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Vincent Dotoli ’91: Harlem’s headmaster

Posted on Jun 10, 2009

Vincent Dotoli ’91 is an active listener, a skill he honed at Union in psychology Professor Suzie Benack’s adolescence and moral development courses. He is also the founder and architect of an innovative private academy for grade-school students near Central Park in Harlem.  

“Suzie Benack helped me hone my sense of where kids are coming from. It served me well as a teacher, and it goes on as an administrator. It’s empathy really. It’s the understanding of where someone else is coming from,” Dotoli said.

As the Harlem Academy finishes its fifth year, Dotoli is learning to re-apply his skill as an active listener. Sure, there are 74 students in grades one to five at the academy and about 20 new students set for next September. But the pupils are supported by an involved group of parents, teachers and donors. So, as head of school and chief architect of the academy, Dotoli has had to become a really active listener.

During the school year, Dotoli’s average work day begins at 7 a.m. and ends at 5 p.m. But, at the Harlem Academy, the time investment is a two-way street.   

“We expect parents to be educational partners. We make sure we are regularly conferencing with them. We have parent workshops. We include them in our leadership committees,” Dotoli said. 

The framework for the academy was formed during Dotoli’s work as a graduate student in education administration at Columbia University, beginning in 2001. With help from advisor Edmund W. Gordon, the Harlem Academy and 12 first-grade pupils began classes in a rented studio near Columbia’s campus in September 2004. Since then, the academy has grown but the basic goal has remained: Provide top-notch grade-school education to qualifying children without regard to family financial resources by using a sliding tuition scale that ranges from $400 to $16,500.

“This school is built around a strong foundation of making sure the kids excel in reading, writing, critical thinking, mathematics and public speaking. It is a very traditional curriculum. What is unusual is that we are getting great results while the public schools around us are essentially failing,” Dotoli said.

Two-thirds of the academy’s students rank in the top 20 percent nationally in math skills. Half score in the top 20 percent in reading, according to Dotoli. The school fielded 400 inquires last year for 21 slots. Those statistics are evidence that Dotoli, a former teacher and administrator at two elite New England private schools, has helped transfer prep school basics to an accessible inner city academy.

But that work comes with a price tag. The academy’s annual budget of roughly $1.2 million is supported by 15 percent tuition and 85 percent annual fund.

“It’s a heavy lift,” Dotoli said.

But the academy has enjoyed corporate support from Van Wagner Communications, an outdoor advertisement company, JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs and several philanthropic foundations.

Jennifer Prince is enrollment director at the academy and began working with Dotoli, who she reflexively calls “Mr. Dotoli,” in October 2004. She has seen him lead by example, saying, “We see him work so hard, so we want to work harder.”

But Prince agrees that hard work is only half the equation. Parents can be demanding. Teachers have ideas and often want to bring in new classroom programs to advance learning. Part of the academy’s success stems from Dotoli’s ability to listen and react, she said.

“He is always available to have those conversations with teachers and parents. It’s not just a conversation. He is going to do something with that. They appreciate that,” Prince said. “We feel like part of a growing school. It’s not just Mr. Dotoli doing in alone.”

As a student at Union, Dotoli was a Theta Delta Chi fraternity member, a psychology major and was active in the Schenectady Big Brothers/Big Sisters program. Aside from Benack, Dotoli counts English Professor Frank Gado’s course on the short story and history Professor Steven Sargent’s course dealing with the Scientific Revolution as formative courses.    

After graduation, Dotoli worked as a teacher or administrator in private schools in Maine, Rhode Island and, most recently, in Cambridge, Mass. at the 125-year-old Buckingham Browne & Nichols. But, as he recently told Forbes magazine, “Those students were going to be successful whether I was there or not.”

So, at age 31, he enrolled at Columbia and began work on a thesis project aimed at creating a private urban school that prized parental involvement and placed renewed emphasis on rigorous academic study in areas like math, composition, debate and critical thinking.    

“When I was at Union, we took courses that represented every discipline in the College’s curriculum. We had to take courses from all different areas. And being exposed to such a wide array of disciplines with high-quality instruction and the chance to acquire a real base of knowledge was critical to me as a teacher and administrator who wants to share a love of learning,” Dotoli said.

