Two juniors with long records of undergraduate research-Fatima Mahmood '06 and David Olson '06-have been named Barry M. Goldwater Scholars, a prestigious prize that provides up to $7,500 per year to undergraduates who are destined for doctoral study.
David Olsen '06 and Fatima Mahmood '06
Their selection brings to six the number of Union students to be so honored since 2002. Other recent recipients are Shira Mandel '05, Mark Hoffman '03, Desiree Plata '03, and Will Johnson '02.
“This is really the type of award that helps not just the winners, but all of our students,” said Prof. Ann Anderson, who recruits and advises the campus Goldwater nominees. “This puts our programs on the radars of the best graduate schools and it makes Union an appealing choice for top high school students. “Fatima and David were strong candidates for the Goldwater because of their significant undergraduate research experience,” Anderson added.
Mahmood, a math and physics double major, recently won the award for best under- graduate paper at a conference of the New York State Section of the American Physical Society. She presented a research project titled “Neutral Meson Analysis of Photoproduction from the Proton,” which she did with Prof. Michael Vineyard of physics.
The Clifton Park native is a 2002 graduate of Shenendehowa High School. At Union, she is a dean's list student and William Golub Presidential Scholar. She also presented her research last spring at Union's Steinmetz Symposium, an exposition of student scholarly and creative achievement.
After Union, she would like earn a Ph.D. in mathematics or physics and then conduct her own research as a college professor and inspire students to study science and math.
Olson, a biochemistry major, is a 2002 graduate of Mohawk (N.Y.) High School. He was a member of the 15-student contingent from Union that attended the 229th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in San Diego earlier this month. He has conducted research with Prof. Joanne Kehlbeck of chemistry.
He plans to pursue a Ph.D. in bioorganic chemistry. He is considering research on the design, synthesis and evaluation of novel molecules possessing interesting biological activities.
“It's a prestigious award and it's been nice to have all that comes with it,” said Mandel, last year's winner, who does research in the College's Aerogel Lab under the direction of Anderson and Prof. Mary Carroll. “All that comes with it” includes offers for other scholarships and instant credibility with the nation's top graduate programs, she said.
The Goldwater puts a premium on undergraduate research with possible applications, notes Mandel, a double major in chemistry and mechanical engineering. “They want to see that you've completed research and that it has applications that you've thought about as you do the research.”
The Goldwater Foundation awarded 320 scholarships for the 2005-2006 academic year to undergraduate sophomores and juniors from the United States.
Roger Hull receives the sign for street named in his honor from Schenectady Mayor Brian Stratton
President Roger Hull has received a number of honors since announcing his plans for departure. They have included the Schenectady County Public Library's establishment of the Roger Hull Schenectady Collection, part of a proposed $5 million wing at the library's main branch, that will feature material about Schenectady by local authors and artists. He also received a commendation from the Board of Governors of the National Conferences on Undergraduate Research, citing his leadership in promoting undergraduate research at Union and nationally. Perhaps the most unusual and visible was the renaming of a street in Hull's honor. Schenectady Mayor Brian Stratton honored Hull for leading the renovation of the College Park neighborhood west of campus by naming Roger Hull Place, the stretch of the former Huron Street between Seward and Park.
Hugh Jenkins, professor of English, accepted the eighth annual Stillman Award for Excellence in Teaching on Feb. 17, and called on faculty and students to help preserve what he called the “heritage of free inquiry” against “religious bigots, moral bullies, and intellectual terrorists.”
Prof. Hugh Jenkins
At issue now is preserving the heritage of free inquiry and the ideals of a free society that have lived for more than two thousand years,” he said at Founders Day convocation. “The intellectual privileges we have here at Union and at similar institutions are vital in sustaining the basic rights of our society as a whole.”
Jenkins, who joined the College in 1992, earned his bachelor's degree from Carleton College, and his master's and Ph.D. from Cornell University. His research has concentrated on 17th-century English literature including English country-house poetry; the poetry, prose and drama of Ben Jonson and John Milton; and the dramas of the Jacobean stage.
College Marshall Ruth Stevenson said her English department colleague “[leads] the students to respond with knowledge and delight to the works of those passionate, contentious, gorgeously literate writers, and, what's more, [leads] them to develop for themselves cogent, imaginative thinking and clear, elegant style.”
Jenkins gives daily quizzes, imposes a “grammar tax,” and writes miniature essays on student papers that are, in themselves, “persuasive models of independent thinking and cogent analysis,” Stevenson said.
