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Alison Chiaramonte ’08 (Sherman, Conn.) spent her summer on the Hill, but not the one you’re probably thinking of. The public policy major was nowhere near Hamilton this summer; instead, she was on Capitol Hill as an intern in the offices of Congressman Sherwood Boehlert and Congressman John Larson.

China is once again the setting for the research of Yejun Qian ’08 (Shanghai, China). Qian, a duel major in mathematics and economics, is studying the effects of China’s accession into the World Trade Organization with a particular emphasis on the environment. The central question of his study will be, “how have the trade patterns and environmental indicators changed, nationally and provincially, since China’s accession into WTO?”

A day-long music and arts festival is planned for the Village of Clinton the weekend Hamilton students return to campus. The first Clinton Art & Music Festival will be held at locations throughout Clinton on Saturday, Aug. 26, from 10 a.m.-10 p.m.  Hamilton’s Office of Student Activities has arranged for busses to run continuously from campus to the village, beginning at 3 p.m.

Associate Professor of Theatre Mark Cryer presented a panel on grant writing for the arts at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) Conference in Chicago. He also was elected chair of the Acting Focus Group at ATHE.

Ernest Williams, the Leonard C. Ferguson Professor of Biology, attended the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Memphis, Tenn., August 6-11. He presented a poster "Tree removal expands habitat for lupine and frosted elfin butterfly," on which Associate Professor of Biology William Pfitsch was second author.

The new Science Center has brought many joys to students and professors alike. But while the center’s impressive architecture certainly warrants appreciation, the resident collection of new “science toys” has stolen the attention of the inhabitants. Heather Michael ’07 and Nikola Banishki ’07, for instance, perk up when they talk about the new DNA-sequencing machine.

While many of his classmates remain on campus to do their research, Daniel Campbell ’08 (Pittsford, N.Y.) is working off-campus this summer, at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Campbell is working on several projects, but his main one deals with improving the accuracy of the results of a previous neutron experiment. He is trying to simulate the effects of redesigning two pieces of his apparatus in the hopes of reducing neutron collision.

Professor of Biology Pat Reynolds contributed a chapter to a new book, The Mollusks: A Guide to their Study, Collection, and Preservation. Reynolds' chapter is on the class Scaphopoda, known as the tusk shell because of their hollow, curved, conical tube shape. The book is a publication of the American Malacological Society, which according to its website, is "a dynamic international society of individuals and organizations with an active interest in the study and conservation of mollusks." Reynolds is editor-in-chief of Invertebrate Biology, the journal of the American Microscopical Society.

Timothy Fox ’08 (Montclair, N.J.) is spending his summer in the lab with the good company of Neoproterozoic sedimentary rocks. He is working with Professor of Geology Eugene Domack studying glacial rocks from Namibia and East Greenland in the hopes of better understanding the implications of global ice covering episodes (glaciations) that have occurred in the past, and the associated effects on long-term climatic stability.

Robert Brande ’08 (Glen Rock, N.J.) got a surprise visit from his aunt and uncle last year when they brought him some objects they had dug up on their Missouri farm. Brande, an archaeology major, did what he was trained to do: he examined and asked questions. “I thought, what if I could turn this into a project?” Later, Brande applied for and received an Emerson Grant to investigate this farm in the hopes of determining “how different people have used the land in different ways over time.”