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Snapshots of history

Posted on Jun 10, 2009

The College celebrated Founders Day in late February by recounting its role during the abolitionist movement and the Civil War and by unveiling a portrait painting of one of Union’s notable historical figures.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author James M. McPherson, in the keynote address at Memorial Chapel, said the real character of the College was established by its longtime president, Eliphalet Nott. Though he never affiliated with the organized anti-slavery movement, Nott held strong anti-slavery convictions. McPherson is a professor emeritus at Princeton University and author of 11 books including Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, which received the Pulitzer Prize.

McPherson cited Nott’s baccalaureate address in 1811, in which he praised the British anti-slavery leaders who had abolished the African slave trade.

Their fame, Nott said, “I had rather inherit than Caesar’s.” McPherson noted that in the same speech, Nott, whose son and grandson were named after British abolitionists, predicted that “Africa will rise if there be any truth in God.”

McPherson, a Civil War historian and the George Henry Davis ’86 Professor of American History Emeritus at Princeton, paid homage to the hundreds of students and alumni who fought in the war, including 61 who died, as proof of the “devotion that the nation might experience a new birth of freedom.

“It is a record of which this institution may be justly proud.”

During the hour-long ceremony in Memorial Chapel, the College unveiled a portrait of Moses Viney, a runaway slave from Maryland who escaped to Schenectady on the Underground Railroad. Viney was a coachman, messenger and constant companion of Nott, who eventually secured his freedom. Viney was featured in the Old Union section in the Winter 2008 Union College magazine.

Viney’s portrait was painted by Simmie Knox, a renowned African-American artist who painted the official White House portraits of former President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and other political and cultural figures, including childhood friend Hank Aaron. As a young man, Knox’s promising baseball career was cut short by an eye injury. During recovery he discovered a talent for drawing and painting and later earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in fine arts. 

President Stephen C. Ainlay praised Knox, who used a photograph from the College’s archives to complete the portrait. Borrowing the words of Jared Gourrier ’10, who spoke about Viney before the painting was uncovered, Ainlay told Knox he captured the “integrity, capability and intelligent humility” of one of the campus’s most central figures.

Founders Day commemorates the 214th anniversary of the granting of the College’s charter from the New York State Board of Regents.

Also at Founders Day, Daniel Frio, a history teacher at Wayland High School in Massachusetts, received the Gideon Hawley Teacher Recognition Award. Frio was nominated by Priscilla Wright ’12. The award is named for the 1809 graduate of Union who was New York state’s first superintendent of public education.

Seniors Adrienne Hart and Alexander Schlosberg received the Hollander Prize for Music. The pair provided a musical interlude, “All I Ask of You,” from Phantom of the Opera.

The Founders Day convocation was the first in a series of events to commemorate Union’s role in the abolitionist movement. The College hosted “The Underground Railroad, Its Legacies and Our Communities,” the eighth annual Underground Railroad History Conference, at College Park Hall in February.

In addition, a Schaffer Library exhibit, “Abolitionism and the Struggle for African-American Freedom: The Union College Experience,” chronicled the College’s involvement in the struggle for African-American freedom. It included an 18th century sermon against the keeping of “negros” by Union College President Jonathan Edwards the Younger, photographs of Moses Viney, and copies of Union’s African-American student newspapers from the 1970s.

Nott and the Civil War

Prior to the Civil War, President Eliphalet Nott opposed slavery and supported Abraham Lincoln’s bid for the presidency, yet publicly worked to quell the passionate debates flaring up between Southern and Northern students. Nott feared that such activities would stir passions that would set back the cause, or bring violence, according to author, historian and Founders Day speaker James M. McPherson.

McPherson outlined Nott’s views and highlighted pieces of the war’s impact on the College in a keynote speech in Memorial Chapel during Founders Day. As McPherson notes in the excerpt of his address printed here, 61 former Union College students and graduates died in Union service. Six died in service to the Confederate Army. 

