Hamilton in the News

Preparation for the opening of the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art was the focus of a WKTV news report on Sept. 20. Museum director Tracy Adler described the open design of the museum and the opportunity it offers students and visitors to see the processes involved in receiving and preparing art. Its two-story glass cases as well as expansive gallery space also allow viewers to see much more of the museum’s collection.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Nathan Goodale and his work with students and other faculty in the Slocan Valley of British Columbia, Canada, were featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education in its Sept 17 issue. “Archaeologists Uncover Markers of an ‘Extinct’ Ancient Tribe on Contested Land” provided an overview of the work that Goodale has been pursuing in the last decade excavating the land of the Sinixt people to document the archaeology of First Nations in the valley.

Hamilton Board of Trustees chairman and former Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley ’69 and Samuel J. Palmisano, former IBM CEO, were featured as corporate leaders with liberal arts degrees in a Chronicle of Higher Education article titled “Skills Gap? Employers and Colleges Point Fingers at Each Other.” 

Associate Professor of Government Peter Cannavò published "Individualism or Independence?," on Huffington Post on Sept. 10. His piece addressed the Republican Party's embrace of both economic individualism and personal independence as fundamental American values and suggested that the two ideals may be incompatible. Cannavò also argued that the American Founders supported personal independence but were not necessarily economic individualists.

An American Public Media’s Marketplace segment focused on a recent Pew Research Center study of what people think it takes to be middle class included quotes from an interview with Professor of Sociology Dennis Gilbert. During the Aug. 31 segment titled “Working your way into the middle class,” Gilbert said  that people’s priorities have changed. Gilbert is the author of The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality (Sage, 2011) and recently discussed the topic on Connecticut Public Radio.

USA Today published a front-page article titled “Student businesses market to lazy college classmates” featuring  HillFresh Laundry, the Hamilton-based service founded by Jeremy Young ’13 and run by a small team of Hamilton students.   The Aug. 28 piece focused on student entrepreneurial ventures that cater to student needs, from grocery shopping to laundry to shipping.

Peter Maher ’13 was featured on local television station YNN on Aug. 28 related to his research on the Rome, N.Y., police department. Maher, who served as an intern with the Rome Police department for two years, conducted a study on how policing is done in that city. It resulted in his recommendation that Rome form a Community Impact Unit (CIU), a group of four officers who will patrol by foot, by bicycle and only when necessary by car.

Professor of Sociology Dennis Gilbert was a guest on the Connecticut Public Radio (WNPR) morning call-in show “Where We Live” on Aug. 28.  He was part of a conversation on the middle class. Participants discussed political candidates’ views on the middle class as well as how it’s defined and how politicians use the term. Gilbert is the author of The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality.

National Public Radio science reporter Richard Harris interviewed Eugene Domack, the Joel W. Johnson Family Professor of Geosciences, for a segment on All Things Considered on Aug. 22 titled “Humans’ Role In Antarctic Ice Melt Is Unclear.”  Domack’s research, published in the journal Nature in 2005, provided evidence that the break-up of Antarctica’s Larsen B ice shelf was caused by a combination of long-term thinning over thousands of years and short term cumulative increases in surface air temperature that have exceeded the natural variation of regional climate during the Holocene period.

An article on The Washington Post website titled “Atheists find a new venue for the godless: on film,” and released by the Religion News Service, quoted Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies S. Brent Plate.  “An independent faith film festival will create film fests for similar reasons — to be with other, like-minded people, to laugh together and cry together and think together,” Plate said in the article that focused on the San Francisco-based, annual Atheist Film Festival. Published on Aug. 17, the article also appeared on the The Times-Picayune site.