Charlotte Ameringer ’88, chief conservator at the Portland Art Museum, recently spent nine months meticulously removing varnish from a painting in Monet’s famous “Waterlilies” series
Read about her work, and that of other alumni, in the Know Thyself section starting on PAGE 4.
The Stick Has Been Passed
Kaillie Briscoe Kelly ’09 was a standout player on Hamilton’s 2008 national championship women’s lacrosse team. Now she’s back on College Hill as the new head coach, succeeding her mentor Patty Kloidt. PAGE 18
You Gotta Break a Few Eggs
Sure, it can be messy at times, but cooking with kids is worth the effort! Elizabeth Palmer Califano ’11, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute and mom of two, offers tips for getting little ones involved in the kitchen. PAGE 35
Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow
Back in 2021, we asked eight new students to tell us about a personal item they brought with them from home. Now, as they prepared to graduate, we caught up with those same members of the Class of ’25 and asked a different question: What are you taking away from Hamilton? PAGE 50
Don’t Write Off the Blue Book
After Jim Memmott ’64 dug up a box that contained his old Hamilton blue books, he took on another assignment — to find out if the line-ruled exam notebooks are still in use today. PAGE 62
On the cover
Read about a friend’s promotion on LinkedIn; binge The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix; shop for a new home on Zillow. We’ve come to count on these and other handy tech tools — and the visionary Hamilton digital entrepreneurs who’ve been at the forefront of their creation. PAGE 36 ILLUSTRATION BY PATTI BLAU
THIS PAGE: The traditional attire of a Buffer includes a navy blazer featuring the official emblem. Hamilton’s oldest a cappella group is marking its 75th anniversary. PAGE 46
PHOTO
BY
KEVIN M. WALDRON
COMMENTS
HAMILTON MAGAZINE
SUMMER 2025
VOLUME 90, NO. 1
EDITOR
Stacey J. Himmelberger P’15,’22 (shimmelb@hamilton.edu)
with the article “25 Years of the Open Curriculum” that was in the Fall 2024 Hamilton magazine.
While Kirkland College ceased to be a separate school in the spring of 1978, open curriculum not only existed on the Hill in the fall of 1974 (when I arrived as an incoming undergraduate), but thrived. The old concept of the “core curriculum” was discarded in favor of the student, with guidance of the faculty adviser, to create a meaningful path of education, customized to that individual.
The freedom to decide was a cornerstone of the Kirkland experience. For myself, I arrived on the Hill “knowing” I was going to go into biology, while continuing my studies in photography, philosophy, and other art classes. During Orientation, I met and attended many talks by Kirkland professors. As a result, I actually decided I had to take a class with Professor Nadine George in History of Science.
This was a subject I hadn’t even heard of before, and would probably not been able to sign up for if a core curricula existed.
Because of the respect Kirkland College had for me as a student, I eventually created a self-designed major called media studies (based on the New School’s program in NYC). In consultation with my adviser, I had the opportunity to develop a course of study that allowed
me to explore such diverse classes as Microbiology and Hindu Buddhist Thought (both Hamilton classes), and photography and painting (Kirkland classes), to name a few.
Hamilton College must recognize and celebrate what Kirkland’s legacy is, and make sure that our contribution to the Hill is never forgotten. We have to be more than a display case in McEwen Hall. It is to the benefit of current and future students, plus the faculty on the Hill.
I would not have become the well-rounded person I am today without what both Kirkland and Hamilton gave me.
— Constance “Connie” Halporn K’78
Editor’s Note: In the article referenced above, Dean of Faculty Ngoni Munemo shared his thoughts on the 25th anniversary of Hamilton’s current curriculum, approved by the faculty in 2000. Over the past two centuries, policies and guidelines for teaching and learning on College Hill have seen many iterations — imagine the first class of students in 1813 who studied only Latin and Greek with a smattering of math and geography on the side! Connie reminds us that the innovative approaches embraced by Kirkland College helped shape the Hamilton College of today. We apologize if our story led to confusion.
IREAD WITH INTEREST
“The Fascinating Life of Gerrit Smith” in Hamilton (Fall 2024). I knew of Azel Backus, but not Gerrit. What got my attention, in particular, was his participation in the Secret Six to spring John Brown at Harper’s Ferry.
I have always had a vague knowledge of another staunch abolitionist’s membership in the Secret Six — Thomas Wentworth Higginson, my great-grandfather! And there they appear together in the Massachusetts Historical Society website (masshist.org)!
Higginson is also famous for commanding a South Carolina regiment of freed slaves in the Civil War. And it was Higginson to whom Emily Dickinson first wrote to share her poetry, which he later co-edited for the first publication of her work.
Thanks so much for adding a chapter of appreciation to my family history.
— Tony Woodin ’65, GP’23
Scan to read the online edition.
COMMENTS
Tips for Sharing Letters … and More
Hamilton magazine readers are always welcome to send us comments on topics discussed in the magazine or on any subject of possible interest to the College community. Email letters to editor@hamilton.edu, and be sure to include your name, class year, and whether or not you intend your letter to be published.
In addition, here are a few resources for other ways you can stay connected and share news:
• Want to share an accomplishment … or brag about a friend?
The Communications and Alumni offices tap into several sources for news of the important and interesting things our graduates are doing throughout the world. But try as we might, it’s impossible to keep up with everything. In order to fill these pages — and those on our website — with the most compelling stories, we need your help. Email editor@hamilton.edu
• Have a broader idea?
Periodic focus groups and readership surveys are a few ways we get a sense of general topics our readers care about. Another way is when they pop us an email. If you have a potential story idea, don’t be shy about sharing — odds are, if you think something is interesting, others will too! Email editor@hamilton.edu
• Got a class note for Glade & Glen? New jobs, promotions, awards, marriages, additions to the family. We want to hear about all of life’s milestones. It’s best to email class notes to your class correspondent. If you are unsure who that is, or need contact information, reach out to the Glade & Glen editor. Email hamily@hamilton.edu
• Written a new book?
Congratulations! We consider all books by alumni for inclusion in Hamilton magazine and on our online Bookshelf page: hamilton.edu/alumni/books. Send news of your book — including a description, the publisher, and a publication date — to editor@hamilton.edu. If you can get us a copy, even better! We’ll be sure to forward it on to Burke Library for the Alumni Collection. Books may be sent to Editor, Office of Communications and Marketing, Hamilton College, 198 College Hill Road, Clinton, NY 13323.
• Has your address changed? Don’t miss the latest communications from the College, including editions of our print periodicals Hamilton magazine and Glade & Glen. You’ll also want to share your email address to receive our twice-yearly digital feature Hamilton Extra and monthly e-newsletter Hamilton Headlines. You can email changes to hamily@hamilton.edu and verify and update your contact information through My Hamilton Connect at connect.hamilton.edu
• Want to opt out of print editions of Hamilton magazine or Glade & Glen for environmental or other reasons? You can find digital editions of Hamilton magazine at hamilton.edu/magazine and Glade & Glen at hamilton.edu/alumni/glade (the latter requires log-in through My Hamilton Connect). If you’d like to change your subscription preferences, write to hamily@hamilton.edu
THE TRUSTEES
David M. Solomon ’84, P’16, Chair
Robert V. Delaney ’79, Vice Chair
Linda E. Johnson ’80, Vice Chair
CHARTER TRUSTEES
Aron J. Ain ’79, P’09,’11
Mason P. Ashe ’85
Richard Bernstein ’80
Peter B. Coffin ’81, P’14
Julia K. Cowles ’84
Mark T. Fedorcik ’95
Daniel C. Fielding ’07
Amy Owens Goodfriend ’82
Philip L. Hawkins ’78
Gregory T. Hoogkamp ’82, P’25
Lea Haber Kuck ’87, P’24
Sharon D. Madison ’84
Christopher P. Marshall ’90
Daniel T.H. Nye ’88, P’24
Montgomery G. Pooley ’84, P’16,’19
Ronald R. Pressman ’80
Imad I. Qasim ’79
R. Christopher Regan ’77, P’08
Nancy Roob ’87
Alexander C. Sacerdote ’94
Jack R. Selby ’96
Steven Tepper
ALUMNI TRUSTEES
Phyllis A. Breland ’80
Josie M. Collier ’97, P’14
Kathleen Corsi ’82, P’23
Eric F. Grossman ’88
Monique L. Holloway ’87, P’14,’18
Stuart P. Ingis ’93
Edvige Jean-François ’90
Elizabeth Fox Keogh ’94, P’26
Kevin J. O’Donnell ’89, P’22,’25
Lindsey Pizzica Rotolo ’97
William C. Schmoker ’89
Gillian B. Zucker ’90
LIFE TRUSTEES
Henry W. Bedford II ’76
David W. Blood ’81
Harold W. Bogle ’75, P’14
Brian T. Bristol P’11
Christina E. Carroll P’90
Gerald V. Dirvin ’59, P’84, GP’17
Sean K. Fitzpatrick ’63, P’87
Carol T. Friscia K’77
Lee C. Garcia ’67
Eugenie A. Havemeyer GP’00
David P. Hess ’77
Joel W. Johnson ’65, P’93
Kevin W. Kennedy ’70 †
A.G. Lafley ’69 †
George F. Little II ’71, P’04
Arthur J. Massolo ’64, P’93
Robert S. Morris ’76, P’16,’17
Donald R. Osborn P’86, GP’16
John G. Rice ’78
Stephen I. Sadove ’73, P’07,’10,’13 †
Howard J. Schneider ’60, P’85,’87,’89, GP’21
Thomas J. Schwarz ’66, P’01 A. Barrett Seaman ’67
Chester A. Siuda ’70, P’06, GP’25
Susan E. Skerritt K’77, P’11
Charles O. Svenson ’61, P’00
Thomas J. Tull ’92, P’13
Susan Valentine K’73
Jack Withiam, Jr. ’71, P’16,’20
Jaime E. Yordán ’71
Srilata Zaheer
† Chairmen Emeriti
PRESIDENT OF THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
Adriana S. Payne ’92
Know Thyself
MEET PEOPLE TAKING HAMILTON’S MOTTO TO HEART AS THEY DISCOVER AND EXPLORE THEIR PASSIONS WHILE MAKING VALUABLE CONTRIBUTIONS ON COLLEGE HILL AND BEYOND.
Restoring Masterpieces
Charlotte Ameringer ’88
Charlotte Ameringer ’88 works small. As chief conservator at the Portland Art Museum, she recently spent nine months ever so gently removing varnish from a painting in Monet’s famous “Waterlilies” series. The tranquil Impressionist work measures about 5 feet by 6 feet, but on a good day this precise and patient scholar, wielding a cotton-tipped bamboo skewer, cleaned a portion of the canvas that measured only 3 inches by 3 inches.
“I work carefully because I have as a guiding principle that I don’t want to cause any damage to the artist’s material,” said
Ameringer, whose career has taken her from San Francisco’s Fine Arts Museums to Atlanta’s High Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston before landing in Oregon.
At Hamilton, the psychology major started out thinking she’d become a doctor like her parents. Though her career choice at first disappointed them, she now jokes that instead she became a doctor of artwork. Organic chemistry fascinated Ameringer, and that knowledge dovetails with her work. Because of the unique composition of an artist’s paint and the varnish, she must mix her solvent to ensure it dissolves only the unwanted coating and not the paint below.
“You lose a lot of the lovely, subtle, more pastel tones when you put a varnish on
something,” Ameringer said. “What I do is a very customized thing. There’s a lot of fine-tuning of the solvent type to get something that works just right.”
What other paintings has she revived from grime or misguided attempts at preservation? “I’ve been doing this for 25 years. Name an artist, and I’ve probably worked on a piece by him or her,” she said. “Sometimes I spend more time with an artwork than the artist did. This incredible intimacy with the act of creation and the painting itself is part of what I love about the job.
“It gives me goosebumps to think how good Monet was at age 73 when he painted this. He knew exactly what he wanted to do.” • — George Spencer
Charlotte Ameringer removes a synthetic varnish from “Waterlillies” by Claude Monet.
Creating a Safe Haven
Carolyn Wolf-Gould ’83
Founder and medical director of the Gender Wellness Center of Oneonta, N.Y., Carolyn Wolf-Gould ’83 has been a pioneer in expanding access to transgender healthcare. Yet, she did not choose the field of gender affirming care — it chose her.
A pre-med student at Hamilton, WolfGould enlisted in the Peace Corps after graduation. It was while teaching fish
farming in the Congo that she first met a transgender person. After her service, she attended Yale Medical School and completed her residency at the University of Rochester before joining the Bassett Healthcare Network in Oneonta as a general practitioner.
In 2007, Wolf-Gould welcomed her first transgender patient, a trans man who was recommended to her due to her safe space sticker. His needs inspired her to research hormone replacement therapy. Word of her support for trans patients spread, and she soon found herself with upward of 300 patients.
Wolf-Gould saw the need for more specialized and comprehensive care for transgender people and endeavored to establish a health center with five prongs — medical, surgical, mental health, legal,
It’s in the Cards
Scott Kleinklaus ’11
Scott Kleinklaus ’11, a longtime Formula 1 racing fan, saw an opportunity to turn his passion into a profession. Introduced to the sport by his late father, Kleinklaus got into F1 trading cards about four years ago, and it wasn’t long before he realized he could do a better job than those in the card market.
“People were mispronouncing all the names,” he laughed. “They didn’t know anything about the sport! I thought, I can do this better.”
Kleinklaus, who had climbed the ranks in the healthcare industry, decided to launch The P1Castle, a premium trading card business specializing in Formula 1. His company provides two services: opening Formula 1 trading cards live on streaming platforms and running a consignment service that sells high-end cards to collectors.
Recently, that second service made headlines.
Kleinklaus brokered the first-ever seven-figure sale of a F1 card between a film producer in Florida and crypto billionaire Jeff Yin Sang. “We flew down from New York to Florida to pick up the card, watched over a million dollars in Bitcoin hit the seller’s Coinbase account, and then flew to Singapore to hand-deliver the card,” Kleinklaus said. “It was a pretty surreal experience.”
and community-based research services. Together with a team of three other healthcare professionals, she received a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to construct the Gender Wellness Center. Today, the center is a bastion for transgender healthcare — a safe haven where patients from not just New York, but also states as far away as Texas and Florida can receive the care they need.
Along with her work at the Gender Wellness Center, Wolf-Gould has spent the past six years crafting her recently published book, A History of Transgender Medicine in the United States: From Margins to Mainstream. “To understand where we are now, we have to understand the history,” WolfGould said. “We have to understand how people are afraid of difference.” •
— Holly Mirales
’26
From unboxing live for fans to managing private deals across the globe, Kleinklaus and P1Castle have built a reputation at the highest tier. “F1 is only going to continue to grow, and we’ve positioned ourselves in a great spot to take advantage of and push along that growth.” • — Dehler Ingham ’27
Scott Kleinklaus and the nowinfamous F1 card.
Planting Seeds of Hope Nana Hayrumyan ’27
In 2020, when the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War forced Nana Hayrumyan ’27 and her family to flee to Armenia from their home in the Republic of Artsakh, her schooling was put on hold. But Hayrumyan never gave up her belief in the value of education. She was soon accepted into the United World Colleges. She went to UWC Dilijan where she first learned about Projects for Peace, a program that supports innovative student-designed projects that can be implemented anywhere in the world.
