Union College - Alumni

Alumni

Since 1797, the year of the first graduation, Union alumni have distinguished themselves in fields such as law, medicine, ministry, botany, geology, engineering, local, state, and federal government, literature and poetry, photography, military service, education, journalism, and architecture.

Among Union’s 19th-century graduates were important figures in American secondary and post-secondary education. These included Gideon Hawley (1809), the first superintendent of public instruction in New York State; Francis Wayland (1813), president of Brown University; Henry Philip Tappan (1825), president of the University of Michigan; and Sheldon Jackson (1855), who was the first superintendent of public instruction in Alaska and introduced the idea of domesticating reindeer as a food source for the native population.

Union has produced many graduates who had (and continue to have) distinguished careers in government and public service. John C. Spencer (1806), Secretary of War and Secretary of the Treasury; William H. Seward (1820), Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln, Governor of New York, and architect of the Alaska Purchase from Russia; Chester A. Arthur (1848), 21st President of the United States; and Neil Abercrombie (1959), the current Governor of Hawaii, are some of the alumni in this sphere.

In 1845 Union established a course in civil engineering. Many of the graduates in this course went on to work on significant construction projects. In fact, it has been claimed that, for a time, the “designers and builders of the country’s canals and railroads were overwhelmingly graduates of the military academy at West Point, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Union College…”. Among these early engineering graduates were James Chatham Duane (1844) and Jacob Hays Linville (1848). Solomon Deyo (1870) was the engineer in charge of constructing the first New York City subway system.

A number of alumni have made meaningful contributions to arts and letters: Joel T. Headley (1839), author of numerous books about the Adirondack Mountains and early American history; William James Stillman (1848), photographer and author; Fitz Hugh Ludlow (1856), author of The Hashish Eater; Andrea Barrett (1974), winner of the National Book Award (for Ship Fever) and the Pulitzer Prize for works of fiction; and David Markson (1950), author of titles such as The Ballad of Dingus Magee.

Other notable Union alumni include: Dr. Baruch Samuel Blumberg (1946), winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; Henry Wager Halleck (1837), chief of staff for the Union Armies during the Civil War; William F. Fox (1869) Superintendent of Forests at the Adirondack Park in New York State; Howard Simons (1951), managing editor of The Washington Post during the Watergate era; Nikki Stone (1995), winner of a gold medal in the 1998 Winter Olympics for aerial skiing; and Armand V. Feigenbaum (1942), American businessman and developer of the concept of Total Quality Management (TQM).