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The Hamilton College Chapter of Sigma Xi, the scientific research society, initiated 27 members of the Class of 2011 to associate membership at the annual banquet in the Science Center Atrium on May 20. Family members in attendance heard a program of brief observations by mentors about the students and their research.

Rising juniors Alexandra Arenson ’13 and Charlotte Cosgrove ’13 will spend the summer with Professor Jeremy Skipper  studying speech and the parts of the brain that affect it.  Their project, “The Phantom Text Effect,” concerns the processes of speech comprehension in the brain among adult English speakers.

Professor of French John C. O'Neal presented a paper, "Saint-Preux comme personne transgenre dans La Nouvelle Héloïse de Rousseau," at the international colloquium "Masculin et pouvoir de Rousseau à Balzac," held at the Université Jean Monnet, May 19-20.

Professor of History Thomas Wilson presented a paper titled “The Imperial and Ancestral Sacrifices of Confucius” at the International Symposium on the Rites to Confucius held at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, South Korea.

Al Gore, 45th vice president of the U.S., and author of An Inconvenient Truth, told Hamilton’s Class of 2011 that the climate crisis is “the most serious challenge that our civilization has ever faced,” and that while the grassroots movement in support of solving the climate crisis is the most powerful in the history of the world, “it will be the generation of you in this graduating class that will really bring about change.” Gore also addressed the political state of our democracy and how decisions made on false assumptions have led to major national challenges.

Six students  presented posters at the 55th Annual Biophysical Society Meeting that took place in March in Baltimore.  Matthew Baxter ’11, Daryl Berke ’11, Alex Dao ’12, Jason McGavin’12, Nathan Schneck ’11 and William Wieczorek ’11  presented work as part of sessions on “Membrane Active Peptides” and "Interfacial Protein-Lipid Interactions.”

An article co-authored by Ernest Williams, the Christian A. Johnson Excellence in Teaching Professor of Biology, appears in the current issue of the Journal of the Lepidopterists’ Society. “Overwintering clusters of the monarch butterfly coincide with the least hazardous vertical temperatures in the oyamel forest” presents the results of the authors’ study of the impact of temperature on the survival of monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico.

Twenty-six candidates for graduation were elected to the Epsilon chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest honor society, on May 19.  

In a weakened school system that faces continual budget cuts, co-curricular field trips are usually among the first programs that schools discontinue. In Washington, D.C., this rings especially true, as an increasing number of middle schools are deciding to drop field trips from their curriculum.

A paper co-authored by Associate Professor of Psychology Jennifer Borton was published in the March-April issue of The Journal of Social Psychology. “Does Suppressing the Thought of a Self-Relevant Stigma Affect Interpersonal Interaction?” was co-written with David Reiner ’05, Erica Vazquez ’08, Jessica Ruddiman ’09 and Stephanie Anglin ’10.