Lunch & Learn for February

Date:  Friday, February 8, 2013  
Speaker:  Stacy Pomeroy Draper,
                Curator, Rensselaer County Historical Society
Topic:  "The Great Fire of Troy"
Time:  12 noon to 1 pm
Place:  Folsom Library's Fischbach Room

 

Adrienne Birchler

Coordinator

Friends of the Folsom Library

 

Library Offers Campus Subscription to Chronicle of Higher Education

For those Friends who don't read Inside Rensselaer, I'm posting the notice Friend and member of the Board of Directors of the Friends Meg Gallien included in the latest edition of the Institute's bi-weekly newspaper.  Meg is the Alumni News Editor.

Through the support of the Friends of the Folsom Library, the Rensselaer Libraries have renewed a site license to the daily online version of The Chronicle of Higher Education, which allows the campus community access to the newspaper at no cost.

“Given The Chronicle is ‘the’ news service for higher education, I think this is a wonderful service,” said Bob Mayo, director of the Rensselaer Libraries. “Providing a site license saves money to those who were paying for a subscription but, perhaps more importantly, provides access to the many who did not have a subscription.”

This is the second year that the Friends of the Folsom Library has underwritten the cost of an institutional subscription to The Chronicle. The Friends is a service organization comprising Rensselaer faculty, staff, alumni, retirees, and interested community members dedicated to enriching the collections, services, and events provided at the Folsom Library. 

 

When I manned the Library's information table this month at Rensselaer's Annual Benefits Fair and Staff Appreciation Day event, several faculty and staff who stopped by said they are so pleased that Friends is providing free online access to this valuable publication.  And those who were just learning about it said they were definitley going to enlighten members of their departments since their current paper subscriptions are quite costly and now unnecessary.  One person told me this was the biggest and best piece of information he received at the benefits fair.  That made my day.   

Adrienne Birchler
Coordinator
Friends of the Folsom Library

Lunch & Learn for November

Lunch & Learn

Co-sponsored by
Friends of the Folsom Library

and
The Rensselaer Retirees Forum

 

Friday, November 9    

   12:00 noon to 1:00 pm   

Folsom Library Fischbach Room

Chuck Boylen

 

           Free!       

       Everyone is welcome!  

     Bring your lunch or purchase one at the Library Cafe.      

     Dessert will be provided.



Adrienne Birchler
Coordinator
Friends of the Folsom Library

Upcoming Lunch & Learn Programs

Here are the programs scheduled for the next few months.

• November 8

Darrin Fresh Water Institute on Lake George

       Chuck Boylen, professor of biology and Associate Director of the Darrin
       Fresh Water Institute in Bolton Landing, has promised to talk about
       either the problem of invasive zebra mussels in Lake George or
       the Darrin Fresh Water Institute and some of the work performed
       there. One of Chuck's graduate students may join him.  



Zebra Mussels

Photo courtesty of NYS Department of Environmental Conservation

• December 7

       RPI Athletic DirectorJim Knowlton will present “Athletics at RPI--An
       Inspiring Story!” Jim plans to start off with a quiz (with prizes!) to
       see how knowledgeable the audience is about Rensselaer's athletic
       programs.  In case one of the questions is "What percentage of our
       students participate in some form of organized athletics?" the answer is
       70%.  Pretty surprising, don't you think?
 
       Please note:  This program will take place on the first Friday of the
       month rather than the second.

• January

       No program is planned and the Retirees Forum will not meet.

• February 8

       Rensselaer County Historical Society Curator Stacy Pomeroy Draper will
       talk about "The Great Fire of Troy."  Stacy sent me this photo.  The
       burnt district is in the foreground. The many-spired building on top of
       the hill was the Troy University, which later became St. Joseph's
       Seminary.  After it was razed, the Folsom Library was built on the site.

       This year (2012) marks the 150th anniversary of the fire.


Aftermath of The Great Fire of Troy (1862)

Image courtesy of the Rensselaer County Historical Society

      

Adrienne Birchler
Coordinator
Friends of the Folsom Library
 
 
      

Lunch & Learn for October

October's program should be very appealing to students. 

“How Are You Using Linkedin?  What’s New, What Works and Why Should I Care?”

Linkedin currently counts over 175 million professionals as members and continues to grow at a rate of 2 new members every second.  It is widely acknowledged as the leader in the professional space of social networking and has attracted members from the executive suite of every single Fortune 500 company.  Linkedin is now being used as a primary recruitment tool by 85 of the Fortune 100, and is also used by RPI.

Linkedin is becoming the first destination for so many of us in the beginning of a professional relationship.  What are you telling the world with your profile?  Unlike Facebook, where the line is still pretty clear as to how that site applies to today’s professional, Linkedin is becoming, and has become for many of us, an occupational necessity.  It is where people go to be found and, more and more, it is where companies and recruiters go to find talent. 

If you have to be on Linkedin then what should you do to make sure that you are representing yourself appropriately?  How can you build a profile that promotes yourself and your employer in tandem and in good taste?  The purpose of this session is to address these questions and give some suggestions and guidance on the use of Linkedin for busy professionals in today’s world.

Tom Whalen has been using Linkedin since early 2005 after a Silicon Valley alumnus of RPI told him   “…this thing is going to be huge.”  Seven years later he is one of the best linked members of the RPI community, as measured by the number of his 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd degree RPI Linkedin connections that he keeps within his network.  After seven years with the Office of Institute Advancement, Tom is now the Director of MBA and MS Career Resources at the Lally School of Management and Technology, a position that he has held since November of 2010. 

 

Friday, October 12

12:00 noon - 1:00 pm

Folsom Library Fischbach Room

Free!

Everyone is welcome!

Bring your lunch or purchase one at the Library Cafe.

Dessert will be provided.

 

Adrienne Birchler

Coordinator

Friends of the Folsom Library

New Exhibit on Signs, Seals, and Symbols of Rensselaer

Visit Folsom Library for a new exhibition exploring the signs, seals, and symbols designed and used by the Institute’s offices and students throughout the Institute's  history.  Assistant Institute Archivist Jenifer Kuba has assembled quite a few visual materials--pins, medals, key chains, stamps, paperweights, and documents that carry the various seals and symbols. As Jen explains, "The Institute’s logo or official seal, school colors, phrases, school letters, and the name 'Rensselaer' communicate its presence to students and communities. We see how Rensselaer communicates through material culture--pins, medals, official events--but student traditions and alumni pride make up a slightly different aspect of the Institute, one which embodies the internal culture of student life and courses of study. The exhibit places the Institute in historical context by examining the visual material it has created since its advent."

After viewing the exhibit, feel free to visit the Fixman Room on the third floor to see more Rensselaer signs, seals, and symbols and to say hello to Jen. 

 

 

 

 

Adrienne Birchler

Coordinator

Friends of the Folsom Library

Online Exhibit Worth Checking Out 

There is a informative and attractive online exhibit that this year's intern in Institute Archives and Special Collections, Amber J. D'Ambrosio, spent a lot of time on and deserves your attention. It's about the many performance spaces RPI groups used over the years before EMPAC was erected.

One thing I discovered is that the building that housed the library before it moved into its present building--the chapel that is now the Voorhees Computing Center--was under consideration to be transformed into a performing arts center.  Wouldn't that have made a divine dwelling for the performing arts! 

View the exhibit, Dim the Lights...Performance Spaces at Rensselaer at  http://www.lib.rpi.edu/dept/library/html/Archives/gallery/performance_spaces/index.html  
You'll be glad you did.


Adrienne Birchler
Coordinator
Friends of the Folsom Library