Overall, nearly 570 one-time Union College students fought in the Civil War, according to the Encyclopedia of Union College History. Roughly 520 served in the Union Army or related military divisions and 46 served in the Confederate Army.

Keynote excerpts

Following are excerpts from McPherson’s address at Founders Day:

The real character of Union College was established by its fourth president, Eliphalet Nott, one of the most famous college presidents in the 19th century whose 62-year tenure at Union will surely never be equaled.

Nott held strong anti-slavery convictions. In his Baccalaureate Address in 1811, [Nott] praised the British anti-slavery leaders who had succeeded, after a long struggle, in abolishing the African slave trade. Their fame, said Nott, “I had rather inherit than Ceasar’s.” In the same speech he predicted that, “Africa will rise if there be any truth in God.”

Yet Nott never affiliated with the organized anti-slavery movement. He considered himself a man of reason and rational discourse, while he believed that the abolitionists appealed to the passions of humankind and would only provoke a Southern and conservative backlash that would set back the anti-slavery cause. As president of an institution that depended on the support and goodwill of the community, he also felt that he must keep the militant abolitionists at bay. Union College had a substantial number of Southern students – more, evidently, than almost any other Northern college of its size.

Nott was fond of expounding upon what he called a “higher law” than the laws of man, which would ultimately bring slavery to an end. New York Senator William H. Seward, Union Class of 1820, made this “higher law” famous in his speech against the Compromise of 1850, in which he declared that “there is a higher law than the Constitution,” the law under which all man are free and equal in His sight.

Eliphalet Nott could not have agreed more with his former student. Perhaps that is why he looked the other way when the Philomathean Society invited Wendell Phillips, the most radical of abolitionists, to speak in 1854 at the same time the College Trustees were meeting to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Nott’s installation as president. Nott was quite clever about manifesting his anti-slavery attitudes by indirection.

By 1860, Nott was no longer confident that slaves would be disenthralled by the diffusion of science or the progress of society. As Southern states prepared to secede after Abraham Lincoln’s election as president in 1860, Nott wrote to a friend, “that odious bondage may have to be swept away in blood.”

It was indeed swept away in blood during the next five years. Union College alumni and students made an important contribution to Union victory in the war, but at great cost to the College. The war reduced enrollment by half as many students enlisted, led by the few Southern students still remaining in 1860, who departed for their home states after Lincoln’s election. Combined with a series of strokes suffered by Nott … the College was devastated by the war and took a long time to recover. Sixty-one Union College alumni and students, including 23 from the classes of 1861 to 1864, gave this last full measure of devotion so that the nation might experience a new birth of freedom. It is a record of which this institution may be justly proud. 

Dispatch from the battlefield 

In addition to McPherson’s remarks, Union College magazine pulled from the College archives several Civil War personal items belonging to Maj. Charles E. Pease, Class of 1856, and member of the Army of the Potomac.

In April 1865, Pease carried the terms of surrender drafted by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, which led to the formal meeting between the two at the Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia. Pease is one of several notable Union men to serve in the war, including Maj. Gen Daniel Butterfield, Class of 1844 and composer of “Taps,” and Maj. Henry Reed Rathbone, Class of 1857, who grappled with John Wilkes Booth during the assassination of Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre.

The College’s Special Collections houses Pease’s uniform patches, a War Department appointment as a Union Army officer, and a letter from Pease to his wife, Kitty, about an incident on Feb. 6, 1865. On that day, Pease’s horse was shot and wounded as he rode. He later recovered the bullet that felled his horse, which is shown here with his letter.

Pease volunteered for the Union Army in September 1861 and served until the war’s end in 1865. After a series of promotions, he became a major under the command of Gen. George Mead. Pease was at Grant’s Appomattox headquarters when a letter from Lee addressed to the “General Commanding of the Armies of the United States” was delivered, according to March 27, 1886 obituary in the New York Tribune. Pease and two others set out at night and tracked Grant down near the site of the Battle of Five Forks. Grant selected Pease to join him at the famous meeting with Lee at the Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865.

According to the Tribune obituary, Lee sketched a path for Pease to ride from the courthouse to Grant’s headquarters to deliver news of the surrender.  