She cited Jenkins' “infectious enthusiasm and curiosity” in the classroom, for example, using a real skeleton to stage scenes from “The Revenger's Tragedy.” “[He] leads the students to the comprehension of the heart (and bones!) of the matter, the dramatic interactions of human wishes, human institutions, and human limitations,” Stevenson said. “He makes the texts an integral part of his students' aesthetic and intellectual life.”
Quoting from student nominations, Stevenson said Jenkins “is 'amazing,' that he is 'fantastic,' and, simply and gleefully that 'Hugh rocks!'”
The award was created by Abbott L. Stillman '69, a former trustee, to pay tribute to the central mission of the College: teaching. Nominations are solicited from the sophomore, junior, and senior classes. The faculty on the Committee on Teaching review material submitted by the nominees and forward the recommendation to the Dean of Faculty. Other finalists this year were Teresa Meade, history; Robert Lauzon, biology; and Terry Weiner, political science.
Seguin makes his own March Madness
While most folks in Elliot Seguin's hometown of East Lansing, Mich., were celebrating Michigan State's arrival in the NCAA hoops “Sweet 16,” the Union senior swimmer made a splash at a pool in his backyard.
He became Union's fourth men's swimming and diving athlete to win a national championship with a victory in the 100 freestyle at the 2005 NCAA Division III Swimming & Diving Championships at Hope College in Holland, Mich. His winning time of 45.32 seconds was .42 ahead of runnerup Brad Test of Johns Hopkins.
On the way to nationals, he also won state titles in the 100 and 200 freestyle events.
Society is increasingly willing to take on large-scale problems that require interdisciplinary teams, and entrepreneurial academic ventures like Union's Converging Technologies initiative provides a rich proving ground to introduce the concept, said Theodore Berger '72 at Founders Day convocation on Feb. 17.
Berger, the David Packard Professor of Engineering at the University of Southern California, described his experience in leading a team from diverse disciplines to develop “bionic” replacement parts for the brain, novel sensor systems for homeland security, and start-up companies for commercialization of those technologies.
The title of his talk was “Educating the Mind to Build the Brain: The Power of Integrating Liberal Arts with Science and Technology.” Berger was awarded an honorary doctor of science degree from the College. There is an enormous cost of caring for some 4 million Americans with Alzheimer's and another 4.5 million stroke survivors, Berger said, but there is still no strategy for repairing the brain.
“To deal with such a huge problem, you have to be able to put together a multidisciplinary team,” he said, “to convince someone that this should be interesting and that they should work on it. You've got to put a team together that can look at all aspects of a problem,” he said, “and this includes business people.”
Earlier in the day, Berger and his wife, Roberta Diaz Brinton, professor of molecular pharmacology at USC, gave a breakfast talk sponsored by the College and the Center for Economic Growth.
Speaking to an audience of business and industry leaders, the couple stressed the importance of scientists collaborating with business and industry.
“There are a lot of things that you know about that we don't,” Berger said. “People have cutting-edge solutions to problems and I don't even know what they are. It's really valuable to have someone who can say, 'I know the answer to that.' That allows you to jump ahead by a couple of years.”
Brinton, founder of NeuTherapeutics, which is researching preventive measures against Alzheimer's, spoke about the importance of learning business. “I have an entire small business in my laboratory that I have to manage,” she said.
“No one ever told me, 'Do a market analysis,'” she said. “Thank God, I was interested in Alzheimer's disease and not some bizarre little meaningless piece of science.
“You need to have these partnerships,” she continued. “Union and Schenectady have a unique opportunity. You're in the building phase. Build what no one else has done yet, which is interface the College with your efforts and your efforts with the College.”
Harold Clark Martin, the 14th President of the College from 1965 to 1974, died on Monday, May 2, at the age of 88.
Harold Martin
Harold Martin served this College with distinction,” said Roger H. Hull, president of the College. “He led the College through a number of milestones including curriculum revision, student unrest during the Vietnam War, the admission of women and the construction of a number of buildings. We are better today because of his leadership.”
Born in Raymond, Pa., he graduated high school in the depths of the Depression but worked his way through Hartwick College, where he earned a B.A. in 1937.
He taught high school English in Adams, N.Y., and took summer graduate courses in English Renaissance studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In 1939 he married another Michigan student, Elma Hicks of Webster Springs, W.Va., and returned to his high school in Goshen, N.Y., to teach English and then serve as principal. Exempted from the draft because he was a high school principal and father, he enlisted in the Navy late in World War II to serve a year as instructor in English at the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Bainbridge, Md. After his discharge, he returned to Goshen and pursued full certification through courses in education at Columbia and then at Harvard.
