Posted on Sep 8, 2000

May 29, 2000 (last meeting of spring term)

1. The minutes of the May 8, 2000 meeting were approved.

2. Minutes of the Subcouncil on Courses and Programs were discussed. The following courses were approved:
FRN 138 (Women on Top: Great Women Writers and Characters of French Narrative Fiction); FRN 149/MLT42 (West African Oral Literature); FRN 139 (Identifying Desire, Desiring Identity: French and Francophone Non-narrative Literature); ATH 021 (Puppet Theater Design and Performance); ATH 19 (Introduction to Costume Design and Make-up); ATH 65 (Special Topics in Theatre); MLT 052 (Traditional Chinese Medicine and Healing); GER 174/MLT 032 (Modern Language in Translation: “Metropolis Berlin”); PHY 14 (Freshman Seminar)

3. The Committee discussed the proposed course changes to the 8- year medical curriculum. The courses were approved contingent on changing ECO 253 to MED 253.

4. The committee discussed the proposal on college credit for distance learning courses. The issue was tabled to the Fall.

5. Pass/Fail policy was discussed. A motion was passed to table this issue until the fall when Dean Sorum will distribute the pass/fail policies of other schools.

6. The committee discussed a proposal from Dean Sorum to move a tenure line from Civil Engineering to Computer Science. The AAC supported this proposal.

Posted on Sep 8, 2000

Campus colleagues are mourning the loss of Joseph E. O'Connor, who served as a campus safety officer for 19 years.

O'Connor died at his home in Glenville on Aug. 25 after a long illness. He was 53.
He also held positions as a bus driver for Scotia-Glenville school district for 10 years. He was an emergency medical technician for Schenectady Ambulance Service and taught CPR and first aid for the American Red Cross. He coached basketball for the Scotia Methodist Church, and soccer for Scotia-Glenville schools and Highland Club of Scotia. He was a member of the Beukendaal Fire Department and an auxiliary member of the Scotia Police Department. He was a foster parent for 12 years.

A loyal Union athletics fan, he was a fixture at hockey games.
Survivors include his wife, Katharine Heiner O'Connor; a son, Joseph Jr., and two daughters, Katharine and Christine. Contributions may be made to Community Hospice of Schenectady, 1411 Union St., Schenectady 12308.

Posted on Sep 8, 2000

Union has launched a new design for its Web site with a home page that incorporates a contemporary look aimed to attract prospective students. The main photo on the home page features a different aspect of Union life every time the page is visited or reloaded.

“Building a site that is user-friendly for all the people who visit our site is a real challenge,” said Thomas Smith, Web site director. “When you consider that alumni, students, parents, prospective students and faculty all visit the site regularly, and are looking for different things, you've got to make sure that the site gives them what they want.”

The site features several new areas designed to make the site more user-friendly, according to Smith. The new Visitor's Center will make the first-time visitor to the Union Web site feel at home, and will give campus visitors everything they need to plan their trip. A “quick navigation bar,” which provides an easy-to-use drop-down list of the most commonly visited Union sites, appears on every page of the site, a feature that previously appeared only on the home page.

Links to the main sections of the site now appear in a consistent position at the top of the page, and users are able to see a trail of “breadcrumbs” showing every step back to the home page. The new Web Site Index is similar to a book's index: it provides quick links to the most common “topics” that a user would look for in Union's site. The Site Index provides an alternative to the search engine.

Because of improvements in site architecture and page layout, pages will load, on average, about 50 percent faster with the new design, Smith said. This improvement will be especially noticeable to off-campus users, who typically access the site using a dial-up modem. The faster download times have been achieved by several technical improvements in the site, such as using javascript for navigation, reducing image sizes, reducing the number of unique elements on each page, and installing cascading style sheets.

“Union has always had an attractive, easy-to-use site,” Smith said. “We just built on the strengths of the site and took advantage of some technologies that weren't available just a couple of years ago,” said Smith.

Two new members have joined the Web team in the Communications office. Erik Espana (Union Class of 2000) joined as Web programmer, and Cathy Burbules joined as Web coordinator. Erik and Cathy will be focused on enhancing the interactivity, usability, and quality of the official college Web site.

Posted on Sep 8, 2000

Andy Wolfe hovers over a cooking omelet, waving a spatula at a circle of students standing in his kitchen.

“Who knows how you make your eggs fluffy?” asks Wolfe, a civil engineer who usually quizzes students on stress loads of bridges. “Anybody?”

“Add milk?” one timidly offers.

“Try water,” Wolfe says. “It took me 28 years to learn that, but it really works.”
And so it went twice a week this summer for a dozen students who took “Cooking with the Wolfes,” a course designed to get even the most diehard macaroni and cheese eaters to expand their culinary horizons.

The idea came to Wolfe when he was asking students what they usually had to eat. Predictably, selections leaned toward the fast and easy – pasta, hot dogs and the ubiquitous pizza delivery.

“We wanted to show students that for just about the same money and very little time, they can prepare some really great meals,” says Wolfe, who with his wife, Lisa, are frequent hosts to Union students at their nearby Adams Road home. “This is not gourmet cooking. It's home style. This is the kind of cooking that could impress a date … or parents.”

The course was largely underwritten by the College's Intellectual Enrichment Grant. Students paid only $7 for the entire course.

“We both come from families that like to cook,” Wolfe said. “The big Thanksgiving, the big Christmas, family reunions. We just like to cook, and we like to cook for crowds.”

Most of the students who signed up for the class knew their way around a kitchen. Three seniors – Jenny Comerford, Paula Denema and Dan Bamford – took a cooking class last spring on a term abroad in Italy. “I came here to the Wolfes to get some new ideas,” said senior Rebecca Terry. “I'm not a very creative cook.”

Posted on Sep 8, 2000

President Roger Hull welcomed first-year students to “a community that builds character” in his address at the opening convocation on Tuesday.

“An education at Union is a social activity, a community activity,” he said. “A college is a place where people can communicate with each other through ideas, through facts and through emotional experiences.”

Hull spoke of 19th-century French philosopher Alexis de Toqueville. “For Toqueville, the true genius of American democracy was revealed in the way Americans founded voluntary associations that harnessed American individualism for service to society,” Hull said.

But those associations – including colleges – have lost some of their ability to rein in individualistic impulse, Hull noted. “Americans too often are a collection of narrow special interests with little tolerance for compromise and less allegiance to anything approaching a concern for the common good.”

Hull also spoke of the challenge of substantially changing the social, residential and academic character of the College, adding, “I trust that … the rule of civility will prevail and the level of our discourse will be raised while the volume of our voices will not be.”

Hull concluded, “We must continue our journey toward true community while celebrating the autonomy and individuality of each member of the student body, faculty and staff.”

Also at convocation, Peter D. Heinegg, professor of English, received the Stillman Prize for excellence in teaching. Dean of Faculty Christina Sorum, quoted student nominations, one of which read, “Professor Heinegg's classroom is one of intellectual engagement and excitement. It's like getting a drink from a fire hose.” 
Pratikshya Bohra '03 received the Phi Beta Kappa prize for excellence among first-year students in General Education. Christopher D. Roblee '02 was honorable mention.