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Assistant Professor of Physics Natalia Connolly has been granted observing time on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) during its “Cycle 18,” which runs from Sept. 1, 2010, through Aug. 31, 2011. HST cycles are time periods during which research projects, selected in a highly competitive peer review process, are executed. Fewer than one-third of all research proposals are accepted. Cycle 18 will have about 3,000 HST orbits available to researchers.

Every morning, Hanna Kahrmann-Zadak ’12 rides her bike from outside Clinton up the Hill to get to the lab. But before reaching her destination, she makes three pit stops to pick up her samples from two wells and nearby Oriskany Creek. She and Associate Professor of Geosciences Todd Rayne are embarking on a project that could prove extremely significant, especially to the community of Clinton: plotting the changes in the components of groundwater and of Oriskany Creek as they correlate to precipitation events.

Alumni Keith Gross ’09 and Brendan Sullivan ’07 with Yale alumna Jennifer Lanski have published an article with Professor of Mathematics Richard Bedient and Yale Professor Michael Frame in the journal Fractals. The paper, titled “Higher Block IFS: Memory Reduction and Dimension Computations,” is the result of work over a period of years by the authors as parts of various senior projects.

The business world is basically divided into two camps: socialism and capitalism. In socialist economies, businesses are owned and controlled by the state, and in capitalist economies, shares in ownership are traded on the public market. In his summer Levitt Fellowship research, Shichen Xu ’12 will be exploring the economic middle ground between capitalism and socialism by studying the behavior of the Mondragon Cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain.

Clinton Mayor Robert G. (Gill) Goering and members of the Clinton Fire Department brought the department’s new $1 million ladder truck to the Hamilton College campus on Tuesday, June 8. Clinton Fire Chief Mark Young presented President Joan Stewart with a personalized fire helmet in a small ceremony. After the presentation, Stewart and members of her office staff were hoisted above the library roof via the new ladder in a demonstration of the truck’s 100-foot ladder’s reach.

Associate Professor of English Doran Larson spoke on a panel titled "Integrating Prison Studies into Undergraduate Legal Education" at the American Bar Foundation's Consortium of Undergraduate Legal Studies Programs on May 26 in Chicago. The consortium is an organization for colleges and universities that have interdisciplinary programs geared toward undergraduate education about law and justice in the United States and internationally.

Nine Hamilton College faculty members were approved for tenure by the College's Board of Trustees during a recent meeting. The Board granted tenure to Donald Carter (Africana studies), Anne Lacsamana (women’s studies), Tina Hall (English), Chaise LaDousa (anthropology), Rebecca Murtaugh (art), Angel David Nieves (Africana studies), Edna Rodriguez-Plate (Hispanic studies), Chad Williams (history) and Yvonne Zylan (sociology).

Clad in pseudo-space-age garb, Sarah Andrus ’12 looks somewhat out of place striding through a grassy field and not bounding over lunar craters. Despite her more mundane surroundings, Andrus’ quest still leads to an exploration of sorts: she is collecting samples of honeybees and fruit flies for her research with Associate Professor of Biology Herman Lehman. These samples may help to dispel some of the mystery surrounding the effects of a little-understood compound called octopamine.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Ashleigh Smythe is spending two weeks in June at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s Bocas del Toro field station on the Caribbean coast of Panama. She is one of 11 experts who are leading a workshop titled "Meiofauna Diversity and Taxonomy."

Leide Cabral ’11, Denise Ghartey ’12 and Hector Acevedo ’08 presented at the K-16 Model of Minority STEM Education: Innovations in Pedagogy and Approach Conference hosted in April at Virginia State University with funding from the National Science Foundation. The student leaders of The Young People’s Project at Hamilton College (YPP@HC) joined Maisha Moses, The Young People’s Project national board member and daughter of Robert Moses ’56.