pianist at the keyboard. Twenty-four recitals later, she came to Union, where she has thrived as a pianist, flutist, violist, composer, athlete, and actress.

Yamashita, who graduated in June, was attracted to Union by the opportunity to continue all of her interests-not just music. In fact, her adviser, Professor of Performing Arts Hilary Tann, was at first unsure that Yamashita was serious about music because she had so many other interests. Co-founder and president of the women's ice hockey club, Yamashita also has played soccer and tennis, is a member of the choir, and has performed in several theater productions.

Since her first term, though, Yamashita has impressed Tann with her dedication to music. She has continued with her piano lessons and greatly improved upon her technique. “When I came here, I had a lot of musical ability-I could find the music in a piece and pull it off a page and make it sound like music, but my technical ability was beneath my musical ability,” she says. Last fall, she performed a Mozart piano concerto, a dream that had seemed unreachable four years ago.

In addition to her progress as a pianist, she joined the flute choir to keep up her skills and also took up the viola because she wanted to learn a string instrument and face a new challenge.

Her studies and talent culminated in the performance of her senior project, Daybreak, a
full length piece for orchestra that was first performed by the Union Orchestra at the Steinmetz Symposium on May 9.

Daybreak began to come to her last summer while she was visiting her
grandparents in Japan. Sitting in her grandparents' house one evening as the breeze blew through the open windows, Yamashita suddenly began hearing notes in her head. “They were so clear,” she says. “I could visualize exactly what every instrument was doing. Then I realized that this was going to
be the opening of my new piece-my senior project.”

A few months after she had quickly sketched the notes that she heard, Yamashita set to work on the composition, which she revised about
twenty-five times. “When I heard the Union College Orchestra play my piece for the first time, I couldn't believe that it was finally out of my head, into the air and into my ears,” she says. “I had listened to it in my head for so
long just to hear them play the opening was beautiful, but then it got jumbled and I was devastated.”

The orchestra had difficulty with certain sections of the piece, she explains, but
Tann – herself a composer of note reassured her that this was normal. After weeks
of rehearsal, the piece finally came together. “It could never have been as perfect as what I hear in my head, and I knew that already, but to me it just felt perfect,” she says. “Before that point, I felt like I had given my insides to the orchestra and each of them had a little piece of me and it wasn't coming together. Finally, all those pieces came together, and I felt whole again.”

Yamashita says she was “incredibly nervous” about the debut of Daybreak. “It was part of me, and the orchestra was going to perform it for the audience to accept or not accept-to like or to dislike-and I had no control over it. All I could do was sit and wait and listen. When they finished, I was shaking. Professor Tann had me come up on stage to take a bow and I thought I might trip. Then, I turned around and people started standing and their faces were lit up. There was this amazing rush of excitement and energy and relief flooding my body; I was so pleased.”

Twice, Yamashita received the College's Victor Herbert Prize, awarded to the student who shows the most promise of making a contribution to American music. Last winter, she studied abroad in Barbados and taught music theory to middle school students-and loved it. After graduation, she plans to move to Colorado for a year, hoping to teach a few piano lessons and start an a cappella singing
group the first steps in what she hopes will be a career of teaching music and giving piano lessons.

Posted on Jul 1, 1997

Jared Richman '97 is known on campus for his editorial cartoons in the student newspaper, but for many high school students he is the artist behind the illustrations in their Spanish textbook.

The project began when Dirk Mundt '64, owner of Curriculum Press in Albany, N.Y., asked Professor of Visual Arts Walter Hatke to recommend a student to illustrate his textbook, Spanish for Communication. “I had worked with Jared in a couple of my classes and was very impressed with the work he had done. He t seemed made to order for the job,” Hatke says.

Richman did a few initial drawings, which Mundt liked, and was hired to draw the approximately 100 illustrations of key words and phrases. “I was in shock that somebody wanted to pay me to draw, which I love to do,” he says.

Soon Richman was jotting down ideas in notebooks, sketchbooks, textbooks, and even on his hand. “The idea was that the drawings have to be instantly recognizable as the action, word, or phrase,” he explains. So he began work on illustrating hot, cold, nose, hair, ski, sew, cook, clean, and many others.

Richman says the most rewarding part of the project was seeing his work published-and hearing from teachers who liked his drawings. The text Richman illustrated was a revision of an older text, and many of the teachers who had used the older book said that they loved Richman's new drawings.

The previous illustrations, although done by a professional artist, were somewhat boring, Richman says. “I just thought that if I was I kid who had to use this book, I would enjoy it a lot more if I liked the drawings and if they were humorous.”

During his sophomore year, Richman began doing the editorial cartoons in Concordiensis, the student newspaper. He says he loves the opportunity to express his ideas through his artwork, and most of his cartoons concentrate on campus issues. He obtained a Union Internal Education Fund grant to support his research for an study of editorial cartoons and cartoonists, and he raves about the work of the early artists who began the profession. In June, he exhibited his editorial cartoons from the last three years in the Reamer Campus Center. Even though he is an English major who hopes to attend graduate school eventually, he plans to keep drawing.

Posted on Jul 1, 1997

One Union student group that makes a difference was honored by the city of Schenectady shortly before this year's commencement.

The group, We-Care-About-U-Schenectady, has played as big role in improving the city's housing stock. A group called Better Neighborhoods, Inc., uses paid contractors and volunteers, such as the Union students, to restore houses whose owners have walked away from them. Nine houses in the city have become known as “Union College houses” because the work was done primarily by Union students.

About forty percent of the College's students do some kind of community service each year, from acting as Big Brothers and Big Sisters to tending the
ill and injured with a local ambulance squad.

Posted on Jul 1, 1997

A number of students received special recognition at Prize Day in May for their academic achievements, community and college service, and athletics. Altogether, more than 100 prizes were awarded. Two who received multiple honors were:

Carmen McMurtry, a senior mechanical engineering major, received the Bailey Prize for the greatest service to the College in any field; the Warner King Prize for contributions to the
traditions and ideals of the College; and the Mortimer F. Sayre Prize for the senior with the best potential for furthering the ideals of the mechanical engineering profession.

She plans to enter a post-baccalaureate program at Bryn Mawr College to catch up on courses she needs to enter medical school and become a doctor.

Meredith Miller, a senior English and arts major, received the Josephine Daggett Prize for citizenship and character, the President's Commission on the
Status of Women Community Service Award, and the Meritorious Service Award, voted by the Student Affairs Council. A member of the Campus Action Board, she worked to coordinate political groups on campus and in the region, and she provided workshops on sexuality, racism, and multiculturalism to Union resident assistants. She plans to attend Brooklyn Law School.