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Hamilton President Joan Hinde Stewart along with five other college presidents will be addressing a crowd of nearly 400 educators, journalists and business leaders next Monday, May 5, at  the Innovation + Disruption Symposium hosted by Colgate University at Manhattan’s TimeCenter. The panel of college presidents will focus on the topic of “Seizing the Initiative in the Digital Age.” 

Hamilton College President Joan Hinde Stewart attended an all-day summit on Thursday, Jan. 16, hosted by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama in Washington.  Note: Following this meeting, President Stewart discussed her observations on Albany public radio station WAMC-FM  and Utica station WIBX-AM.

Hamilton College President Joan Hinde Stewart has been invited and will attend an all-day summit on Thursday, Jan. 16, hosted by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama in Washington.

In an essay on Huffington Post titled “The Godfather of All Encyclopedias,” President Joan Hinde Stewart wrote about “one of the greatest of the Enlightenment philosophers, Denis Diderot,” and the “dazzlingly original series of works that range in their subject matter from religion to science and morality” that are his legacy.

Hamilton President Joan Hinde Stewart participated in a round table, “Women and Literary Tradition: Breaking the Sequence,” in honor of Wellesley College Professor of French Vicki Mistacco’s retirement. The April 30 event was hosted by La Maison Française of Wellesley College.

The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and Vanderbilt University have established a committee to examine emerging national-scale digital projects and their potential to help transform higher education in terms of scholarly productivity, teaching, cost-efficiency and sustainability.  President Joan Hinde Stewart has been appointed to this group, the Committee on Coherence at Scale for Higher Education, which comprises college and university presidents and provosts, deans, university librarians and association heads.

In an  essay in Inside Higher Ed titled “Change,” President Joan Hinde Stewart began with a reference to the recent leadership upheaval at the University of Virginia.  Published on August 16, the article  addressed how college presidents might consider their decision-making processes in making institutional changes.  Stewart included advice she offered in an invited presentation at the Mellon Foundation to new college presidents. She suggested to her new colleagues that they should first “identify those things that they would not alter.”

Opening with a discussion of Mr. Rogers' metaphor of the mind as a garden and lyrics from one of his songs on the importance of curiosity, President Joan Hinde Stewart addressed the purpose of education in her most recent Huffington Post blog. In “Minds and Gardens,” posted on Aug. 8, Stewart wrote, “Those who see the value of college in the amount of money a graduate earns miss a fundamental point: The purpose of an education is not simply to make a better living but, by enlivening the mind, to make a life worth living.

In an essay titled “What Would Jean Valjean Do?” and published on the Huffington Post, President Joan Hinde Stewart discussed “the transforming potential of individual example and community action” and “the redeeming value of great models, whether literary or historical.” Stewart employed Victor Hugo's Les Misérables and the author’s protagonist, Jean Valjean, as examples to illustrate these themes and to demonstrate how literary works from centuries past have relevance in today’s society.

On Wednesday, May 30, Robert Meelan, supervisor of the Town of Kirkland,  will present President Joan Hinde Stewart with a proclamation from the town in honor of the college’s 200th anniversary of the May 1812 signing of the charter by Regents of the University of the State of New York. The presentation will be made at the town meeting.