All News

Imagine looking through a series of portraits and being asked to observe the faces of each one. What if suddenly you saw your own face on the screen? How would you react? According to Sam Briggs ’12 and Beril Esen ’13, a lot of that reaction depends on how you feel about yourself.

In its third year, Cram & Scram has perfected the formula for reusing unwanted goods, and helping others in the process. Fifteen students from all class years worked many hours in the early days of summer break to collect more than 10,000 pounds of goods that have found new and happy homes, resulting in fewer deposits of these usable goods to a landfill. This year, Cram & Scram reduced landfill deposits by more than 40 percent—10 percent more than 2009.

Assistant Professor of Art Rebecca Murtaugh is currently exhibiting at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, Mich. Her solo show titled "Temptations" opened on June 11 and runs until August 6, and features four series of art works.

The mission of the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, a nonprofit corporation headed by folk artist and cultural icon Pete Seeger, is to protect the waters of the Hudson River from pollution and degradation. This summer, Emerson Fellow Jacob Sheetz-Willard ’12 is researching how Pete Seeger’s Clearwater movement transcends environmental activism and becomes a cultural movement similar in organization to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. 

Professor of Chinese De Bao Xu gave the keynote speech at TCLT6, the 6th International Conference and Workshops on Technology and Chinese Language Teaching in the 21st Century, held at the Ohio State University on June 12-14. His talk was titled “Assessment of Participatory Learning Tools and Selection of Virtual Classroom Software (VCS).”

In 1918, the global influenza pandemic struck millions of families, killing a jaw-dropping 3 percent of the world’s population at the time. Scientists since devised a treatment to stop the flu infection from spreading within the body. With the recent emergence of a particularly virulent strain of avian influenza, H5N1, and the rise of the highly transmissible but somewhat less virulent pandemic H1N1 “swine flu” in 2009, many fear a repeat of this serious and lethal world health crisis. The common drugs used for treatment of influenza are far from perfect, and they sometimes act in unexpected ways on the molecular level. Working with Assistant Professor of Chemistry Adam Van Wynsberghe, Erica Losito ’12 and Jeremy Adelman ’13 are taking a closer look at exactly what happens when the virus and the drug interact, in two different ways.

Standing in the dark lab, Sarah Fobes ’12 and Zane Glauber ’12 flip the switch to turn on their laser. In the blink of an eye, the tiny glass sample that they had labored over glows a radioactive green—with any luck, a brighter green than the last one they illuminated. Working with Professor of Physics Ann Silversmith, Fobes and Glauber are spending the summer experimenting with different aspects of glass formation to make it fluoresce (or glow) more brightly, with the indirect consequence of being able to make a better laser.

Hong Gang Jin, the William R. Kenan Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures, published an article titled “Task Complexity and its Effects on Interaction & Production: An Experimental Study of Task-based Instruction” in the May issue of the Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association (JCLTA). The article presents the results of her study about “the effect of task complexity on language and interaction in a Chinese as a foreign language context.”

Hamilton has no formal pre-law program, but that doesn’t stop a large number of graduates, many of whom have degrees in economics or government, from pursuing a law degree after Hamilton. With so many students choosing law school, some faculty members ask “How do we better prepare students with interests in becoming lawyers?” The possible solution? A new major that would draw on classes from multiple disciplines and would, hopefully, be attractive for students who anticipate a future in law.

Assistant Professor of Philosophy Russell Marcus has published two articles in the spring issue of the American Philosophical Association’s Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy.