All Union News

November 5, 2026

Fall theater production presents “The Government Inspector”

The Department of Theater and Dance will present its fall production, “The Government Inspector,” Nov. 4-8 in Yulman Theater. Tickets are on sale now. The show, based on Nikolai Gogol’s 1836 play, is adapted and directed by Jorge Luna. When the locals in a small town learn that an undercover government inspector will arrive for a surprise visit, a case of mistaken identity prompts a group of corrupt officials to confront questions of morality and political accountability in a fast-paced satirical comedy. Pe

November 5, 2026

For the record: Week of Nov. 6, 2026

For the record graphic

November 4, 2026

Union to commemorate Kristallnacht with a talk by a Holocaust survivor

Tibor Spitz was 12 when Nazi soldiers attacked Dolný Kubín, a tiny village in the mountains of northern Slovakia, at that time part of Czechoslovakia. His family eventually fled into the forest, where they hid in an underground shelter. “We hid for 200 days, and every day was the longest I have ever experienced,” Spitz recalled in an earlier interview. “As patrols on horseback and foot searched the forests, each day could have been our last. We lived like animals, instinctively, surviving from one minute to

November 4, 2026

Catching up with…Heather Watson

Heather Watson has come a long way since her days as a graduate student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, but the Capital District has always had a special place in her story. A native of Canada, she came to the area to pursue her Ph.D., where she met her husband, Matt. After graduation, the couple moved around the country for postdoctoral research and other academic opportunities, living in Washington, D.C., the Bay Area and the Chicago suburbs before returning in 2012 for Matt’s position as a physics

October 29, 2026

LIM students finish second in national competition to solve a healthcare challenge

A group of students in Union’s Leadership in Medicine program recently finished second in the Penn State Health Policy and Administration Virtual Case Competition. Hosted by the Department of Health Policy and Administration and sponsored by Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, the competition featured students from 20 undergraduate institutions. Students were asked to create a schedule for overlapping TKA’s (total knee arthoplasty or replacements). This would allow the attending surgeon to d

October 29, 2026

For the record: Week of Oct. 30, 2026

For the record graphic

October 29, 2026

Cole Belmont, Union’s Makerspace maven, to be honored as Innovator of the Year

On a recent weekday afternoon, Cole Belmont, Union’s Makerspace director, stood beside a CNC router (computer numerical control) in a lab in the Feigenbaum Center for Visual Arts. Enoch Fashola ’30, a mechanical engineering major from Houston, listened intently as Belmont explained how they were going to use the automated, computer-driven cutting and milling machine to create three-dimensional tiles for display in the lab. “We can make complex, precise cuts with this,” Belmont said. “It opens up a whole ran

October 22, 2026

Catching up with...Junko Ueno

Junko Ueno, professor of Japanese, grew up in Fukuoka, one of the prefectures of Kyushu Island, Japan. She loved learning English as a child, and a part-time job teaching English during her college days inspired her to study abroad after graduation. While working on her M.A. in TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) and applied linguistics at Indiana University, Bloomington, Ueno started teaching Japanese as well. She found tremendous joy in teaching and relearning her native language and

October 22, 2026

Death of a textbook: 19th-century mock funerals used to mark the end of a term

Calder Baker ’29 was sorting through material in Special Collections when he discovered an old student scrapbook. Belonging to Frederick Richards, Class of 1888, the weathered book contained what one would expect for chronicling a student’s time on campus: menus, newspaper clippings and information related to his fraternity. Placed prominently at the front of the book, however, were mementos of a long-dead tradition: the burial/cremation of textbooks. This included special programs for the “Burial of Algebr

October 22, 2026

For the record: Week of Oct. 23, 2026

For the record graphic