Posted on May 1, 1995

On Prize Day in the spring of 1980, Laurie Brecher '80 walked out with her hands full. Not only was she praised for her academic achievements in the Political Science Department, she also won the Joseph Dagget Prize for outstanding conduct and character and her public service contributions to the College community.

Fifteen years later, Brecher is still making contributions to her community. For the past eight years, she has been an assistant United States attorney, helping to put away some of New York's most brutal criminals. In one of her better-known cases, Brecher prosecuted a member of New York's Irish mob, known as the Westies. During one of the more disturbing days of the trial, Brecher listened as her lead witness described how he had committed certain murders and how other confederates in the Irish mob chopped up the bodies of the people they had murdered.

But Brecher hardly sees her work as a cops and robbers chase. To her, working as a prosecutor is a way of achieving her lifelong goal of participating in public service.

“Being a prosecutor is a rewarding form of public service,” Brecher says. “We are enforcing the laws that ensure
that our communities are safe. We're literally representing the people. Just because you're a prosecutor and working on the side of law enforcement doesn't mean you're not interested in justice or in protecting civil rights and civil liberties.”

Brecher says she was always interested in “participating in the issues that affect the environment I lived in.”

As a young girl, that meant playing the judge when a friend of hers broke a vase. (Brecher's brother was the prosecuting attorney.) In high school, that meant taking the bus once a week from her suburban home to an inner-city magnet school in Boston, where she was exposed to the world of civil rights. During her college years, that meant interning for New York State Senator Franz Lechter and serving as a volunteer campaign coordinator for U.S. Senator Paul Tsongas. Back on campus, she led the College's chapter of Amnesty International and worked with the admissions, tax, and orientation committees.

After graduating second in her class
from New York University's law school in 1983, she got her first taste of the courtroom by clerking for John 0. Newman, chief judge of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the highest federal court in New York. Although she spent three years in the private sector as an associate at two New York firms, Brecher says she knew she wanted to return to the courtroom as a prosecutor. “I wanted to be a real lawyer, I wanted to spend more time in court, and I definitely wanted public service,” she says.

The U.S. attorney's office has certainly satisfied all of those goals while giving her first-hand knowledge of the world of investigations and law enforcement. Working in the narcotics division, Brecher supervised a F.B.I.-New York
State Police investigation of a Colombian cocaine-trafficking ring that was coordinating its local operations from a horse ranch on Long Island. The two-year investigation included thousands of hours worth of wiretap recordings, and Brecher even picked up a bit of Spanish.

Of the eighteen people indicted, fourteen pleaded guilty. Brecher and a colleague prosecuted three of the defendants during a six-month trial; all were found guilty. The trial was afar cry from the two-day, $10 crack trial Brecher prosecuted when she first arrived at the U.S. attorney's office.

Just how did she catch the ring? “We had a cooperating individual, as well as tapes, visual surveillance and documentary evidence gathered by a team of investigators,” Brecher explains.

She also has prosecuted cases of securities fraud and insider trading. An investigation she and others conducted with the assistance of the Securities and Exchange Commission during 1992 and 1993 involved a managing director at Salomon Brothers who was prosecuted for making false statements in bids submitted for U.S. Treasury bond auctions.

“It's a real challenge to investigate a case and uncover credible evidence,” she says. “I love pulling all the pieces together and following the trails of evidence that develop as you corroborate witnesses during a long-term investigation.”

These days, ten months removed from giving birth to her first child, Brecher has shifted some of her responsibilities from the courtroom to management. As the recently-named deputy chief of the U.S. Attorney's General Crimes Unit, Brecher supervises the new crop of assistant U.S. attorneys.

“I'm still handling some of my own cases, but it is a nice change of pace.”

Posted on Mar 1, 1995

Convocation Remarks delivered on Founders Day, February 25, 1995

Today we celebrate and plan: celebrate an idea and an institution; and plan for a future that, if we apply ourselves courageously and diligently, can reassert the College's leadership role in education and steer the Union ship past education's Scylla and Charybdis.

This day is truly remarkable. It is remarkable in that only seventeen institutions share our longevity; it is remarkable, too, in its similarity to our other major milestones.