Shortly after Martin's arrival at Union in 1965, “Hal,” as he was called, oversaw the adoption of the current trimester calendar and a revised curriculum, “CompEd,” which required all students to take courses in both of the newly organized academic “centers” -Humanities & Social Sciences, and Sciences & Engineering.
He also urged a re-thinking of Union's mission, arguing that a number of trends, including the rapid rise to prominence of public institutions in the Northeast, imperiled traditional liberal arts colleges like Union.
The most drastic proposal of his tenure, initiated by the faculty, called for reconsideration of the policy which, since 1795, had restricted enrollment to men only. In 1968, Martin appointed a committee to study the question of adopting coeducation. When the committee unanimously endorsed coeducation, the faculty voted in the affirmative without audible dissent, and the trustees nearly so. The first full-time women students entered in 1970.
At the height of student activism, Martin joined with 34 other college presidents in signing a letter to President Richard Nixon urging attention to student voices.
During Martin's tenure, Union added a number of buildings including Humanities, Social Sciences, Fox, Davidson and Achilles Rink (now Achilles Center).
After Union, Martin became president of the American Academy in Rome, a position he resigned in 1976. After a year as Martha Bundy Scott Professor of English at Williams, he joined the faculty of Trinity College. He retired from Trinity as Charles A. Dana Professor of Humanities in 1982.
In retirement, the Martins returned to their farm on the outskirts of Rensselaerville, N.Y. He completed two books of Episcopal history, St. George's Church: Spanning Three Centuries (1984) and “Outlasting Marble and Brass”: the History of the Church Pension Fund (1986).
In 1988 the Martins moved to Corrales, New Mexico, where Elma Hicks Martin died February 26, 1995. Harold Martin subsequently moved to Maine.
Martin last year published his edited two-volume Diary of Jonathan Pearson, and wrote three articles for the Encyclopedia of Union College History, published in 2003. He attended Homecoming last fall to do a book signing for the Pearson book. He also participated in the processional at Commencement 2004.
Some of the above material came from Wayne Somers, compiler and editor, Encyclopedia of Union College History (Schenectady: Union College Press, 2003), page 472.
Christina Sorum, dean of faculty
Christina Sorum
On a glorious mid-May afternoon-the kind of day that Christie would have found perfect for taking her dog, Hector, for a walk around campus-the Union community filled Memorial Chapel to remember the vivacious dean of faculty who was a “teacher to her core.”
Christina Sorum, whose personality Prof. Suzie Benack compared to sparkling water, died on Monday, May 16, following a heart attack three days before. Her daughter, Eve, recalled her mother's wide-ranging intellectual interests and her excitement over meeting new faculty members and students. She often came home to announce, “I had the most interesting conversation today,” Eve said.
President Roger Hull described her as “energetic and ebullient.” Hull said he found in Christie, a classicist steeped in Greek and Roman mythology, a contemporary who joined him in making decisions using the lessons of the classics.
Joan Hinde Stewart, a close friend of the Sorum family and president of Hamilton College, described Christie's love for Union from the moment she joined the faculty. Fellow administrators Kimmo Rosenthal and Terry Weiner remarked that Christie somehow always found delight even in long administrative meetings.
Therese McCarty, professor of economics, recalled frequent lunches with her mentor, when they discussed more than teaching and the College: they shamelessly bragged about their daughters. Christie once gave a book to Therese's daughter, Helen, as a gentle attempt to expand her horizon beyond the Harry Potter series.
Some of the recollections were likely new to most of the nearly 1,000 people at the service. Christie, of Midwestern roots, was surprised when authorities at Wellesley College confiscated her rifle during freshman year, said her husband, Paul, who added, she was a good shot with a gun. Christie also had a clever way of “chasing” a group of teens from a hangout near her home, said McCarty. She brought them lemonade and cookies.
Sorum was a strong champion for Union's distinctive broad education, undergraduate research and international study.
She served the College in a variety of administrative capacities including department chair, and a member of the General Education Board, Faculty Review Board, Academic Affairs Council and numerous tenure and review committees.
A native of Jacksonville, Ill., Sorum graduated from Wellesley College with honors in Greek and received a Ph.D. from Brown University. She was a visiting instructor at Union in 1973-1974, became an assistant professor at North Carolina State University, and returned to Union in 1982 as an associate professor and chair of the Department of Classics. She became the Frank Bailey Professor in 1992. She was named dean of arts and sciences in 1994, and acting dean of faculty in 1999. She was named dean of faculty and vice president of academic affairs in 2000.
