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If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to spend more time engaging in volunteer activities, a local program has an opportunity for you. Young Scholars is seeking adults to mentor at-risk young people in the area; the program is designed to encourage local at-risk students to become college-bound.

For more than 30 years, Hamilton College Professor of Art Bruce Muirhead has been sharing his love of printmaking with his students. On Monday, Jan. 17, an exhibition of his prints will open to a broader audience in the Emerson Gallery at Hamilton College. "Professor Printmaker," 50 Muirhead etchings from the Amity Art Foundation collection, includes many references to the local landscape including old houses and factories of Upstate New York. The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, will be open through April 10.

Personnel Services announced upcoming employee seminars and workshops, as well as ongoing fitness and aerobics classes.

Alf Evers, who died last Wednesday at age 99, was the town historian of Woostock, N.Y., and the author of several exhaustive works of local history,including "The Catskills: From Wilderness to Woodstock."    A charismatic figure, Alf often spoke before local groups regarding the need to limit development in the Catskills, Evers seems to have been preserved into a lucid old age by his dedication to his work. In the days before his death, he put the finishing touches on his final book, "Kingstonon-Hudson: An American Historical City," another massive production, which he wrote with the secretarial assistance of Ed Sanders, a poet and friend. It is scheduled to bepublished this spring.  "He was singing when he passed," Mr. Sanders said. "Bemusement, that's how he lived so long. The divine comedy passed over his eyes."    

Winslow Professor of Chemistry George Shields published an article in the Jan. 8, 2005, issue of the Journal of Chemical Physics titled "Comparison of complete basis set-QB3, complete basis set-APNO, Gaussian-2, and Gaussian-3 thermochemical predictions with experiment for formation of ionic clusters of hydronium and hydroxide ions complexed with water." This work was co-authored with senior chemical physics major Frank Pickard, Emma Pokon '04 and Matthew Liptak '03.  Pokon is in law school at the University of Vermont, and Liptak is a chemistry graduate student at the University of Wisconsin.  The research in this eight-page article demonstrates the ability of state-of-the-art quantum chemical methods to investigate fundamental ion condensation processes in atmospheric chemistry.

Associate Professor of Communication Catherine Phelan presented a paper titled "Beyond Secondary Orality" at the National Communication Association in November. She was one member of a panel that included communication scholars Frank E. X. Dance, University of Denver, and Bruce Gronbeck, University of Iowa. The panel recognized and responded to the work of Walter Ong. In October she presented a paper titled "The Communication Matrix" at the New York State Communication Association. This presentation elaborated on key points from her recently published book, Mediation and the Communication Matrix, (2003, Peter Lang, pub.) At the NYSCA presentation she was one of three authors discussing their recent publications in the field of communication.  

Ashley Hatfield '05 and Associate Professor of Geology David Bailey presented the poster "Jun Jaegyu Volcano: A Recently Discovered Alkali Basalt Volcano in Antarctic Sound, Antarctica" at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting held in December in San Francisco. Hatfield plans to participate on a research cruise in Antarctica during February and March led by Geology Professor Eugene Domack.

Project SHINE (Students Helping in the Naturalization of Elders) culminated its inaugural semester of service on Saturday, Dec. 11, with an end-of-semester celebration held at the Vega Family Resource Center in Utica. The event celebrated the successes of 66 Hamilton College and Utica College students who volunteered more than 1,300 hours during the fall semester as a service-learning component of their academic courses to tutor older immigrants and refugees in English and help them prepare for the citizenship exam.

Professor of Anthropology Doug Raybeck was interviewed for an article in the Utica Observer-Dispatch (12/28/04) about the destructive tsunami that hit South Asia on December 26. Raybeck, who lived and worked in Malaysia for four years, said that the country will fare better than others in the disaster area because it has efficient services. Many people in that part of the world live in homes with woven roofs, Raybeck said. "People who live in the traditional houses -- which are very light and flimsy and up on stilts to avoid heavy rains and flood waters -- they will lose absolutely everything and many will lose their lives," he said. Raybeck predicts that the aftermath of the quake will take more lives. "If dead bodies are not immediately cleaned up, there will be an incredible increase in diseases such as cholera. It's difficult to imagine the magnitude of the catastrophe."

Mary Bonauto '83 was named one of the Boston Globe "Bostonians of the Year" for 2004 and featured in the newspaper's Sunday magazine (12/26/04). Bonauto was the lead counsel in the landmark 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision that ruled to allow gay marriages. She is the civil rights project director for the Boston-based Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD).