Posted on May 27, 2003

For those who like variety, this year's Founders Day celebration was made to order.

The College's 208th birthday party included nanotechnology, Chopin, teaching, mentoring, and more.

Nanotechnology was the subject of remarks from the guest speaker, Philip Ball, a consulting editor of Nature magazine who has published seven books and a number of articles on popular science. Introduced as someone who encourages readers to look beyond traditional boundaries, he began by asking. “What is the scariest thing?”

His own answer: “All writers of thrillers and detective stories would agree-it's the thing we cannot see.”

Ball animatedly described the promise of structures and machines too small to be visible, and predicted that “nanobiology will be the hottest area within nanotechnology, dealing with damaged tissue and even with spinal column injuries. Since it operates on the scale of viruses, it offers all kinds of new possibilities,” he added.

Nanotechnology is still a fledgling science, he said, and, as such, it is almost a technological philosophy, requiring the same creativity of pioneers like an Edison. It brings with it an ethical dimension-and it “wouldn't be a bad thing if this were to become the focus on a debate on all technology,” he said. “The first step is a fully informed public-that's the gap we have to close.”

Ball received an honorary doctor of science degree at the ceremony, with reccognition for “a body of work that fascinates the layman and challenges the expert.” He also visited with a number of faculty and students and spoke to several classes during his two-day visit to campus.

Ball, who also is science writer in residence in the Chemistry Department of University College, London, received a first class honours degree in chemistry from the University of Oxford in 1983 and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Bristol in 1988.

His science books for the lay reader include Designing the Molecular World (1994), which surveyed the frontiers of modem chemistry;
Made to Measure (1997), which previewed the future of materials science; The Self-Made Tapestry (1998), which discussed pattern formation in the physical, biological, and geological sciences; Life's Matrix: A Biography of Water (1999), a cross-disciplinary exploration of this vital molecule; and Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color (2002), which argues that the development of artistic color is inseparable from the development of art.

Founders Day also included:

A tribute to teaching

Steve Sargent, professor and chair of Union's History Department, was awarded the Stillman Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Sargent began his college studies in electrical engineering, went on for graduate work in operations research, and then started all over again, acquiring a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in history.

“I encourage my students to consider their education as a golden opportunity to seek out and adopt ideas that will aid them in constructing a meaningful life,” he said. “If they are to resist simply becoming products of their culture and to have real choices about how to live their lives, young people must have lots of ideas to choose from.

“In the end, the real joy of teaching comes from helping young people become successful human beings…Long after we retire, our efforts on their behalf will bear fruit in their lives and in those of the people they love. Given the opportunity to produce so much good, who could resist feeling joyful?”

The Stillman Prize was created by David I. Stillman '72, Abbott Stillman '69, and Allan Stillman in honor of Abraham Stillman, father and grandfather, and is awarded to a faculty member to encourage outstanding teaching.

An honor for
Jim Underwood

Professor Jim Underwood was installed as the Chauncey H. Winters Professor of Political Science. Underwood has been a Union faculty member since 1963, and has served as dean of the faculty, chair of the Political Science Department, chair of the social sciences division, director of the General Electric program, and adviser to many students in the College's internship program in Albany and Washington, D.C.

“Scholar, teacher, lover of this college,” said President Roger Hull of Underwood, “for 40 years, Jim has shaped what Union is. Political leadership is his academic field. More than a student of leadership, he has led. Feeling for his students is very evident in the classroom. He's been sought after and loved by generations of students. He has served as my mentor, and he knows every tree, every planting, every nook and cranny on this campus.”

Underwood, the longest-serving current faculty member, has had longstanding friendships with a number of alumni who have gone on to distinguished careers in law, politics, and diplomacy. Among his students over the years he counts a half-dozen parent-child pairs.

He is co-author of
Governor Rockefeller in
New York: The Apex of Pragmatic Liberalism in the United States, and in 1971 he co-authored “Science/Technology-Related Activities in the Government of the State of New York,” a study funded by the state Office of Science and Technology. He has written and lectured extensively on former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, and has served as an analyst of elections and campaigns and a critic and commentator on matters ranging from college curricula to drug testing to acid rain.

