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Rising senior Mikhail Bell ’08 (New York, N.Y.) knew that he didn’t want to spend another summer working in an insurance agency. Bell, a major in world politics with a concentration on gender studies and development, wanted experience in a profession related to his academic interests. After some research, Bell applied for and received a position as a volunteer at the Carter Center.

Earlier this summer we spoke to Stephen Okin, who has an Emerson grant to research the increasingly shaky relationship between Venezuela and the U.S. With the recent media coverage of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, it seemed timely to catch up with Okin and get an update on his research.

Since declaring its independence from the USSR in 1991, the Republic of Georgia has been working to establish a fully democratic government and educational system. Giorgi Chavleishvili ’08, a native of the Republic of Georgia, had a Levitt Fellowship this summer to investigate the changes in the Georgian education system and how it has been adapted to democracy.

Hamilton students migrate south for the summer, leaving one Hill for another, and Maura Kernan ’08 was one of several Hamiltonians interning in Washington, D.C. this summer. While some of her classmates worked in senatorial offices, Kernan had a position with the Department of Labor in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, where she worked as a research assistant under the directorate of science, technology and medicine.

Living in America, we tend to take the existence of democracy and the separation of church and state as a given. Andrew Gumbiner '08 (Glencoe, Ill.) is interested, however, in the parts of the world where this is not necessarily true. Gumbiner, a world politics major, was awarded a Levitt Fellowship this summer to research the current culture of democracy in the Middle East.

A native of Hollywood, Calif., Lyndra Vassar '09 is, like many others in that area, interested in being a part of the entertainment industry. The rising junior is considering a career in entertainment law and decided to get a head start on work experience this summer. After some research, Vassar applied for and received a position as an intern with MTV Network's Press Department.

When Tom Brokaw visited the Hamilton campus, Matt House was a sophomore. The talk had such an effect on its listener that House, now a rising senior, used Brokaw's correlation between military service and political responsibility as a jumping-off point for his senior project. Although he has already begun working on the thesis, House applied for and was granted a Levitt Fellowship to do additional historical research this summer into the decline of the citizen-soldier in modern American.

When Li Qiu '09 was hired by Merrill Lynch this summer, he not only bagged a position as an intern, but he was put in charge of other interns. Qiu worked for the management team of Merrill Lynch's Foreign Office this summer and had duties which ranged from providing support to his Financial Advisor (FA) to organizing intern training and activities.

Literary criticism is a deceptively simple field; it seems easy enough to separate written work into fiction and non-fiction. Rising senior Kathleen Naughton (Cromwell, Conn.), however, challenged this assumption with her research into the autobiography. Naughton, a creative writing and chemistry minor, has always been interested in the resonances of the writer upon his or her subject matter, which she researched this summer.

Steven Beale '09 (Durham, N.C.) is a world politics major with a long-standing interest in international security and the War on Terror. This summer, he combined these two fields with a newer interest in Russian policies to design research on the Russian reaction to the U.S.-led War on Terror, for which he has a Levitt Fellowship. Beale worked with Lecturer in Government David Rivera.