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Mitchell Stevens, associate professor of sociology, is quoted in an article about higher learning institutions across the country revamping their orientation programs to include more activities to get students to bond with each other and faculty. Institutions across the country are adding social programs to their orientation schedule. “Colleges have become increasingly responsible for social skill of college students,” Steven says. “Many of these kids grew up with parents scheduling their extracurricular lives elaborately. They don’t have a lot of experience scheduling their own lives.”

As chair of a panel on information ethics at the August 2002 Computing and Philosophy Conference at Carnegie Mellon University, Ken Herold, director, Library Information Systems, gave a presentation, with Marti Smith of Drexel University, on "Information Ethics: Perspectives from Librarianship and Information Science." Herold is also a guest editor of a special issue of the journal, Library Trends, Winter 2004, devoted to the philosophy of information.

Luce Junior Professor of Asian Studies Ann Frechette has authored Tibetans in Nepal, The Dynamics of International Assistance among a Community in Exile (Berghahn Books, 2002). The book explores the influence of foreign aid organizations on the lives of Tibetan refugees in Nepal.

Hamilton faculty members are going back to the classroom, not as teachers but as students. In a two-day workshop, faculty were introduced not only to cutting-edge technology available but also to the latest research in teaching and learning and how to incorporate oral presentations into the classroom. This overview will aid them in developing and teaching the new sophomore seminars, which will be introduced this fall.

Stuck on the hill for the summer because publications are due, there's a conference to run or this is the only time to catch up on that work that will never get done when the students get back? Here are some day trip ideas from fellow Hamiltonians. Go on. Take a day. It'll do you a world of good.

Professor of Economics Christophre Georges chaired a session "Co-evolutionary Learning and Network Effects" and gave a paper "Learning and Nonlinear Misspecification" at the 8th International Conference of the Society for Computational Economics, June 2002, Aix en Provence, France.

Assistant Professor of Theater and Dance Mark Cryer is playing "the Duke" in Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. Cryer can be seen at the Saratoga Springs Shakespeare Festival in Congress Park, Wednesday, July 31 through Saturday, Aug. 3 at 6 p.m., and Sunday, Aug. 4, at 5 p.m. Performances are free and open to the public.

Peter Hinks, assistant professor of history, attended a three-day conference on slavery at Yale University. One of the goals of the conference was to debunk the myth that slavery did not occur in New England. According to Hinks, “at the time of the American Revolution about 5,000 Africans were enslaved in Connecticut.” Slavery was not abolished in Connecticut until 1848. He said, “the revolution gave the Africans the impetus to seek their freedom.”

Professor of Chemistry George Shields hosted the 1st MERCURY Conference in Computational Chemistry (http://mars.chem.hamilton.edu/conference/) at Hamilton College. This national conference featured seven talks by invited speakers and 28 poster presentations by undergraduates, and was organized by Shields and Jennifer Sturm, system administrator and research support specialist.  Each undergraduate had two minutes to advertise his or her work in front of the entire audience of 70 attendees, followed by a two-hour period where they explained their work in more detail at the poster session.  Shields and Dreyfus Postdoctoral Fellow Steve Feldgus had 13 of their summer research students present the results of their collaborative research projects at the conference:  Amber Gillis '06 and Becky Shepherd '06, "Energetics of the Hydrogen Atom Abstraction by Diradicals;" JunChan Hong '05, "Conformational Analysis and Docking Studies on Phosphatase Cdc25B Inhibitors;"  Christy House '06 and Meghan Dunn, "pKa Calculations on Amino Acids;"  David Kelland '05, "Substituent Effects on Hydrogen Atom Abstraction by Diradicals;"  Katrina Lexa '05,  "Conformational Analysis of the alpha-fetoprotein Active Site;" Matthew Liptak '03,  "Absolute pKa Determinations for Protonated Nitrogen Compounds;"   Abby Markeson '04, "Investigating the Stereoselectivity of Radical Additions" (joint computational/synthetic project with the synthetic part supervised by Ian Rosenstein, associate professor of chemistry;) Brent Matteson '04, "Conformational Analysis for Absolute pKa Determinations of Amino Acids;"  Emma Pokon '04, "Hydrogen Bonded Clusters;"  Chantelle Rein '03, "The Enediyne Anticancer Antibiotics: A Study of the Bergman Cyclization Barriers of Experamicin A1 using the ONIOM Hybrid Method;" and Sarah Taylor '03, "Computational Approaches to Anti-cancer Drug Design."

Associate Professor of History Thomas Wilson was elected to a three-year term as a board member of the Society for the Study of Chinese Religions. SSCR has more than 100 members from international colleges and universities.