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"It's amazing," says Nate Schreiber '08 (Sudbury, Mass.) as he's sitting across from me, "people have been working with robots for 30-plus years, and still the most advanced robots can't even walk up stairs." Annie Dickson '09 (Ottawa, Canada) agrees, and as the two bounce ideas and questions off each other, it becomes obvious why they make such a good team, "an excellent working team," as their research advisor, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Jonathan Vaughan, says. "Wait a minute," I say. "What does robotics have to do with psychology?"

“My job is to take students out into places that are beyond their normal bounds. If I'm going to do this, I should be doing it myself," explains Hamilton Director of Outdoor Leadership Andrew Jillings about his decision to enter the ninth Yukon River Quest.  "The trips I take them on shouldn't be a stretch for me - that would be irresponsible. So I chose to go to the Yukon to feel the same 'stretch' that my students do, only for me, the stretch is necessarily longer,” The race is the longest annual canoe and kayak race in the world.

Geoarchaeology major Mary Beth Day '07 has been named to USA Today's All-USA College Academic First Team. Each February, USA Today honors 20 undergraduate academic all-stars as its All-USA College Academic Team. Day is the first Hamilton student to earn the honor. The team honors full-time undergraduates who not only excel in scholarship but also extend their intellectual abilities beyond the classroom to benefit society.

It was not your ordinary job interview. Michael Viveiros '08 (East Greenwich, R.I.) was chatting with his counselor in the Career Center and mentioned he had some experience with computer-based presentations. He was subsequently hired by the center to produce podcasts for their Web site.

Hamilton’s Emerson Gallery will host two exhibitions this summer selected from the permanent collection. Opening Thursday, June 21, and continuing through Sunday, September 9, “Photographs by Silvia Saunders” and “The Beinecke Collection – Prints, Watercolors and Drawings of the Lesser Antilles” will be on display.

This is “an investigation into various questions of perception and understanding,” wrote studio arts and English major Erin Shapiro '08 in her February proposal. Four months later, she has an Emerson grant to work on a sculptural exploration of natural elements, concentrating on the relationship between art, materials and audience reaction. She will work with Assistant Professor of Art Rebecca Murtaugh.

Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature Melek Ortabasi wrote a review of the 2002 animated film Millennium Actress, titled "Teaching Modern Japanese History with Animation: Satoshi Kon's Millennium Actress." The article, which has appeared in the Spring 2007 issue of Education About Asia, is written for instructors who wish to make more use of contemporary Asian media such as anime in their history and culture courses. Education About Asia is published by the Association for Asian Studies.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Debra Boutin presented a talk titled "Measuring Graph Symmetry with Determining Sets" at the 1st Canadian Discrete and Algorithmic Mathematics Conference in Banff, Alberta, Canada. Boutin's work focuses on finding a smallest set of nodes that captures all the symmetries in a network. In this talk Boutin gave upper and lower bounds on the size of such a set when the network is presented with a particular decomposition.

Some people start their summer research with an experiment, but Geoffrey Hicks '09 (Newton Mass.) preferred to start with a more abstract problem: the relationship between shame and spirituality and the African American experience. A dual major in English and African Studies, Hicks came to his topic through the plays of August Wilson and this summer takes an interdisciplinary approach to exploring the complicated issue of blackness in America.

Martha Mockus, the Jane Watson Irwin Chair and visiting assistant professor of women's studies, presented a paper at the Feminist Theory and Music conference at McGill University in Montreal, June 6-10. The paper was titled "Carla Lucero's Wuornos: Feminism, Violence, and Lesbian Redemption."