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Lasers are versatile tools that have many applications in research and industry. Improving laser technology, therefore, is a top priority for those who use or produce equipment that utilizes lasers. At Hamilton, Professor of Physics Ann Silversmith has focused her research on developing new laser materials that would be useful in the solid-state laser industry. This summer Dan Campbell ’08 (Pittsford, N.Y.) has been working with her to study solid-state lasers that use sol-gel encapsulated rare earth metals as their laser material.

The emergency departments in United States hospitals are under increasing pressure due to overcrowding. Tamar Nobel ’08 (Mamaroneck, N.Y.), a Hamilton student particularly dedicated to emergency care, takes this problem as her research this summer. Funded by a Levitt Fellowship and working with Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics Selcuk Eren, Nobel is studying the availability of insurance coverage and hospital emergency department visits for asthma patients.

When most people hear the term global climate change, they automatically think of global warming. But as temperatures rise, more water enters the atmosphere via evaporation. Once in the air, these water molecules may cluster into aerosols (airborne solid particles), forming clouds that reflect solar radiation and cause a cooling effect. Understanding how and why these water clusters form is therefore an important component to understanding global climate change. To accomplish this task, Alexa Ashworth ’09 (Pittsford, N.Y.), Tom Morrell ’10 (Randolph, N.J.), and Elena Wood ’10 (Ridgefield, Conn.) are studying the formation of water clusters with different aerosol cores.

The Hamilton College Climate Change and Environment Issues Youth Poll, conducted in November by Assistant Professor of Economics Julio Videras and his class, was cited in a Christian Science Monitor article (7/5/07). The article, "Could this be the global-warming generation?," concerns the "Live Earth" concerts held around the world on July 7.

Associate Professor of History Shoshana Keller has published an essay titled "Going to School in Uzbekistan," in a new anthology, Everyday Life in Central Asia (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007), pp. 248-265. The article discusses school life in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods and is based on library work and interviews done in Uzbekistan in 2003.

Karl Kirschner, co-director of the Center for Molecular Design, published a paper in the July issue of the Journal of Chemical Education. The paper is titled "Calculating Interaction Energies Using First Principle Theories: Consideration of Basis Set Superposition Error and Fragment Relaxation" and is coauthored by Phillip Bowen (University of North Carolina at Greensboro) and Jennifer Sorensen (Seattle University).

Stephen Okin ’10 (New York, N.Y.) is fascinated with current foreign policy, a fascination which led him straight to the big problems. The U.S. relies upon a rhetoric of liberty and democracy, but there are times when the promotion of democracy abroad conflicts with the need to secure national interests. Okin, a rising sophomore, has an Emerson grant and is working with Assistant Professor of Government Ted Lehmann to research this contradiction as regards the “Venezuelan threat:” the current political situation in Venezuela and its conflicting implications for U.S. foreign policy.

Dean of Faculty and Professor of English Joseph Urgo took four students to the 11th International Willa Cather Seminar in France, June 24-July 1, where he presented a lecture. The seminar, "Willa Cather: A Writer's Worlds," took place in Paris and the Abbey St. Michel de Frigolet in Provence. The trip was an optional, culminating event to a senior seminar on Willa Cather that Urgo offered last spring. The students who attended were Leah Babb-Rosenfeld '07, Christine Mays '07, Laura Hartz '07 and Ashley DeMaio-Zacharek '08. The conference attracted 150 attendees.

Blake Hulnick ’09 (Richfield, Conn.) is anything but an average, errand-boy intern. Working in the office of the King’s County District Attorney in Brooklyn, N.Y., Hulnick doesn’t fetch anybody coffee; instead, he gets to do exactly the same job as the lawyers and paralegals beside him. He is in the Early Case Assessment Bureau (ECAB) Department, the part of the office which screens, categorizes, and arraigns every arrest that takes place in Brooklyn.

What summer job is better for college students – one that pays well and allows them to save money and pay for expenses, or one that doesn't pay anything but gives them the career-related experience they need to help land a "real" job after college graduation? It's a dilemma that many students face during the summer and sometimes it's difficult to find a  job that provides both.