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Dmitry Suslov, deputy director for research at the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, visited Hamilton for  a lecture on Oct. 1 and told his audience that until recently, relations between the United States and Russia had been ambiguous—a “transition period” where the U.S and Russia were “neither friends nor foes.”

Now back on campus this fall for his junior year Alexandru Hirsu ’17 spent his summer exploring the impact that cooperation with the European Union has had on corruption in Romania through a Levitt Center Summer Research Fellowship. Hirsu, along with the Henry Platt Bristol Professor of International Affairs Alan Cafruny, will present on their findings during this fall’s Family Weekend.

Genevieve Caffrey ’17 recently completed a summer internship with one office of the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency (DCP&PI), under the Department of Children and Families, in Cranford, NJ. Caffrey’s internship was supported by the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center through a Levitt Public Service Internship Award, awards which provide funding to students taking up unpaid or minimally-paid summer work focused on public service.

Though traveling through Italy enjoying wine-tastings and local delicacies may sound like a simply ideal vacation, Emily Moschowits ’16 is taking what she’s learned this summer in the food and wine capital of the Mediterranean and applying it to Hamilton’s own local community. Moschowits is in the final stages of a food-studies project, funded through the Levitt Center, addressing methods of promoting local sustainable food in the Upstate New York area.

Sexual assault is a significant problem on college campuses. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 1 in 5 women and 1 in 16 men are sexually assaulted while they are in college. This summer, Corinne Smith ’17 is using a Levitt Summer Research Fellowship to assess sexual violence at Hamilton.

While students, faculty, staff and visitors to Hamilton know that the Mohawk Valley is a beautiful and engaging place to live, another striking feature of the area is its position as a cultural and ethnic melting pot, thanks in large part to the City of Utica’s diverse refugee and immigrant populations. Tanapat Treyanurak ’17 is spending his summer continuing work related to Project SHINE, a program dedicated to assisting in the incorporation and assimilation of immigrants and refugees into local communities, through a Levitt Center grant.

When most of us think about oral health, we might not think far beyond brushing our teeth and our next trip to the dentist’s office. James Robbins ’16, however, knows that there’s much more to it than that. This summer as a Levitt Summer Research Fellow he is researching water fluoridation for improved public health. Working closely with Professor of Biology Herm Lehman, Robbins has been researching the public health debate about water fluoridation.

Although globally humans rely mostly on agriculture as a source of sustenance, farmers around the world are not on equal footing. Eren Shultz ’15 is particularly aware of this disparity “having both grown up in rural Wisconsin and spent significant amounts of time traveling and living abroad in small agrarian villages in Eastern Africa.” Shultz said he was both “fascinated and concerned” with “the differences in mechanization and lifestyles” between those communities.

Zachary Pilson '16 is spending his summer in an internship at Ashoka, a not for profit organization dedicated to supporting social innovators and entrepreneurs to “advance an ‘Everyone a Changemaker’ world, where anyone can apply the skills of changemaking to solve complex social problems.” Pilson, a biochemistry major, is working in Ashoka's Venture and Fellowship department which helps locate, nominate, fund and connect new and past Ashoka Fellows throughout the world.

While many Hamilton students end up pursuing their passions professionally after graduation, some start earlier. Carolyn Kossow ’17 is spending her summer in an internship with the Health and Reproductive Rights section of the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) in Washington, D.C.