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Keyhole limpets are sea snails that, despite their small size, offered a great opportunity to four Hamilton research students in Professor Patrick Reynolds’ lab. Part of the Diodora genus, these snails sit at the base of the main branch of the gastropod (snail) tree of life. As such, they provided an interesting perspective for tracking snail evolution, Reynolds said.

The Hamilton in NYC Program is off to a busy and exciting start. On Jan. 31, the group met with David Maddox, founder and director of the Nature of Cities, “an international platform to share diverse, transformative ideas about cities as ecosystems of people, nature, and infrastructure.”

Pat Reynolds, the Stone Professor of Natural History, spent July 1 at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. helping with outreach for International Polychaete Day.

President Joan Hinde Stewart recently announced the appointment of eight Hamilton faculty members to endowed chairs.  Doug Ambrose (history),  Brian Collett (physics), Martine Guyot-Bender (French), Gordon Jones (physics), Tim Kelly (mathematics), Heidi Ravven (religious studies), Patrick Reynolds (biology) and Michael “Doc” Woods (music) received appointments. All are effective July 1.

With a well-known commencement speaker who holds controversial views, Hamilton may have anticipated a bit more national media attention to the event than in past years. What was not expected was additional focus on the dean of faculty.

Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty Patrick Reynolds was recognized for his service to the American Microscopical Society (AMS) at the society’s annual meeting in Portland, Ore. He was awarded honorary life membership for his 17 years of service to the executive committee.

The Huffington Post published an opinion piece co-authored by Dean of Faculty Patrick Reynolds titled “The Liberal Arts Contribution to edX.”  The piece explored the fact that “the residential liberal arts model that our institutions and many other liberal arts colleges have embodied for two centuries has something to contribute to the open online platform: promoting a wide exploration of knowledge and the reciprocal illumination of seemingly disparate disciplines through critical thinking, discourse and writing.”

Hamilton College and Colgate University jointly announced today their partnership as new contributing members in the nonprofit, online learning platform edX. Founded by Harvard University and MIT, edX currently offers more than 150 courses in many areas of study, including the arts and humanities, public health, law, math and computer science. Its focus is to create access to the world’s best education globally, improve on-campus education and conduct research to enhance teaching and learning.

Dean of Faculty Patrick Reynolds visited Professor Gordon Jones’ “Physics 190: The Mechanical Universe” class last week to help illustrate some laws of physics.  Lying on a bed of nails, Reynolds demonstrated the difference between force and pressure. In comparing a bed with a single nail to one with hundreds of nails in both cases the force (Reynolds’ weight) is the same, but the pressure is different.  On a bed of hundreds of nails the force is spread over many nails in the same way that pressure depends on the area over which a force is spread.

Patrick D. Reynolds, professor of biology at Hamilton, has been appointed dean of faculty at the college, effective July 1, 2011. He is currently serving in that capacity on an interim basis.