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The Hamilton College Choir is on the road for its annual spring break tour, this year visiting cities in the Midwest. The 64-members are directed by G. Roberts Kolb, professor of music and director of choral music at Hamilton since 1981. The choir will perform in Chicago on March 12; Plymouth, Minn., on March 13; Evanston, Ill., on March 14; and Cleveland on March 16.  The annual home concert is scheduled for Friday, March 30, at 7:30 p.m. in Wellin Hall.  

Stephen J. Wright, a senior geosciences major, presented a poster titled “2011:  A Comparison of Tornado Events in Dixie Alley and Upstate New York,” at the 37th Annual Northeastern Storm Conference held in Rutland, Vt., on March 2-4.

For the third year, Hamilton College is the recipient of STARTALK funding to operate two programs for Chinese language this summer—a Chinese teacher development program and a week-long intensive learning Chinese immersion course for students in grades 8 and 9.  This year’s grant of $125,000 will fund the ACC-STARTALK Teacher Program for non-native K-12 Chinese Teachers and ACC-STARTALK Youth Camp for Utica BOCES students on the Hamilton campus July 1 through 14.  

The Nesbitt-Johnston Writing Center noted its 25th birthday on March 6 with a festive celebration at the Center in KJ. Writing Center director Sharon Williams, Center assistant Dori Critelli, Writing Center tutors, students and faculty gathered for cupcakes and refreshments.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of Michael Harrington’s The Other America on March 6, the publisher Scribner is releasing a new edition. It includes a new introduction by Harrington’s biographer Maurice Isserman, the Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of American History.  The publisher calls The Other America “a landmark treatise on poverty in America.” Isserman wrote a New York Times op-ed on Harrington's influence  (March 3, 2012).

A study co-authored by Gordon Hewitt, assistant dean of faculty for institutional research, was cited in a New York Times op-ed, “The Indoctrination Myth,” on Sunday, March 4.  The op-ed was in response to Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s comment that “There are good, decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them.”

Six prizes were awarded across three categories in the annual Public Speaking Competition on Saturday, March 3, in the Chapel. The 18 finalists were chosen after an open preliminary round held in February. Speakers’ presentations were either persuasive or informative in nature, and in one category, students were asked to address an assigned topic.

Members of the Hamilton community again supported the annual America's Greatest Heart Run and Walk, held this year on March 4 in Utica. Donations are still being counted for this year's event,according to Colleen Pellman, a team captain. Last year Team Hamilton had 162 participants and raised $6395 for the American Heart Association. 

Hamilton’s 2012 Public Speaking Competition will take place on Saturday, March 3, from 1-4 p.m. in the Chapel. In this annual event students will compete for three different prizes: The McKinney Prize, The Clark Prize and The Warren E. Wright Prize.

Actor and screenwriter Nat Faxon ’97 won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Descendants during the Feb. 26 Academy Awards. The award, which he received with co-writers Alexander Payne and Jim Rash, is given to the writer of a screenplay adapted from another source (usually a novel, play, short story, or TV show but also sometimes another film). Faxon, who majored in theatre at Hamilton, started comedy troupe Bobby Peru. He was profiled in the Spring 2007 Alumni Review article “Roll Credits.”