Hayrumyan came to Hamilton in 2023 and was inspired to design a project to help her people back home. By this time, the president of Artsakh had signed a decree to dismantle the republic’s institutions. “[The Artsakh people] essentially became refugees,” she said. “There were profound disturbances in education. I wanted to do my best to fill the gap through more non-formal education practices.”
She received a $10,000 Project for Peace grant for the project Hooys: Planting Seeds
of Hope in Artsakh Youth. Named after the Armenian word for hope, her project aimed to “catalyze personal, intellectual, and communal growth” among its 29 Artsakh refugee participants.
“I believe that without hope, there is no plan,” she said.
The project, which took place over the summer of 2024, consisted of three main components: a series of online workshops aimed at promoting self-development, a book distribution program, and three participant-led initiatives that allowed students to apply the skills they learned in workshops to positively impact their own communities.
“When you’re 16 or 17 and you know that you can make a difference in your community, it fuels you,” Hayrumyan said. “My intention was for them to see that their future is bright, and we need to start preparing for it.” •
— Claire Williams ’25
Addressing Global Food Security
Tom Vilsack ’72
Fresh off his second term in the White House as U.S. secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack ’72 has joined the World Food Prize Foundation as CEO. The organization is devoted to driving transformative change in food security and sustainable agriculture.
Vilsack’s appointment continues his longstanding ties with the foundation; previously he served on its council of advisors and board of directors. The former two-term governor of Iowa has devoted much of his career to work targeted at agricultural trade and sustainable food production.
“The World Food Prize Foundation has a phenomenal and important history of advancing innovation to address global food security,” said Vilsack in a news release announcing his appointment. “I look forward to forging new partnerships, helping bring to life new solutions in the fight against hunger, and championing efforts to ensure a sustainable and equitable food system for future generations.” •
A Champion for Women in China
Kiki Yang ’00
Kiki Yang ’00 has never stopped learning. It’s been the one constant in her career. As a senior partner at the consulting company Bain & Company in Shanghai, she said, “Every day is about thinking. Clients come to me with issues they can’t solve, and we have to understand their problems. It’s never easy.”
Fortune magazine’s China edition named her one of its Most Powerful Women in Business in China in 2023 and 2024. As co-head of Bain’s Asia-Pacific private equity practice, she and her team help multinational corporations and local companies position themselves to tackle strategic issues that face them throughout the region.
As Bain’s only senior female partner in China, she’s been outspoken about the need for more women in executive positions there. Women, according to her, hold only about 19 percent of top jobs. “Three things can move the needle — executive commitment, an inclusive culture to take on unconscious bias, and an equitable environment to provide part-time opportunities or other support,” she said.
The Shanghai native was valedictorian and double majored in economics and math. She is grateful Hamilton took a chance on accepting her. “I know how hard it must have been to judge a candidate who came from a very different background, who didn’t take the SAT because it wasn’t offered in Shanghai,” she recalled.
Her freshman English class Persuasive Argument opened her eyes to the differences between how English speakers and Chinese communicate in writing. “I clearly remember learning that good writing means supporting your arguments in logical, succinct ways — nothing fancy. In English even without a huge vocabulary, you can write
beautifully. In Chinese, arguments often may not be as explicitly laid out. The emphasis could be more on an extensive vocabulary than the logic of the essay.”
Preparing meals for her husband and three children brings satisfaction away from work. “It’s like meditation where everything slows down,” Yang said. Cooking and her career have something in common — both require her to be “very precise, accurate, and drive things to perfection.”
Looking back, she didn’t realize how fast China was changing when she was a student. “I’ve seen the extremely fast acceleration, then the first wave where everyone wanted to come to China, and now some companies exiting. It’s like a full circle,” she said. • — George Spencer
Kiki Yang (center) receiving recognition from Fortune magazine’s China edition.
Keeping Kids in the Know Tori Campbell Nelson ’86
When Tori Campbell Nelson ’86 talks, children listen. The co-founder and anchor of KidNuz, “a fun, fresh, first-of-its-kind kids’ podcast,” delivers age-appropriate news stories to her third- to sixth-grade audience five days a week.
“Kids are curious, the world is fascinating, knowledge is power, and children really want to know what’s going on,” said Nelson, who hosts the fast-paced, six-minute show from her home in Singapore. “Children want the facts, but probably fewer details than you’d expect. We meet them where they are and keep it simple and straightforward.” The commercial-free show is non-partisan and avoids distressing topics like drugs and plane crashes.
Now in its seventh year, the nonprofit KidNuz has had more than 21 million downloads. It counts about 100,000 daily listeners, mostly children in classrooms.
Teachers play it during homeroom, according to Nelson. “Our daily quiz is popular. Teachers tell us it improves listening comprehension because students listen carefully to get the right answers. That’s an unexpected, pleasant bonus,” said the Ridgefield, Conn., native.
A French literature major, she spent her junior year abroad at Sorbonne University in Paris. “My goal was to become fluent in a different language, and I did it,” Nelson said. “My Hamilton experience made me more confident and helped me realize I was capable of even more than I thought.”
Her journalist father inspired her career direction. Of her first job as news director at WREF-FM radio in Ridgefield, Conn., she recalls, “I loved being the first person to know something that happened and being able to tell people about it.” A career leap led her to San Francisco where she
co-hosted the top-rated morning news show on KTVU-TV from 1996 to 2015. Along the way, she interviewed a 9/11 widow and luminaries who ranged from author Deepak Chopra and actress Angela Lansbury to supermodel Christie Brinkley and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler.
One thing she doesn’t miss about daily TV news is getting up before dawn. “It was like getting ready for the hottest date of your life five mornings a week, and doing it at six in the morning was a bit tough,” she said.
Today she’s excited about the newest feature on KidNuz — Convo, a 20-minute interview on a single topic with scientists and government leaders. “It gets me back to my journalistic roots, digging into one subject, adding sound effects, and uploading episodes. It’s nice to learn new skills at this point in my life. It’s like I’m a one-woman band.” • — George Spencer
Telling the Stories of History
Maurice Isserman
A career of storytelling — the “narrative power and scholarly distinction of [his] historical work”— has earned Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of American History Maurice Isserman membership into The Society of American Historians.
Founded in 1939 and based at Columbia University, the society promotes excellence in the writing or presentation of history. Specifically, it recognizes historical work marked by clarity, empathy, narrative power, accuracy, and explanatory force. Among the society’s approximately 450 current fellows are scholars, journalists, novelists, independent historians, essayists, biographers, filmmakers, curators, and poets.
Isserman is the author of numerous essays and 17 books addressing a range of topics, many of which have earned praise in the media and been recognized with awards. A sampling of his books includes The Other American: The Life of Michael Harrington (2000); On the Hill: A Bicentennial History of Hamilton College 1812–2012 (2011); Cronkite’s War: His World War II Letters Home (2013, co-authored with Walter Cronkite IV ’11); Continental Divide: A History of American Mountaineering (2016); and, most recently, Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism (2024).
A member of the faculty since 1990, Isserman also has received two Fulbright lectureships and several National Endowment for the Humanities awards. •
Sailing for Science
Preston Sutton ’97
Preston Sutton ’97 follows where science, the wind, and his interests take him. As operations manager at Sail & Explore, this polymer physicist does field work and expedition planning for a Switzerlandbased nonprofit that explores the possible effects of micro- and nanoplastics on human health.
Last spring found the Denver, Colo., native aboard the SV Seeker, a 72-foot junk, a Chinese-style sailing vessel. Its journey from the Dry Tortugas at the tip of the Florida Keys followed the Gulf Stream up the island chain. Along the way, he and the crew, which included professional researchers, grad students, and citizen scientists, collected water samples for analysis.
Sutton steers clear of sensationalizing his research. “We care about our reputation as scientists, so we consciously are not advocates. It’s not clear that microplastics are bad for people. It’s a huge open question. We report the data as we find it and avoid hyperbole and speculation,” he said.
After Hamilton, Sutton had no “grand plan” for his life. “I try to take advantage of anything that interests me in the moment, if I can make it work and can still take care of my family,” he said. “Multiple times in my life I have seen, read, or heard something I found interesting and made a radical change to find out more about it.”
This philosophy first took him to Ghana where he oversaw food distribution in remote areas. Changing course, he guided whitewater river rafting trips in the U.S. and Costa Rica. Finally, after a job took him to Europe, he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. Today when he’s not at sea, he lives and works remotely in the Italian city of Pescara on the Adriatic Coast.
Although Sutton loves the “rigorous routines” of being on the water, he finds that its sometimes-monotonous nature creates meditative feelings. “It makes the magic moments that are unique about being at sea that much more poignant. It’s a rich experience.” •
—
George Spencer
From
Steak
Nite
to
a Wall of Gold
Bob Halligan ’75
Bob Halligan, Jr. ’75 has written over 1,100 songs, 200 of which have been recorded by such artists as Cher, KISS, Michael Bolton, Blue Oyster Cult, Kathy Mattea … the list goes on. A wall in his home studio in Syracuse, N.Y., is lined with the results of his success — 10 gold and platinum records.
But to his classmates, Halligan is perhaps better known for his performances with the campus band Steak Nite (named for a culinary treat served occasionally in the dining hall). Founded in 1972 as a winter study project and featuring Halligan, Don Fram ’75, Jeb Guthrie ’75, and Bob Sollinger ’75, Steak Nite reunited on the Hill for a Reunion Weekend performance this June.
Turn the clock back 50 years, and Halligan might be surprised by his success, but not by his path. As graduation approached, the English literature major
found himself floundering. Classmates were landing jobs, and while he borrowed a suit and sat through some interviews himself, Halligan’s heart wasn’t in it. A turning point came when Fram asked a simple question that was more of an observation: “You’re going to go into music, right?”
That’s when the lightbulb went on. “Don could see who I had to be,” Halligan said. “I never had a Plan B.”
Halligan’s climb up the Billboard charts began, as many do, with a mix of talent and luck. When the fledgling songwriter’s publisher mentioned that a band was looking for a new song, Halligan churned out a tune and lyrics in three hours and rushed them over. That band was Judas Priest. The song, “[Take These] Chains,” would be the only one on their 1982 album Screaming for Vengeance not written by a member of the band.
Soon Halligan was writing for a string of international artists. Although he earned a reputation as a “heavy metal song doctor” — and that work paid the bills — his true passion had to wait a few years. For the past two decades, he’s been the lead vocalist and guitarist for Ceili Rain, a group he founded that combines Celtic, rock, and a spiritual message. Halligan also dons a mop-top wig to portray Paul McCartney in a one-man Beatlemania-esque show he calls PaulTheBeatle
“I’ve always seen performing and creating music as an act of generosity,” he said. “I approach what I do with a servant’s heart. I love putting people in a little better shape when they leave [a concert] than when they got there.”
— Stacey Himmelberger P’15,’22
The wall of Bob Halligan’s home studio in Syracuse, N.Y., is lined with his gold and platinum albums.
A Moment that Changed Hundreds of Lives
AN INTERVIEW WITH Vinnie Strully ’68
This summer marks the 50th anniversary of The New England Center for Children (NECC), the life’s work of its founder and longtime CEO, Vinnie Strully ’68. Looking back, how did a Hamilton government major, with no clear career path, go on to establish what would become one of the world’s leading organizations for the treatment of children and adolescents with autism just five years after graduating?
Strully credits a turning point that came on the morning of his 25th birthday. We asked him to share the story — and he did (edited for length).
I didn’t apply myself much at Hamilton, even though my dad and uncle — both Hamilton alumni — went on to become successful surgeons. My father loved the school, so I never considered going anywhere else. After graduation, I did a year of graduate studies in political science at Syracuse, thanks to my senior advisor, Professor Eugene Lewis, who had completed his Ph.D. there. But I quickly realized it wasn’t for me. I wanted to do something that involved direct service, so I found a job as a residential childcare worker at Vanderheyden Hall in Troy, N.Y.
I worked around the clock, living alongside a group of kids. I started to get pretty good at it, but I struggled with some of the more complex behavioral challenges. It became clear I needed to find a place with deeper expertise — somewhere that truly understood how to teach important skills to these kids.
But first I took a break to travel. It was October 1971, and I was in Europe, spending time in Florence with a Hamilton friend,
Harry Weintraub [’68]. I had saved money from the childcare job and was making plans with other Hamilton friends to travel to Afghanistan or North Africa.
But then, on the morning of my 25th birthday, I woke up with a jolt. My first thought was, “This is your 25th birthday. If you were 30 today, you’d be completely lost.”
That moment hit hard.
I shaved off my Jerry Garcia-style beard, cut my shoulder-length hair, and headed home. Within three weeks, I landed a job at Spaulding Youth Center in Tilton, N.H. There, a young executive director named John Pangburn was launching one of the first programs for children based on applied behavior analysis — then referred to as behavior modification. The approach offered a structured, systematic way to teach children with special needs.
About a year-and-a-half in at Spaulding, John approached me with the idea of creating a program specifically for children with autism. At the time, neither of us knew much about it. We split up the available literature and dove into an intense two-year journey of learning everything we could.
Eventually, John suggested relocating to Massachusetts, where the state was preparing to launch schools for children with the
condition. We developed a proposal and secured a grant to open a program in Taunton on the grounds of a state hospital. The Department of Mental Health offered us a former nurse’s residence, which we began renovating to serve a group of 10 to 20 students.
In 1974, we moved. It took 10 months of hard work to get things off the ground.
Although our mission was compelling, autism was still largely misunderstood. We didn’t know that we were standing at the forefront of something much bigger. Over the next 50 years, autism would become one of most commonly diagnosed developmental disorders. That realization and that journey was the beginning of what would become the New England Center for Children.
[John moved on in 1978, leaving Strully at a crossroads. Though he initially considered pursuing special education at Columbia, he decided instead to continue the work they had started and take on the program’s leadership.]
My vision was to create the educational equivalent of a teaching hospital — an environment where children with autism could receive high-quality education alongside
Vinnie Strully (left) meets with fellow NECC staffers Jackie Rogalski ’10 (center) and Kim Wysocki Keogh '90.
KNOW THYSELF
ABOUT THE NEW ENGLAND CENTER FOR CHILDREN
Established in 1975 and located in Southborough, Mass., the New England Center for Children (NECC) is a leading nonprofit dedicated to providing comprehensive, evidence-based educational services for children with autism spectrum disorder. The center provides both day and residential programs that combine individualized instruction with evidencebased applied behavior analytic treatment. The NECC extends its reach through partner classrooms in public schools across New England and operates international programs in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
NECC’s Autism Curriculum Encyclopedia software is used by more than 13,000 learners worldwide. Additionally, the center fosters professional development by partnering with higher education institutions — including Hamilton — to offer free on-site graduate programs and internship opportunities in special education and behavior analysis.
active university partnerships, on-site research, and professional development. I imagined a place where people from around the world could come for both treatment and training in autism education.
To move this vision forward, I began reaching out to leading behavior analysts in the area. One of them completed his Ph.D. under B.F. Skinner [Hamilton, Class of 1926] at Harvard and joined us, staying through the mid-1980s. By that time, I had built my own team and was beginning to take strategic risks.
Although I’d only been working with children for about 10 years, I came from a medical family, so I understood the importance of research. I also recognized early on that we’d need strong financial and legal foundations. In the mid-1980s, we secured a $23 million tax-exempt bond at a time when there was a pressing need for more services for children with autism, particularly those with severe needs. We were uniquely positioned — we had a proven model, and by then, I had developed the necessary political and financial relationships to make it happen.
One of the lasting benefits of a Hamilton education was learning how to approach complex challenges — to figure things out, tackle tough subjects, and work through them with persistence.
I’ve been incredibly fortunate. I had two well-educated, generous parents who gave me access to resources and opportunities. I was, by most accounts, quite privileged growing up. It’s surprising I developed a strong work ethic — but I credit that to my father. While I may not have had to work hard early on, I can honestly say I’ve worked hard almost every day for the last 50 years.
Could you share a breakthrough in autism treatment that the NECC has made?
The center has contributed significantly to autism research, including recent work focused on infants from high-risk families
with a history of autism or related developmental disabilities. One of our most exciting advancements is the creation of the Early Markers of Autism assessment tool, developed by our research team. Designed to identify early signs of autism in children from birth to 18 months, this tool holds promise for earlier detection and intervention. Once validated, it could be made available to pediatricians, offering a major step forward in early autism diagnosis and treatment. It has the potential to be a true game changer.
NECC has also been recognized with two awards from the Association for Behavior Analysis International — in 2005, for our enduring contributions to the field, and in 2017, for international dissemination of behavior analysis, particularly for our successful replication of NECC’s model in Abu Dhabi.
In addition, our proprietary software, the Autism Curriculum Encyclopedia is used daily by educators worldwide and includes over 2,500 lesson plans grounded in a socially validated assessment framework. This powerful tool supports more than 13,000 students each day, ensuring consistent, high-quality instruction across a variety of educational settings.
Why did you expand to Abu Dhabi?
I’ve been traveling to Abu Dhabi since 1997, when we first connected with a member of a prominent family seeking support for their child. Our success in working with that family opened the door to a wide range of opportunities and partnerships across the region, ultimately allowing us to build a lasting presence.
Are any other programs comparable to the NECC?
Few can match the ecosystem that the New England Center for Children has built. From the beginning, there was a deliberate focus on developing a robust research program — a process that took nearly two decades to fully realize.
We’ve maintained a longstanding partnership with Hamilton, and for nearly 40 years, we've hosted an on-site master’s degree program in special education with an autism specialization through Simmons University. We also partnered with Northeastern University to offer a master’s in behavior analysis, and now, through Western New England University, we provide both master’s and Ph.D. programs in applied behavior analysis.
Over time, we've continually strengthened the quality of our teaching and training. Our research is now featured in peer-reviewed journals, underscoring the real-world effectiveness of our integrated model.
You retired as CEO in 2023 but are still executive advisor, spending winters in Abu Dhabi and the rest of the year in Boston. What’s your plan moving forward?
Walking away was never something I considered. This work — this center — is my legacy and my life’s purpose. Without it, I’m not sure how I would define myself. I’ve spent 50 years doing something I truly loved, alongside an extraordinary group of people, many of whom stayed with NECC for decades. Together, we built exceptional teams of professionals rooted in mutual respect, deep connection, and shared purpose. We accomplished meaningful work and had a great deal of fun along the way, even when the challenges were immense.
Looking back, it all traces back to that morning of my 25th birthday. That moment put me on the right path for the next 50 years of my life. •
HAMILTON AND THE NEW ENGLAND CENTER FOR CHILDREN
Since 1999-2000, Hamilton students have had the opportunity to spend the semester or summer at the New England Center for Children. Here are the numbers:
• 80 Hamilton students completed the cooperative learning program where they spent a semester taking master’s level coursework in applied behavior analysis and 25 hours a week working with children the classroom.
• 54 Hamilton students completed summer internships, which includes 20–35 hours a week of classroom experience.
• 15 Hamilton alumni currently work at NECC.
I’d go to Hamilton every year in those early days to recruit staff. I’d always meet with [Professor of Philosophy] Russell Blackwood, who kept telling me I should go back to graduate school. We also got tied in with the Psychology Department because Kim Wysocki Keogh [’90] had been a psychobiology major — she’s now been at the center over 30 years.
“Each year, [Professor of Psychology] Jon Vaughan would bring one of his classes to the center to show them how this work applied. He and Professor Doug Weldon (Kim’s advisor), helped to set up the long-standing partnership with NECC and Hamilton. Once my friend Professor Blackwood came with him. After touring the school, he said to me, “Okay, you don’t have to go back to graduate school.”
— VINNIE STRULLY
In 2018, Vinnie Strully in the Chapel delivering the half-century annalist letter for the Class of ’68.
NANCY L. FORD
RECENT NEWS HIGHLIGHTS From across the Hamilverse
1 WELLIN HALL, SCHAMBACH CENTER
On May 7, the Hamilton College Choir performed its final concert of the year. And what an exciting year it was for the talented group of singers who embarked on their first international Spring Break tour since 2017 with concerts in Dublin, Belfast, Edinburgh, and Glasgow.
2 KIRNER-JOHNSON BUILDING
British photographer and filmmaker Zara Briski attended an April showing of her Oscar-winning documentary Born into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids (2004) as part of Hamilton’s F.I.L.M. series. In addition, her photograph “Bearegram #10” was featured in the Wellin Museum’s recent exhibit “Menagerie: Animals in Art.”
3 FILLIUS EVENTS BARN
To mark the 30th anniversary of Hamilton’s Fillius Jazz Archive, members of the College community celebrated with a reception in March featuring live music and video excerpts from some of the archive’s 500+ oral histories with jazz legends.
WANT MORE HAMILTON NEWS? Visit hamilton.edu/news.
And if you’re not receiving our monthly Hamilton Headlines in your inbox, send a note to editor@hamilton.edu, and we’ll add you to the list.
4 SADOVE STUDENT CENTER
No electronic devices required. Students gather weekly to challenge each other at meetings of the Board Game Club. Among the most popular game selections — Blood on the Clocktower, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Ghost Stories, and Werewords.
5 SAGE RINK
The Hamilton men’s hockey team hosted the NESCAC championships in March for the second time, but it was the first time the Continentals skated away with the conference title. The win earned them an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament where the team advanced to the quarterfinals before losing to Curry College.
6 CHAPEL
Tumbling After and Special K, Hamilton’s a cappella groups for women and nonbinary students, hosted their annual Women’s Month concert in March. The event raised funds for The Thurman Perry Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting the health and wellbeing of women and girls impacted by incarceration.
7
TAYLOR SCIENCE CENTER
“Activists address the symptoms of an issue; organizers attack the roots.” This was the message shared by Krystal Two Bulls, an Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne, who met with students in an environmental studies class in January. The executive director at Honor the Earth explained that as more communities are impacted by the climate crisis, organizing becomes not just a role but a responsibility.
8 BURKE LIBRARY
“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” Once again Satan’s famous words were quoted during the marathon reading of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The April event marked the 16th time Margaret Thickstun, the Jane D. and Ellis E. Bradford ’45 Distinguished Writing Chair, hosted the communal reading of the epic poem, which, she says, takes 9-10 hours to recite, “depending on whether people decide to get dramatic and slow us down.”
TOM WOOLLEY
My Weekly Meeting with the Congressman
By Anna Richardson ’25
DID YOU KNOW THERE ARE AWARDS for the best political campaign ads each year, called the Pollies? Or that Nancy Pelosi always told House Democrats to “embrace the suck?” How about that Ted Kennedy used to be called “the liberal lion of the Senate?”
After taking the Government Department’s Sol M. Linowitz ’35 Seminar this spring with former Congressman Matthew Cartwright ’83, I can confidently respond “yes” to all of the questions above.
The Linowitz Seminar was established in 1988 to honor the accomplished diplomat, lawyer, and businessman. It recognizes Linowitz’s expertise in domestic and international affairs by bringing to Hamilton instructors who have occupied senior positions in government or non-government organizations. Each semester, 12 government and world politics concentrators are selected to enroll.
Cartwright emphasized the importance of interpersonal relationships on the campaign trail and while in office. Although I can easily read about the vicious attacks candidates make — and endure — on the campaign trail, hearing Cartwright’s experience with fictitious claims about his stance on funding for local police forced me to recognize the dangers of misinformation.
This spring, I had the opportunity to participate in the seminar with Cartwright, who served as the representative for Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District from 2013 to 2025. Although I had met the congressman in DC when I participated with the Hamilton in Washington program the year before, our three-hour meetings every Monday morning gave me a unique perspective on the skills necessary to navigate the political landscape and be successful in the House of Representatives.
In this instance, Cartwright successfully combated the accusations by airing a television ad that featured an endorsement from the local police chief, with whom the congressman had formed a personal relationship.
In the House, Cartwright routinely formed friendships with Republicans to pass bipartisan legislation. One example is the work he did with Steve Russell, former representative from Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District. Cartwright and Russell had attended flight school together, and once they connected on an interest rather than an issue, they were able to craft legislation on aviation regulation that benefited both parties. Cartwright passed his legacy of bipartisanship connections along to us, as we had the opportunity to chat with Russell via Zoom.
Throughout the semester, Cartwright ensured that we got a complete picture of the workings of a congressional office. Each week, in addition to his lecture, a guest speaker joined us in person or via Zoom. We heard from the congressman’s former legislative director, chief of staff, press secretary, campaign field director, and campaign media director. As a graduating senior, learning about the different career paths available in a congressional office helped me think about how I might leverage my skill set in Congress.
Outside the classroom, Cartwright kept his office door open to us. While members of Congress make important decisions, they are also people; Cartwright often told us stories about his time on College Hill and the opportunities we needed to take advantage of. He advised us to form close relationships with our professors because they want to see us succeed.
“That’s one thing I love about Hamilton; the people who teach here are really smart,” he said. “The professors come here because they know they will be able to really help the students here because it’s a small school. When I was here, I didn’t take enough advantage of that. If you don’t go talk to the professors here, you’re missing out.” n
Matt Cartwright on campus in April 2024 for a Common Ground panel discussion.
NANCY L. FORD
In Brief
BEGINNING IN FALL 2026, NESCAC football teams can advance to NCAA Division III championship competition. The league will maintain a nine-game schedule against fellow conference schools. The team that finishes at the top of the standings (after tiebreakers are applied, if necessary) will earn the NESCAC’s automatic berth to the NCAA Division III football championship. NESCAC teams will be eligible for Pool C “at-large” bids if selected. The NCAA Division III football championship consists of 40 teams, with all rounds, except the championship game, played at campus sites.
THE ARBOR DAY FOUNDATION has recognized Hamilton as a 2024 Tree Campus for its dedication to enhancing community well-being through tree education, investment, and community engagement. The recognition requires colleges and universities to uphold five core standards: maintaining an advisory committee, setting a campus tree care plan, verifying annual investment in the tree care plan, celebrating Arbor Day, and creating a service-learning project aimed at engaging the student body.
MIRIAM MERRILL, director of athletics and chair of physical education at Pomona-Pitzer Colleges, has returned to College Hill as chief of staff and secretary to the Board of Trustees. From 2017 to 2020, she was Hamilton’s associate director of athletics. In her new role, Merrill will coordinate activities of the senior staff and President’s Office, and advise President Tepper on issues of strategic importance. As secretary to the board, she will plan and implement trustee meetings and advise on policy decisions, board management, and College procedures.
FOR THE 21ST STRAIGHT YEAR, Hamilton has been recognized among the colleges and universities with the most students selected for the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. Thirty-six Hamilton students and graduates applied for the 2024-25 academic year cycle. Of those, 13 were named semi-finalists, six were awarded the grant, and two were selected as alternates. Recipients are pursuing Fulbright English Teaching Assistantships in Peru, Taiwan, the Czech Republic, Germany, and Kazakhstan. n
Shining for Others
IN HIS CLASS & CHARTER DAY remarks in May, Justin Clark, associate professor of philosophy, looked to Socrates for a lesson about what it means to pursue Hamilton’s motto:
“To ‘know thyself’ is to know which values are so central to your flourishing that you would be willing to sacrifice money, reputation, whatever status you might have. This is the lesson that hides beneath our College motto.
“We are surrounded every day by other capable and curious human beings who want to understand each other and how the world works. That’s the fabric of an academic community. If you are truly able to shine, at Hamilton or beyond Hamilton, it will have very little to do with the awards or achievements on your résumé, or the prestige of the college you went to, or the rankings. It will be because you learned how to contribute to a community of this caliber.
“Marcus Aurelius, the ancient Stoic, inspired by Socrates, once said, ‘[He who] does not transmit light [for others], merely serves to create [his] own darkness.’ Let us not create darkness, friends. Let us go out and shine for others. That’s part of what an education at Hamilton should teach us to do.” n
FOOTBALL
Passing the Stick with Pride
ADECADE-AND-A-HALF after powering
Hamilton’s women’s lacrosse to the College’s only team national championship, Kaillie Briscoe Kelly ’09 has returned to the Hill as successor to her former coach and mentor Patty Kloidt.
Kelly just completed her first season, a tough grind through the rugged New England Small College Athletic Conference. She did that while pregnant — she and her husband, D.C. Kelly, welcomed son Cade on May 3 — and the Continentals finished 6-8, improving steadily as the season progressed. The new head coach sees a bright future.
“When I came on my [admission] recruiting visit, I told Patty that we were going to win a national championship together and I meant it,” Kelly said. “My sentiments have not changed in this second chapter, and my ultimate goal is to bring the title back to the Hill.”
With her Princess Leia hairdo and scary face paint, the Orangeville, Ontario, native was a highly skilled, game-wise, fearless, tough-minded, incredibly com-
petitive, and — no joke — intimidating player. A two-time All-American, and three-time Liberty League champion, her teams went 65-12 over four seasons. She holds Hamilton records for goals, assists, and points, and was the wheelhorse of that 2008 NCAA Division III championship team that finished 21-1, including a 13-6 win over Franklin & Marshall in the title game. Nicole Tetreault ’08, Kate Marek ’09, and Jennifer McGowan ’08 also were AllAmericans on a squad loaded with talent.
Kloidt stepped down from the head coaching role last year after going 220-127 with five league championships and 17 post season appearances in 22 seasons. She will continue to teach in Hamilton’s Physical Education Department and help guide event management and other College initiatives until her retirement in June 2026. The former coach is beyond thrilled Kelly is back.
“She had such a love for the game, a unique and special IQ for the game, and she always remained a student of the game,” Kloidt said. “She was always committed to learning her craft and elevating her teammates to see the game as she saw it. She put that team on her back.”
And as coach?
Patty Kloidt (left) has turned the women’s lacrosse coaching whistle over to former player Kaillie Briscoe Kelly.
“She is an incredible teacher,” Kloidt said. “She instills love and enthusiasm for the game with people of all ages. She’ll make it fun. She’ll make the players want to learn their craft the way she did. That is enough to spark the players’ intrinsic motivation. She has the ability to bring that out in people.”
After Hamilton, Kelly built LincolnSudbury High School into a powerhouse, winning a Massachusetts state title and coach of the year honors in 2023. And she and her husband run Central Lacrosse, which has taught the game to hundreds of girls since 2018.
Kelly began playing box lacrosse at age 3 on a boys’ team.
“They call it the ‘medicine game’ for a reason — there is something so special about the feeling you get when you’re around the lacrosse field that is unlike anything else,” she said. “On the field, you are always most successful when you work together, whether it’s on offense or defense, so I think one of my favorite parts of the game is how it instills the importance of teamwork; you genuinely share the successes of the people around you because everyone has a role to play.”
She wasn’t always treated well playing with boys and men, but she learned from them, spending hours in her yard copying their moves. Then, in high school, she was coached by Canadian national teamers Tami Jones and Jessica Brownridge, who worked their players hard but also made the game fun.
“I like to joke around and have a very positive attitude, so that is the environment I like to create on the field,” Kelly said. “My agreement with my team is that I will always work as hard as I can to set them up for success, and in turn, they will give us their best effort and attitude. My ultimate goal is for every player to leave this program having had the same amazing experience that I had. I love this place with all of my
heart and look back on my years here as the stuff dreams are made of. I’m so honored to have the opportunity to create that same experience for this next generation in a place that I love so much.”
Kelly, who holds a psychology degree from Hamilton and a master’s in exercise and sports science from Smith College, knows the deal. The NESCAC is one the best small college conferences in the country, and the competition is fierce.
“I firmly believe that success is a byproduct of having great culture,” she said. “When a team loves each other, has fun every day, and has developed a toughness and ‘no-quit’ attitude, they are impossible to stop, and that is where we are headed.”
The lessons learned in 2008 also will play a role. “We took a lot of pride in what we did,” she said, “and spent countless hours working at it away from practice — whether it was having hard conversations about culture, tough workouts in the gym with Coach [Paul] Adey, hours of wallball on the Dark Side, or getting together to play as much as humanly possible — we were relentlessly dedicated to getting better.”
Mackay Rippey P’12, an assistant on the 2008 staff, and Kalley Greer Friedman ’07, another former Hamilton All-American teammate and good friend from Ontario, are her assistants.
“One step at a time! Our first goal is to finish in the top four in the NESCAC and bring home a championship,” Kelly said. “Once we are able to do that, we will have the poise and experience needed to bring home the NCAA title.” n
— John Pitarresi
’70
AROUND COLLEGE
TOP: Lead Assistant Tammy Rotach, a familiar face at Hamilton’s Mail Center for the past 24 years. BOTTOM: Jade Joyce ’25 processes packages while Anna Hoover ’25 sorts smaller parcels and letters into mail slots.
New Location, Same Friendly Faces
IT'S BEEN ALMOST A YEAR since Hamilton’s Mail Center moved from its tight quarters in Beinecke Student Activities Village to the lower level of Bristol Center. With its two loading docks and nearly four times the space, the new location makes it much easier to accommodate the more than 71,000 packages (you read that right) processed each year. And while boxes from Amazon might outnumber those filled with homemade cookies from Mom, the Mail Center still features student mailboxes because nothing beats a birthday card or handwritten note from home. n
President Obama Takes Stage
FORMER PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA was witty and thoughtful; diplomatic, yet to the point. Those gathered to hear his hour-long candid conversation with Hamilton President Steven Tepper got a sense of how the 44th U.S. president views the current political climate and his thoughts for moving forward.
“It’s been easy during most of our lifetimes to say you are progressive or say you are for social justice or say you’re for free speech and not have to pay a price for it ,” he told the crowd of over 5,000. “And now we’re at one of those moments where it’s not just enough to say you’re for something, you might actually have to do something and possibly sacrifice a bit . ”
The event, held on April 3 in the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House, was the latest in the College’s Sacerdote Great Names Series.
BY NANCY L. FORD
PHOTO
This stone, standing just south of the College Chapel, marks the spot where the original Hamilton-Oneida Academy building once stood.
Built on a Promise
Hamilton’s Reinvigorated Partnership with the Oneida Indian Nation
THOSE ATTENDING HAMILTON’S
2024 Commencement ceremony were the first to witness one of the College’s newest traditions: the reading of the Land Acknowledgment at the start of major institutional events. Co-created with members of the Oneida Indian Nation, the statement both honors this place and reflects a relationship grounded in ongoing collaboration.
“With humility and pride,” it begins, “Hamilton College acknowledges its campus sits on the ancestral homelands of the Oneida Indian Nation.”
The connection between the two institutions dates back to 1793, when Oneida Chief Shenendoah gifted land to the Rev. Samuel Kirkland to bring their shared vision to life: a school where Native and settler youth
could learn together and build mutual understanding through education. That vision, often referred to as the Promise of 1793, led to the founding of the HamiltonOneida Academy, a school built upon Indigenous reciprocity and inclusivity.
Though that vision never came to fruition as intended, and the academy eventually became Hamilton College in 1812, the partnership created a spirit of connection and mutual respect between the Oneida Indian Nation and the College on the Hill. The Land Acknowledgment and the collaborative process that shaped it illustrate how an imperfect past can serve as a guidepost for continued dialogue, responsibility, and shared work moving forward.
CONNECTIONS
A PARTNERSHIP REAFFIRMED
The relationship between Hamilton and the Oneida Indian Nation has included periods of both engagement and quiet. A pivotal moment came in 2016 with a meeting between then President David Wippman and Ray Halbritter, Oneida Indian Nation representative and CEO of Turning Stone Enterprises. That conversation led to the establishment of a liaison role in 2022 that has helped facilitate communication and partnership. Around the same time, under the leadership of Dean of Faculty Ngoni Munemo, the College made establishing an academic program in American Indian and Indigenous Studies a strategic priority.
As momentum continued to build, Hamilton welcomed Brianna Burke to its faculty in 2023 in a newly created role: faculty fellow in Native American and Indigenous Studies. In the ensuing months, Burke was among those who worked with members of the Oneida Indian Nation on a variety of significant milestones that exemplify the depth and richness of this partnership, including the development of the Land Acknowledgment.
“This renewed partnership is grounded in shared history, mutual respect, and a commitment to education and cultural understanding,” said Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs Nathan Goodale, who co-leads the initiative with
Hamilton College and the Oneida Indian Nation
are uniquely positioned to advance narratives that challenge dominant historical frameworks, highlight Indigenous perspectives, and inspire thoughtful dialogue about the future of America.
Burke. “Hamilton College and the Oneida Indian Nation are uniquely positioned to advance narratives that challenge dominant historical frameworks, highlight Indigenous perspectives, and inspire thoughtful dialogue about the future of America.”
Hamilton invited Halbritter to speak at Convocation in 2024, where he welcomed new students to Oneida sovereign lands. As part of his visit, he presented President Steven Tepper with an Oneida Indian Nation flag, a symbol of friendship and shared commitment that has since been displayed at College ceremonies.
FROM VISION TO ACKNOWLEDGMENT
While many institutions draft land acknowledgments internally, Hamilton’s is different. The statement was co-created with the Oneida Indian Nation through months of dialogue, reflection, and revision. Language experts from the Nation provided written and spoken translations in the Oneida language, a gesture that both deepened the statement’s meaning and offered important educational value.
As part of the process, the College hosted open meetings where students, faculty, and staff were invited to reflect on the statement and consider how Hamilton could uphold the commitments within it. One key suggestion — from both the Oneida Indian Nation and guidelines from the Native Governance Center — was to clearly state how the College would act on the values the statement expresses. That feedback informed a key line in the final version:
“Through sharing our community and educational resources, we are committed to building a sustainable partnership with the Oneida Indian Nation and the Haudenosaunee peoples.”
A GRANT FOR A NEW MINOR
In early 2025, Hamilton received a $750,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to support the launch of an interdisciplinary program in American Indian and Indigenous Studies (AIIS). The minor — to be offered beginning in the 2025–26 academic year — will invite students to engage deeply with Indigenous histories, knowledge systems, and contemporary issues through a liberal arts lens.
The AIIS program builds upon Hamilton’s foundational relationship with the Oneida Indian Nation and reflects a broader commitment to inclusive, placebased education. Students will explore urgent questions about land, identity, sovereignty, environmental justice, and decolonization — key issues that intersect
Left: A 1779 engraved map shows the Kirkland Patent land, upon which Hamilton College would be built.
Below: A rendering of the HamiltonOneida Academy building.
Below: Among the flags displayed at Commencement are those representing the home countries of the student body,
meaningfully with nearly every academic discipline.
In addition to coursework, the initiative will support cultural programming, research collaborations, and new opportunities for student learning. Elements include:
• Hiring two new faculty members specializing in Native and Indigenous studies
• Annual grants for existing faculty to develop new courses
• Summer research projects
• Student internships
• Annual public events co-hosted with the Oneida Indian Nation
Programs beyond the classroom, which are being developed by Hamilton to align with the College's academic goals, will begin with an Indigenous Film Festival in 2025, followed by a Truth and Reconciliation program in 2026 and a Resilience and Sovereignty speaker series in 2027. The grant will also fund a new AIIS program coordinator — ideally a member of the Oneida Indian Nation — to support the partnership and help guide the program’s direction.
A LIVING COMMITMENT
Through these efforts, Hamilton is not only honoring its history; it is continuing to build a more thoughtful and inclusive academic community, one shaped by relationships that evolve over time.
“Our enduring collaboration not only honors the past,” the College’s Land Acknowledgment concludes, “but also sets the stage for a future in which education, cultural exchange, and mutual respect thrive between our communities and inspire generations to come.”
CONNECTIONS
As the Baccalaureate speaker for the Class of 2025, Halbritter again addressed the Hamilton community, reflecting on the College’s legacy. As he acknowledged that the Hamilton-Oneida Academy ultimately did not fulfill its original mission, he emphasized that does not make it a failure.
“While the vision laid out for this institution may not have been realized in its earliest moments, they are more clearly seen in the incredible legacy Hamilton College continues to build today,” Halbritter said. “That is something both Chief Shenendoah
and Samuel Kirkland would have found especially meaningful. One of the guiding principles we follow as Oneida people is to do all things for the benefit of the Seventh Generation. We know that our actions and choices have a far-reaching impact and seek to always act with our grandchildren’s grandchildren in mind. The evolution of this College from its humble beginnings and the community it is building today serve as a prime example of this kind of vision.” • — Meg Bernier Keniston and Vige Barrie
Top: Ray Halbritter, Oneida Indian Nation representative and CEO of Turning Stone Enterprises, delivered Hamilton’s 2025 Baccalaureate address.
the Oneida Indian Nation, and Hamilton College.
CONNECTIONS
Hamilton College Land
Acknowledgment
Scan to hear the Land Acknowledgment recited in Oneida, and read the full story behind its origin.
Students Investigate Gun Violence in Utica
IN FEBRUARY, the Levitt Center released “Youth Gun Violence in Utica, New York: Causes, Context, and Prevention,” which represented the culmination of the Fall 2024 Justice Lab, an interdisciplinary initiative involving 16 students across four integrated courses.
The overall conclusion: “Youth gun violence in Utica is a multifaceted issue driven by economic instability, social inequities, and cultural norms that normalize aggression and firearm use. Addressing this crisis requires a comprehensive approach, including economic revitalization, enhanced educational opportunities, and community-oriented policing reforms.”
The Justice Lab was conceived in early 2024 following a meeting of Levitt Center staff and
Utica Mayor Michael Galime and Chief of Staff Michael Gentile. It became evident that the city could use help assessing the troubling trend of youth gun violence. Levitt Center Director and Professor of Government Frank Anechiarico ’71, Professor of Philosophy Marianne Janack, Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies Jeff McArn, and retired Utica Judge Ralph Eannace each created a distinct academic course addressing the issue. They also directed students in extensive research, including interviews with local law enforcement, judicial officials, probation officers, and community members.
Each of the 16 students investigated a specific aspect of the gun control issue, from social and economic mobility to student mental health; from juvenile justice to ghost guns. They also analyzed data gathered from a public opinion survey conducted by Hamilton in collaboration with Colgate University’s Upstate Institute and Zogby Analytics.
The final report identifies key factors contributing to youth gun violence in Utica — including economic hardship, deindustrialization, residential segregation, and intergenerational trauma — and offers a
long list of recommendations sourced from around the country. A few of these include:
n Revive gun violence prevention grants and provide at-risk youth with employment opportunities.
n Provide restorative justice and traumainformed training for police officers and employ that training to prevent excessive force incidents.
n Expand alternative sentencing programs.
n Establish permanent school resource officers trained in adolescent mental health and conflict resolution.
n Implement a Neighborhood Investment Fund, modeled after Chicago’s Neighborhood Opportunity Fund, to support businesses in highcrime areas.
n Enhance community policing strategies to improve cooperation and crime reporting.
n Disrupt gun trafficking networks and enhance gun tracking technologies.
“The key takeaway from the report is that this is a very complicated problem that involves a number of different institutions,” Anechiarico told the Utica Observer-Dispatch, adding that the findings are broadly applicable and the recommendations could be used by any city. “We found there’s a great deal of anxiety surrounding [youth gun violence] and a high level of people with personal experiences with gun violence. Between one’s own family and their circle of friends, 30% of our respondents from a scientifically representative sample had some experience with gun violence. It’s remarkable and troubling.
“This is a prominent problem in people’s lives,” Anechiarico added. “These solutions we discuss are important beyond just Utica.” n
Robert Neithart '26 talks with Utica Police Captain Stanley Fernalld at a Justice Lab poster session.
Scan to read the full report.
ZACK STANEK
This Just In…
Read about some of the latest research by Hamilton faculty.
ECONOMICS
In “Political Advertising and Consumer Sentiment: Evidence from U.S. Presidential Elections” (European Journal of Political Economy, Jan. 2025), professors Cody Couture and Ann Owen reported on a study that analyzed data on consumer sentiment and U.S. political ads. Their results show that ads during presidential election cycles have a significant impact. “In particular, a higher intensity of positive political ads with an economic theme makes consumers more optimistic about their own current and future financial positions and the future state of the economy,” they wrote. “Our findings also suggest that political ads impact sentiment through an emotional appeal rather than by providing information to viewers about economic fundamentals.”
ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
Using artificial intelligence, Assistant Professor Heather Kropp mapped vegetation using historical and contemporary high-resolution satellite imagery. She found that variations in the composition of shrubs and trees are not reflected in coarser-scale satellite imagery commonly used to document changes in vegetation throughout the Arctic-Boreal region. Her results, reported in “Heterogeneous longterm changes in larch forest and shrubland cover in the Kolyma lowland are not captured by coarser-scale greening trends” (Environmental Research: Ecology, Jan. 21, 2025), will contribute to understanding ecological changes concurrent with rapidly rising temperatures in the region.
ABIOLOGY
ssistant Professor Ariel Kahrl and collaborators from Trinity University published an article in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society (April 2025) titled “The evolution of testis architecture and sperm size in Anolis lizards.” Sperm is one of the most diverse cell types in animals, and many factors that shape diversification remain unknown. In this study, Kahrl examined how testes morphology impacts sperm size to understand the process of diversification of sperm across 20 species of lizards. She found that sperm had longer flagella in species with larger seminiferous tubules (found within the testes). Typically, larger animals and species with high rates of multiple mating have larger testes. This suggests that many factors may influence sperm size and shape.
HISPANIC STUDIES
As part of his research on literary representations of indigenous workers, Assistant Professor Jack MartínezArias looked at how writers from mining communities in Junín, Peru, addressed pollution, occupational diseases, and the transformation of the Andean landscape — topics largely overlooked by the dominant, urban-based indigenismo. By focusing on lesser-known authors like Gamaniel Blanco, Mateu Cueva, and Clodoaldo Espinosa Bravo, Martínez-Arias underscores the importance of local voices in understanding early 20th-century Peruvian literature. His findings appear in “The Other Indigenismo: Voices from Peru’s Mining Centers (1920–1940)” (Romance Quarterly, March 6, 2025).
HSOCIOLOGY
igher levels of anticipatory stress — worries about things that may or may never come to pass — are linked to elevated depressive symptoms and feelings of anger, according to research conducted by Associate Professor Matthew Grace. Using national survey data, he found that anticipatory stressors are often rooted in one’s identity (e.g., being a person of color) and social role (e.g., being a parent). Further, “Black and Latino Americans are more likely to worry about economic insecurity, traumatic events, and discrimination compared to white Americans; LGB and trans people expressed greater trepidations about discrimination relative to straight and cisgender individuals; and women worry more than men about economic precarity and traumatic events.”
His study, outlined in “Into the Unknown: Anticipatory Stressors in the Stress Process Paradigm” (Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Dec. 2024), also identified resources to offset the effects of anticipatory stress on mental health. For instance, people with greater self-esteem and those with a stronger belief they can control things that happen to them tend to fare better. Grace found it surprising, however, that more social support — people to rely on during times of need — is generally minimally effective.
“Anticipatory stress explains more of the variation in psychological outcomes than most other traditional measures of stress, suggesting it’s an important piece of the puzzle when it comes to understanding mental health disparities,” he concluded. n
See hamilton.edu/news for more on these and other examples of faculty research.
My Favorite Film? Wait, Let Me Think!
BY SCOTT MACDONALD
WHEN SOMEONE LEARNS that I’m a film history professor, the question, “What’s your favorite film?” is rarely long in coming. It’s usually asked with a slight touch of embarrassment. Maybe the question feels a bit intrusive or silly. But it does seem to be a “thing” these days. Just recently, students in Hamilton’s film club were asking a range of faculty to name their four favorite films.
I often fumble at a response to the question. For a decade or two, I’d offer one or another snide response: “Well, I guess that would be Larry Gottheim’s Fog Line!” Fog Line (1970) is an 11-minute, silent, single shot of fog gradually clearing over a small dell to reveal, part way through in the bottom third of the frame, two barely visible
horses slowly grazing across a pasture.
In the last few years, I’ve come to respond with a question of my own: “My favorite film, for what?” Another snide, maybe pretentious, response, but at least one that suggests the many ways in which cinema can matter to us.
Certainly, judging from the fact that I paid to see it three times (and snuck into a fourth screening!), A Complete Unknown is a current favorite not only because I enjoyed revisiting Bob Dylan’s career — and seeing Timothée Chalamet’s remarkable performance — but also because the film feels like a mythic metaphor for a long-ago crucial change in my personal/professional life. It was also fun to be in a theater with so many moviegoers my age. Dylan’s long career has been one of the soundtracks of our lives. Indeed, his “Gotta Serve Somebody” helped me determine the focus of my life as a film scholar.
If I think about films that transformed my sense of what cinema can do, one favorite is the original King Kong (1933), which I experienced in its theatrical re-release in the early 1950s. My parents had
suggested I go see it alone at a downtown theater, but told me nothing about it. At first, I was bored. Nothing much seemed to be happening as the ship sailed toward a tropical destination, though for some reason, the filmmakers who’d hired the ship were teaching Ann Darrow how to scream! Pretty weird.
Then the boat arrives at Skull Island; the natives steal Ann and take her through an immense gate in a giant wall to tie her to a sacrificial altar. The natives run back through the gate, leaving Ann alone. On top of the wall, a huge gong is struck — then TOTAL SILENCE. The gong is struck again. Suddenly, a strange noise! I’m half standing, ready to run out of the theater, barely suppressing the urge to yell, “Get out while there’s still time!” And then there’s Kong himself, giant on the big screen, tearing through the trees, releasing Ann from the altar, and carefully carrying her — and me! — into a new cinematic world.
I’ve been through many cine-transformative moments. Hating Fellini’s 8 1/2 when I saw it as an undergraduate in 1963, then loving it when I saw it as a graduate
Scott MacDonald, at home in the projection booth.
student a decade later, taught me I could learn to admire a film. Seeing Buster Keaton’s The General in 1970, when it had finally become available after decades in the dark, made clear that Keaton was and remains not just a funny comedian but one of the greatest American directors.
In 1972, I was appalled by my first program of “avant-garde” films, only to realize that, despite my fury, I’d just learned what film theory was. And, very recently, finding my way to Max Tohline’s video essay A Supercut of Supercuts (2021) online transformed my sense of what media scholarship, including my own, could be.
The truth is that my actual favorite is not a film but the “meta-film” I construct when I teach Introduction to the History and Theory of Cinema. Last fall, the course included 103 films, each of them a favorite for my teaching — Chaplin’s The Kid, Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera, Fritz Lang’s M, Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon, Hitchcock’s Psycho, Bob Fosse’s Cabaret, Bill Greaves’ Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, Anthony McCall’s Line Describing a Cone, Laura Poitras’ Citizenfour, Chloé Galibert-Laîné/Kevin B. Lee’s Reading // Binging // Benning, and yes, of course, Gottheim’s Fog Line. My hope is that this slowly evolving meta-film is as revelatory for my students as it continues to be for me — an immersion in an art form so rich, so engaging, that we can never fully comprehend its ongoing transformations and its various ways of transforming us. n
Scott MacDonald is professor of cinema and media studies and director of Hamilton’s F.I.L.M. series.
Fighting the Flu
THE THING WITH INFLUENZA is that it mutates a lot, very quickly,” said biochemistry major Crissy Crespo ’25. “The ultimate goal of scientists studying influenza is to make a universal vaccine. It’s a huge goal, but that’s what we’re trying to help [advance].”
Crespo and Alinur Jaboldinov ’26 spent the spring semester in Saranac Lake, N.Y., as Hamilton’s first participants in the Trudeau Institute’s Biomedical Research Scholars Program. Under the direction of Dr. Deborah Brown, they worked alongside graduate students testing the effectiveness of small molecules, known as adjuvants, in protecting the immune system against lethal Influenza-A doses.
While the program includes five courses designed to develop students’ research skills and understanding of immunology, its shining focus is the intensive immunological research experience.
“[There’s an] importance to being challenged as a real scientist in the demanding, fast-paced nature of research,” Jaboldinov said. “I’ve learned what it means to think and work like a scientist.”
The program concluded with Crespo and Jaboldinov presenting their research — a great warmup for the future. Jaboldinov plans to attend graduate school, while Crespo hopes to become a research technician.
“You have to live [research],” Crespo said. “This program has taught me that I would thrive in this collaborative environment where you’re all thinking about science and constantly learning from each other.” n — Claire Williams ’25
I’m Not Available, But ...
Teachable moments happen everywhere ... even in out-of-office auto-reply messages:
Hi! I’m currently on sabbatical and may be slow to respond to emails. In the meantime, did you know that Hamilton College has a dozen species of small mammals in Rogers Glen? We study these little creatures to better understand how they support the forest food web around them, and to anticipate how climate change and invasive species might alter their biodiversity. Hamilton’s small mammals range from the tiny 2-gram masked shrew to the 200-gram American red squirrel. But the crown jewel of Hamilton’s small mammal community is the southern flying squirrel. These critters love the old-growth hemlock stands in the glen, zipping down to the forest floor to look for their favorite food: mushrooms. Beyond their majestic soaring, scientists learned about five years ago that under UV light, flying squirrel fur fluoresces a bright pink color. We have no idea what purpose, if any, this serves, so we can only assume they’re having glow parties late at night in the forest.
*Dr. Pete Guiden* (he/him/his)
Assistant Professor of Biology
Hamilton College
IT’S SNOW PROBLEM
Unprecedented as far as anyone can recall, Hamilton closed for two days in February due to a lake effect snowstorm that just wouldn’t quit. Some 50 inches of the white stuff blanketed campus throughout the month; average is just over 27. But lest you think campus came to a standstill, think again. February’s College Events Calendar featured 599 happenings — and that list is far from complete. Here are just a few highlights …
Come to this week’s Makerspace Monday and learn how to design, simulate, and render 3D content with Unreal Engine!
Aaron Sanandres ’96, co-founder/CEO of UNTUCKit, grew his clothing brand into a $200M powerhouse. Spencer Newman ’96, president of Newman Medical, has led his family’s medical device company to new heights. Children’s author Lowey Sichol ’96 is on a mission to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs. Brian Hunt ’95, president of Believe Entertainment, is behind the scenes at an Academy and Emmy award-winning studio changing the entertainment landscape. At Entrepeneurship 101, hear their journeys and gain insight into what it takes to turn ambition into achievement. Sponsored by the Career Center.
Cruise over hump day with the basics of indoor cycling while building strength and endurance. Spin Class with Aileen will teach you proper bike setup, correct form and posture, and basic cycling moves.
Blackness in Art: Art History Walk! Celebrate Black History Month through art produced by and about Black artists and Blackness. Docents will lead tours of a selection of works on view; come join the conversation!
Attention sophomores: Join President Tepper and his wife, Dana, for “walking tacos” down the hill at the Davenport House. Sophomore Suppers are a wonderful opportunity to meet President Tepper, tour the president’s home, and mingle with your classmates.
7 8 9 10
Is the deadline to submit your thesis looming? Not sure where to start or how to manage a large writing project? Come to the Writing Center’s Workshop for Thesis Project Management! We will cover determining your argument, setting your schedule, fighting off procrastination, and using your resources.
Student bands will battle it out for a spot to perform at the Class & Charter Day concert. Come check out student performers, get a CAB FebFest: Battle of the Bands shirt, and vote for your favorite.
Will Kaback ’20 will draw on his experience as a journalist at Tangle News to explore five reasons the media has lost our trust and what it can do to earn it back. At the Levitt Center Workshop: Press Bias, we’ll break down examples of bad journalism and media bias, then talk about how to be a smarter news consumer in a politically charged environment.
Tea, the world’s most popular beverage after water, contains hundreds of chemical compounds that contribute to its color, taste, and stimulating effects. In this Chemistry Talk, Michelle Francl, the Frank B. Mallory Professor of Chemistry at Bryn Mawr College and a fellow of the American Chemical Society, will take us on a dive into a cup of tea to discover the rich molecular brew.
Come to the first Common Ground All-Campus Debate! Students, faculty, and staff are invited to debate the resolution “Environmental protections are more important than economic growth.” Coordinated by Common Ground student ambassadors in collaboration with the College Debates and Discourse Alliance, the debate will employ an amended parliamentary format to encourage everyone to participate, to support good faith and accurate disagreement, and to promote better understanding for all. 6 7 8 9 10
Poster illustrations by Sawyer Kron ’25
EDITOR’S NOTE:
With the changing higher education policy landscape making headlines on a near-daily basis, President Steven Tepper sent a message in mid-April to members of the College community, both on and off the Hill. He noted that Hamilton is joining other colleges and universities in efforts to continue to define and defend key principles, especially freedom of expression and academic freedom.
Later in April, Tepper and Dean of Faculty Ngoni Munemo hosted a campus community gathering where the president reiterated those principles and spoke about Hamilton’s overarching mission — creating a community that transforms lives.
“We are a diverse community. We are a complicated community. More than 60 countries are represented, [people] from every socioeconomic background, every religious perspective, every race, every ethnicity, every gender, every sexuality. It takes a lot to figure out how to curate that community so that we trust each other, we can learn together, and we can engage across difference,” he told those gathered. “We are all part of this mission. We are all part of transforming lives. We all wake every day committed to that, so it makes me really sad sometimes to believe that people are telling us that we’re the problem, that higher education is not doing good work in the world. I can’t imagine a better institution designed to do good work in the world. We feel that every day.”
What follows is the message President Tepper shared earlier for those who may have missed it via email.
Higher Education Delivers on the Promise of America
BY PRESIDENT STEVEN TEPPER
Critics of higher education are on the attack with tax proposals, executive orders, and economic sanctions and penalties that could greatly hobble our core mission and jeopardize America’s standing in the world. They argue that college is no longer affordable, especially for the middle class; for others, that our campuses are not open to disagreement and debate, including welcoming conservative ideas about liberty, freedom, community, and markets.
These critiques can be mis leading. For example, data suggests that the real cost of college — after accounting for dramatic increases in financial aid — has actually declined for most families over the past 20 years. And, while some may worry that we are preparing too many disruptors and activists, in reality the vast majority of college students across America are studying traditionally mainstream subjects such as economics, business, engineering, computer science, biology and chemistry, along with literature, religion, and philosophy and art from ancient Greece through today. Many more students graduate from an American college or university
knowing how to draw a supply-and-demand curve than can articulate the important theories of post-colonialism, feminism, or any other critical theory. If the academy is out of balance, it is tilting more in the direction of producing graduates who want to take their place in the current economic order rather than those who are trying to change it. So while we can acknowledge needed reform, we should not abide by distortions and generalizations of who we are and what we do.
Far from being hostile to American values, our colleges and universities embody our founding fathers’ greatest hopes for our democracy. They believed that a new democracy needed new institutions and new ways of organizing itself.
Alexander Hamilton designed and built the nation’s first central bank, established the U.S. Coast Guard, and created public-private partnerships to encourage manufacturing and industry. He also believed colleges and schools were essential to preparing future entrepreneurs and citizens who could contribute to a diverse economy. Hamilton, along with Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin,
and most other founding fathers, believed that education was essential for building prosperity for all and a strong America — and history has proven them to be correct.
Alexander Hamilton believed in diversity and pluralism: He arrived in America as an immigrant; he believed a diverse economy would engender social mobility and opportunity; he was an outspoken critic of slavery; and he was among the only founders who cultivated a relationship with the Jewish community. And, he agreed to be a founding trustee of the Hamilton-Oneida Academy, which later became Hamilton College, endorsing its aspiration, never fully realized, for cultural exchange and reciprocity between settler and indigenous youth.
America, in fact, has been guided by an aspiration for pluralism from the beginning, and this ideal has expanded over the centuries to include more people and more ideas. Our colleges, along with our military, have been critical spaces for helping humans from every imaginable background figure out how to learn together, work together, and build bonds of affection and trust. At Hamilton and many other colleges across America, this is how we practice inclusion and belonging — rejecting discrimination of any kind and advancing the promise of our founders — a pluralistic, creative, and diverse America.
Higher education is often accused of a type of ideological purity around the way certain disciplines approach and critique
Whether you are on the right or the left, a healthy skepticism of power is an act of patriotism. Ultimately, this is our commitment as a college — to give our students the capacity to critique things as they are in order to imagine things as they could be. That act of imagination is core to our American identity.
power. At Hamilton, we have a requirement to take courses that explore “social, structural, and institutional hierarchies” — examining places where power prevents liberty or creates inequality. Asking students to understand power is about the most patriotic thing we can do. Every founding father expressed a critique of power — the power of a landed aristocracy, the power of unchecked government, the power of nobility and wealth, the arbitrary power of a king. Whether you are on the right or the left, a healthy skepticism of power is an act of patriotism. Ultimately, this is our commitment as a college — to give our students the capacity to critique things as they are in order to imagine things as they could be. That act of imagination is core to our American identity.
America’s higher education is the envy of the world and remains the number one destination for international students — contributing close to $50 billion to our economy and generating huge trade surpluses. And more important than direct economic impact, most breakthroughs that have improved our quality of life over the last century — fighting disease, improving crop yields, driving productivity through technological advances, discovering new forms of energy, creating new building materials, and finding new ways to use data to save our planet — can be traced to university-based research. Education is and will remain our surest guarantee of a healthy, competitive and prosperous America.
Alexander Hamilton once wrote, “There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.” Bravery today requires wielding the tools of critique, discernment, and good will to improve our great colleges and universities. Taking a sledgehammer to higher education is not an act of heroism; it is reckless and inconsistent with our founders’ vision for an educated, informed, and pluralistic citizenry. n
Advice from Deanna Durben ’25, who won the Clark Prize in this year’s Public Speaking Competition for the speech “Conviction and Communication: Productive Discourse in Times of Discord ”
Film your practice runs and analyze them to pinpoint things you want to improve on instead of just practicing over and over with no clear goal.
This is a place
where people
hold doors
for one another
— literally and
metaphorically.
It may seem like a small thing, but what are you saying when you hold a door for someone? “I see you, you go first, come with me.”
Allie Ennis ’25, who was selected by her classmates to address the class at Commencement on May 25.
My freshman year, a guy tried to fight us because we woke him. It was 7:20 a.m. He tried to push our senior [who told him], “Your girlfriend bought you a Buffergram, sit down.”
The lack of work cause(d) bills to (pile) up, and (we) were backed up on rent.
One of the respondents to a survey of Utica’s refugees that assessed the impact of COVID-19. The study, conducted by Hamilton researchers, focused on identifying the pandemic’s effects on refugees’ household finances, employment, housing, health, and education.
Luke Struthers ’25 in “Buffergrams: A beloved Hamilton tradition,” an article in the Feb. 20, 2025, Spectator. As is their custom, the Buffers spent Valentine’s Day serenading campus with love songs beginning at 5:30 a.m.
How to Inspire Kids in the Kitchen
What’s the best way to get started cooking with kids?
1
Starting small can make the process feel less daunting. Bring your kids grocery shopping and let them help select ingredients, or peruse cookbooks together and pick a recipe that catches their eye. Farmer’s markets are also a perfect jumping off point; let your kids wander around with a basket and pick out a few items without giving them any direction. You can also try growing herbs or lettuce, both of which sprout up quickly. Kids get such a thrill watching the growing process and are usually more inclined to eat something they’ve had a hand in growing and picking. To engage teenagers, try browsing online with them for new recipes or cooking techniques that pique their interest. Teens also love cooking challenges, recreating a test kitchen vibe like they might see on TV. Trying to make the “best” version of something they love gives you both ample opportunities to spend time together in the kitchen.
A graduate of the French Culinary Institute, Elizabeth Starnes Palmer Califano ’11 teaches culinary skills to aspiring cooks of all ages. With her background as a private chef for families and as a mother to Holden, 7, and Maren, 4, she has firsthand experience with the transformative benefits of cooking with kids. With school break upon us, we asked her to share ideas for how to get kids involved in the kitchen.
What are a few kidfriendly recipe ideas?
2
Kids of all ages love customization options to help them feel in charge and give them the agency they crave. Quesadillas or build your own taco bowls are perfect for this; set out a spread together and let them run wild with all the fillings and toppings. Build your own pizzas also allow for customization. You can make your own pizza dough and lean into the science aspect of cooking; they love kneading the dough, watching it rise, and seeing something delicious taking shape out of a few humble ingredients.
What are the benefits of getting kids involved in the kitchen?
3
In the short term, involving kids flexes their adventure muscles and can help mitigate picky eating. I also see cooking with kids as a dual-purpose activity. Instead of doing a craft project that inevitably ends up in the trash, you get something delicious to eat as well as an educational, confidence-boosting activity. Time in the kitchen together also helps children develop fine motor skills, learn mathematical concepts through measuring, enhance reading comprehension through following recipes, and build confidence through creating something delicious. Long-term, learning to cook for yourself, and eventually for your family and friends, is a powerful tool for nourishment and self-care.
Cooking with kids can feel frustrating. Do you have tips to help mitigate that?
4
As triggering as it can sometimes feel, let them make the big mess. Let them crack the eggs, even if the shells get everywhere (always crack eggs into a separate small bowl to avoid ruining the whole recipe!). Let them add all the ingredients even if some end up on the counter (just sweep them back into the bowl!). It gives them confidence and a sense of responsibility, and makes them feel so trusted to have a more “grown-up” task. I admit that sometimes I have to avert my eyes to stop myself from jumping in and preventing the mess, but it’s always worth it when the kids walk away feeling proud and accomplished.
DRIVING TECH INNOVATION
BY Michael Blanding
Since the launch of the World Wide Web, Hamiltonians have been at the forefront of digital entrepreneurship, creating and funding a number of tech companies — perhaps you’ve heard of a few.
ILLUSTRATION BY Patti Blau
EThe illustration featured on the previous two pages hints at a few of the companies Hamilton alumni have had a hand in developing.
Clockwise from left:
Listening to a favorite band on Spotify; settling in to watch a movie on Netflix; working up a sweat with Peloton; cooking while connecting on LinkedIn; checking that homework essay for errors with Grammarly; and shopping for a bigger house on Zillow.
VEN AT HAMILTON, Marc Randolph ’81 was a serial entrepreneur — launching a new outing club, starting a humor magazine, and staging a freshman class play. “It was the kind of place where you could take those creative risks and still have a dorm bed to go back to,” he said. “I learned how to ask for money and enlist people to help me. By the time I started doing it for real, I’d already been doing it for four years at school.”
Randolph went on to cofound the streaming platform Netflix, one of the most successful digital companies today. He’s one of dozens of Hamiltonians who have parlayed their liberal arts education into a technology startup or venture capital firm as digital entrepreneurs from the earliest days of the web to the new frontiers of artificial intelligence. Alumni have played roles in launching and growing Zillow, LinkedIn, PayPal, Peloton, Spotify, Grammarly, and other popular apps on our home screens, as well as other lesser-known digital entities.
“As our late great economics professor Sidney Wertimer used to say, ‘Hamilton trains you for nothing and prepares you for everything,’” said Dan Nye ’88. Skills developed on College Hill — such as resourcefulness and adaptability — are ideal
for the innovation economy, which is constantly changing and growing as new technology platforms come online. Nye started working at Dell when it was just a startup in Austin, Texas, before going on to become an executive at Intuit and Advent Software. In 2007, he took on the role of CEO of LinkedIn. Over five years, he transformed the company from a résumé-posting site to a vibrant business-oriented social network.
“I felt well equipped to understand and engage with technical issues because I’d been prepared to break down problems and think critically and analytically,” Nye said. “Every organization needs people who can communicate clearly and concisely and persuasively, and that’s especially needed in a technical environment.”
As a Hamilton trustee, Nye has been a prime mover behind a new $50-million, 41,000-square-foot innovation center set to open next to Burke Library in 2027. The bright and airy building will provide a dedicated home for the Computer Science Department as well as makerspaces and technologically advanced classrooms. In addition to meeting the explosion of student demand for technology classes, the center will encourage faculty to integrate computing and artificial intelligence into lessons from biology to art history, better equipping the next generation of digital entrepreneurs to follow in the footsteps of alumni who already have shaped the industry.
BIRTHING A REVOLUTION
“I just happened to be at the right place at the right time, and took advantage of it,” said Blake Darcy ’78, who was working at brokerage firm DLJ in the late 1980s when one of the first internet browser companies, Prodigy, came calling. Darcy, who saw how difficult it was to get customers information about the market in real time so they could
make informed decisions, immediately recognized the internet as a way to do that. The problem was convincing the rest of the financial industry of the wisdom of giving customers the wheel.
“They thought you should really have a broker who understood the market and used the research of the firm — the idea someone was going to place a trade over a personal computer seemed far-fetched,” he said.
Darcy persevered, founding DLJdirect and offering real-time brokerage information to customers through Prodigy and later America Online (AOL); by the time the web came along in the mid-1990s, other financial companies were scrambling to catch up, starting an advertising war, and Darcy’s firm pivoted to the high end of the market. Its initial public offering (IPO) in 1999 was the second largest internet IPO at the time.
Darcy credits the communication and critical thinking skills he learned in English and philosophy classes at Hamilton, as well as a semester he spent in Washington, D.C., as a government major, with helping him make the positive case for his pioneering online brokerage firm, which set the stage for E*Trade, Robin Hood, and other firms to follow.
“Who would have said I was going to run the largest online commerce company in the country?” Darcy said — after all, when he came to Hamilton, online commerce didn’t even exist. “What you need to succeed is flexible persistence, because things change quickly, and you have to be able to move from one thing to another, but at the same time stick with your vision.”
Darcy has been back to campus to mentor students for the entrepreneurial Hamilton Pitch Competition — Hamilton’s answer to Shark Tank — as well as recruiting other successful alumni for an education series to help train participants.
One of those he brought in to help was Randolph, who started his career in direct marketing and was in his 30s by the time
Every organization needs people who can communicate clearly and concisely and persuasively, and that’s especially needed in a technical environment.
the internet started taking off. He immediately recognized it as an opportunity to reach people with an unprecedented level of personalization — a kind of “direct marketing on steroids.” By 1997, he was collaborating with computer scientist Reed Hastings to create a company to ship DVDs through the mail for rental, getting the jump on video store giant Blockbuster with the new format and allowing people to stack rentals online in a queue and mail them back and forth without late fees.
From the beginning, the company pioneered a matching algorithm it called Cinematch to recommend movies to users, the precursor to now ubiquitous recommender engines all over the internet. Randolph envisioned a day when the company could deliver films through digital download, but never imagined streaming media as Netflix and companies ranging from Hulu to Peacock do today. He knew the company had succeeded when he read
a clue in The New York Times crossword puzzle for “service with a queue.” “It was a seven-letter word with an X at the end,” he remembered. “I said, ‘Oh my God, it’s actually Netflix in The New York Times.’”
Since leaving Netflix in 2003, Randolph has served as a board member for more than a dozen other companies and organizations, including Hamilton, where he has returned several times to mentor students. “Working with students is a tremendous source of energy for me,” he said. “They have the right blend of talent and ambition, but still have a lot of flexibility as they harbor all these dreams of making their ideas real.”
TRANSFORMING MEDIA AND FINANCE
Greg Schwartz ’94 also started out working in advertising, selling one the first ad campaigns on AOL. He soon leapt into digital media, working for Yahoo! and CNNMoney. com before joining startup real estate site Zillow as vice president of sales in 2007. “They were looking for a business person to figure out how to monetize the site,” he said.
In one of his first endeavors, Schwartz asked for a single software engineer, and the chairman told him to hire 20. “It taught me the West Coast attitude toward product development, which is all about taking big swings,” he said. Schwartz rose to become president of Zillow’s media and marketplace business before leaving in 2020 to found Tomo, a company that aims to use automation and artificial intelligence to streamline the mortgage industry and overcome customer frustrations on closing properties.
“There’s a formula my friends and I use, which is to look for massive markets, where customers feel like they are being taken advantage of, and in which the incumbent is overcharging for service,” Schwartz said. “You might have the chance of building something big.”
He described the first few years as both joyful and harrowing. “As an entrepreneur, you are responsible for all the wins and losses — and we had no idea whether it was going to work out,” he said. His efforts have paid off, however, as the company has raised $130 million in investment funding to put it on track to soon be one of the nation’s largest mortgage companies. Schwartz’s classmate Samantha Skey ’94, a comparative literature major, started at a New York literary agency after Hamilton before jumping ship to begin working in digital media in the late 1990s. “I didn’t even know how to use email when I first started,” she remembered, but she quickly learned her way around technology working for companies including CNET, where she was embedded in early internet startup culture, with “a dog and a bunk bed” in the office. After stints at Disney and a clean tech company, she joined startup blogging company SheKnows as chief marketing officer in 2013.
Skey has since helped it grow into SHE Media, a conglomerate of 1,000 sites focused on women’s health and parenting, where she now serves as CEO. Having worked at the Women’s Center and volunteering for a rape crisis counseling organization while at Hamilton, she was drawn to the company’s mission supporting women, who are often neglected as an audience online. At the same time, data shows women over 40 make up one of the most lucrative demographics when it comes to advertising, allowing the company to be profitable as well. It now attracts some 75 million monthly visitors.
While at Hamilton, Andy Berman ’06 met future Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who happened to be friends with his roommate Seth Coburn ’06. Four years after graduating, Berman joined Facebook as one of the first employees in its New York ad office. He thrived in the early days of the company, when young people in hoodies and flipflops were closing multimillion-dollar ad deals.
“It was full of really smart and creative people who did not belong in a suit-andtie environment,” remembered Berman, who closed the company’s first deals over $10 million with Walmart and American Express. “We were built around this narrative that there’s this new thing called social media that is growing faster than any media technology ever has — and if you invest in it early, you will have a huge head start relative to your competitors.”
Over the next decade, he watched as the company grew into a multi-billion-dollar company, and by 2020, he was head of audience network business across the Americas. He’s since gone on to Glade Brook Capital, a venture capital firm that invests in established companies to take them to the next level. Berman has used his expertise in strategy and finance to advise companies such as Stripe, Instacart, and Indian ecommerce site Zepto. “I spend a lot of time with founders, helping them think through the evolution they need to get from the $15 million they are making today to $150 million in the future,” he said.
Helping businesses prosper in a different way, Rezaan Daniels ’07 worked for a number of companies helping develop sustainable enterprises overseas before founding his own firm, Finvx, in 2019. Originally from South Africa, Daniels saw a gap in the market when it came to investing in overseas companies, often leaving them struggling to obtain working capital.
“The number one reason small businesses fail isn’t lack of profitability, it’s
CRAFTING A NEW INTELLIGENCE
[Facebook] was full of really smart and creative people who did not belong in a suit-and-tie environment.
running out of cash while they wait 90 days to get paid,” he said. Finvx bridges that gap with a platform that allows it to pay companies in advance, and then collect directly from their customers, taking a portion of the sale.
Daniels was a world politics and government major at Hamilton but also worked in the library where he would read old copies of MIT Technology Review; for spring break his freshman year, he and some friends bypassed Fort Lauderdale to visit Silicon Valley — they still jokingly refer to Hamilton as “Ham Tech.” However, it was the anthropology classes he took that gave him the versatility to speak across cultures both internationally and within the firm.
“When you are bridging finance and technology, it’s really important to figure out the storytelling piece,” he said. “If we are in a finance meeting, we need to speak the language of finance; if it’s a tech call, we need to speak that lingo. You can have a great, innovative solution, but if you are not able to get people on board with the story, you are not going to succeed.”
Not surprisingly, many of the newer startups that Hamilton alumni are involved with focus on the use of artificial intelligence (AI), which has transformed the tech landscape in just a few years with an explosion of generative AI such as ChatGPT and other technologies. Unlike some Hamilton entrepreneurs who started in the humanities and transitioned into tech, Indraneel Das ’94 took the opposite route, studying mathematics and computer science and working as a data analyst for IBM and ExxonMobil before moving into the world of digital finance.
After earning an MBA at Columbia, he founded Pearl Brook Capital Management in 2014, focused on finding hidden gems in emerging markets. In 2021, he launched a new company, MQ Technologies, that combines AI and asset management to artificially mimic the investment strategy of a particular trader by converting their market decisions into data AI can use. The firm is working to offer off-the-shelf products based on the strategy of well-known investors such as Warren Buffett and Bill Ackman, as well as with investment managers who want to optimize their own strategies.
