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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.

William Lands, a nutritional biochemist who is among the world’s foremost authorities on essential fatty acids, will give a lecture titled “Put Basic Science into Your Personal Health,” on Wednesday, April 16, at 7:30 p.m., in the Chapel.

From disappearing landmasses to widespread drought, descriptions of climate change’s potential impacts are grim. Its larger geopolitical and commercial ramifications are perhaps less talked about. On April 7, Peter Oppenheimer, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, delivered a lecture about the impacts of climate change in the Arctic.

Peter Oppenheimer, section chief of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will give a lecture titled “Aspects of Arctic Climate Change and Marine Geo-Engineering,” on Monday, April 7, at 4:10 p.m., in the Red Pit, KJ. It is free and open to the public and sponsored by the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center.

April 6 marks the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide; yet, in light of the current conflict in Syria, many question the lessons learned from history. Ambassador Prudence Bushnell, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs during the time of the Rwandan genocide, gave a Levitt Center-sponsored lecture on April 2, with Emily Willard, project coordinator for the Genocide Prevention Project.

The Levitt Center kicked off its first ever Social Innovation Fellows Program during the second week of Hamilton’s spring break.  The program was designed and run by Anke Wessels, executive director of the Center of Transformative Action, a non-profit affiliated with Cornell University.  Her course, “Social Innovators and Entrepreneurship,” was selected by the Ashoka Foundation as one of the 10 best social entrepreneurship courses in the country in 2011. The Levitt program was a weeklong intensive program designed to be a condensed version of Wessel’s award-winning course.

Former U.S. Ambassador Prudence Bushnell will give a lecture titled “The Rwanda Genocide: An After Action Review 20 Years Later,” on Wednesday, April 2, at 7:30 p.m., in the Bradford Auditorium, KJ. The lecture is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center.

Thirteen Hamilton students are spending a week of their spring break taking a new course in social entrepreneurship.  Anke Wessels of Cornell University is leading the course that introduces participants to social entrepreneurs, innovators and visionaries – people who are coming up with new methods to resolve pressing social problems.

Award-winning journalist Christopher Dickey will present a lecture, “Policing, Politics and Paranoia in Post 9/11 America,” on Thursday, March 6, at 4:15 p.m., in the Dwight Lounge, Bristol Center. The lecture is free and open to the public.