At each of our past milestones, we also combined celebration and planning. Although those occasions were marked by somber notes, Union clearly was an institution that moved forward. In 1895, despite the fact that Union's great president, Eliphalet Nott, lamented that he would soon pass from the scene, he had the vision to introduce engineering for the first time at the liberal arts college level (by the way, Nott was wrong; he was to serve Union for another
twenty-one years). In 1895, during the College's centennial, President Andrew Van Vranken Raymond presided over an institution that still had not reemerged from its nadir following the Civil War; yet, Raymond and the College had the vision to bring the great Charles Steinmetz to Union and have him introduce electrical engineering into the curriculum. And, in 1945, at the sesquicentennial Founders Day, Union found itself in a less than celebratory mood, for World War II was still raging and Union's president, Dixon Ryan Fox, had suddenly died a month before; however, Union like other colleges, was planning to welcome the returning veterans to the campus and to join in serving them as they had served the nation.

What we do today will be in keeping with what has transpired before. Well-positioned, but faced with the pressures confronting all of higher education, Union once more has a unique opportunity, an opportunity that, thanks to a generous grant from the General Electric Foundation, will enable the College to develop the engineering curriculum for the 21st century and bring liberal arts and technology together in a way to provide a model for all of higher education.

The institution that we celebrate today is Union. Yet the idea we celebrate had its origin well before 1795. The idea for Union's illustrious history can, like all of American higher education, be traced back to ancient Greece. Indeed, the belief that knowledge is power, and that it can be acquired through effective and logical reasoning, through persistent and hard work, is hardly unique to Union.

What is unique, though, is how this wonderful college came into being. In the midst of the Revolutionary War, in 1779, the townspeople of Schenectady petitioned the State of New York for a college; in 1795, during the presidency of George Washington, they succeeded in obtaining a charter for an institution of higher learning in Schenectady, “the land beyond the pine plains,” thereby marking a departure from what had taken place at the seventeen other colleges that had been chartered before Union. For the first time, a non-denominational institution was born, an institution that was a union of all faiths and that specified in its charter that no person of any religious denomination shall be excluded from the College on account of his particular religion. Moreover, as Union's first president, John Blair Smith, concluded, education should not be the providence only of the elite. In this country, said Smith, where the path to honors and offices had been open to all, so also should higher education, and the dissemination of knowledge; at Union, therefore, the sons of farmers and the sons of patroons would be equally welcome.

Early on, too, Union chose a decidedly different path from its seventeen brethren. Like those institutions, the acquisition and transmission of knowledge was the primary raison d'etre. However, it was the application of that knowledge, and. the recognition that that knowledge is a living entity, that distinguished Union. For those teaching and learning at Union, knowledge grew, changed, had meaningful applications.

Taken separately, the acquisition, transmission, and application of knowledge have relevance; together, though, they have more than relevance, for they have the power to change the world. From its earliest days, Union has recognized and encouraged the dynamic interaction among these three aspects of knowledge, for, as
Eliphalet Nott stated, “in the acquisition of knowledge, you are never to be stationary, but always progressive.”

That approach was evidenced early on and is equally evident today. From the introduction of the modern languages into the curriculum, to the addition of the hard sciences, to the introduction of first a general program in engineering and then in electrical engineering, Union has not shied from the application of knowledge that has been acquired and properly transmitted.

More recently, the spirit is demonstrated in the broad range of international study opportunities, on the emphasis on undergraduate student research (not only in the sciences but also in the arts, humanities, and social sciences), and on a recognition of the need to revamp an engineering curriculum for the 21st century. Yet the real challenge is before us; we must afford students seeking a broad liberal arts education the opportunity to be exposed to technology in a pedagogically sound and non-threatening manner.

Certainly, while most first-rate educational institutions are willing to confine themselves to the acquisition and transmission of knowledge, there are other institutions that have emphasized the application of knowledge. Yet what makes Union distinctive is our belief-a belief that truly can be traced to the very first years of the College-that the three ideas must work together and that they can do so effectively in the intimate setting of a small liberal arts college.

These attributes will serve us well as we face the obvious and many challenges in our third century of service. As important as this philosophical basis is, and as lovely as the beauty of this first planned campus in America is, ultimately it is people who will make the difference. The right people without the right idea and the right setting, and the right idea and setting without the right people, can each provide something of worth. In the final analysis, though, it is the triumvirate of our idea, our setting, and our people that will help propel us into our 21st century.