At the same time, Das is raising seed funding for a second startup, Multiplicity Solutions, which hopes to transform education using AI. Unlike other firms looking to replace teachers with AI platforms, he said, the company would help teachers use AI to supplement their teaching in order to reach more students.
Michael Blanding is a journalist whose pieces have appeared in The New York Times, WIRED, Smithsonian, Slate, The Nation, and The Boston Globe Magazine. He is the author of several books, including The Map Thief: The Gripping Story of an Esteemed Rare-Map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps (2014), which was a New York Times bestseller and an NPR Book of the Year.
“A teacher can essentially clone herself, training her AI to teach lessons and answer questions, and reach six to 10 times the number of students,” he said. The company could help solve both the shortage of teachers and allow teachers to be paid more adequately for their skills. Initially targeting the homeschooling market, Das eventually envisions building a school that would integrate teachers with AI, to allow students to chart their own path through their studies with teacher support.
Sam Reider ’14 has been applying AI to transform the field of behavioral health counseling as vice president of engineering at the startup Charlie Health. The company focuses on intensive outpatient therapy in which patients are participating in over 10 hours a week of individual and group therapy, dealing with problems of scarcity and high expense through a virtual environment.
A computer science major at Hamilton, Reider previously worked at electronic health record company Practice Fusion, where he found the writing skills he gained in college came in handy as he tested code. “Whenever you find a bug, you have to write a ticket describing it, and I started gaining some clout within the organization, because they were like, these bug tickets are amazing,” he remembered.
After joining Charlie Health in 2021 as the first software engineer, he has since grown a team of 50 engineers, transitioning from a system using Zoom calls and spread-
sheets to a fully integrated platform that connects therapists and patients with a click of a button. Not only can the system offer therapy with more convenience and lower cost, he said, but it also uses AI to summarize group sessions and provide notes for therapists they can consult in real-time during a session to offer better service.
“We have this great opportunity to give care providers superpowers,” Reider said. “By building better technology, we help care teams be better at their jobs and deliver better outcomes.”
At Microsoft, Jeremy Mathurin ’16 is using AI to improve efficiency in the public sector as part of a team rolling out the new AI companion CoPilot starting late last year. After Hamilton, he worked at Deloitte Consulting, where he used robotics and automation to help government agencies do their jobs better. Microsoft was his “dream company” to work for — a giant tech company that nonetheless thrives by working with partnerships rather than trying to own every piece of its ecosystem. Despite being at a huge company, Mathurin has been able to pursue innovation as an “intrapreneur,” employing almost a startup mentality with the AI team.
“There’s a lot of pressure for government to operate more efficiently and do more with less,” he said. “Generative AI is one of those tools that can help organizations do more with more, improving efficiency without having to necessarily spend more or develop a lot of new skills.”
Its free product, CoPilot Chat, allows government workers to write prompts, similar to ChatGPT, but it protects their data, so that content and queries provided are not used to train the model. Its paid product, 365 CoPilot, is integrated into Microsoft’s Office applications, helping summarize emails on Outlook, draft documents in Word, or perform data analytics in Excel.
At age 30, Mathurin is responsible for overseeing work with government agencies
in the entire eastern half of the country. “It all starts with the foundational skills and mindset from Hamilton,” he said. “Even with things like generative AI, having the ability to think critically is not going out of vogue. Those critical thinking skills have allowed me to be a better leader, to communicate, to be persuasive, and to translate between disciplines. That all came from Hamilton.” n
NAME-DROPPING
Many Hamiltonians work in the digital tech space. Here are just a few others involved in companies that have become household names …
• Coby Berman ’12 — Co-founder and COO of the geolocation platform Radar; formerly with mParticle and Foursquare.
It all starts with the foundational skills and mindset from Hamilton. Even with things like generative AI, having the ability to think critically is not going out of vogue.
• Woody Marshall ’90 — General partner, TCV; involved with investments in GoFundMe, Instacart, Peloton, SeatGeek, Spotify, and others.
• Abby Homer Reider ’16 — Head of corporate communications, Figma; former global corporate and financial communications lead, DoorDash.
• Phil Sanderson ’90 — Managing partner, Griffin Gaming Partners; investor in Discord, Phoenix Labs, Vivox, Triller, Funzio, and more.
• Jack Selby ’96 — Managing director, Thiel Capital; one of the first employees at PayPal.
• Ware Sykes ’99 — CEO, Seasoned (professional social network for hospitality workers); former CEO, Nowait, acquired by Yelp in 2017.
• Brian Truesdale ’92 — Chairman of global technology banking, capital markets, and advisory, Citigroup; former global head of software investment banking, JPMorgan.
A rendering of Hamilton’s Innovation Center, situated between Burke Library and Taylor Science Center, scheduled to open in 2027.
DIGITAL INNOVATION
Preparing the next generations of digital entrepreneurs, computer scientists, and all other students whose paths after Hamilton will inevitably involve the use of emerging technology — that’s the goal of the College’s multi-faceted digital fluency initiative, Digital Hamilton.
Serving as its headquarters will be the Innovation Center, a $50-million, 41,000-square-foot facility now under construction and expected to open in early 2027. The new building, strategically located between Burke Library and Taylor Science Center, will create a hub for digital research and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Today’s college students are digital natives. They can’t remember a time without the internet, smartphones, or social media. Yet the skills necessary to succeed in technology-driven careers in business, healthcare, government, research, and many other fields require more than proficiency in using digital devices and software. Employers want problem solvers who can think critically, analyze data, and create in
the digital space. That requires individuals to navigate, understand, and engage in the digital world effectively and responsibly.
Trustee Dan Nye ’88, P’24, along with his wife, Meagan Knuetter Nye ’90, has been a lead donor and visionary for the Innovation Center. A digital entrepreneur known for his innovative approach to business strategy and technology-driven growth, Nye imagines a flexible, high-energy space that fosters brainstorming.
“Not every college has a faculty eager to take advantage of the many possibilities that come with a broad technology facility like we’ve designed the Innovation Center to be, but Hamilton does,” Nye said when the project was announced last spring.
“These are bright, energetic scholars who are at the top of their respective fields and could have done anything, and they chose Hamilton because they love to teach. They get excited about creating and innovating alongside their students and colleagues. The center will give them even more opportunities to do that.” n
FEATURES OF THE INNOVATION CENTER
A New Home for Computer Science
Currently located in Taylor Science Center, Hamilton’s Computer Science Department has experienced a steady increase in interest and demand. Nearly 40 percent of students elect to take Introduction to Computer Science to learn fundamental digital skills that can be applied in any discipline. Upon moving to the Innovation Center, the department will introduce additional hardware, plus new software and coding options. An electronics lab and robotics lab are planned where students can learn how software interfaces with the physical world, from advanced manufacturing technology to smart houses.
Where Makers Make
Expanding on the popular makerspace in Burke Library, a second makerspace in the Innovation Center will allow students to prototype using electronics and robotics; resin-based 3D printers; and metalworking and woodworking tools such as a CNC router and milling machine. In the AR/VR studio, students will experiment with 360 video capture, photogrammetry, and 3D scanning for creating interactive digital worlds.
The west entrance of the Innovation Center will link the new facility with Taylor Science Center.
• Mixing It Up
The center’s expansive atrium or “mixer hub” will host small, informal interactions and collaboration as well as presentations and larger brainstorming sessions. Among the atrium’s planned features are bleacher seating, a digital gallery, and a hybrid teaching and meeting space.
• Teaching and Learning
In addition to multiple open areas for collaboration, the center will feature two flexible classrooms, 11 labs, a seminar room, and 10 offices with dedicated tutorial space.
• Bringing the Outside In
The center’s prominent glass façades and interior glass panels will immerse the space in natural light, creating an approachable and inviting environment.
• Innovation Meets Sustainability
Geothermal heating and cooling and all-electric systems; radiant floors and daylight sensors to optimize energy use; and sustainable building materials to minimize environmental impact are some of the efficiencies that will help Hamilton achieve its goal of carbon neutrality by 2030.
GATHER CLOSE …
The Buffers Turn 75
Hamilton’s oldest a cappella group, the Buffers are marking a milestone this year — 75 years of sharing song and laughter on College Hill and beyond. Here’s a look at just a few highlights through the decades.
1950s
After a College Choir rehearsal in late October 1950, Lawry Gulick ’52, Warren Dodson ’52, and Addy Keeler ’52 pause beneath a street lamp on Campus Road. While watching the snowflakes flutter through the lamplight, an idea emerges for an a cappella singing group. Originally an octet, the Buffers begin weekly rehearsals and soon start performing at nearby colleges — Skidmore, Cazenovia, Wells, Syracuse, and Colgate.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Heated discussions arise around what the group should be called. Suggestions range from Von Steuben’s Boys to The Continentals. Someone suggests the College colors — which prior to becoming buff and blue was pink. Clearly Pinkies was not an option. Finally, Addy Keeler suggests Buffers, and the name sticks.
Our songs were old-fashioned, straight barbershop stuff, and we were utterly without a sense of showmanship. We stood stiff as sentinels without even a hint of a gesture. We came back to the Hill knowing well that we had a very long way to go to match virtually all the other groups. Many of them had some uniform item of dress. We fell in line. All save me owned tattersall vests. I borrowed one from a fraternity brother, too cheap to buy my own, and that became our ‘uniform.’ It was Warren Dodson who rescued us with a new repertoire, and Addy Keeler who managed to get us lighthearted. We got better fast. Dodson got hold of some great arrangements, and Keeler taught us stage presence.
— Lawry Gulick ’52, in the Winter-Spring 2002 Hamilton Alumni Review. From 1975 to 1981, he served as dean and later professor of psychology at Hamilton.
The original Buffers, 1950-51 (from left): Irving Reid ’53, Addy Keeler ’52, Bob Abrams ’53, Warren Dodson ’52, Ed Draffin ’54, Lawry Gulick ’52 (who served as first musical director), Bob Millspaugh ’52, and David Hastings ’53.
(TOP) A tradition that keeps on giving — Isabella Schoning ‘16 is serenaded with a Buffergram in McEwen Dining Hall in 2016. (BOTTOM) Buffers alumni perform in the Chapel during Reunion Weekend, 2023.
In 1965, Buffers performed at the New York State Pavilion of the World’s Fair. Meanwhile in the studio, the group recorded a 33 LP, Standin’ On the Corner, that featured an illustration by Professor of Art James Penney.
1960s
The Buffers issue their first recording. An article in the Oct. 7, 1960, Spectator reports, “The Buffers use a modern style like that of the Four Freshmen. Dick Perkins [’61], the leader of the group, noted that the octet wishes to emphasize the musical qualities of its selections rather than take a showman or vaudeville approach characteristic of other groups.”
1970s
Fritz Bergmann ’76 credits College Choir director Lee Spear for pushing the Buffers “beyond Hamilton’s old male choir tradition, encouraging us to broaden our repertoire and mission on and off campus.”
The March 28, 1976, New York Times included the review of a performance by the Hamilton-Kirkland choirs and brass choirs after they made their New York debut at Town Hall. The writeup concluded with this mention: “an octet of singers called the Buffers offered an interlude of light music.”
The Buffers perform in the Chapel during Parents’ Weekend, 1986.
Buffers gather around the Chapel organ in 2000.
One of the most heartfelt and longstanding Hamilton traditions comes each year on Valentine’s Day when the Buffers don their white bucks and blue blazers and traverse campus to serenade students and staff with such classics as “Love me Tender” and “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (...I’m Yours).” The group averages some 150 “deliveries” on Valentine’s Day, starting at 5 a.m. with Buffergrams by phone.
1980s
Often partnering with the all-female group Special K, the Buffers host annual jamborees featuring such guests as the Smith Smithereens, the Middlebury Dissipated Eight, the Sonneteers from Skidmore, and the Connecticut College Cocobeauxs. The Feb. 27, 1981, Spectator reviewed one such gathering, noting: “The Buffers landed on stage (literally) in leaps and bounds, and spent the rest of the evening plying us with anecdotes,
pantomimes, and fine vocals. Old favorites like “Standin’ On the Corner” and “‘Coney Island Baby” are sure crowd pleasers. Chip Bristol’s [’82] stunt fall, John Abbott’s [’81] sobs, and Joe Greene’s [’82] dry sense of humor had us snapping and cheering. Tim Morgan [’82], John Hadity [’83], Erick Steen [’83], John Hanselman [’83], and Alan Cienki [’82] contributed to the keen production. All this and they sing well too. Vaudeville here they come!”
The Buffers perform in the Chapel during Parents’ Weekend, 2015.
1990s
Although nothing beats a live Buffers performance, listening to a recording comes close. Visit hamilton.edu/hearbuffers for a selection of tunes through the years — including a few from the 1996 album The Buffers Eat Sandwiches. Liner notes include, “The Buffers, an a cappella singing group shrouded in fraternal mystery, continue their brilliant legacy of astounding harmonic virtuosity, unparalleled intellectual witticism and good fashion sense. As the oldest and wisest a cappella singing group at Hamilton College, they are respected by the college community and neither matched nor surpassed in their melodic capabilities. The Buffers reached DEFCON 5 this year at a supersaturation of 15 men. ... Our repertoire has now expanded to include the expected barbershop and pop tunes, and diversified to include rock, hiphop, classical, folk, and traditional.”
2000s
The Buffers perform at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall on Dec. 17, 2017, as part of the renowned Christmas Spectacular starring the Radio City Rockettes. They perform an arrangement by Carter Sanders ’18 of Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas” featuring soloist Christopher Victor ’21.
NANCY L. FORD
NANCY L. FORD
WHAT YOU Take
Away
by STACEY HIMMELBERGER P’15,’22
photos
by
NANCY L. FORD
BACK IN 2021, we asked eight first-year students to tell us about a personal item they brought with them to Hamilton, something that served as a reminder of home. Photographer Nancy Ford captured images of the students with their “favorite things” — ranging from a canoe paddle to a guitar to a necktie — and we shared them with readers in the Winter 2022 edition of Hamilton magazine.
Now, on the eve of their graduation, we reconnected with those same members of the Class of ’25 to ask a different question: What are you taking away from Hamilton? Their responses are as diverse and insightful as the students themselves, but each epitomizes a step on the path to “Know Thyself.”
John Carbone ’25
BIOCHEMISTRY
major
John Carbone ’25 came to Hamilton with a passion for chemistry and biology. The choice to major in biochemistry meant he didn’t have to pick one or the other.
Making choices, especially those that involve risk, was something Carbone once found challenging. During his time at Hamilton, that changed. “College taught me that half of the fight is just showing up,” he said. “You can always leave early, but you might miss out on something if you never put yourself out there.”
After just one visit to Hamilton’s Climbing Wall, Carbone decided to get belay certified and then ran clinics for fellow
students. He joined the Frisbee team and served the past two years as captain, and worked as an orientation and Adirondack Adventure leader. During junior year, he spent a semester studying in Copenhagen.
“I was nervous to spend four months out of the country on my own, but I ended up making some of my closest friends. I joined a Danish Frisbee team, and we played in a national tournament,” Carbone said. “I can’t imagine not having had those experiences.”
