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Out of Utica’s some 60,000 residents, as many as a quarter of them could be refugees, Shelly Callahan, the executive director for the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees (MVRCR), revealed in a recent New York Times article. The Center is a not-for-profit organization that has helped resettle thousands of immigrants from over 30 countries since its founding in 1979. Today, Utica is truly a mix of cultures, reflected in the more than 40 languages spoken by the 2,700 students at Utica’s Proctor High School.

Roughly every five or six years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishes a report that indicates the current impact of climate change and consequent policy recommendations. The most recent report, the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, contains three separate reports based on the IPCC’s working groups. Ming Chun Tang ’16, under the guidance of Professor of Government Peter Cannavo, is researching online news media’s coverage of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report for his Levitt Fellowship this summer.

For her Levitt Summer Research Fellowship Grant, Sarah Izzo ’15 is working on a project with Professor of Philosophy Rick Werner titled “Brains on the Stand: The Implications of Emerging Neuroscience Research on our Judicial System.” Izzo is examining new neuroscience research on topics like decision-making and free will as well as associated technological advances (such as improved precision in lie detection). 

About one in every seven American men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime1. Combatting cancer is difficult, but one crucial step is early detection, which is made possible through screening examinations such as the Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) test. Philip Parkes ’17 is working with Professor of Biology Herm Lehman on a project titled “The Origins of Over-Testing: Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) Test” that is sponsored by a Levitt Summer Research Grant.

While the U.S. is a global leader in many fields, such is not the case with our public education system, which lags behind 13 other countries.1 Brian Sobotko ’16, a public policy major and education studies minor, thinks that the solution for failing public schools may be more obvious than we imagine. As a Levitt Summer Research Fellow, he is working on an independent examination of  “Transformational Leadership in American Public Schools.”

For his 2014 Levitt Summer Research Fellowship Grant, Adam Pfander ’16 is working with Professor of Economics Paul Hagstrom to examine the employment opportunities of immigrants during the “Great Recession” of 2007-08.  Pfander laid out three main goals for his project titled “Foreign-Born Labor Markets in Recession.”

The corn from Ohio, the blueberries from Maine, and the strawberries from California that all ended up at your summer barbeque traveled quite a distance before arriving on your plate. “Farm to Fork,” a term used by the college’s food service provider, Bon Appétit, entails buying locally grown products when possible in order to reduce carbon emissions caused by transporting food long distances, as well as to stimulate the local economy. Nicole LaBarge ’15 is working on a Levitt Project, “Analyzing the Sustainability of Bon Appétit at Hamilton College Using Life Cycle Assessment.”

This past February, Hamilton welcomed actress, writer, producer, and transgender advocate, Laverne Cox, as the keynote speaker of the NY6 Spectrum Conference. Cox portrays the incarcerated Sophia Burset on the critically acclaimed television show Orange is the New Black, which follows the lives of inmates in a women’s federal prison.

The Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center recently announced the 2014 Levitt Summer Research Fellows. To enhance student research around issues of public affairs, the Levitt Center funds student-faculty research through its Levitt Research Fellows Program. The program is open to rising juniors and seniors who wish to spend the summer working in collaboration with a faculty member on an issue related to public affairs. Following are this year’s recipients.

Between all the statistics, graphs and technical language, some find it difficult to conceptualize the real local impacts of climate change. On April 13, Jody Roberts, director of the Institute for Research at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, spoke to the Hamilton community about art’s ability to help people visualize the pressing consequences of environmental shifts. His lecture, titled “Sensing Change: How Art and Science Work to Communicate Climate Change,” was the final event in the Levitt Center’s Sustainability Lecture Series.