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Undergraduate research will again be the order of the day in the Science Center, as Hamilton hosts the seventh annual MERCURY Conference on Undergraduate Computational Chemistry. The conference, which runs from Sunday, August 3 until Tuesday, August 5, will include guest speakers as well as a poster session of students' research projects.

What was once a majestic tower overlooking the South Quad has been reduced to stumps and wood chips as Hamilton College's beloved tulip tree was struck by lightning for the third and last time this summer and finally deemed unsound.  Hamilton will dearly miss this 150+ year old tree standing over 100' tall just east of Cooper.  The Tulip tree was # 34 on the Tree Tour map. Arboretum Director Terry Hawkridge hopes to plant a new Tulip tree in its place.

Summer for Hamilton students is not just a time to chill out on the beach. Summer internships are becoming more and more necessary for college students, letting them try out areas they might be considering as possible careers, and giving them valuable work experience. Students jump enthusiastically into summer internships in a wide range of fields, from federal regulatory agencies to nature preserve patrols to news stations, working with the professionals in their field and learning skills that they may use for the rest of their careers.

Associate Professor of Theatre Mark Cryer is the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) Conference in Denver this week. He's participating in the Leadership Conference for new and emerging department chairs as well as chairing the Acting Focus Group. Cryer is also performing excerpts from his one-man show, "99," on Aug. 1 in ATHE's Micro-Fringe.

Texts like the Iliad may be old, but they are called classics precisely because they are timeless, turning up over and over again – sometimes in unusual places. Christopher Bouton '09, a rising senior from Beverly, Mass., is spending the summer researching the connections between Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, and two slightly more recent productions: "Blade Runner" by Ridley Scott and the television series "Battlestar Galactica" by Ronald Moore.

While many students use the summer to explore new professional opportunities, Susan Stanton '09 (Lafayette, Pa.) is sticking with what she knows. Stanton, who participated in the Hamilton Program in Washington last semester, started an internship with the National Organization for Women (NOW) in March and knew she was onto a good thing. "I really wanted to stay with NOW to continue some of my projects and working for causes that I truly believed in," she says.

Evening is the Whole Day, a new novel by Preeta Samarasan '98, received positive reviews in a New York Times review (7/27/08). Calling the book a "delicious first novel," reviewer Allegra Goodman writes, "Deftly switching points of view and flitting backward and forward in time, Samarasan constructs a narrative that opens outward even as it deepens, revealing the wounds and secrets within each character."

Nguyen Thi Thao Nguyen, 2008 salutatorian and double major in physics and math, has been named a finalist for the LeRoy Apker Award. The award is given annually by the American Physical Society for outstanding research accomplishments in physics by an undergraduate. Nguyen is Hamilton's fourth finalist. Other Apker finalists were Toru Ohira '86, who worked with Phil Pearle; Brandon Collings '94, who won the award and worked with Ann Silversmith; and the late Qijia Fu '96, who worked with Phil Pearle and died tragically after being struck by lightning while hiking, before the final winner was chosen.

Nietzsche and religious studies may not seem like the most logical companions, but for Deborah Pless '09 (Rockport, Mass.), the tension between them is fascinating. While other students have left the Hill for summer jobs and internships, Pless is researching "Nietzsche and the Dying-Reviving Cycle," a collaborative project with Associate Professor of Philosophy Todd Franklin funded by the Emerson Foundation Grant program.

Many people feel that the ability to remember information is positive, like being able to recall facts or our life events. Alternatively, many people consider forgetting a negative process, and feel frustrated when we forget someone's name or what items we need at the supermarket. However, forgetting traumatic life events or what items you needed last time you went to the grocery store can be helpful. Furthermore, having control over what we forget, or the ability to engage in Directed Forgetting, can be even more useful. Although many researchers have previously demonstrated the Directed Forgetting (DF) effect, Avery Rizio '09 (Walpole, Mass.) is working with Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Mark Oakes to further examine DF, investigating the processes that underlie this phenomenon.