Field Notes

Nguyen Thi Thao Nguyen's earliest interest in science came when she "first got to play with experiments." Growing up in Vietnam, Nguyen, who was Hamilton's Class of 2008 salutatorian and a double major in physics and mathematics, devoted most of her early school science classes to math and didn't have a chance to do hands-on chemistry laboratory work until she arrived in Singapore for high school. "You could mix two things and they would suddenly change colors ... that was cool," she says.

Scores of Hamilton students are already involved in graduate-level research in many fields, each working closely with faculty mentors while pursuing individual projects and goals. Five, however, have taken this intensive study to the next level: As Senior Fellows, they have devoted the entire academic year to independent study projects, often interdisciplinary, that are defined by their academic rigor and potential impact.

Hamilton is one of the nation's most frequently cited research institutions relative to its size, based on a study in Science magazine of more than 4.2 million U.S.-based scholarly papers published across three decades. Appearing in the Nov. 21 issue of the magazine, the study, "Multi-University Research Teams: Shifting Impact, Geography and Stratification in Science," found Hamilton ranked 15th in citations per faculty member and 24th in citations per paper in science and engineering. The College was considered as part of a group of 662 colleges and universities recently supported by National Science Foundation grants.