Recognition for a mentor

Herbert Taylor, chair of
the English Department
at Hamburg (N.Y.) High School, beamed as he received the Gideon Hawley Teacher Recognition Award. He was nominated by his former student, Heather Lockrow '05, a “soon-to-be-declared English major.”

In her nominating essay, Lockrow described Taylor as “the epitome of an educator, filled with knowledge, passion, and care, and perhaps more importantly, respect for his students.” She wrote that Taylor “enters the class each day with the willingness and desire to share the joys of English language and literature” and that he “pushed people to do their best…in and out of the classroom.”

The Gideon Hawley Award is named for the 1809 graduate of Union who was New York State's first superintendent of public instruction. It is awarded to secondary school teachers who have had a continuing influence on the academic life of Union students.

Music, maestro

The Hollander Convocation Musician Prize went to Tian Tian '05, who wowed the Founders Day audience with her playing of Chopin's
Fantaisie-Impromptu Op. 66. The award was established and presented by Lawrence J. Hollander, former dean of engineering at the College; the prize will be awarded annually to a musician or ensemble.

Posted on May 27, 2003

The College's Board of Trustees has approved a 2003-04 balanced budget of $97,014,000 that limits increases in tuition, preserves competitive employee compensation, and meets the challenge of a decline in endowment spending with cost containments and revenue generation.

Included in the budget:

• Tuition, room and board rates are to increase five percent to $36,005. Costs are $28,608 for tuition, $3,882 for room, $3,195 for board (fifteen meals), $240 activity fee, and $80 for phase-in of a House System fee.
• A commitment to continue to meet the financial need of all students. Financial aid is to increase eight percent over the current year's forecasted expense to $19.8 million, $18.9 million of which will come from restricted and unrestricted institutional funds and the balance from federal and state sources.
• In employee compensation,
  faculty and staff earning $55,000 or less will receive a permanent increase of two percent. Staff earning more than $55,000 will receive a one-time adjustment of two percent, which will not
  be added to their base salaries. Faculty earning more than $55,000 will receive a permanent one percent increase and another one percent as a one-time adjustment.

• Following the recommendations of committees established last fall, reductions totaling approximately $1.3 million have been made in financial aid, terms abroad, athletics, printing, and travel expenditures. In addition, an employee benefits committee is at work, and the Board of Trustees will examine the work of the six committees this summer.

In other business:

• The trustees authorized the establishment of the Graduate College of Union University as a separate legal entity to conduct graduate programs in business administration, health system administration, educational studies, engineering and computer science. The move is deemed essential to clarifying the mission of Union as an undergraduate institution. The new entity would have its own board of trustees and officers.
• The board authorized the purchase of 2 Nott Terrace, the former Pedestrian Café, to be used as an additional building for the U-Start incubator program. A donor has contributed the $125,000 purchase price.
• The trustees also authorized improvements at Achilles Rink at an estimated budget of $700,000. Plans call for the replacement of the mechanical ice sheet system and improved heating and dehumidification that will allow for ice time in the summer months, and additional revenue. Work will begin when the funds are raised.

Posted on May 27, 2003

Professor of History Stephen M. Berk, widely known for his expertise on the Holocaust, Russia, and the Middle East, has been named the Henry and Sally Schaffer Professor of Holocaust and Jewish Studies.

Creation of the professorship was announced by the H. Schaffer Foundation.

A member of the Union faculty since 1967, Berk has earned an international reputation for his teaching, writing, and research about such topics as Russian and Soviet Jewish history, the Holocaust, the American Jewish experience, and anti-Semitism.

President Roger Hull said, “Steve Berk's lectures, both to his classes and to many organizations and conferences nationally and internationally, are legendary for their eloquence and knowledge.”

Berk said the Holocaust teaches a number of important lessons including the “pernicious impact of racism and demonological thinking in general, the role of personality in history, the need to confront evil, and the meaning of heroism.

“The Holocaust, important though it might be, is not the core of the Jewish religious and historical experience,” he continued. “The Jewish people made remarkable contributions to humanity, and this chair in Holocaust and Jewish Studies will help subsequent generations of Union students to become cognizant both of the Holocaust and the role played by Jews and Judaism in world history.”

