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Hamilton will name the Annex, the multipurpose facility adjoining the Beinecke Student Activities Village, the Patricia and Winton Tolles Pavilion in honor of the former long-time dean and his wife. The ceremony officially celebrating the rededication will occur at 4:30 p.m., on June 1 during Reunion Weekend.

Visiting Professor of English Scott MacDonald presented documentary filmmaker William Greaves with the annual Leo Award for lifetime achievement in documentary filmmaking at the Lincoln Center’s Walter Reed Theater on Thursday, Nov. 16. Named after pioneer of independent and non-theatrical film distribution Leo Dratfield, the Leo is awarded by International Film Seminars. The recipient must "show a sustained ability to introduce innovative approaches into the media arts field."

The Corning Museum of Glass recently unveiled Josh Simpson’s Megaplanet, the 1000th paperweight in the museum's collection of paperweights. Simpson’s Planet is the focal point of the Museum’s new exhibit, Worlds Within: The Evolution of the Paperweight. The paperweight is 13 inches in diameter, weighs more than 100 pounds, and contains more than 50 different colors of glass. The planet is a clear orb with swirling oceans, continents, spaceships in orbit, and many objects that can be left up to the imagination.

Vivyan Adair, the Elihu Root Peace Fund Associate Professor of Women's Studies, was honored for her work as as the director of The ACCESS Project at Hamilton College by the Genesis Group on November 15. The Genesis Group is a Mohawk Valley association working to advance regional economic, social, and cultural interests and to foster regional unity and cooperation.

Students in the Semester in Washington Program participated in three policy briefings on November 16. They met with Representative Sherwood Boehlert, who shared his perspectives on the recent election and Congressional politics. At the Government Accountability Office, students were briefed by James White, director of strategic issues, on e-government initiatives in the Internal Revenue Service. Finally, students toured the new building of the United States Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, Va., and participated in a briefing by Jonathan Gregorio ’02 of the Commerce Department’s Office of Intellectual Property Enforcement.

On November 14, Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of the National Review Online spoke in the Fillius Events Barn. After an introduction by Hamilton Republicans president Ben Noble, Goldberg stated that the recent election is not the death of American conservatism, and we are not in a new era of liberalism, even if Republicans deserved to lose. In fact, he pointed out, liberals have been announcing a new age “about once every 15 minutes for the last century.” He joked that while he can’t remember the last time Republicans advocated for the pedophilic IM-ing of pages, with Republicans like Mark Foley on voter’s minds, corruption ranked highly in exit polls as a reason why Republicans were voted out.

Hamilton’s Director of Donor Relations, Pamela Havens, attended the third International Conference of the Association of Donor Relations Professionals (ADRP) in Denver, during the first week of November.  Havens joined nearly 250 donor relations and stewardship professionals, from the United States and Canada representing a myriad of organizations, and led a session titled, “Panning for Gold: And the 2006 Stewie Goes To.” The session offered participants an opportunity to share success and horror stories, while brainstorming creative solutions.

Philip Terrie, professor of American Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University, lectured at Hamilton on Nov. 14 in conjunction with the Adirondack Sophomore Seminar. His talk was titled “The Adirondacks and the Invention of American Wilderness.”

Hamilton College has announced the creation of the Richard W. Couper (RWC) Press named in honor of the late Richard W. Couper’44, an alumnus and life trustee of Hamilton and benefactor of the Burke Library. Couper also served as a former president and CEO of the New York Public Library, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and deputy commissioner of higher education with the New York State Education Department.

The Al Biles Virtual Quintet will present a jazz improvisation on Thursday, Nov. 16, at 4:15 p.m. in the Red Pit. This quintet is comprised of a single performer, Al Biles on trumpet, and his computer program, GenJam, which handles the bass, drum kit, and other instruments. GenJam (short for “Genetic Jammer”) doesn’t simply provide a musical backdrop - it is a computer program that implements an evolutionary computation technique that enables it to learn how to improvise jazz solos. GenJam trades fours or eights by listening to the notes and chord progressions on Biles’s trumpet and constructs its own solo based on the tunes played by Biles. The program will include a brief discussion of the technology behind GenJam. This performance is free and open to the public.