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After 28 years as a professor of archaeology at Hamilton College, most people would be content with taking some time off. Not Charlotte Beck. “Just because I’ve retired from teaching doesn’t mean I’ve retired from archaeology,” she said. Beck is currently on sabbatical before officially retiring at the end of the 2012-13 academic year, and is living in Taos, New Mexico, where she is finalizing an upcoming monograph that she has co-authored with her husband, Leavenworth Professor of Anthropology Tom Jones.

Machiavelli. Darwin. Paine. These men changed lives with their writing, affecting how millions thought about themselves and their place in the world.  Dan Chambliss, the Eugene M. Tobin Distinguished Professor of Sociology, and Al Kelly, the Edgar B. Graves Professor of History, have a similar effect on the Hamilton students they teach in their Great Books seminar—albeit on a slightly smaller scale.

From his former home at the peak of College Hill to the blue New York State Historic Marker outside his birthplace at Buttrick Hall, Elihu Root looms large over the campus as one of Hamilton’s favorite sons. Yet his legacy extends far beyond College Hill: 2012 marks the centennial of Root’s 1912 Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering work in international relations.

From his former home at the peak of College Hill to the blue New York State Historic Marker outside his birthplace at Buttrick Hall, Elihu Root, Class of 1864, looms large over the campus as one of Hamilton’s favorite sons. Yet his legacy extends far beyond College Hill: 2012 marks the centennial of Root’s 1912 Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering work in international relations.

If judged by the cliché that a picture is worth 1,000 words, Professor Bruce Muirhead has a veritable library stashed away in a collection of folders, boxes and portfolios on the second floor of the List Art Center.  The authors in this library span decades—but most of them are not household names.

After a long, hot, summer 225 years ago on September 17, 1787, a group of men signed their names to the document that would give structure to the fledgling United States: the Constitution. After an early attempt, the Articles of Confederation, had been abandoned, the nation’s founders decided to craft a completely new document, which they did in four months.

As Hamilton College’s third century began with its annual Convocation on Aug. 29, keynote speaker and former President John W. Chandler offered an affirmation of the enduring value and purpose of a liberal arts education, even in today’s dynamic era. His tenure as Hamilton’s 15th president spanned from 1968 to 1972 and coincided with another tumultuous era in the nation’s history that included both the opening of Kirkland College as well as the Kent State massacre.

When Nick Richards ’12 entered Hamilton, he was sure he was going to medical school. “I was gung-ho pre-med,” the biology major remembers. Four years later, however, Richards has begun working at Huron Consulting Group in New York City with an eye toward a career in investment banking. Richards’ transformation came about thanks to a variety of extracurricular activities, and he now encourages incoming first-year students to “think about everything.”

Max Vaickus ’12 had been coming to Hamilton long before his first year as a student on the Hill. For years, he would accompany his family each winter and summer to visit his brother Louis Vaickus ’05. The Hill’s stately buildings made an impression early on: “that’s what I thought a college was supposed to look like,” Vaickus remembers. When it was time to choose his own college, he too picked Hamilton. Now, he will soon begin a career as a medical assistant with the Boston Sports and Shoulder Center.

After Kristin Stenerson walked across the stage as a member of Hamilton’s Bicentennial class, she walked into her new position as a strategy and operations consultant for Deloitte, one of the world’s largest professional service employers. For Stenerson, a mathematics and economics major, the job at Deloitte is the culmination of years of hard work both inside and outside the classroom.