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Junior Sharfi Farhana (West Haven, Mass.) used to spend a lot of time in Bangladesh when she was younger. Returning for a wedding last Christmas, she looked at the familiar landscape with new eyes. After several years at an affluent Western college, Farhana noticed that the poverty, the lack of opportunity, the pollution all stood out. "You see that when you’ve had two years of liberal arts education," Farhana said.

Summers on the island of Nantucket are nothing new for Chris Bouton ’09 (Beverly, Mass.), although this is the first summer he has spent there doing research as well. Advised by Associate Professor of History Douglas Ambrose, Bouton spent his summer investigating the contentious Nantucket anti-slavery movement in the 1840s.

Sarah (Sally) Powell ’09 presented her observations and findings about the lives and treatment of marginalized Kenyan children during the faculty and student “Social Justice” conference on September 8. With help from the Diversity and Social Justice Project as well as the Kirkland Endowment, Powell spent her summer working and living in the Sons of Manaseh Children’s Home for abused, neglected, orphaned and abandoned children outside of Nairobi. Her lecture combined her personal experience with and contribution to the children’s home and observations she made about Kenyan children while working in the home and traveling though Nairobi and rural Kenya.

Hamilton has a proud history of entertaining the best and most famous experts in various fields. David Suzuki, Tom Brokaw and Al Gore have all spoken on the Hill in the recent past. No less impressive are the countless professors and professionals from across the country who find Hamilton a welcome place to share their findings and ideas. The Hamilton Diversity and Social Justice Project continued this tradition in excellent style by inviting Professor Leslie Thiele of the University of Florida to speak at the opening of its annual colloquium on September 8, a two-day event that also included student speakers from Hamilton, Union College and Colgate University.

The evening of September 9 saw the Hamilton College Chapel crowded with students listening to "A Conversation about the 2006 and 2008 Elections" from two accomplished Hamilton alumni. Alicia Davis '97 and Marc Elias '90 had different perspectives on the causes of the recent Republican defeat, but agreed on the importance of new media and the closeness of the upcoming campaign.

Junior Tom Helmuth from Wooster, Ohio, wants to take a number theory class. Unfortunately for Helmuth, Hamilton's math department does not currently offer one and so Helmuth turned to Professor of Computer Science Richard Decker in his pursuit of prime numbers. Advised by Decker, Helmuth spent this summer doing interdisciplinary research that combined his two majors of math and computer science as he investigated primality testing and factorization algorithms.

John Molfetas (Athens, Greece), a junior who spends his summers on the Greek island of Cephalonia, spent this summer on the island as usual, doing research into the electoral behavior of the islanders in the last 30 years. Molfetas had an Emerson grant to support his research and was advised by the Henry Platt Bristol Professor of International Affairs Alan Cafruny.

Kevin Kennedy '70, life trustee and former chairman of the Board of Trustees at Hamilton and a managing director at Goldman Sachs, has been named chairman of the board of The Wallace Foundation, a national foundation based in New York City dedicated to supporting and sharing effective ideas and practices that expand learning and enrichment opportunities for all people.

Hamilton President Joan Hinde Stewart and 18 of her presidential colleagues have pledged to make available to prospective students and their families all possible useful information about their colleges, while at the same time de-emphasizing the role that rankings should play in the admission process.

Dean of Faculty Joe Urgo contributed a chapter to Willa Cather as Cultural Icon, the 7th volume in the Cather Studies series. Willa Cather (1873-1947) was a renowned author known for portraying U.S. lifestyles. Her famous novels include O Pioneers! and My Ántonia. Urgo’s chapter is titled “Cather’s Secular Humanism: Writing Anacoluthon and Shooting Out into the Eternities.” In the book Urgo describes Cather as "a great American liberator, an author who truly understood the potential of American secular and humanistic pluralism to serve art and to advance the human condition by lifitng it above the denominational.