For nearly five decades, history professor Michael D’Innocenzo ’57 has remained loyal to former U.S. President and statesman Thomas Jefferson.
Partly because of that devotion, D’Innocenzo won the 2008 Distinguished Teaching Award, which was awarded by the American Historical Association in January. D’Innocenzo is the Harry H. Wachtel Distinguished Teaching Professor for the Study of Nonviolent Social Change at Hofstra University on Long Island, which is home to about 7,600 undergraduate students. In his work at Hofstra, D’Innocenzo has become known as a tireless advocate for student civic engagement.
“All of the courses I have developed over my 48 years at Hofstra, as well as the extensive programs I have created in dozens of public libraries and for community organizations, relate to [Thomas] Jefferson's theme of fostering informed civic engagement. I always strive to assist people of all ages to develop perspectives from history so that they can avoid becoming prisoners of the present,” D’Innocenzo said.
The teaching award was presented at the association’s annual convention in New York City. Established in 1986, the award recognizes outstanding teaching and advocacy for history teaching at colleges and universities.
“As the most senior and oldest member of the history faculty, it is still a privilege and a pleasure for me to teach beginning freshmen. To my continued delight – and, in some ways, to my surprise – my relationships with young students remain warm and vigorously interactive,’ D’Innocenzo said.
D’Innocenzo helped launch the Hofstra Public Policy Institute in 1993 with Kettering Foundation support, and in 2007 helped found Hofstra's Center for Civic Engagement.
At Union, D’Innocenzo earned a bachelor’s degree in history and was awarded the prestigious Frank Bailey Prize. Two years after graduating, he completed a master’s degree at Columbia University and soon after began teaching at Hofstra.
“My teaching and community goals have evolved over time, and I am happy to say that a major aspect of both is to foster deeper intergenerational associations, especially to encourage people across the age divide to think about civic engagement and their roles and responsibilities as citizens,” D’Innocenzo said.
Since 2006, the Posse Scholars program has been helping Union recruit an ethnically diverse group of high-achieving scholarship students from the Boston area. A recent $1 million gift from the Karp family, including Trustee Doug Karp ’97 and Jana Karp ’99, is aimed at keeping the Posse program at Union for years to come.
The Campaign Trail banner from the summer 2008 Union College magazine. You are Union.
“We believe strongly in Union. We want to make sure that it is a great place a hundred years from now, and the Posse Scholars program is part of that. We want to make sure this program is off and running. We are hoping that other alumni and friends will make gifts too,” Doug Karp said.
Each year the Posse Foundation helps the College select a group of about 10 students from a pool of more than a 1,000 candidates from Boston-area high schools. The Posse Foundation manages similar programs based in cities including New York City, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. The Boston branch of the foundation works with selective liberal arts colleges like Union, Hamilton College and Bryn Mawr College to recruit an ethnically diverse group of potential student leaders. The colleges provide tuition scholarships and other financial aid.
Trustee Doug Karp, Class of 1997. Posse Scholars donor.
“This program has transformed people’s lives, and we’ve also seen how it benefits Union. Even though times are tough, and it is hard to make decisions about charitable giving, this type of program at Union remains critically important,” Doug Karp said. “I think Union helps shape who you are. If you are lucky enough to have attended the College, you know that you grow a lot in those four years. I think that opportunity should be available to everyone.”
Doug Karp joined Union’s Board of Trustees in 2007 and has since watched the Posse program take root. The first Posse class at Union will graduate in 2010.
He is executive vice president of New England Development, a company founded in 1978 by his father, Stephen R. Karp. Today, the development company manages several large Northeast shopping centers, hotels and resorts. Doug manages retail and mixed-use development projects and is asset manager for Nantucket Island Resorts, a collection of premier hospitality and retail properties on Nantucket.
As a teenager, Doug helped found Lids, a chain retail outlet found in malls across the country that sells baseball-style hats from major sports leagues. The store began in 1992 as a Christmas kiosk in a Newton, Mass. mall and grew to 400 stores in 40 states.
Jana Karp is a teacher at St. Patrick School, a grammar school in Roxbury, Mass. with a tradition of academic excellence dating back to 1885.
