Tom Brokaw, David McCullough, and twenty-four Union students gather in the Nott Memorial to talk about World War II. The segment appeared on the NBC “Nightly News” and on the “Today” program.
When Tom Brokaw wanted to talk with some college students about the fiftieth anniversary of VE Day, David McCullough suggested Union.
So, on May l, three anonymous gray vans pulled up to the Nott Memorial and NBC technicians began unloading equipment. Union had been selected as the site of a discussion among Brokaw, the NBC Nightly News anchor; McCullough, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who spoke at the dedication of the Nott Memorial on Founders Day; and two dozen students.
By late that night, the technicians had transformed the inside of the Nott into a television studio. When Brokaw arrived at eleven the next morning, he chatted with the students for a few minutes (“Does anybody want David Letterman's home phone number?” was his opening remark), sat down next to McCullough, and began an
hour-and-a-half conversation about World War II and what it means to the students, their families, and the American way of life.
Shortly after the taping ended, the College's Alumni Office
helped by numerous others on campus-began three days of telephoning to alumni and friends to alert them. The several-minute segment was scheduled for Friday, May 5 – three days before the anniversary of VE Day-barring any change caused by late-breaking news.
Sure enough, toward the end of Friday's broadcast the Nott Memorial came onto the screen, and Brokaw, McCullough, and the students were on. The slightly-expanded version appeared the next morning on the “Today” show.
Patrick Allen, director of educational studies, has been named a member of the National Council of Teachers of English's Commission on Curriculum. The council represents teachers and supervisors of English at all levels of education.
Faye Dudden, associate professor of history, has won the George Freedly Award from the Theatre Library Association for her book, Women and the American Theatre: Actresses and Audiences, 1790-1870. The award honors a noteworthy book in the field of theater and live performance. She received the honor at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center in New York City.
John Garver, assistant professor of geology, is the author of an article in the Geological Society
of America Bulletin about a fission track dating process he has developed. The article is titled “Erosional denudation for the British Columbia Coast Ranges as determined from Fission-track ages of detrital zircon from the Tofino basin, Olympia Peninsula.”
Barbara Jones, director of Schaffer Library, presented a paper, “Should Libraries Post Theft Suspect Notices? A First Amendment Perspective” at the annual Smithsonian Institution's National Conference on Cultural Property Protection.
Pilar Moyano, associate professor of Spanish, presented a paper, “Destierros y exilios en la poesia de la mujer centroamericana” at the third International Conference on Central American Literature in Guatemala City.
William Murphy, the Thomas Lamont Research Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature, has published Family Secrets: William Butler Yeats and His Relatives, a companion book to his Prodigal Father: The Life of John Butler Yeats, which was nominated for a National Book Award in 1978.
The Washington Post said of the new book, “Murphy is an expert storyteller, keeping many threads-emotional, financial,
historical-of this complex story in hand at once. And while the family novel unfolds, in the background we see modern Ireland inventing itself.” The New York Times said, “From Mr. Murphy there has come one of the finest biographies of the Yeatses.”
Murphy is widely considered one of the foremost authorities on one of Ireland's most distinguished families. In the new book, he drew heavily on the Yeats archives, to which he has been given
almost unlimited access by the family. The book includes numerous photographs and illustrations never before published.
A.G. Davis Philip, research professor of physics, was appointed by the American Astronomical Society as director of the Shapley Visiting Lectureship Program, which organizes two-day trips by astronomers to colleges that do not offer degrees in astronomy.
Robert Sharlet, professor of political science and currently senior coordinator of the Rule of Law Consortium in Washington, D.C., read a paper and made two other presentations at the 1994 National Slavic meeting in Philadelphia. He also has created three policy seminars for specialists in Washington.
Jordan Smith, professor of English, is the author of “The Dream of Horses,” a poem in The Paris Review (summer 1994). He has recent work in Poetry and poems forthcoming in New England Review, Salmagundi, and The Yale Review.
Phillip Snow, associate professor of civil engineering, delivered a paper, “S.C.S. TR- 55 Computer Hydrology Model Revisited,” at the thirtieth annual conference of the American Water Resources Association.
Carol Weisse, associate professor of psychology, and two former students, Agnes Turbiasz '92 and David Whitney '91, are the authors of “Behavioral training and AIDS risk reduction: Overcoming barriers to condom use” in the journal AIDS Education and Prevention. Papers she prepared with Carl Bishop '96 and Kerry Evers '94 were presented at the annual meetings of the Society of Behavioral Medicine and the Eastern Psychological Association.
Professor of Music Hugh Allen Wilson and soprano Giselle Montanez gave a lecture and recital on “Marcella Sembrich's `Modern' Repertoire” at the annual meeting of the Marcella Sembrich Memorial Association in New York City.
Trish Williams, associate dean of students and director of residential life, received an award from the Hudson Mohawk Association of Colleges and Universities for her commitment to the Educational
Leadership Corps, a mentoring program for students of color who aspire to be college professors.
In Union's program-called “Future Professors” students focus on research, teaching, and college and community service. They meet four times a year to share their research, and they make presentations at the corps' annual banquet.
The program is supported financially by member institutions of the consortium and by the Ford Foundation, and it has been renewed for another two years.
Union's students, their projects, and their faculty mentors are:
Lisandra Ramos, “Theater as a process for social change in Kenya and Brazil,” A.T. Miller of the History Department;
Marguerite Stimphil, “Study of the influence of the visual and environment as it relates to the evolution of color in the visual displays of anoline lizards,” Leo Fleishman of the Biology Department.
