All News

Where did the American founders get their ideas from, anyway? Kaitlyn Bishara '09 (Lewiston, N.Y.) is investigating this question in a summer research project titled "Evolution or Revolution: The Role of the Classics in the Founding of America." Bishara is working in collaboration with Edward North Professor of Classics Carl Rubino on the project, which is funded by the Emerson Foundation Grant program.

Assistant Professor of Psychology Jean Burr, Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Mark Oakes and Tori Nygren '11 presented their paper "An Implicit Association Test to Measure Relational Aggression: Preliminary Results and Directions for Future Research" at the 3rd Research Conference on Relational Aggression in Philadelphia on June 23.

While many Hamilton students this summer are heading to internships in various professions, trading in their jeans, textbooks and flip-flops for business suits, Lizzie Marris '10 is making a different kind of transition. "I think the prominent departure in this internship is not from academic to professional, but rather from privilege to disadvantage," she says of her job this summer. Marris, a native of Erieville, N.Y., is working with migrant children as a teaching assistant with the Cortland Migrant Education Outreach Program (CMEOP).

Summer research at Hamilton isn't always about being in the lab. Kristen Selden '09 found that out last summer when she spent many days out in the field trying to trap turtles. This year she is back out looking for more turtles in addition to frogs and tadpoles. Last summer she focused on disproving Andrew (1959) and Ballmer (1949) who stated that the turtle gastrointestinal tract is one big long tube that has no morphological differentiation between the esophagus, stomach, and various sections within the intestine. 

Assistant Professor of Africana Studies Nigel Westmaas presented a paper at the seventh Association of Cultural Studies (ACS) Crossroads conference held at the University of the West Indies Campus in Mona, Jamaica, July 3 - 7. His paper, "40th Anniversary of Rupture and Revolt: 1968, Guyana and the rise of the New Politics" assessed the effect of the world wide impact of 1968 on local Guyanese and 'third world' politics. It argued that fresh approaches to race relations and additional forms of protest in Guyana was influenced and affected by the global and regional (Caribbean) disturbances of 1968.

Hamilton will host the 2008 Conference of the International Association for the Economics of Participation (IAFEP), from Monday, July 14, through Thursday, July 17. IAFEP Conferences provide an international forum for the presentation and debate of current research and scholarship on the economics of participation. Associate Professor of Economics Jeff Pliskin is the conference chair.

On July 1, Stephen M. Pratt '85 assumed leadership of My Turn, Inc., a youth development agency based in Brockton, Mass. My Turn collaborates with employers, educational institutions, community organizations, and families to help youth ages 14 to 21 make the leap from high school to postsecondary education, work training, and successful employment.

Wearing a wedding gown on television? It's all in a day's work for Vanessa Cruz-Santana '10 (Santa Ana, Calif.), who is interning this summer at KDOC TV, a local television station in Orange County, Calif. Cruz-Santana is interning for "Daybreak OC," a morning news show that reports on local news in Orange County.

Money magazine reporter Amanda Gengler '03 provided analysis during the July 8 broadcast of CNNMoney's "Issue Number One", a news program that probes the health of the American economy. Gengler addressed the nationwide mortgage pinch and rumors of economic collapse.

University of Utah Research Associate Professor of Geology and Geophysics Jim Pechmann '76 offered his seismological expertise in a June 30 NPR broadcast about the deadly collapse of Crandall Canyon Mine in northwestern Utah in August 2007.