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Winslow Professor of Chemistry George Shields presented a seminar, "Computational Design and Experimental Discovery of an Anti-estrogenic Peptide Derived from Alpha-Fetoprotein," to an audience of 60 faculty and students in the department of chemistry and biochemistry at Middlebury College on March 16. His lecture highlighted the work that he and Karl Kirschner, co-director of the Center for Molecular Design, have carried out with Hamilton students over the past few years.

Chad Williams, assistant professor of history, has been awarded a 2007 Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. The fellowship, granted yearly, supports the scholarly research, writing, and intellectual development of underrepresented faculty in the humanities, social sciences and physical sciences in order to improve their success in attaining tenure. Williams will use the fellowship to complete his book on African American soldiers and the First World War, as well as begin research on a future project.

Four Hamilton College faculty members were approved for tenure by the college’s board of trustees during their recent meeting. The Board granted tenure to Jennifer Borton, psychology; Michelle LeMasurier, mathematics; Onno Oerlemans, English; and Tiffany Patterson, Africana Studies.

The Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center is pleased to announce the recipients of the Summer 2007 Levitt Fellowship. To enhance student research around issues of public affairs, the Levitt Center funds student-faculty research through its Levitt Research Fellows Program. The program is open to all students who wish to spend the summer working in collaboration with a faculty member on an issue related to public affairs. Students receive a summer stipend and spend 10 weeks in the summer working intensively with a faculty mentor.

Editor's Note: Many major news outlets have covered this announcement. Here are links to stories that appeared in USA Today, InsideHigherEd.com and Boston Globe. Hamilton College will no longer offer merit scholarships, beginning with the first-year class that enrolls in the fall of 2008. "We are discontinuing our merit scholarship program so that we can provide more need-based aid," said Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Monica Inzer. "We believe we are the first college or university in the U.S. to abandon its merit scholarship program."

In a March 15 article in the The Oregonian, History professor Maurice Isserman, a Reed College SDS member during the late 1960s, commented on the recent efforts to revive the organization.

Professor of Sociology Dennis Gilbert is the author of a new book, Mexico’s Middle Class in the Neoliberal Era (The University of Arizona Press, March, 2007). Gilbert who joined the Hamilton faculty in 1976 and is currently chair of the Sociology Department, earned a Ph.D. in sociology from Cornell University. His primary research interests are Latin American and American class system. He is also the author of Sandinistas: the Party and the Revolution (1988) and The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality (2003).

Research by Professor of Geosciences Cynthia Domack and Associate Professor of Geosciences Todd Rayne was presented at the Northeastern Section of the Geological Society of America by their Hamilton College student co-authors.

Associate Professor of English and American Studies Catherine Gunther Kodat contributed an essay to Blackwell Publishing's recently-released A Companion to William Faulkner. Titled " 'C'est Vraiment Dégueulasse': Meaning and Ending in A bout de souffle and If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem," Kodat's essay discusses the long-recognized influence Faulkner's narrative structures had on mid-20th century cinema, and in particular on the early work of the French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard.

Cheng Li, the William R. Kenan Professor of Government and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, was interviewed this month by both the Associated Press and Reuters for news stories related to shifts in Chinese leadership and military spending.