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The corn may not be knee-high yet, but the Hamilton Community Garden is growing enthusiastically. The garden, a half-acre plot behind the Ferguson House parking lot, is being cared for by three students over the summer. Andrew Pape '10 and Chris Sullivan '09 are planting and tending the main garden, while Melissa Balding '09 will oversee the 1812 Heritage Garden.

Six Hamilton College faculty members will be promoted to the rank of professor, effective July 1. Associate professors Douglas Ambrose, history; Paul Hagstrom, economics; Lydia Hamessley, music, Stephenson Humphries-Brooks, religious studies; Catherine Kodat, English; and Onno Oerlemans, English, will receive the title of professor.

Tom Morrell '10 (Randolph, N.J.), a chemistry major, is working with Winslow Professor of Chemistry George Shields and Visiting Professor of Chemistry Thomas Castonguay to study how water clusters into small aerosol cores. Because increasing temperatures from greenhouse gases cause more water to enter the air via evaporation and this water, in turn, forms clouds that cool temperatures by reflecting sunlight, understanding how these water clusters form is an important component to studying global climate change. Building upon research he started last summer, Morrell's current project will focus on analyzing sulfuric acid and ammonium aerosol cores, which are both abundant in clouds.

"Weekend America," a nationally syndicated radio show produced and distributed by American Public Media via NPR, will feature an interview with Maurice Isserman, James L. Ferguson Professor of History, on the weekend of June 21. Part of an ongoing series titled "This Weekend in 1968," the interview includes Isserman's account of how on the night of his high school graduation in June 1968, he boarded a train for Washington, D.C. and joined a rally in support of the Poor People's Campaign. America Public Media is the nation's second-largest producer and distributor of public radio programs.

As part of a one-hour show highlighting NCAA spring sports, Hamilton's Peter Kosgei '10 will be featured on CBS Sports TV this Sunday, June 22, beginning at 2 p.m. Kosgei, a runner, won four national titles in 2007-08, including two at the NCAA Division III Indoor Track and Field Championships. Learn more about Peter's remarkable year here.

For Kate Fillion '10 (Clinton, Conn.), working with children this summer isn't just fun and games. The rising junior is working as an intern at the Children's Psychiatric Partial Hospital Program (PHP), run in conjunction with the Yale Children's Hospital Child Psychiatric Inpatient Service (CPIS). The program serves children aged 4 to 14 and offers schooling, therapeutic recreation and music therapy, as well as individual and group therapy. It employs doctors, nurses, counselors and social workers as well as student interns.

In a National Public Radio segment titled "Obama Scapegoat Fears," James S. Sherman Associate Professor of Government Philip Klinkner spoke about how the senator's candidacy brings out some conflicted feelings among African-Americans. "The concern expressed by African-Americans reminds me of after 1928. Al Smith was the first Catholic to run for president and lost. I'm sure a lot of Catholics after the crash, the Depression, said thank God he lost over Hoover, otherwise they'd blame us for it," said Klinkner.

"I've always found immigration really intriguing," says Meaghan LaVangie, a rising senior from South Portland, Maine. "Maybe because it's so controversial, that's why I'm drawn to it." LaVangie will spend this summer working on a project funded by an Emerson Foundation grant, in collaboration with Visiting Assistant Professor of Government Shelley McConnell. LaVangie will investigate the relationship between civil society and democracy by studying Border Angels and No More Deaths, two non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that give humanitarian aid to illegal immigrants on the Mexican border.

Assistant Professor of Japanese Kyoko Omori presented a paper at the "Modernist Magazines and Politics, 1900-1939" Conference at Université of Maine in France on June 8. The talk was titled "Japanese Vernacular Modernism and New Youth Magazine." The paper discussed the Japanese magazine New Youth and its promotion of "vernacular modernism" among the emerging Japanese middle class. Through their advancement of modanizumu (or modernism) in the absurdist stories that portrayed mysteries found in urban everyday life, New Youth sought to intervene productively in the ongoing political debates of the time.

Sarah E. Schwartz '99 received a 2007-08 Fulbright grant at the University of South Carolina to conduct international research. The Hamilton graduate is among a USC record eight students who received such grants.