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Arthur Levitt Jr., former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and proponent of tougher corporate accounting standards, will present "The Paradox of an Ethical Society: Are Enrons Inevitable?" on Friday, Oct. 20, at 4 p.m. in the Fillius Events Barn.

Dan Chambliss, the Eugene M. Tobin Distinguished Professor of Sociology, has recently delivered talks an given consultations on liberal arts assessment at Swarthmore College, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Sewanee: The University of the South, and Oxford College of Emory University. The talks discussed his work on the Mellon Assessment project. Chambliss also gave an invited presentation on "Hiring Departmental Faculty" to a department chairs' conference at the American Sociological Association annual meetings in Montreal. In addition, he was recently quoted in articles on higher education in the Washington Post and the Syracuse Post-Standard.

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.