The City Mission of Schenectady recently honored Union’s Kenney Community Center as Community Partner of the Year. The Kenney Center’s staff includes Director Angela Tatem and Associate Director Janet Sweeney.
Carol Weisse, professor of psychology and director of the Health Professions program, was awarded a grant from the New York Six Liberal Arts Consortium. It is part of an award by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for her project, “Care and Support in Aging Communities, with a Focus on End-of-Life Care.” Her co-applicant was Ben DiCicco-Bloom of Hamilton College. The grant is the first of its kind to include faculty from all six NY6 institutions. This includes Cay Anderson-Hanley, associate professor of psychology, and David Cotter, professor of sociology, of Union. The grant will support a four-day faculty retreat at the College in June, a symposium on aging in rural communities at Hamilton in the fall and a faculty study tour to Ireland in 2017.
Lori Marso's forthcoming book, Fifty-One Key Feminist Thinkers (Routledge 2016) was celebrated by a roundtable called "Feminists to Watch Out For!" at the Western Political Science Association Conference in San Diego. The book will be published in June. Marso is professor of political science.
Stephen Berk, the Henry and Sally Schaffer Professor of Holocaust and Jewish Studies, spoke at the Summit Jewish Community Center in Summit, N.J., on “The Crisis in the Middle East.”
Eric McDowell, assistant athletic director and sports information director, received the Warren Berg Award from the College Sports Information Directors Association for outstanding contributions to the field. At Union since 2005, he has long been active in CoSIDA, serving as president of the organization in 2014-15. For more details, click here.
Kimberly Bolduc ’17 received an honorable mention for the Goldwater Scholarship, a leading undergraduate award for students pursuing careers in mathematics, natural sciences and engineering. Bolduc is an English and chemistry double major who plans to conduct doctoral inorganic chemistry research after she graduates.
Katherine Lynes, associate professor of English, gave the Walsh Arts & Sciences Seminar Talk at Clarkson University. Her talk was titled: “‘sage speaks with one voice, pinyon with another’: The Subject of Nature in African American Poetry.” She also presented a paper, “in the hope that hearts will change”: Dialogues with Nature in African American Poetry,” at the Dwellings of Enchantment: Writing and Reenchanting the Earth, a conference at the University of Perpignan in France. Also, Lynes’ article, “‘a responsibility to something besides people’: African American Reclamation Ecopoetics,” was published by African American Review, and it an earned honorable mention for The Joe Weixlmann Award for the year's best essay specifically in 20th- and 21st-century African-American literature.
William Finlay, professor and chair of the Theater and Dance Department, will be returning this summer as artistic director emeritus to the Saratoga Shakespeare Company, where he will direct, “Cyrano de Bergerac” by Edmund Rostand. Now in its 16th season, the company is a professional summer theater group whose productions take place in historic Congress Park in Saratoga Springs.
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