All News

Gretchen Schultes '98, lab and classroom user services manager, presented a paper at the Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges (CLAC) annual meeting, held June 10-12 at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. This year’s conference explored the many facets of “sustainability” and how it relates to information technology in higher education. Her presentation was titled “TE Classroom Support and Sustainability at Hamilton College.” 

Ann Hapanowicz ’05 (Rome, NY) already has some professional experience in the bank, literally. As a participant in the Hamilton College New York City program in the spring of 2004, Hapanowicz interned at Chase Manhattan bank in New York, N.Y.  As an Emerson scholar during the summer of 2004, she will continue to explore her interest in banking. She will work with Hamilton Economics Professor Derek Jones on a project that will collect and analyze case study data to investigate the links between "human resource management practices" and business performance. Hapanowicz hopes to work with new data from firms in Central New York, more specifically local banks, to study productivity in the work place.

Associate Professor of English Onno Oerlemans and Associate Professor of Biology Pat Reynolds organized a panel on "Interdisciplinary Teaching on the Adirondacks" at a symposium on "Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest." The symposium was sponsored by the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment and held June 4-6 in Crawford Notch, N.H.  Ernest Williams, the Leonard C. Ferguson Professor of Biology, was panel chair and addressed "Interdisciplinarity vs. multidisciplinarity in teaching and learning about the Adirondacks."

Brian Alward '04 was featured in the Bergen Record about his planned 3,000-mile bicycle trip from New Jersey to California, to raise money for cancer research. Inspired by his father's recent diagnosis and treatment for prostate cancer, Alward started a non-profit organization, 2004 Coast to Coast for Hope, to help raise funds. According to the article: "He sent letters to family members and friends requesting help and donations, or pledges for miles cycled. He also applied for a grant from his fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon. So far, his organization has raised more than $6,000."

Jordan Shedlock, a rising junior at Hamilton, published a letter to the editor in the Philadelphia Inquirer (6/14/04). Shedlock responded to a columnist who claimed Ronald Reagan was responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union. "Any responsible scholar must acknowledge that by the early 1980s the USSR was stagnating under the ineffective reign of Leonid Brezhnev and the ensuing leadership crisis as members of the gerentocracy rapidly died off," wrote Shedlock. "By the late 1980s the Soviet Union was losing its grip on its satellites and its constituent republics alike," he said. "The Soviet Union would have collapsed...All Reagan accomplished was to hasten it and make it happen on his watch." Shedlock, a history major, is a resident of Wallingford, Pa.

Associate Professor of History Shoshana Keller will serve on the steering committee for an international teaching and research resource project developed by the Social Science Research Council. The two-year project, titled "Histories of Central Asia," received funding from the Department of Education and should start work in the fall.  The project will create an on-line "teaching resource tool" on comparative histories of Central Asia. 

Cheng Li, the William R. Kenan Professor of Government, was quoted in The Business Times commenting on the suspension of Margaret Ren, Zhao Ziyang’s daughter-in-law, from Citigroup (06/25/04). Ren was suspended for allegedly giving "false information to the company and its regulators." The article stated: "Cheng Li, professor of government at Hamilton College in the United States, was quoted as saying that the trend of younger, more professional and Western-educated princelings joining China's international business, especially investment banking, may have increased in recent years." Li is the author of the book, China's Leaders: The New Generation.

Director of Technical Services Connie Roberts served on  the program planning committee for the North American Serials Interest Group Annual Conference in Milwaukee, June 17-20. NASIG is a professional association of librarians, publishers and vendors concerned with journal publishing.  Roberts helped plan programs on developing pricing models for electronic resources and recent trends in scholarly publishing.  She also initiated the first joint session between NASIG and members of the National Women's Studies Association who were also meeting in Milwaukee.

As a sociology major, Becky Conrey ’05 (Burnt Hills, NY) knows what it is like to study human behavior and social norms. However, even after her extensive coursework in the field, Conrey still had some lingering questions about social norms, deviant behavior, and its effect on identity construction. In order to answer these questions, Conrey will collaborate with Hamilton College Sociology Professor Jenny Irons on an Emerson Summer Research Project titled “Identity Construction within Relationships Socially Marked as Deviant.”

Susan Sanchez-Casal, associate professor of Spanish and women's studies, is among the organizers of the "Future of Minority Studies Conference" held at Cornell University from June 24-27. Future of Minority Studies (FMS) is a national research project composed of a broad group of scholars (faculty and students) and universities devoted to research, scholarship and pedagogy involving minority identity, education and social transformation. Hamilton College will co-sponsor a one-day pedagogy retreat, "Conceptualizing the Realist Classroom" during the conference.