“The shortest way led through Rebel lines and Lee rapidly penciled a pass and gave it to the major, who rode back through the discomfited army and was the first to announce the long-hoped-for tidings to the Army of the Potomac,” reads a March 27, 1886 obituary in the N.Y. Tribune

In the letter held in the College archives, Pease wrote:

My dear Kitty,

I have just come in from a hard days work and fight safe and sound. My horse was shot under me and I had many narrow escapes but fortunately escaped – was fighting six hours and have been in the saddle since daylight. So that’s [why] I am not in very good condition to write but thought I would just write you a letter before I went to bed. Fred Tremaine of Albany was hit and is feared fatally wounded and our loss in officers and men has been severe. I will write you more soon. I pray you are well and that one of your good letters will reach me soon.

            As ever yours,

            Charley     

 

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Parents Association Newsletter

Posted on Jun 8, 2009

 

Dear Parents,

Well, it’s happened again; we’ve reached the end of the Union school calendar. This year has flown by. Our students have officially finished with classes, and our seniors, my Sebastian among them, are preparing for Commencement on Sunday, June 14. Ceremonies begin at 10 a.m., with the academic procession – lots of wonderful pomp and circumstance – beginning at 9:30. For the complete schedule of events, please go to http://www.union.edu/Commencement/ 

This is not only the last newsletter of the academic year, it is my final newsletter as Parents Association chairperson, as my son begins his next life phase upon graduation. It has been a pleasure being part of my children’s college experience. I will hand over the reins to Julia Blanchard, mother of Nick ’10 and Ellen ’12, who is eager to begin her work with our Union parents. You will have an opportunity to meet Julia at the Parents Association Open House on campus during Homecoming and Family Weekend, set for Oct. 30-Nov.1.

And now, some news from campus:

From Athletics:
The Athletics Department is hosting the 13th Annual Friends of Union Golf Outing, Monday, Aug. 10, at the Edison Club in Rexford, N.Y. (8:30 a.m. shotgun start). The $135 per player or $500 per foursome includes green fees, cart, gifts, continental breakfast prior to start, post-play barbecue, prizes, hole-in-one and longest drive competition. Register online at www.UnionAthletics.com or call (518) 833-6284
 

From College Relations:
This year’s ReUnion Weekend, May 28-31, was a major success, bringing 1,500 visitors to campus for the annual celebration of Union’s graduates. A groundbreaking ceremony for Lippman Hall and talks by Warner Bros. CEO Alan Horn ’64, “Family Guy” writer Chris Sheridan ’89 and “Night Court”

creative executive Scott Siegler ’69 were among the weekend highlights.

A $3 million gift from Jim Lippman ’79 and his wife, Linda, will support a major renovation of the Social Sciences building. The new Lippman Hall, named in honor of Jim Lippman’s father, Robert G. Lippman ’50, will include “smart classrooms” that employ state-of-the-art technology.

 From the Computer Science Department:
The National Science Foundation has awarded the CS Department a summer supplement to the grant, "Creating a Campus-Wide Computation Initiative." Union professors will work with two faculty members from Bard High School Early College in New York City as they incorporate computation into existing courses and consider whether Union’s introductory CS courses would be suitable for their setting.

In addition, the department welcomes two new faculty members to campus in September. John Rieffel joins the College after he completes post-doctoral studies at Tufts University in the biomimetics laboratory. He works in soft robotics (among other applications, those robots that might travel inside you to carry out various kinds of medical exams). At Union, Prof. Rieffel will collaborate with biology and bioengineering faculty and students. Andrea Tartaro will come to campus after completing her Ph.D. in computer science and communication studies at Northwestern University. She currently works on innovative technology tools for children with special needs. Prof. Tartaro will contribute to human computer interaction work, and build connections to our psychology and neuroscience faculty and students.

