April 2011 Union in the Media Archive

Union College has entered into an agreement with the private conservation group Protect the Adirondacks! (PROTECT) to purchase a building complex in nearby Niskayuna that includes the former home of the noted Adirondack conservationist Paul Schaefer (1908-1996) and a modern addition that houses the Adirondack Research Library.

To read a story in the Times Union, click here.

For the second straight year, Union is included among the country’s most environmentally responsible colleges, according to The Princeton Review’s 2011 “Guide to Green Colleges.” The free guide, produced in partnership with the U.S. Green Building Council, includes schools that have “demonstrated an above average commitment to sustainability in terms of campus infrastructure, activities and initiatives.”

Union recently hosted the 11th annual Rube Goldberg Engineering Competition at Memorial Fieldhouse.

The contest is named for the late Rube Goldberg, an engineer and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist. His cartoons, depicting “inventions” that epitomized “man’s capacity for exerting maximum effort to accomplish minimal results,” appeared in thousands of daily newspapers between 1914 and 1964.

Teams of middle and high school students had to build a machine that could plant a tree.

James N. Hedrick, professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was the contest chair. The competition was coordinated by the Engineering program. Other event sponsors include GE Volunteers, KAPL, Bechtel and the Schenectady Museum.

The Daily Gazette

Baruch Samuel Blumberg ‘46, whose work led to an effective hepatitis B vaccine and earned him a Nobel Prize in Medicine, died Tuesday, April 5, after suffering an apparent heart attack. He was 85.

Blumberg was expected to return to campus for ReUnion weekend next month to deliver the keynote address at the dedication of the Peter Irving Wold Center, a $22 million, three-story, 35,000-square-foot research and education facility.

He earned his bachelor’s degree with honors in physics at Union in 1946, and received an honorary doctor of laws from the College in 1977.

In October 2007, Blumberg was among the first group to be featured in Union Notables, a rotating exhibit in Schaffer Library that celebrates the great men and women who have studied at Union over two centuries and gone on to make leading contributions in their fields.

Dozens of Newspapers and publications around the world published an obituary on Blumberg, including the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times.