All News

A record number of 225 incoming first-year Hamilton students (about 45 percent of the incoming class) are participating this week in Adirondack Adventure, an outdoor orientation program for new students. The students arrived on August 15, a week before regular orientation, for eight days of games, hiking, canoeing and service projects.

Like many of his classmates, Luke Forster ’08 (Averill Park, N.Y.) opted to do research this summer. Forster, a world politics major and Chinese minor, spent his summer on the Hill, working with Assistant Professor of Government Sharon Rivera on a comparative study of democratization in Ukraine and Belarus.

For the 25th consecutive year, more than 50 percent of Hamilton alumni made contributions to the college. Of the 50.2 percent who made contributions, 55.5 percent increased the size of their gifts, a jump from 53 percent a year ago.

Maxwell Akuamoah-Boateng ’09 (Syracuse, N.Y.) is at Hamilton for his first summer of research, working in the lab of Professor of Chemistry Timothy Elgren. Akuamoah-Boateng is investigating a more efficient way of encapsulating an enzyme in silica sol gels. Sol gel is glass made from mixing a solution of silica (tetramethylorthosilicate) with water and acid. This solution mixture when allowed to dry forms the silica (glass) gels used in this experiment.

There are at least three Hamilton students in Japan for their summer research, but Lily Yu ’07 (Livingston, N.J.) wins for immersion: the comparative literature major spent her junior year abroad in the country and then stayed to do her research. Funded by an Emerson grant, Yu spent her summer investigating the formation of identity in burakumin literature.

Dave Smallen, vice president of information technology, commented on the 25th birthday of the personal computer in an article for <em>PC Magazine</em> authored by Natali Del Conte.  In the article, Smallen discussed the emergence of personal computers on college campuses and initial concerns about their use by students stating, "When the first personal computers came out and students started to bring them to campus, many people were concerned that students would spend so much time using their computers, isolated from each other, that the sense of community on campuses, and students' personal health would be compromised."

Jay Williams, Walcott-Bartlett Professor of Religious Studies, delivered a paper titled “Thomas Nast and Multiculturalism” at the International Conference on Arts in Society at the University of Edinburgh on August 15. The conference was held concurrently with the l,Edinburgh International Festival the Edinburgh Art Festival, the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Edinburgh International Film Festival and was sponsored by Common Ground, an academic publisher and conference organizer. Williams’ presentation addressed Nast’s belief that the United States should be an inclusive society. Nast particularly emphasized the need to include African Americans, Asians and Native Americans in society, but he railed against extremists who sought to dominate any aspect of society with a particular ideology.

Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures Masaaki Kamiya gave a presentation at the 8th Seoul International Conference on Generative Grammar. The theme of the conference was "Minimalist views on language design." Kamiya's paper was titled "DP Goal, PP Goal, and vP internal structure in Japanese" in which he presented new evidence that the internal structure of verb phrase is more complex than ever thought.

When YiYang Cao ’09 picked up National Geographic in the spring of his sophomore year in high school, he read an article about pollution in China; later, visiting Shanghai, he saw the extent of the local water pollution. But it was the industrial accident which, in November of last year, caused the dumping of toxic carcinogens into a major river that really prompted Cao to act. “From then on,” he said, “I decided that if I was given a chance, I would study China’s pollution problems and its waters.” Spurred by this ambition, Cao applied for and was granted a Levitt Fellowship to research water pollution in China. He was advised by William R. Kenan Professor of Government Cheng Li.  

Associate Professor of Mathematics Sally Cockburn presented a paper at MathFest, the summer meeting of the Mathematical Association of America on Aug. 12 in Knoxville. The paper, titled "Deranged Socks," was joint work with former visiting professor Joshua Lesperance, and grew out of a problem from Cockburn's junior-level graph theory and combinatorics course. Specifically, given n distinct pairs of socks, how many ways are there to distribute 2 socks to each of n people so that no one receives a matching pair? Like many combinatorial problems, it is easy to state, but remarkably difficult to solve.