From Vivian Falco (Peter ’09), chair of The Parent Fund Corner:
“I would like to congratulate the Class of 2009 on their approaching graduation. I would also like to extend best wishes to the Classes of 2010, 2011 and 2012 for the upcoming academic year as you explore the many opportunities available to you at Union. As Peter will be graduating with the Class of 2009, this will be my final submission as Parent Fund Chair. I have enjoyed the opportunity to meet with so many parents of students at Union College. I am even more pleased to report the 2008-2009 Parent Fund is at 82 percent of the participation goal and 65 percent of the dollar goal.

“There is still time to participate and contribute. The fund year ends June 30. If you were planning on giving a gift to the College this year, please do so before the end of the month. You may donate online at www.union.edu/parent_gift. Every gesture supports the faculty, staff and students that make Union College a wonderful place to work learn, and live.  If you have questions about the Parent Fund, please visit www.union.edu/parents or contact Carol Shotzbarger ’08, fund manager, at (518) 388-6175. Thank you.”

Finally, thank you for all your support throughout these years. I have enjoyed getting to know so many of you and hope we can stay in touch over the coming months. Have a wonderful summer, best wishes to our seniors as they move forward, and I wish the best to all students returning to Union in the fall.

                                                            It has been a pleasure,

                                                            Karen Dumonet, Vanessa ’07 and Sebastian ‘09

                                                            Chair, Parents Association

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Student Speaker Sean Mulkerne ’09: Life is what you make of it

Posted on Jun 8, 2009

In the past few months, I’ve thought a great deal about my time at Union; the conversations I have had with people here; the classes I have taken; and the things I have accomplished. In particular, however, I’ve thought about a question often posed to me at home while catching up with friends and family I haven’t seen in some time. “How do you feel about Union?”

When I was a first-year, I usually just replied with the stock answers: “Oh, it’s wonderful! Classes are challenging! There are so many fun things to do! You really get to know everyone!” While I certainly still hold those statements to be true, as I got a bit older and developed more nuanced ideas about my education, I began to answer this question a bit differently. I found that the best way to encapsulate my experiences at Union was to say the following: “Union College is exactly what you make of it.”

That might seem a bit generic – it probably is – but I haven’t found a better way to describe this campus or the people you find walking through it. Union and its community cannot be pithily described, because they are in a constant state of flux, and each individual has the opportunity to shape the College into something that excites and challenges them.

Student speaker Sean D. Mulkerne addresses his fellow graduates. Commencement 2009.

You have a great idea – maybe a bike program or a green garden shed – and you want to get it off the ground? There are places on campus that are begging for your input. Are you frustrated with some kind of perceived apathy? Organize students in whatever way you can toward a positive goal, like creating a more sustainable campus or tying a big pink ribbon around the Nott. Would you like to expand your horizons academically? It doesn’t matter – GenEd forces you to do it either way. This malleability is one of the most fascinating things about Union; it is just what you make of it – nothing more, nothing less – and there will indeed remain deep-seated imprints on the shape of Union College left by the Class of 2009.

More significantly, however, I have come to understand that Union College is more than what we make of it for ourselves. Union must also be what we make of it for others. This is a lesson I managed to learn in a regrettable manner. I remember quite vividly an atmosphere of discord and frustration permeating the campus during my first year. A rally was being held outside of the library, where hundreds of vocal and impassioned students were coming together to voice their opposition to ignorance and intolerance.

From what I am told, the rally was an incredible sight. Where was I? Asleep in my room in West, taking a nap to recover from a long night of homework. While it may seem like a trivial act, as it did at the time, such lapses in judgment serve to undermine the community we should be continually striving to create at Union College. We have a responsibility to support our classmates – not only our friends or our fraternity brothers, but most especially those with whom we are unfamiliar or perhaps share little.

I believe these notions are reflected quite clearly in the futures we have before us. We are leaving this pristine, shielded bubble known as Union College – walking away from meal plans and housing lotteries, and entering a world full of new opportunities to be pursued. Indeed, life is exactly what you make of it – nothing more, nothing less. Sure, you might have been forced to take the only job you got called back for after twenty-five different applications. But the prospects of making that into something incredible and worthwhile are boundless. Do you have some kind of great idea, something you’ve wanted to see in this world so badly you could taste it? This is your chance to seize that moment and work unremittingly toward a goal limited only by your imagination. I challenge each of you to seek out those opportunities and to make the most of them.