The Posse program was co-founded by Debbie Bial, a former youth leadership program worker in New York City who counseled inner city students who frequently left for college only to drop out six months later. During a conversation, one of those students told Bial, “I never would have left if I had my posse with me.” The foundation name grew from that exchange. Over the past 20 years, Posse’s college and university partners have awarded more than $260 million in Posse scholarships to 2,620 students across the country.
Closed Minds? Politics and Ideology in American Universities
Brookings Institution Press
Contrary to popular belief, the problem with U.S. higher education is not too much politics but too little. Far from being bastions of liberal bias, American universities have largely withdrawn from the world of politics. So conclude Bruce L. R. Smith, Jeremy Mayer and Lee Fritschler in this illuminating book. The book draws on data from interviews, focus groups, and a new national survey by the authors, as well as their decades of experience in higher education to paint the most comprehensive picture to date of campus political attitudes. It finds that while liberals outnumber conservatives within faculty ranks, even most conservatives believe that ideology has little impact on hiring and promotion. Yet this ideological peace on campus has been purchased at a high price. American universities are rarely hospitable to lively discussions of issues of public importance. They largely shun serious political debate, all but ignore what used to be called civics, and take little interest in educating students to be effective citizens. Smith, Mayer and Fritschler contrast the current climate of disengagement with the original civic mission of American colleges and universities. In concluding, they suggest how universities can reclaim and strengthen their place in the nation’s political and civic life.
DANIEL R. SCHWARZ ’63
In Defense of Reading: Teaching Literature in the Twenty-First Century
Wiley-Blackwell
Daniel R. Schwarz, an influential scholar and critic, presents in this book a passionate and joyful defense of the pleasures of reading. Schwarz provides valuable insights for teachers and students on why we read and how we read. The author explores the life of the mind, the rewards and joys of committed teaching, and the relationship between teaching and scholarship in the contemporary university. Schwarz is the Frederic J. Whiton Professor of English and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell University, where he has taught since 1968.
RAYMOND ANGELO BELLIOTTI ’70
Niccolo Machiavelli: The Laughing Lion and the Strutting Fox
Lexington Books
Machiavelli is usually understood as a thinker who separated morality from politics or who championed Roman, pagan morality over conventional, Christian morality. In this book, Raymond Angelo Belliotti argues, instead, that Machiavelli's innovation is his understanding of the perhaps irresolvable moral conflicts that exist within political leaders who fulfill the duties of their offices while accepting the authority of absolute moral principles. Machiavelli is a moral pessimist who insists that politicians must “risk their souls” when performing their public responsibilities, according to Belliotti. Politicians and military leaders must dirty their hands in service to their constituents. The book offers a balanced understanding of the Florentine, with special focus on his insights and his myopias. Belliotti is a distinguished teaching professor of philosophy at SUNY Fredonia.
PHILIP ALCABES ’76
Dread: How Fear and Fantasy Have Fueled Epidemics from the Black Death to the Avian Flu
Perseus Books Group
Philip Alcabes argues in this book that our anxieties about epidemics are created not so much by the germ or microbe in question—or the actual risks of contagion—but by the unknown, the undesirable, and the misunderstood. Alcabes examines epidemics through history to show how they reflect the particular social and cultural anxieties of their times. From Typhoid Mary to bioterrorism, as new outbreaks are unleashed or imagined, new fears surface, new enemies are born, and new behaviors emerge. Dread dissects the fascinating story of the imagined epidemic: the one that we think is happening, or might happen; the one that disguises moral judgments and political agendas, the one that ultimately expresses our deepest fears. Alcabes is an associate professor of urban public health at Hunter College of the City University of New York and visiting clinical associate professor at the Yale School of Nursing. He has written op-eds for the Washington Post and contributed essays to The American Scholar, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Virginia Quarterly Review. He lives in the Bronx.
BILL VITEK ’79
The Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge
University Press of Kentucky
Human dependence on technology has increased exponentially over the past several centuries, and so too has the notion that we can fix environmental problems with scientific applications. This book proposes an alternative to this worldview. The contributors argue that uncritical faith in scientific knowledge has created many of the problems now threatening the planet and that our wholesale reliance on scientific progress is both untenable and myopic. Editors Bill Vitek and Wes Jackson have collected a group of essays to support the notion that humanity’s ignorance far exceeds its knowledge. Each essay supports the idea that we can never improve upon nature but that we can, by putting this new perspective to work in our professional and personal lives, live sustainably. Vitek is associate professor of philosophy at Clarkson University.