She wrote extensively for both classics journals and academic administrative journals. She was a featured scholar in a History Channel program titled “Gods and Goddesses.” She wrote, with Tom Werner, Florence B. Sherwood Professor of Physical Sciences, an article, “Enriching Undergraduate Research and Scholarly Activity Opportunities in All Disciplines at Union College” in the June 2003 issue of the Council on Undergraduate Research Quarterly.
In an interview shortly after her appointment as dean, she said that one of her chief goals would be to continue to improve what the College does extraordinarily well-undergraduate research and international study. “Those experiences are the most transformative for both the personal and intellectual development of students, and they provide some of the best preparation for life after college-how to learn on your own, how to deal with difference,” she said.
She was also a strong advocate for the College's investment in arts and engineering. “Participation in the arts ought to be available to every student,” she said. “Few things are more rewarding after college than having an active interest in, and participating in, the arts.” Given engineering's strong tradition at Union, she said, “We need to ensure excellence. I want to continue to work with the dean of engineering and the rest of campus to discover the proper role of engineering on a liberal arts campus-how it can enrich the rest of the College, and how the rest of the College can enrich engineering.”
She said the College must continue to pay attention to the “more traditional” elements of education-communication skills, quantitative skills, a grasp of the elements that comprise the culture from which we came-and pay increased attention to academic and career advising. Other topics of great interest, she said, are enhancing the diversity of students and faculty, continuing to develop innovative ways to link the residential and intellectual life on campus, and revisiting the College's General Education program.
Memorial contributions may be made to the College, Planned Parenthood or a local animal protection center.
For a complete biography of Dean Sorum, click here.
If you've gotten a grade report or a paycheck from the College, you can thank Vera Shutter.
Vera Shutter with computer cards
The tireless custodian of the College's memory banks for nearly four decades is retiring with more than a few memories of her own.
-Like the time her visiting four-year-old daughter, an aspiring keypunch operator, picked up a stack of punch cards and “helped” with a professor's project.
-Or the time a false fire alarm brought an ax-wielding fireman to her office door.
-Or the time in the early 70s when she moved her operation to make room for students who were staging a sit-in.
-Or the time she found a live bat in her wastebasket.
“Everyone thinks I'm kidding,” she says of some of her stories. “It's just that I'm telling the exact truth and they don't believe it.”
Started with punch cards Fresh from a job as a keypunch operator at New York Telephone, she joined the College's Data Center on January 10, 1966. She collected, entered and sorted data on punch cards in the basement of Silliman Hall. She did most of her work for the annual fund and payroll offices.
Since 1968, she has worked in the large computing room of Steinmetz's Peschel Computer Center. When ITS quarters were renovated two years ago and her colleagues took up temporary residence in North Colonnade, she stayed behind to run the equipment.
Shutter's small office in the computer center has a view of the room where behemoth machines used to whir and click and hum. Much has changed in 40 years. The machines have gotten quieter and more powerful.
Mostly, though, things have gotten smaller. Shutter recently took a visitor to the ITS “dump room” and pulled out a stack of tapes, state-of-the-art data storage devices until the late 1980s. Today, the common pen-sized 256 MB thumb drive can hold what used to require six or seven of the 10-inch tape reels.
But the job-manipulating data and producing reports, paychecks and grades-has not. Once you get the concept of running the programs, she says, it's just a matter of learning a new machine every few years. “I've never been uncomfortable with the changes. But each time has been a challenge.”
Shutter was feted just before her retirement on April 1-no April Fool's joke, she assures -and colleagues presented her with the final printouts and nameplates of machines long gone. She also got a “death certificate” for one troublesome machine.
“Vera was at Union at the beginning of computing,” said David Cossey, chief information officer, who went on to praise her for her early morning arrivals, the quantity of material she handled and her versatility at working with everything from the early IBM punch card accounting machines to modern servers.
Retirement plans She plans to enjoy time with her four children-Dawn, Cheryl, Chuck and Eve-her three grandchildren-Richard, Heather and Stephen-and great-granddaughter, Alexis. She also plans to volunteer as a “cuddler” in a neonatal unit, or perhaps return to her work as a clown and face-painter at children's events.
Whatever she does next, she promises to make it a long-term commitment. “I'm a long-timer at everything I do,” she says. “I don't jump in and jump out.”