Berk, a native of New York City, received his B.A. in history from the University of Pennsylvania, his master's degree from the University of Chicago, and his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He teaches a variety of classes, including Russian history, modern history of the Middle East, history of Poland, European history, and Jewish history. He also directs the College's interdepartmental program in Russia and Eastern Europe.

For more than twenty-five years, Berk's annual course on the Holocaust has been one of the College's most popular courses. As a young boy during World War II, he remembers watching film footage of Nazi death camps, and the images contributed to his desire to teach about the subject. “I want students to learn about the Holocaust, in an attempt to make them aware of the evil around them now and what it takes to oppose evil,” he says. “Anti-Semitism made Auschwitz possible; indifference made it almost inevitable.”

In creating the professorship through a $1.5 million gift, H. Schaffer Foundation President Sonya A. Stall said, “It is with pleasure that the H. Schaffer Foundation creates this academic chair for the continuing study of Holocaust and Jewish Studies benefiting all current and future students of Union. There is no more deserving professor worthy of being the first recipient than Dr. Berk.”

The H. Schaffer Foundation is named for Henry Schaffer, a Schenectady businessman and former trustee of Union. Mr. Schaffer, who left school at age fourteen and later became an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa, was well known for his support of higher education in the Capital District and was the principal benefactor of Schaffer Library.
He died in 1982.

In recent years, the H. Schaffer Foundation has supported Union's terms abroad program and the 1998 renovation and expansion of Schaffer Library.

Posted on May 27, 2003

The record-breaking year in applications for admissions was not the only record set this year in Grant Hall.

Alumni interviews reached
a record-breaking 729, far surpassing the previous record of 530.

“It's an easy and fun way to serve the College,” says Kris Gernert-Dott '86, associate dean of admissions. “And it is very successful in stimulating students' interest in Union. We regularly see that more than eighty percent of the students interviewed by alumni wind up applying.”

Getting involved in the program is as easy as sending an e-mail to Lilia Tiemann, the coordinator of alumni admissions and event planning
(tiemannl@union.edu). Once the preliminaries are out of the way, a volunteer will get a packet of information containing everything from a primer on how to conduct an interview to brochures and background about academic and extracurricular programs. Alumni are kept up to date by a variety of means-a guide for alumni volunteers, an alumni admissions newsletter, fact sheets, the Web. Many return regularly for such events as ReUnion or Homecoming, and Tiemann responds to a steady stream of e-mail to answer such questions as, “I talked with a student who wants to take a year off to do volunteer work in South America; what's the College's policy on deferred admissions?”

The increase in the number of off-campus interviews has not come at the expense of on-campus interviews; in fact, campus programming has also increased substantially in recent years, to the point where the Admissions Office now employs a dozen interviewers from the senior class to help meet the demand from potential applicants and their parents.

Nearly all of the requests for alumni interviews are initiated by the students, with about two-thirds of those requests coming from students who have been on campus, perhaps for a tour or an open house program. “We know that finding the time to get back on campus can be a challenge for them, since so many are carrying AP classes or are heavily involved in activities,” Gernert-Dott says. “So the alumni effort is a great service
-and the students know that we place the same value on an alumni interview as we do on an on-campus interview.”

Alumni are asked to do two or three interviews a year, although some do far more. Bill Vallee '74, an alumni admissions volunteer for many years, did fourteen interviews last year and helped out in the Hartford, Conn., area at school visits and college fairs. (Vallee was one of three alumni recently honored as a “volunteer of the year”-the others are Gary Starr '72, co-chair of the Hartford Alumni Admissions Committee, and Trey Wehrum '92, who volunteers from his home on Long Island.)

To be effective, the admissions volunteers need to be current. Each student who is interviewed fills out a questionnaire, and the most common complaint is that their interviewer presented Union the way it was, not the way it is. It may be for this reason that students generally prefer to talk with alumni who have graduated in the last ten to twenty years. As Gernert-Dott says, “The students tend to relate more to someone who is closer to the college experience.”

Complaints are relatively rare, however. More common is the student who said his alumnus interviewer was “thorough, complete, honest, and knew a lot about where Union is headed.” One student said that her interviewer, Jennifer Papazian '94, “changed my mind about the school,” and another student commented that he “couldn't say enough about my interviewer (Marc Weintraub '93 of Charlestown, West Va.).”

