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August’s news highlights ranged from Confederate memorials to town hall protocols. Links are provided, but some may require subscriptions to access content. Please contact Vige Barrie if you cannot open a link or do not have a subscription.

“I’ve never felt so immersed in a community so quickly,” said Chris Hart ’19 when describing his internship experiences this semester as part of the Hamilton Adirondack Program. Ten students are interning with 16 different organizations in the Adirondacks. Each contributes to, and in some cases develops, essential projects that serve the local region, which they then apply directly to their coursework, research, and community building at The Mountain House, the program’s site.

Eleanor Fausold ’13 penned a letter to the editor that was published in The New York Times in response to an op-ed titled “Is It Time to Bag the Plastic?” Referencing her senior thesis research on the costs and benefits of charging a fee for both paper and plastic bags in New York City, Fausold answered the article’s title question with, “The answer is overwhelmingly yes!” The letter appeared on the publication’s website on the day she graduated from Hamilton, May 26, and in print on the following day.

Professor Gary Wyckoff’s public policy students worked in teams this semester to meet the challenge of devising effective yet feasible policy proposals for education reform. They presented and defended their projects to a panel of alumni who work in education on May 12.

In a Huffington Post essay titled “The New Washington Economics,” Government Professor P. Gary Wyckoff questioned the financial soundness of the sequester.  In the March 21 posting, he addressed the economic reasons why the sequester may be quite detrimental to the economy while not reducing the deficit significantly.

The national media highlighted Hamilton College in multiple ways throughout 2012 by focusing on faculty research and expertise, featuring opinion pieces, and announcing new endeavors and special student projects. From The Today Show to NPR’s All Things Considered to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the college was visible in the media across the country.

Using examples from today’s political landscape, Professor of Government P. Gary Wyckoff examined elements of critical thinking in an essay titled “What Exactly Is Critical Thinking,” published by InsideHigherEd in its Oct. 11 edition. “As I prepared for the start of classes this fall, I tried to pinpoint the critical thinking skills I really want my students to learn,” wrote Wyckoff.  “And as I listened to public debates on everything from tax policy to Obamacare, five essential thinking skills seemed to be missing, again and again.”

The New York Times published a letter to the editor written by Professor of Government P. Gary Wyckoff as the leadoff response to “Class Matters. Why Won’t We Admit It?” in its Dec. 22 editorial section titled “Reducing Inequality in Our Schools.” He compared our current educational policies as being “like a requirement that all children clear the same height in the high jump, regardless of their stature.”

The Levitt Center has recently published the spring 2011 edition of Insights, the academic journal that features the best undergraduate social science research papers written by Hamilton students.

Five students in the Hamilton College Public Policy department posed a question at the outset of their thesis presentation on May 2: are the columnists you read and talking heads you watch better than a coin flip?