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Hamilton College was cited in a Time magazine article, “Can We Avoid Another Virginia Tech” (Aug. 7. 2007), which concerned campus mental health programs and early warning signs of a student's psychological distress. The article referred to Hamilton: “Campus administrators are restructuring RA training to focus less on mental health counseling; they say they are recognizing that these students are not professionals and can be overwhelmed by a crash course in how to be a shrink 101. Instead, RAs are being trained to refer students in potential danger to trained professionals who are best equipped to assist them."

The food isn't all that's environmentally friendly at The Green Café in Hamilton's McEwen Dining Hall. During the summer McEwen's furniture was replaced with new tables, chairs and carpet that are made from recyclable materials.

Steven Beale '09 (Durham, N.C.) is a world politics major with a long-standing interest in international security and the War on Terror. This summer, he combined these two fields with a newer interest in Russian policies to design research on the Russian reaction to the U.S.-led War on Terror, for which he has a Levitt Fellowship. Beale worked with Lecturer in Government David Rivera.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Debra Boutin presented her work "The Determining Number of a Cartesian Product" at a special session on Product Graphs at the 6th Slovenian International Conference on Graph Theory at Lake Bled, Slovenia. Boutin's recent work focuses on finding a smallest set of nodes that captures all the symmetries in a network. In this talk Boutin surveyed work in the area, gave her recent results, and suggested a new topic for research.

Mathematics professors Dick Bedient and Sally Cockburn presented a talk titled “The Hamilton College Senior Seminar” at the Summer Meetings of the Mathematical Association of America in San Jose, California. The talk was part of a session called “Getting Students to Discuss and to Write about Mathematics.”

Fenglin Zhao dreams of a career in finance. A rising sophomore, she decided she wanted to spend the summer working in New York City even if she couldn't land an internship in the financial sector. Fortunately for her, a former employer tipped her off to an internship with his company, International Enterprise Singapore, which Zhao secured for the summer.

When he started his research this summer, Hilary Masuka '09 (Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe) wanted to study the migration between Zimbabwe and South Africa and the experiences of the thousands of people who have risked their careers to cross the South African border. Masuka quickly recognized this topic as too broad for a summer's work and focused his research on the migration of medical personnel from Zimbabwe to South Africa and the effects this movement has had on the health sector, the society, and the economy of both countries.

"It's so refreshing to work in a division where everyone is friends," said Chelsea Mann '09 (Chevy Chase, Md.) of her summer internship. Mann's stories of a relaxed atmosphere, however, disguise the competitive nature of her internship: Mann was one of only 16 students selected to serve as a 2007 intern with the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). She spent her summer working in Washington, D.C. as a marketing intern with the NAHB at their publications arm BuilderBooks.

Members of Hamilton's Class of 2011 arrive for orientation on Tuesday, Aug. 21. The five-day orientation will include opening ceremonies, an address by Hamilton President Joan Hinde Stewart, advising sessions, academic information sessions as well as a new student-faculty picnic, kickball tournament, a dance party and Big Prize Bingo. President Stewart will preside over the ceremony that officially opens Hamilton's 196th academic year with Convocation on Sunday, Aug. 26.

Luce Junior Professor of Anthropology and Asian Studies Chris Vasantkumar delivered a paper titled "Tibet as Incidental to Tibetan Studies?: Views From Various Margins" at a plenary session of the First International Seminar of Yung Tibetologists held at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies from August 9 to 13. The seminar's participants hailed from China, India, the United States and various European countries.