However, our focus and attention cannot be placed solely upon ourselves. The world is too large and its crises are too numbered to be simply ignored. While it may be full of promise for those who are able to take hold of it, the world is also plagued by instability, discrimination, disease, and many hardships too great and complex to be easily enumerated. Even here at Union, we are surrounded by a city with its own difficulties, waiting perhaps for an individual with a brilliant mind and an unrestrained determination to do great things.

It seems to be a common theme in these speeches to say “good luck.” I won’t be doing that today. In my estimation, we in attendance already possess enormous amounts of good luck. We are fortunate enough to graduate from an esteemed institution of higher learning, while many receive no education at all. We may someday be fortunate enough to live safely in cities like New York, Boston, or London, while a quiet, unrepresented number in these places are unsure of which alley to sleep in each night. We are fortunate enough to live in one of the most secure and developed nations in the world, while distant poverty-stricken countries devolve into civil war.

I remind you of these things not to depress you – today is a day of celebration, and rightly so. Rather, I say these things to press you a bit further to apply what you have learned at Union, both inside and outside of the classroom. As with Union College, this world is certainly what we make of it for ourselves, but more importantly, it is what we make of it for others. As you leave this ceremony and enter the dreaded Real World, I challenge you to internalize this reality, and to be mindful of it as you carve out your doubtlessly remarkable futures. Think of this as the GenEd of real life – it might be at times a burdensome responsibility to be so cognizant of others, but the difference it makes is incalculable.

Thank you very much, and congratulations to the Class of 2009.

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Valedictorian, salutatorian, student speaker

Posted on Jun 8, 2009

Valedictorian

Valedictorian Daniel C. Bailey

Name: Daniel C. Bailey

Hometown: Mount Vision, N.Y.

Major: Bachelor of Science in chemistry, minor in biology

Activities: Among his many achievements, the intramural soccer and softball player presented research at the American Chemical Society meeting in Utah this March and interned for two summers with Albany Molecular Research Inc. A member of Phi Beta Kappa and associate member of the scientific research honor society Sigma Xi, Bailey also coordinated Chemistry Club outreach with area school children. His junior year, the Sigma Phi brother and Chemistry Help Center tutor studied abroad in Australia and New Zealand.

Plans after graduation: Bailey will begin work as a chemical development scientist at Roche Carolina Inc., a division of Roche Pharmaceuticals. He also hopes to pursue either a medical degree or a graduate degree in chemistry.

 

Salutatorian Steven M. Herron

Salutatorian

Name: Steven M. Herron

Hometown: Ridgefield, Conn.

Major: Bachelor of Science in chemistry, minors in math and physics

Activities: During his tenure at the College, Herron has passionately studied not only the sciences, but music and Spanish as well. An indoor/outdoor track pole vault athlete, he also played ultimate Frisbee and spent a term abroad in Seville, Spain. Herron’s been active in Chemistry Club as well, and is a member of Sigma Pi Sigma, Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi.

Plans after graduation: Herron will serve with Passionist Volunteers building homes in West Virginia for the summer, after which he will begin pursuing his Ph.D. in chemistry at Stanford University. While there, he will research clean sources of alternative energy, principally solar.

 

Student Speaker

Student speaker Sean Mulkerne

Name: Sean D. Mulkerne

Hometown: Whitesboro, N.Y.

Major: Bachelor of Arts in political science, minor in history

Activities: The Union Scholar and Sigma Phi Society brother graduates with a 3.93 GPA and Dean’s List recognition. A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Pi Sigma Alpha, and Phi Alpha Theta, Mulkerne spent a term abroad in York, United Kingdom and interned for Human Rights First in Washington, D.C. In 2007, he attended the Student Conference of US Affairs at West Point. At Union, he has served as Minerva Council Student Representative for Sorum House, a Writing Center tutor, and an Orientation Advisor.

Plans after graduation: Mulkerne will attend the London School of Economics and Political Science where he’ll pursue a Masters of Science in global politics.

Read Mulkerne’s speech here.

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