Admissions
posts record numbers

It was a year of records for the College's admissions effort:

• A record number of applications
• 4,200, or more than seven for each spot in the class.
• A record number of alumni interview requests-more than 700 (see related article).
• Record turnouts for such events as the fall multicultural weekend.
• An increase of eight percent
  in Early Decision, indicating Union is becoming the first choice of more students.

• And, with twelve members
  of the senior class assisting
  the admissions staff, a record number of on-campus interviews as well as record
  crowds at the year-round Open House programs.

Posted on May 27, 2003

President Roger Hull was honored as “Executive of the Year” at the annual business awards dinner this winter of the Chamber of Schenectady County.

He was cited for his leadership in College-city relations and community revitalization.

Shortly after his inauguration in 1990, he joined with business and government leaders to create Schenectady 2000, a revitalization effort based on the premise that a city in which residents take pride will be better able to lure and retain businesses. A largely volunteer organization, more than 1,000 residents have volunteered with business and civic leaders chairing a variety of task forces. Schenectady 2000 has also been responsible for the organization of the Union community service day, in which students, faculty, and staff take part in repainting bridges, picking up trash and planting shrubbery.

President Hull was a driving force in the creation of the Metroplex Development Authority, which has concentrated on large-scale redevelopment in downtown Schenectady. Among the authority's successes have been the construction of a new headquarters for MVP (an area HMO) and a new office building for the state Department of Transportation.

Under the Union-Schenectady Initiative, the College has invested some $11 million in the College Park neighborhood west of campus. The College has acquired and renovated a number of properties to house about 200 students, provides incentives for homeowners and Union employees to purchase homes (including low-interest mortgages, tuition scholarships and closing costs), assisted in the formation of
a neighborhood residents association, and created the Kenney Community Center, which offers a variety of programs for children and residents of College Park.

The College also has created the U-Start Business Incubator Center, which provides professional space at below-market rates to high-tech start-up businesses and such services as a mentoring program with experts from local businesses and organizations as well as Union faculty.

“Union College can play an important role in the revitalization of Schenectady,” Hull says. “I believe that individuals and institutions alike have an obligation to make a difference in the communities of which they are a part.”

Posted on May 27, 2003

In 1996, at a College commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr., sophomore Rachel Graham '98 announced that she had a dream: COCOA House, an after-school mentoring program that would team Union students with youngsters from Schenectady's Hamilton Hill.

Seven years later, Graham is overseeing COCOA's move to a home of its own at 869 Stanley St. in Schenectady.

“I'm overwhelmed by the favor, kindness, and generosity that this community has shown our program,” Graham says. “People and donations have just appeared. It's more than I could ever have dreamed.”

Until this year, COCOA
(Children of Our Community Open to Achievement) had been housed in the basement of Grace Temple Church of God and Christ at 30 Steuben Street, where Graham's father, Marvin, serves as pastor.

Graham started the program with the idea of offering an alternative. “Having been involved in my father's church, I became acquainted with a lot of kids, and education was not a high priority in many households,” she recalls. “I knew a few girls my age who dropped out and became teenage mothers. I was thinking of a way not so much to intervene in their lives, but to promote education as an alternative for them.”

The house cost about $10,000, most of which was raised through a campaign at the church. Most of the materials and labor for the renovation of the building were donated under the auspices of the Schenectady Inner City Ministry, Graham says.

Union has been closely associated with COCOA House from the beginning. The College supplies the students who volunteer as tutors, about ten to twenty each year who spend one or two afternoons a week with the kids. Last year, Union tutors logged about 700 hours at the center. On campus, COCOA House is a funded student activity with a slate of officers. It also provides funding for field trips including hockey games, museum visits, and plays. Alumni and students account for about half the members of the advisory committee.

Did Graham ever have doubts? “All the time,” she says, “especially after a bad day at the center. But there was enough support and encouragement from others to keep me in it. So many people helped us get
where we are.”

Graham's words on Martin Luther King Day seven years ago still speak to the mission of COCOA: “On Hamilton Hill, we have a role as a College to help them along the way, to show them that life is much broader than what they see.”