EVAN I. SCHWARTZ '86
Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story
Houghton Mifflin
Finding Oz tells the remarkable tale behind one of the world’s most enduring and best-loved stories. Offering profound new insights into the true origins and meaning of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 masterwork, it delves into the personal turmoil and spiritual transformation that fueled Baum’s fantastical parable of the American dream. Baum failed at a series of careers before setting out on a journey of discovery that would lead to the Land of Oz. Drawing on original research, Evan Schwartz debunks popular misconceptions and shows how the people, places and events in Baum’s life gave birth to his unforgettable images and characters. The Yellow Brick Road was real, the Emerald City evoked the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, and Baum’s mother-in-law, the radical women’s rights leader Matilda Joslyn Gage, inspired his dual view of witches—as good and wicked. Schwartz is a former award-winning editor at Business Week and the author of The Last Lone Inventor, named one of the 75 best business books of all time by Fortune. The idea for Finding Oz came to him while reading Baum’s classic to his daughter at bedtime. For more: www.findingoz.com.
MUSIC ALBUM
JASON BROOME ’91
The Westport Sunrise Sessions 2
Diablo Dulce Records
This 11-song album retains the indie, folk and rock roots of the band’s first record while capitalizing on the band's growing creativity and production skills. Led by singer and guitarist Jason Broome, The Westport Sunrise Sessions have been touring and making records since 1987. The band first collaborated on college breaks, often in the basement and laundry room of Union’s Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, now the Office of Admissions, as well as various barns and garages in Westport, N.Y. Today, all four members write, sing and are multi-instrumentalists. This makes for a range of sonic variety and an eclectic mix of tunes, featuring everything from clarinet, to Hammond organ, banjo, to propane tanks and plastic bottles. The album features songs ranging from Beatles-esque melodies and lyrical sarcasm of the opening track, “The King,” to the Mariachi flavors and storied sentiments of “Barcelona.” The album is available as a free download on their Web site: www.diablodulce.com/wss.
MICHAEL L. EZRA ’94
Muhammad Ali: The Making of an Icon
Temple University Press
This book takes a unique stance on the life of Muhammad Ali by exploring the relationships between Ali's public image and the economic consequences of his career. The book argues that, while much of Ali's importance has stemmed from his cultural and political influence, it is impossible to separate those things from their financial impact. It is Ali's economic value as a corporate pitchman as much as his moral authority as a figure of tolerance and righteousness that drives his iconic status today. Ali's status as a great American hero does not simply result from his virtue; it exists because over his long reign as a cultural icon, profit and political capital have accrued from positioning him as such. Ezra is chair of the American Multicultural Studies Department at Sonoma State University and author of Civil Rights Movement: People and Perspectives, a comprehensive reference book that fuses traditional scholarship with cutting-edge research.
Union boasts one of the highest graduation rates in the country, according to a recent national report.
Commencement 2008 hats in air
Eighty-six percent of students at Union graduate within six years of entering, placing the College among the top 10 for “highly competitive” schools. The top schools in the category were Babson College and Mount Holyoke, which graduate 89 percent of their students within six years.
The national average for four-year schools in all categories is 55 percent, according to the report.
“Union students and alumni are deeply grateful for their close working relationships with faculty members, whose dedication is an essential contributing factor to our high graduation rate," said Therese A. McCarty, the Stephen J. and Diane K. Ciesinski Dean of the Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs.
“Diplomas and Dropouts” was prepared for the American Enterprise Institute on Public Policy, a conservative Washington think tank.
Graduation rates were based on U.S. Department of Education data for nearly 1.2 million freshmen who entered college in 2001, and the six categories ranging from non-competitive to most competitive were as defined by Barron's Profiles of American Colleges, based on student demographics and admission standards. The study looked at 1,385 four-year colleges.
Last summer, Business Week took a look at the schools where graduates have the most earning potential and found that Union alumni place among the top colleges in the country. To read the article, click here.
Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve and economic advisor to President Barack Obama, addresses the graduating class. Commencement 2009.
Paul A. Volcker, head of President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, told Union’s newest graduates that “the abrupt downward slide in the economy may be slowing.
