Parents

I walk through the narrow, lively streets of Bastille, hearing chatter from full café terraces. I turn right, passing a small independent bookstore, onto the historic Rue de la Roquette, long known for the presence of its workshops. A marvelous sight appears: neo-Gothic wooden walls lined with a series of large windows, draped in vines and early spring cherry blossoms in the Paris afternoon sun. I step forward and gently push the door; the playful tinkle of a small bell above announces my arrival into Kostia’s atelier. Kostia is an art and design studio founded in Paris in 2012 by Constantin Laan ’97, who named it in honor of the nickname his Russian grandfather had given him as a child.

Over the past year, Hamilton students, faculty, staff, and alumni came together to think about the future, tackle challenges, and celebrate each other. From a historic NCAA title to research, creative work, and partnerships that reached across the Mohawk Valley and around the world, these stories capture some of the moments that defined the 2025-26 academic year.

While most of campus is asleep, the lights inside Hamilton’s Peters Observatory are still on. This summer, Associate Professor of Instruction for Physics Adam Lark and students Marcus Raabe ’27 and John Fitzgerald ’27 spend their nights tracking distant stars, searching for tiny flickers that reveal exoplanets: planets orbiting stars beyond our solar system.