As we celebrate today, we have reason to feel proud of our history and the future promise of our distinctiveness. It is the strength of that history and distinctiveness that has made the difference in the experiences that so many in the Union family have had, including so many of you, and it is that historic and ongoing distinctiveness that will lead the Union ship safely past the modern-day Scylla and Charybdis.

Roger H. Hull

Posted on Mar 1, 1995

As the College neared its 200th birthday on February 25, it was the happy recipient of a flurry of major gifts:

• Gordon Gould '41, the inventor of the laser, gave the College $1.5 million to establish an endowed chair in physics. Although the chair will bear his name, Gould made the gift to honor Professor Frank Studer, who was his mentor.  
• The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded Union a $575,000 challenge grant, one of the largest of thirty grants the foundation made nationwide. When the challenge is met, it will mean nearly $3 million for the renovation and expansion of Schaffer Library. 
• The National Science Foundation made matching grants of nearly $450,000 for three projects that will greatly enhance research opportunities for both students and faculty at the College. 
• The GE Fund awarded $191,000 to the College to create an innovative teacher training center to help mathematics, science, and technology teachers in the Schenectady City School District. 
• Doug Seholm '57 and his wife, Barbara, pledged $250,000 to establish an endowment for the maintenance of Jackson's Garden.

Details about all the gifts will be found in the “Bicentennial Campaign” news section, which begins on page 10.

Posted on Mar 1, 1995

William G. Burns '54, a past chairman of the Board of Trustees and a longtime participant in the life of the College, received the Founders Medal at the Founders Day convocation in February.

The Founders Medal, one of the College's highest honors, is awarded on special occasions to recognize unusual and distinguished service to the College.

As an undergraduate, Burns was a member of the Student Council, president of the Newman Club, a member of the track team, and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

He continued his active role after graduation. Soon after becoming an
alumnus, he was president of the Albany Alumni Club. Later he was a head agent for the Annual Fund, chairman of his class's twenty-fifth ReUnion, president of the Class of 1954, chairman of ReUnion, a member of the Campaign for Union's National Committee, and chairman of the Bicentennial Campaign.

Appointed to the Board of Trustees in 1979, he was vice chairman in 1985 and chairman of the board from 1986 to 1990. Currently, he is a life trustee.

He is retired from NYNEX, where he was vice chairman and a director.

Posted on Mar 1, 1995

The College began its third century by establishing a new honor for alumni the Eliphalet Nott Medal.

The medal will be awarded to alumni who have achieved outstanding success in their professional fields. It is named after Union's great nineteenth-century president, Eliphalet Nott, who served the College from 1804 to 1866, the longest tenure of any American college president.

President Roger Hull, who had the idea for the honor, presented medals to six alumni during the Founders Day convocation on February 25. Recipients were:

Baruch S. (Barry) Blumberg '46, Fox Chase Distinguished Scientist at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1976;

Robert I. Chartoff '55, president of Chartoff Productions, a film production company in Santa Monica, Calif.,
and producer of such films as the Rocky series, The Right Stuff, Raging Bull, and others;

A. Lee Fritschler '59, president of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., and former chairman of the U.S. Postal Rate Commission;

Michael J. Fuchs '67, chairman and chief executive officer of Home Box Office;

Robert A. Laudise '52, adjunct research director for chemistry at AT&T Bell Laboratories;

Kathleen M. White '72, editor-in-chief of Redbook magazine and the former editor of McCall's, Working Woman, Child, and Mademoiselle magazines.

Posted on Mar 1, 1995

New members of the College's Board of Trustees are William J. Curtin `82, of Summit, NJ.; Wallace A Graham, of Schenectady; and Stephen R Karp, of Weston, Mass.

Curtin, who was elected to the board by alumni, is a managing director with Lehman Brothers in New York City. He received his B.A in economics and has worked in a number of volunteer capacities for the College.

Graham is vice chairman of the board of Schenectady International, a chemical manufacturer with worldwide sales. A graduate of the University of North Carolina, he was with IBM before joining Schenectady International (formerly Schenectady Chemicals, Inc.) in 1972.

Karp is the chief executive officer of New England Development, Inc., a commercial real estate developer that has built a number of shopping malls in the Boston area. He is a graduate of Boston University, and one of his two children is a current Union student.