"With massive government spending and monetary expansion, we have headed off the kind of deep recession that faced some earlier Union College graduates. But there still is a long way to go to restore and sustain prosperity,” the former chairman of the Federal Reserve said during the College’s 215th Commencement Sunday.
A professor emeritus of International Economic Policy at Princeton, Volcker, 81, is one of history’s most acclaimed central bankers, widely credited with reining in high inflation in the 1980s with a series of courageous, if sometimes unpopular tactics, including raising interest rates.
Graduates pose for a photo at Commencement 2009. Fanning.
He characterized the current big recession as "one big wake-up call. It can and must be the start of a corrective process."
His prescription fo sustaining prosperity is to "learn to save more, to invest more, to stay on the leading edge of technology. In some ways, we have to challenge ingrained habits of thinking and working… Union College has helped prepare for those changes and get us back on a better track."
Economic news aside, families and friends cheered from their seats in Hull Plaza as some 500 students received their diplomas on the walkway in front of Schaffer Library under a bright blue sky.
Volcker, who encouraged graduates to take "time to experiment, to take a risk,” received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Union Sunday.
Family members clap as the Class of 2009 marches from the Nott Memorial to Hull Plaza at Commencement 2009. Fanning.
The College awarded an honorary doctor of science degree to Martin L. Perl, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1995 for his discovery of a new elementary particle, the tau lepton. Perl was nominated for the honorary degree by Jay Newman, the R. Gordon Gould Professor of Physics, and Michael Vineyard, the Frank and Marie Louise Bailey Professor of Physics.
Volcker, Perl and President Stephen C. Ainlay arrived on campus in a 1914 Duplex Drive Brougham Detroit Electric Automobile once owned by Union Professor and famed electrical engineer Charles Proteus Steinmetz.
In his remarks to the Class of 2009, Ainlay enumerated ways in which students contributed to campus and community life, from athletic and academic accomplishments to raising funds for local and global causes.
“No matter what you choose to do in the years ahead, remember that your academic lineage is a great one and your lineage beckons you to make a difference,” he said.
His single piece of advice: “Don’t take these relationships or your relationship to this College for granted. Stay in touch with … people who made a difference in your life and who care about what happens to you.”
Class valedictorian was Daniel C. Bailey of Mount Vision, N.Y., a chemistry major who begins work as a chemical development scientist at Roche Carolina Inc.
Student speaker Sean D. Mulkerne addresses his fellow graduates. Commencement 2009.
Salutatorian was Steven M. Herron of Ridgefield, Conn., also a chemistry major. After building homes in West Virginia this summer with Passionist Volunteers, Herron will begin his Ph.D. in chemistry at Stanford University.
The student speaker was Sean D. Mulkerne of Whitesboro, N.Y. A political science major, he will pursue a Masters of Science in global politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science after graduation.
“Union College is exactly what you make of it,” Mulkerne said. “Each individual has the opportunity to shape the College into something that excites and challenges them… Indeed, life is exactly what you make of it.”
Julia Bernstein, left, and Dr. Leslie Bernstein, center, pose with Dr. Paul Bernstein '82, Leslie's son and Julia's uncle. The elder Bernstein left Union some 50 years ago to attend medical school and went on to become a doctor. He received his Union d
Sunday was particularly special for Leslie H. Bernstein and his family. Fifty-five years after he attended Union, Bernstein joined his granddaughter, Julia ‘09, in receiving his diploma. Bernstein, of New Rochelle, N.Y., left Union before completing his degree to attend the University of Louisville School of Medicine Health Science Center, where he received his medical degree in 1958.
Each year, the College awards bachelor's degrees to alumni whose study at Union was cut short, in many cases because of military service. To be eligible, alumni must have completed at least three years at Union, received an advanced degree and attained distinction in their field, and they must not have a bachelor's from another institution. Since 1990, more than 40 alumni have received their bachelor's degrees through this program.
Bernstein ‘55 attended the ceremony to see his granddaughter graduate, but his son, Leonard (Julia’s father) and other family members surprised him with a cap and gown Sunday so he could receive his long-awaited bachelor of science degree. In addition to Bernstein, a gastroenterologist with Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, and his granddaughter, Julia, son Paul ’82, and his wife, Tamara DiNolfo ’83, are also members of the Union family.
