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Professor of Religious Studies Heidi Ravven spoke at the symposium, Ethics on the Edges of Tradition, at Duke University on October 17. Ravven presented the paper, "Spinoza and the Rethinking of Philosophical Ethics." The symposium was sponsored by the Duke University Department of Religion and the Center for Judaic Studies. The four speakers and two respondents focused on three religious and philosophical thinkers, the medieval Muslim theologian Ghazali, the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides, and the early modern post-Jewish philosopher Spinoza. The panelists explored some contemporary uses to which the thought of these historical figures could be put to revise ethics and theology for the contemporary era. The event was made possible through a generous donation from the Ford Foundation.

Assistant Professor of English Tina Hall presented at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association's annual meeting in Tucson, October 12-15. She was on a panel called, "RMMLA Poets Read Their Work" and she read from her novella in prose poems, titled, "All the Day's Sad Stories."

Hamilton College Performing Arts will present Snappy Dance Theater on Saturday, October 21, at 8 p.m. at Wellin Hall in the Schambach Center for Music and the Performing Arts on the campus of Hamilton College.

The Hamilton Environmental Action Group (HEAG) is sponsoring Green Week from October 16-21. The week's activities will include a Farmer's Market and a film, "The Future of Food." Trash Mountain, on Martin's Way, is a tangible reminder of the enormity of student waste. HEAG estimates that since January, Hamilton has generated more than 630 tons of waste, costing more than $50,000.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Government Brian J. Glenn has been named chair of the public policy section of the 2007 New England Political Science Association (NEPSA) annual conference, which will be held in Newton, Massachusetts.  The section covers a wide variety of subjects, from health care to welfare to environmental and education issues.  In 2001, Glenn received the Robert Wood award, presented annually for the best paper presented at NEPSA by a graduate student.

Hamilton’s computer science department recently received a grant award from Microsoft Corporation's research division. The title of the funded grant proposal is "Using Phoenix in Computer Security Curricula."

Derek C. Jones, the Irma M. and Robert D. Morris Professor of Economics, and Antti Kauhaunen of Helsinki School of Economics presented a paper at the Conference on the Analysis of Firms and Employees (CAFE): Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches. CAFE was held on September 29-30, in Nuremberg, Germany. The paper, titled “Teams, Performance-Related Pay, Profit Sharing and Productive Efficiency: Evidence from a Food-Processing Plant” was co-authored by Jones, Kauhanen and Panu Kalmi. It investigates the impact of important changes in human resource practices on firm performances for a food-processing plant.The paper is one outcome of a National Science Foundation-funded project.

Douglas Weldon, Stone Professor of Psychology, presented a poster in Atlanta at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience with Carlyn Patterson ’06 and Erica Colligan ’06.  The poster was titled “Neuron Activity in the Rat Superior Colliculus during Reward Magnitude Task Performance.”  The paper showed that some neurons in the midbrain of the rat show cellular activity that differs when the animals retrieve high versus low reward.  The context of the work is that this area of the brain is known to be involved in sensory processing and in generating visuo-motor orientations and is thereby thought to be involved in the neural basis of attention.  The data are meaningful in suggesting that the brain area participates in processing information about significant events.

Philip Klinkner, the James S. Sherman Associate Professor of Government, was quoted in a Bloomberg.com article titled “Bush Emphasizes Economy as Messages on Security, Values Weaken” (Oct. 6, 2006). Commenting on the Bush Administration’s effort to credit Republicans for an improving economy, Klinkner stated “You go with what you’ve got, and right now the economy is the best thing they’ve got going.” The article suggested that the administration’s effort to focus on the economy was a result of the “difficulty in making moral values and the war on terror central issues…” in the upcoming mid-term elections.

Assistant Professor of Psychology Jean Burr recently presented a paper at the Annual Licensing Seminar of the National Association for Regulatory Administration in Oklahoma City, OK.  This organization oversees the licensing of the nation's human care facilities, such as child care and adult assisted living facilities.  The paper, which Burr co-wrote with Rob Grunewald, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank, focused on the economic benefits of publicly-funded early childhood education programs. Burr and Grunewald presented evidence that well-constructed early childhood intervention programs can create an 18 percent annual return on investment over a 20-year period. They also discussed the policy implications for these findings and some of the current efforts being made to motivate the business community to invest in early childhood education. The paper is available at the Federal Reserve Web site at http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/studies/earlychild/.