Sandra Rojas, “Military uprising in Argentina and Chile during the 1970s,” Teresa Meade of the History Department;
Patricia Serpes, “A psychological and feminist study of women's and young people's identity in the short stories of Marita Lynch and Marta Traba,” Victoria Martinez of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures;
Vicky Lowery, “Fiber optics,” David Hayes of the Chemistry Department.
Died: Leo A. Aroian, professor of industrial administration emeritus, died May 10 at his home in Schenectady. He was
eighty-eight.
Born in Holden, Mass., he earned his BA, MA, and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
He taught statistics and mathematics at Hunter College and Colorado State University. From 1950 to 1960, he headed the mathematics section and was director of the computation facility for Hughes Aircraft. He became senior staff mathematician for TRW Systems in Redondo Beach, Calif., before the joining the faculty of the Graduate Management Institute at Union in 1968. He retired from teaching in 1972 and was named research professor of management emeritus.
He was the author of two books and more than 120 articles, including a paper on the establishment of quality levels for industrial and consumer products that was published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
The Leo A. Aroian Research Fellowship was established in his honor.
Survivors include his wife, Amine; two daughters, Julie Carpenter, of Boulder, Colo., and Lois Aroian, of Nairobi, Kenya; and two grandchildren. Memorial contributions maybe made to Hospice of Schenectady, the Union Presbyterian Church, the Union College Aroian Endowment Fund, or the Armenia Fund USA.
Discussing various aspects of the Nott Memorial with the Alumni Council were James Alexander, Sarah Landau, Phyllis Lambert, and Paul Turner '62
For students, the restored Nott Memorial is a wonderful place to study.
For visitors, the building and the display it contains about Union's history are a look into the past.
For architects, the Nott is one of the most remarkable buildings in America, and at the April Alumni Council meeting four individuals whose careers center on architecture assessed the building and discussed its importance.
Paul Turner '62, professor of art at Stanford University and author of Campus: An American Planning Tradition, noted that he has spent many years studying the career of the "mysterious" French architect who designed Union, Joseph Jacques Ramee.
Ramee, said Turner, produced a sweeping design that was by far the most ambitious and innovative plan for an American college or university up to that time. Among the many innovations was a central domed rotunda.
"The idea of a simple, circular building goes back in antiquity, with the Pantheon in Rome being a prime model," Turner said. "In America, Ramee's plan for Union apparently was the first design in which a whole institution was conceived and organized around a temple-like structure of this sort."
Thus began a long and important tradition in American architecture, with the most famous example coming only four years after Ramee's design — Thomas Jefferson's plan for the University of Virginia in 1817.
"For many years some architectural historians have wondered if Jefferson may have been influenced by Ramee's plan for Union," Turner said. "The full story is complex, but my conclusion is that Jefferson was indeed influenced by Ramee's plan-not necessarily the whole plan, but one particular aspect, and that is the idea of a domed rotunda as a centerpiece."
Turner said the idea was communicated to Jefferson by the architect Benjamin Latrobe, who must have become familiar with Ramee's plan through contacts in Philadelphia.
Another aspect of the Union campus that has puzzled historians is the original intended use of the Nott. Turner said that it was meant to be the College chapel but that President Eliphalet Nott eventually changed his mind.
Another question frequently asked concerns the discrepancy between the cool, simple, neoclassical style as conceived by Ramee and the "supercharged, High Victorian character" of the Nott as designed by Edward Tuckerman Potter.
"Is the discrepancy good or bad?" Tumer asked.
Turner said that Nott, near the end of his life, still intended to build the central building more or less as Ramee had designed it.
"But the architect he chose, Edward Tuckerman Potter, was understandably more interested in the style of his own day," Turner said. "After Nott's death in 1866, Potter took full advantage of the innovations of his day. The result was two very different styles on the Union campus.
"Would it have been better if the Nott had been built following Ramee's plans?" Turner said. "In this case, the architectural discrepancy is actually a plus.
"First, the building's quality is so great. Second, it is far enough removed from the original Ramee buildings that one can appreciate both modes of architecture on their own terms while still seeing them function together as a unified composition.
"Third, this stylistic variety adds the element of time to the campus," he continued. "It creates a visual record of the cultural change that has occurred over Union's history.
"And finally, the building's present restoration is in itself part of the building's significance, for it adds a new kind of meaning — affirming the importance the College attaches to its cultural and architectural heritage."
To Sarah Landau, professor of art history at New York University, the Nott Memorial signifies the College's emphasis on scientific studies as well as the Victorian view that the arts find their highest perfection when they're associated with architecture.
Although Gothic was the state of the art style for the day, she said, Edward Potter later regretted his design, saying the building should have been more in keeping with the rest of the campus.
Also speaking at the Alumni Council meeting were Phyllis Lambert, founder and director of the Centre Canadien d'Architecture in Montreal, and James Alexander of the architectural firm of Feingold Alexander & Associates, Inc., which designed the restoration of the building.
Lambert paid tribute to the late Daniel Robbins, the May I. Baker Professor of Visual Art at Union, for his continuing efforts on behalf of the Nott, and Alexander described the ideas proposed and decisions made during the renovation project.
The society, based in Philadelphia, is dedicated to upholding standards of Victorian architecture; the Nott Memorial is considered a prime example of Victorian High Gothic architecture.
In its letter to the College, the society said it was impressed by the professional care and the great expense incurred in the renovation, the creative adaptation to modern uses, and the reopening of the magnificent interior space.
“We applaud the commitment of the College and all associated with this lengthy and eminently successful restoration effort,” the society said.
The society presented a framed certificate to Joseph Mammola, vice president for campus life, at its annual meeting in Cambridge, Mass.
