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Professor of French John C. O'Neal traveled to Washington, D.C. in August to serve on the Romance Studies panel of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). College and university professors as well as independent scholars compete for the fellowships program funded by NEH. The Endowment received some 1400 fellowship applications for the 37 different panels this year. Currently, 12-month fellowships provide $50,400 in support for research projects. The panel in Romance Studies on which O'Neal served consisted of five members, four of whom came from large research universities. They reviewed a total of 44 proposals. NEH estimates that one out of every 10 proposals will ultimately receive funding.

Living in America, we tend to take the existence of democracy and the separation of church and state as a given. Andrew Gumbiner '08 (Glencoe, Ill.) is interested, however, in the parts of the world where this is not necessarily true. Gumbiner, a world politics major, was awarded a Levitt Fellowship this summer to research the current culture of democracy in the Middle East.

Visiting Instructor of Art Sylvia de Swaan is among the invited artists exhibiting photographs in the Cazenovia College Art Gallery Exhibition, Signs of Life, which opens on Thursday, Sept. 6. An artist's lecture and reception will be held on Sept. 6 from 4 to 5:30 p.m. in the gallery. The exhibition, lecture and reception are free and open to the public. The show will close on Sept. 27.

Join alumni, faculty members, students and friends for Fallcoming '07 which will take place Thursday, Sept. 27 through Sunday, Sept. 30. During Fallcoming we will celebrate our inaugural Multicultural Reunion as well as a full schedule with world-class jazz, panel discussions and athletic contests.

Thump… thump… thump. Hamilton’s College Marshall John H. O’Neill struck the stage of Wellin Hall three times with his ceremonial staff to begin Hamilton’s 196th convocation. Thus began a new year for all the students and faculty on the Hill and the first for the newly matriculated Class of 2011. O’Neill’s call to order was followed by a brief invocation by College Chaplain Jeffrey McArn who appealed to the “Great Teacher” to give students the strength and enthusiasm to embrace the contentions that make the college experience so valuable.

Economics professors Ann Owen and Julio Videras published "Culture and Public Goods: The Case of Religion and the Voluntary Provision of Environmental Quality" in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management in the September 2007 issue. The paper uses new statistical methods to characterize religious beliefs and concludes that culture does play a role in determining pro-environment behavior. Owen and Videras' research was supported by the Levitt Center's Sustainability Program via a grant from the Blue Moon Fund. Pragyan Pradhan '08 was a research assistant on the project.

A native of Hollywood, Calif., Lyndra Vassar '09 is, like many others in that area, interested in being a part of the entertainment industry. The rising junior is considering a career in entertainment law and decided to get a head start on work experience this summer. After some research, Vassar applied for and received a position as an intern with MTV Network's Press Department.

When Tom Brokaw visited the Hamilton campus, Matt House was a sophomore. The talk had such an effect on its listener that House, now a rising senior, used Brokaw's correlation between military service and political responsibility as a jumping-off point for his senior project. Although he has already begun working on the thesis, House applied for and was granted a Levitt Fellowship to do additional historical research this summer into the decline of the citizen-soldier in modern American.

When Li Qiu '09 was hired by Merrill Lynch this summer, he not only bagged a position as an intern, but he was put in charge of other interns. Qiu worked for the management team of Merrill Lynch's Foreign Office this summer and had duties which ranged from providing support to his Financial Advisor (FA) to organizing intern training and activities.

Literary criticism is a deceptively simple field; it seems easy enough to separate written work into fiction and non-fiction. Rising senior Kathleen Naughton (Cromwell, Conn.), however, challenged this assumption with her research into the autobiography. Naughton, a creative writing and chemistry minor, has always been interested in the resonances of the writer upon his or her subject matter, which she researched this summer.