November 2014 News Archive

If you stopped by the Department of Communications and Marketing recently, you might have noticed the building at 69 Union Ave. was dark.

Inside though, it was business as usual for the 10-member team.

For the second straight year, Communications finished first in the College’s annual electricity conservation contest known as “Do It In the Dark.”

The College mourns the loss of H. Gilbert Harlow, professor of civil engineering emeritus, who taught from 1940 to 1984 and was a key advocate for maintaining and enhancing the campus landscape. He died Monday, Nov. 17, 2014, at the Capstone Center in Amsterdam, N.Y.  He was 100.

“Gil” earned an engineering degree from Tufts University, and his master's in civil engineering from Harvard University.

Sara Covelli ’17 spent last summer back home working for Nassau County’s environmental resources department. The department is in the midst of an ambitious campaign to install rain gardens throughout the sprawling Long Island county.

Covelli thought a rain garden, which can filter out runoff pollution by using plants and natural items so the untreated water doesn’t end up in storm drains, would be welcomed at Union.

Armand V. Feigenbaum ’42, an adviser and benefactor to Union and an internationally recognized leader in systems engineering and total quality control, died Nov. 13, 2014. He was 92.

He and his brother, the late Donald S. Feigenbaum ’46, founded General Systems Co., the Pittsfield, Mass.-based international systems engineering firm that designs and helps implement operational systems for corporations and governments worldwide.

There’s a clown in Steinmetz Hall. Insert punchline here.

Long before he started pontificating about evolutionary fabrication, artificial intelligence and robotics, John Rieffel entertained thousands as a professional circus clown.

The assistant professor of computer science got his big break during his senior year of high school when Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus held an open audition in his hometown of Washington, D.C.

In October, Proctors Theater screened D.W. Griffith’s 1915 Civil War epic “The Birth of a Nation” as part of Film 100: The American Film Institute Essentials, and on Monday, Nov. 24 a community dialogue on the film and racial progress will be hosted at 7 p.m.

The Doric String Quartet debuts on the Union College Concert Series in Memorial Chapel on Thursday, Nov. 20 at 7:30 p.m.

Loose Change Dance Collective, founded by Union dance faculty member Laurie Zabele Cawley, joins with (Alex)andra Taylor Dance, a New York City-based company, to present Tides of Magnets, an evening of original and restaged modern dance in the Henle Dance Pavilion, Saturday at 7:30 pm.

The program, which runs approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes with no intermission, is free and open to the public.

On Monday, novelist Elizabeth Rosner will visit campus to discuss her most recent book, Electric City, based on her hometown, Schenectady.

Rosner will speak in the Nott Memorial at 7 p.m., and the event is free and open to the public. Before the evening talk, she will discuss her new book at Sorum Book Club during common lunch in Sorum House. 

The College will welcome Robert Kelly, Ph.D. to serve as the Chief of Staff in President Stephen C. Ainlay’s office.

In an email to the campus community, Ainlay said about Kelly: “He brings a wealth of experience to the position, and I’m excited about the qualities and expertise he brings to Union’s Senior Staff.”