Kit Goldstein Grant '05 was recently featured on Crazy Town Blog. The Q&A focused on her thriving career as a New Yorker who writes musicals.
During her time at Union she participated in Steinmetz Symposium Day, spent a term abroad in Ireland, and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Mountebanks.
Daniel Mosquera, associate professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies,
with other supporters of Union's new electric vehicle charging stations.
The College has installed two electric vehicle charging stations as part of its continuing efforts to become a more sustainable campus.
Students, faculty and staff are now able to power up at the stations located in the Facilities parking lot, just left of the Olin Center. The chargers can service up to four vehicles at a time.
They work for both electric-only vehicles and plug-in hybrids, which switch to a gasoline engine when their batteries run low.
“We believe that by making the technology a reality in our campus we can help educate the community about its possibilities and its positive environmental impact,” said Daniel Mosquera, associate professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies.
Mosquera jump-started the idea for the stations. He and his wife, Megan Ferry, chair and associate professor of Chinese and Asian Studies, are among a handful of EV owners on campus. The couple drives an all-electric Nissan Leaf and has plans to trade their Subaru Impreza for a plug-in Prius.
The EV owners thought putting charging stations on campus would encourage others to explore the technology. Mosquera, with the help of Jeff Corbin, associate professor of biology (who drives a plug-in Prius) and Meghan Haley-Quigley, '11, manager of Sustainability and Green Initiatives, worked on a proposal for a Planning and Priorities grant. The grants are awarded each year for projects that support the College’s Strategic Plan. Hugh Jenkins, professor of English (Chevrolet Volt) was the co-sponsor.
The grant paid for the stations and will cover electricity use during the first year.
The stations have already generated interest from students and parents intrigued by electric cars, Mosquera said. Users must register to access the stations. Contact Mosquera at mosquerd@union.edu Plans are in the works to allow visitors temporary access.
One issue still being ironed out: Non EV users have been parking in the spots, often blocking access to the stations. Mosquera is working with Campus Safety to address the problem.
Sustainability is one of the key priorities of the College’s Strategic Plan. In 2007, President Stephen C. Ainlay was among the first to sign the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC), pledging to formally work on reducing, and eventually eliminating, campus greenhouse gas emissions.
“Providing electric vehicle charging stations for our students, faculty and staff is an important opportunity to show that our commitment to sustainability extends beyond the campus gates,” Haley-Quigley said.
An exhibit featuring the work of Fernando Orellana, associate professor of visual arts, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts was featured in various Philadelphia media outlets, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philly Voice and BillyPenn.com.
Two books by Lori Marso, the Doris Zemurray Stone Professor of Modern Literary and Historical Studies, were recently released. Routledge published 51 Key Feminist Thinkers, which includes articles by Andrea Foroughi, associate professor of history, and Michelle Chilcoat, associate professor of French. Oxford University Press published Politics, Theory, and Film: Critical Encounters with Lars von Trier, which Marso edited with Bonnie Honig from Brown University.
“Two Early Interactive Computer Network Experiments,” an article by David Hemmendinger, professor emeritus of computer science, appeared in the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.
Heather Watson, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, was awarded a $292,000 grant from NASA for her project, “Diffusion in Iron-Nickel Alloys and Sulfides: Constraints on Segregation and Crystallization of Early Planetary Cores.” Her project will include education and research training for high school and Union College students from the fields of astronomy, geology and physics. Learn more about it here.
Union officially welcomed the Class of 2020 when students began moving in on Sunday, Sept. 4.
The 563 first-year students were selected from record 6,647 applications, one of the most competitive admissions cycles in the school’s history. The students hail from 29 states and 23 countries, including Mauritius, Rwanda and Zimbabwe. The class is one of the most diverse, with nearly 30 percent international or from underrepresented backgrounds. It’s also one of the strongest academically, with two-thirds of the students ranked in the top 10 of their high school class.
Zoe Oxley, professor of political science and director of American Studies, provided expert analysis for the Times Union series, "Women in Politics."
Oxley's expertise includes gender stereotyping and elections as well as the gender gap in public opinion and voting. She has published journal articles and book chapters on these topics, including “Gender Stereotyping in State Executive Elections: Candidate Selection and Success,” “Why No Madame President? Gender and Presidential Politics in the United States,” and “Women’s Support for an Active Government.”
To read one article in the series, click here (subscription may be required).
To read another in which Oxley is quoted, click here.
Andrea Foroughi, associate professor of history and director of the Women's and Gender Studies Progam, was recently quoted in a Times Union column by Jennifer Gish on the rise of women's voices in today's world.
To read the column, click here (subscription may be required).
Bradley Hays, associate professor of political science, was a recent guest on "Congressional Corner" on WAMC, Northeast Public Radio. He discussed the 2016 presidential campaign between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Northeast Public Radio is a member of National Public Radio serving parts of seven northeastern states. These include New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.
In their controversial 2014 book, “The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America,” legal scholars Amy Chua and her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, attempted to explain why some groups “do strikingly better than others in terms of wealth, position and other conventional measures of success.”
The theory received widespread attention, in part because Chua had touched off an intense debate earlier with her bestseller, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.”
But a recent study by two Union College psychology professors finds there is little evidence to support the idea of the so-called triple package.
Instead, Joshua Hart and Christopher Chabris counter that intelligence, conscientiousness and economic advantage are the most likely elements of success, regardless of ethnicity.
The study, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, received widespread media attention when released in the spring.
