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Sometimes being active in your college and also in your home community isn't as difficult as you might think. For Rachel Bigelow '10, it's the same thing this summer. The Ilion native, funded by the Levitt Community Service Fellowship, has taken up the reins of the Utica Refugee Community Garden, located at the F.X. Matt Apartments, a public housing unit in Utica. Bigelow is working with Judith Owens-Manley, associate director for community research at the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center. Her project was started last year by Jenney Stringer '08, who also received funding from a Levitt Center grant. Stringer negotiated with the Utica Municipal Housing Authority (UMHA) to receive permission to start the garden, and then worked with volunteers and residents to get the project off the ground.

Selections from a forthcoming collection of poetry, Metsaka's Kente of Words, by Professor of English Vincent Odamtten was published in the national newspaper of Ghana, the Daily Graphic on June 7, 2008. The publication was part of a collaboration between the Daily Graphic and the Mbaasem Foundation to promote literature and arts in the West African nation. Odamtten has been researching the life of Togbui Sri II, a Paramount Chief of the Anlos in Southeastern Ghana, as well as the written literatures of Ghana.

The Hamilton College Wall Street Association will host a panel discussion of the U.S. economy with experts from private equity, real estate, commodities and academia on Thursday, June 26, at 6 p.m. at the Racquet and Tennis Club in Manhattan. Greg Hoogkamp '82, a Hamilton College trustee and a managing director at Goldman Sachs & Co., will moderate the discussion with panelists Robert V. Delaney, Jr. '79, partner with Crestview Partners; Adam I. Popper '87, managing director at Beacon Capital Partners; J. Robert Collins Jr., founder and managing partner of the 1.618 Group and former president of the New York Mercantile Exchange; and James Bradfield, the Hamilton College Elias W. Leavenworth Professor of Economics.

James L. Ferguson Professor of HistoryHistory Maurice Isserman contributed an essay titled"Will the Left Ever Learn to Communicate Across Generations" to the Chronicle of Higher Education (6/20/08). It is featured in The Chronicle Review in the special section "The Surprising Legacies of the 60s." In the piece, Isserman, a preeminent historian of the American left and expert on reform and radical movements, recounts the meeting between social activist Michael Harrington with then 20-year-old student Tom Hayden. Harrington unsuccessfully tried to recruit Hayden into the Young People's Socialist League, the youth affiliate of the Socialist Party, of which Harrington was a leader. Hayden went on to write the Port Huron Statement, the founding document of Students for a Democratic Society.

Many disciplines contain two seemingly opposed halves. Physics has its quantum theory and general relativity. Chemistry can be organic and inorganic. Late night television offers either David Letterman or Jay Leno. Similarly, in a Levitt Center summer research project, Andrew Miller '10 is working with Professor Christophre Georges on a computer program for a simplified economy that accurately simulates both microeconomic and macroeconomic phenomena. Microeconomics is the study of individual market behavior, while macroeconomics is concerned with a broader picture of the economy as a whole. As Miller explains, the program "shows that realistic macroeconomic fluctuations can be generated from idiosyncratic, microeconomic interactions between firms and workers." In other words, the program has produced movements in things such as the interest rate by starting with the production and trade of individual companies as a building block.

Allen Mellen '58, who celebrated his 50th reunion on the Hill two weekends ago, has posted an essay about his deeply personal experience of Reunions '08 on his blog "Morningsider."

Bryden Considine '08 and Assistant Professor of Biology Mike McCormick presented their research at the national meeting of the American Society of Microbiology in Boston, June 1-5. Considine and McCormick presented a poster describing a novel technique they developed to search for biologically produced compounds that permit iron-reducing bacteria to respire iron oxides solids that are far from the bacteria.  Support for this project was provided by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Professor of Biology Ernest Williams will lead a walk through the Utica Marsh as part of the Utica Monday Nite Walks & Talks Series on Monday, June 16, beginning at 6:30 p.m. The walk is titled "Observing Nature at the Utica Marsh." Williams also gave a presentation on monarch butterfly migration at the Visitor Center of the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge on June 15. His talk was part of its 5th annual Wildflowers and Wine Festival. Finally, on Thursday, June 19, he will speak to all the Clinton third grade classes about butterflies.

Benjamin Van Arnam '09 (Waterford, CT) is spending his summer investigating the ligand binding interactions of galectin-1, a protein involved in tumor progression. (A ligand is a substance that is able to bind to and form a complex with a biomolecule, like a protein.) Arnam hopes that his research may assist in the future development of better tumor growth inhibitors. Building upon the research done by Jodi Raymond '08 for her senior thesis, Van Arnam is synthesizing several different carbohydrate molecules and testing to see how well they bind to and inhibit galectin-1. His project is being conducted under the supervision of Assistant Professor of Chemistry Nicole Snyder. 

On Friday June 6, Vice Chairman of GE, President and CEO of GE Infrastructure, and Hamilton trustee John Rice '78 delivered the Reunions '08 keynote address to an audience of Hamilton alumni in the College Chapel.