Other “ah-ha moments” came in the lab. Carbone spent two summers interning at Mass General in his hometown of Boston. He also worked with associate professors of chemistry Ian Rosenstein and Max Majireck, and was selected to present his research on synthetic versions of naturally occurring compounds at an American Chemical Society meeting in San Diego.
In the fall, Carbone will start work on his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at Penn State. His goal is to emulate his mentors by becoming a teacher/scholar at the college level and encourage future students to pursue the field of chemistry. •
THEN: Carbone with “Buddy,” who accompanied him to campus in 2021.
NOW: Carbone has his attire ready for when he starts work on his Ph.D. this fall — a lab coat that once belonged to his mentor, Associate Professor of Chemistry Max Majireck.
Eva Millay Evans ’25, a creative writing major and French minor, still has Hope, although she left it at home for now. Accompanying her these days is Resilience.
Those are Evans’ two guitars, and their names are fitting. A prolific songwriter (4,244 at last count), she performed her favorite song the first day of freshman year at an open mic. She followed that with impromptu mini-concerts in the stairwell of her Dunham residence and a show on WHCL. When Evans learned about Hamilton’s Smallen Creativity grant, she applied and received funds to record an album. Three of her songs are on Spotify, including the soulful “Rain.”
“I wrote it after a rough day. I was feeling overwhelmed, friendship circles were shifting, relationships shifting. I had a disheartening moment in class,” she said. “It’s like a prayer in song form. I’m asking the universe, ‘Hey, I’m trying. Is there something you can give back to me?’”
Although bad days can provide inspiration for songwriters, Evans is fortunate to have had plenty of good ones. She honed her craft in creative writing classes where she’s written everything from poetry about her hometown of Kent, Conn., to the beginnings of a young adult novel. She spent a summer working at a nonprofit teaching creative writing and performance to children. Junior year found her abroad, first in France and then England, where she plans to return this fall for a postgraduate degree in creative writing.
“When I came [to Hamilton], I spent time worrying about how people are perceiving me, what I’m going to do with my life,” she said. “I now focus on what I love. I’m a writer, and that’s all I need to be. I measure success by how I feel rather than what I accomplish.”
Having developed a chronic illness called POTS during her time at Hamilton, Evans knows what it looks like to redefine success and re-evaluate her dreams. After showing up with Hope and now graduating with Resilience, she’s taking her many lessons with her. •
THEN: Millay Evans came to Hamilton in 2021 with her guitar, “Hope.”
NOW: Still making music, Millay Evans strums on “Resilience” outside the College Chapel.
Eva Millay Evans ’25
CREATIVE WRITING major
FRENCH minor
Avarsity sprinter, Edwin Mensah-Boateng ’25 has faced hurdles on the track and in the classroom. He cleared them all by heeding the advice of a faculty mentor: “Pivot to your strengths.”
Mensah-Boateng, from Newark, N.J., was intent on a career in public health. But by sophomore year, he felt defeated. His grades were slipping in his biology courses, and he began to realize he didn’t have a passion for science. “I felt conflicted. This was my plan. Changing course felt like failure,” he said.
Then came Sociology of Health and Illness with Associate Professor of Sociology Matt Grace. Not only did Mensah-Boateng excel in that class, he started to see more than one path to achieving his goal. He interned in the healthcare management program at Northwell Health and was selected to the Summer Health Professions Education Program at the University of Iowa.
“I had the chance to work with a variety of people and really see what I liked to do and am good at,” he said. “There’s more that goes into public health than knowing how to treat people when they’re sick. There are the social factors that go into why they get sick.”
In addition to Grace, Mensah-Boateng sought guidance from ALEX advisor Kevin Alexander ’13, Director of Opportunity
Programs Aaron Ray, and Director of Health Professions Advising Courtney Hance. “My advisors served as more than sounding boards; they helped me reevaluate what I wanted out of college and pivot in a much better direction.”
In addition to track and field, MensahBoateng served as co-treasurer of the NESCAC Coalition of Student-Athletes of Color and an assistant with the Chaplaincy. He also sang with the College Choir.
“Looking back [to freshman year], I see someone who in a lot of ways hasn’t changed. I’m definitely a positive person,” he said. “I do think I have matured. I’ve learned how to handle things I can’t anticipate and come out more than OK. I’ve flourished.”
What’s next? Possibly a stint with AmeriCorps. •
Edwin Mensah-Boateng ’25
SOCIOLOGY major
THEN: With his signature bright yellow beanie, it was hard to miss Mensah-Boateng during his first year on campus.
NOW: Mensah-Boateng is ready to tackle whatever hurdles life hands him.
Eve Rudin ’25
ENVIRONMENTAL
STUDIES &
Eve Rudin ’25 came to Hamilton off an incredible canoeing experience with the Northwaters wilderness group. Although she doesn’t get out on the water much anymore, the New York City native maintains a love of nature as an environmental studies and Spanish double major.
But that choice didn’t come easy. First she thought perhaps she’d focus her studies in literature. She also took calculus and biology. Things didn’t become clearer until she enrolled in Forever Wild: Natural and Cultural Histories of the Adirondacks with Onno Oerlemans, the Elizabeth J. McCormack Professor of Literature, and spent the following summer helping him with his research for a book.
Rudin followed that with a year abroad — one semester in Copenhagen, where she studied sustainability, urban design, and glaciers, and another in Hamilton’s program in Spain.
“Back then I was very indecisive, untrusting of my own opinions. The thought of choosing was overwhelming,” she said. “Going abroad helped me take chances and trust the experiences I wanted to have.
I developed a better idea of what makes me happy.
Living by myself
roommate, Olivia Strigh ’25. “We’ve both changed, and will continue to change, but we’ll never lose a part of who we were. I found a real support system in her. We will always have that connection.” • in a city for the first time, I became more independent.”
Rudin discovered that she wants to pursue a career involving ecological monitoring or conservation work. Her senior capstone project examined the demographics within effective citizen science programs. She plans to spend some time working in a biological or field lab before pursuing a master’s degree.
As much as she’s grown during her time at Hamilton, there is one constant in Rudin’s life — she still lives with her freshman-year
THEN: Rudin and the canoe paddle she brought with her to campus her first year.
NOW: Forever friends Rudin (left) and Olivia Strigh, who’ve lived together as first-year students and as seniors in Babbitt.
SPANISH major
THEN: Tanelli arrived on campus in 2021 with his coveted sneakers featuring illustrations drawn by his best friend.
NOW: Sharing his Hamilton senior cane with a familiar friend, Tanelli is off to work at Disney Experiences.
Next stop, graduate school for mathematics. That was the plan Dominic Tanelli ’25 set for himself when he arrived on College Hill as a first-year student from West Caldwell, N.J. Four years later, his interests and goals hadn’t exactly changed — they’d been fine-tuned.
In addition to math classes, Tanelli took courses in computer science and economics. As he began thinking about math less theoretically and more through an applied lens, Hamilton introduced a new major in data science. The program encourages students to explore the societal impact of analytics and such ethical issues as privacy rights and data validity.
The new major, along with a second one in economics, turned out to be a perfect fit for Tanelli. He pursued internships that ranged from working at a small startup to assisting the supply chain and operations team at Amazon. Last fall, he completed an in-depth project in applied probability, and
this spring he’s exploring industrial organization in his economics senior thesis.
Tanelli will bring his analytical and problem-solving skills to Disney Experiences, one of the Disney Company’s three main corporate divisions, as a product development and strategy analyst. In this role, he’ll help manage the development and logistics of hardline novelty products across Disney’s resorts and cruise lines. He’ll also apply his background in data science and economics to optimize revenue, streamline inventory planning, and contribute to the strategic rollout of new offerings.
What is he taking from his experience at Hamilton? “Be as open-minded as possible, especially when it comes to professors. Listen to their advice,” Tanelli said. “I knew I wanted to work in tech, but there isn’t always one go-to answer. There are so many different ways you can go, so much I didn’t know about what would best align with my interests. Talking with alumni and professors really helped me figure that out.” •
Dominic Tanelli ’25
DATA SCIENCE & ECONOMICS major
Ilsaa Siddiqui ’25
COMPUTER SCIENCE & HISPANIC STUDIES major
When Ilsaa Siddiqui ’25 was named salutatorian of her high school class, she agonized for weeks. She hadn’t finished first. Not only had she disappointed herself, but also her parents, who had emigrated to the U.S. from Pakistan to give their daughters a better life.
Yet Siddiqui’s hard work had paid off. She earned a Questbridge scholarship to attend Hamilton and arrived from Selden, N.Y., with two main goals: One, she would major in computer science and find a job after graduation that would offer financial stability. Two, she wouldn’t sacrifice everything else to achieve goal one.
“I missed out on so much in high school because I was constantly grinding. I never went to dances or parties. People found me annoying because I only talked about grades,” she said. “When I came to college, I shifted my perspective about perfectionism.
When I saw that C+ on my transcript, I learned to move past it.”
Make no mistake; Siddiqui didn’t slack off. Her name routinely appeared on the Dean’s List, and she double majored in Hispanic studies. Although her parents initially objected, she decided to study in Spain and, carefully budgeting her time and money, visited 20 cities across six countries during her semester abroad.
“The younger Ilsaa would not have had the courage to travel out of the country alone, and it was the highlight of my time at Hamilton,” she said. “I met great people and my Spanish really improved. I actually cried at the farewell lunch.”
On campus, Siddiqui participated in the Debate Club, hosted a show on WHCL, and worked three campus jobs. She is active with the Feminists of Color Collective, served as vice president of the Muslim Student Association, and cofounded Byte Into Tech, where Hamilton students meet with kids at local libraries and teach them how to code.
What’s next? After interning at Erie Insurance as a software engineer last summer, Siddiqui will join Fast Enterprises this summer as an implementation consultant. •
THEN: Siddiqui came to Hamilton with “Caeli,” a gift from her best friend since seventh grade.
NOW: Representing her journey, Siddiqui collected magnets from all the cities she visited while studying abroad.
What Tim Colledge ’25 likes about his two academic interests is how public policy applies a top-down analysis, whereas computer science builds from the bottom up. Such ideas never would have occurred to him before he came to Hamilton.
Colledge grew up in Milton, Mass., and enjoyed high school. He thought college would be much the same. “But now I think about all the skill-set building that takes place — developing communication skills, how to organize thoughts, how to walk into a room of people you don’t know and start talking to them. There’s so much you don’t realize [you’re learning] until later.”
In computer science classes, Colledge saw how much easier it is to hone programming skills than it is to learn how to think critically about a problem. In public policy courses, he came to appreciate not only
how data is used to analyze issues, but how collaboration is key to finding solutions.
Like he planned as a first-year student, Colledge participated on the Debate Team, which finished fourth in the nation in its league last year. He applied his oratory skills as a panelist at a recent Common Ground debate. On a different field of play, he competed on the Curling and Rugby teams.
Colledge interned for three summers at investment firms in New York and Atlanta, where he helped develop software systems. After graduation he’ll start a job in systems engineering in Chicago.
What’s he taking with him? Three of his Morris House suitemates also plan to head to the Windy City. “I’m so glad I’ll be moving with them to the next stage in life,” he said. “I met a lot of people here who are going to go off and do truly amazing things.” •
Tim Colledge ’25
COMPUTER SCIENCE & PUBLIC POLICY major
THEN: Colledge sporting the lucky tie he brought with him as a first-year student.
NOW: Putting their special Hagoromo chalk and computer science skills to use, Colledge, (left) and Michael Stewart ’25 work out a coding problem in Christian A. Johnson Hall.
Abigail Lowder ’25
NEUROSCIENCE major AMERICAN STUDIES minor
Days, evenings, or weekends, Abigail Lowder ’25 could often be found in the lab caring for her test subjects, Drosophila melanogaster — the common fruit fly. A neuroscience major and American studies minor from Putnam Valley, N.Y., she has worked with hundreds of the tiny creatures, analyzing their brains to understand what might go wrong and lead to cancer.
Her pursuit has deep personal meaning. Lowder’s father was diagnosed with brain cancer right before she started at Hamilton; he passed away a year later. “Dealing with that loss going into sophomore year, I felt like I had to relearn how to do everything,” she said.
Lowder leaned on her friends, professors, and on Hamilton’s Counseling Center. She threw herself into her studies and spent two years working in the lab alongside Associate Professor of Biology Rhea Datta. Along the way, Lowder developed a deeper understanding of herself, including the fact that it’s OK to admit when there’s something you don’t know.
After taking a class on Indigenous languages with Lecturer
in Linguistics Meredith Moss, Lowder discovered how little she knew about Native American history and culture. Her initial reaction was to shy away from class discussion, but ultimately she decided to take additional classes. “Embracing discomfort is something I’ll take away from Hamilton,” she said, “and an appreciation for the open curriculum that offers the chance to explore a lot of different subjects and bridge my knowledge.”
Outside of the classroom, Lowder participated on the Mock Trial team, served on the eBoard for the fashion magazine Signature Style, and played bass with the band Yonic Youth. This fall she will begin work on a Ph.D. to continue her study of cancer.
“My goal is to contribute to the field in any way I can,” she said. •
THEN: Lowder with “Pennywise” from the horror film It. She brought the 6-foot cutout with her freshman year as a reminder of her dad, who first took her to see the movie.
NOW: To commemorate her research, Lowder has a fruit fly tattooed on her arm, along with a snake that honors her late father, who was a herpetologist.
Bookshelf
Charles Thacher ’63
Fishing and Other Follies, Including Self-Guided Fishing in Argentina
(Archway Publishing, 2024).
Back in 1978, Charles Thacher’s wife gave him a fly-fishing outfit. Funny thing was, he wasn’t much of a fisherman. But proving that woman’s intuition is not to be underestimated, that gift would mark the start of a passion that would take him around the world — and to Argentina’s northern lakes country 20 times.
This book describes the adventures of an angler, so don’t expect a how-to manual about casting or fly tying. Instead, the author shares why you should want to go fishing in the first place. “The joy comes from the challenge of figuring out how to deceive a feeding fish, combined with the allure of traveling to beguiling and exotic places, the absorption of the long and fascinating history and literature of the sport, and perhaps most of all, the pleasure of
meeting extraordinary other anglers along the way,” he notes.
One reviewer noted, Thacher’s book is really two books — and they are both superb. “The first is a collection of stories accumulated from a life of fishing. The characters jump off the page, whether you are on the Kola Peninsula in eastern Russia or San Martin de los Andes in Argentina,” he writes. “The second book is an outstanding guide to the rivers of northern Argentina/Patagonia. It is a personal tour of the region from someone who has spent as much time in this part of the world as any non-guide. He is incredibly open with his secret spots — far more than could be expected.”
Another reviewer adds, “You’ll feel like his fishing buddy and friend as he spans the globe in search of his next adventure.”•
WARD V.B. LASSOE ’82. Diane: True Survivor (Koehler Books, 2024).
MATT LEVINE ’83. Places I Peed During the Pandemic (NoSubject Press, 2022).
SCOTT MACDONALD, professor of cinema and media studies. Comprehending Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2024) and Publication as Autobiography: Occasional and Forsaken Texts — and Endangered Cinema Species (Sticking Place Books, 2024).
ERIK S. MCDUFFIE ’92. The Second Battle for Africa: Garveyism, the US Heartland, and Global Black Freedom (Duke University Press, 2024).
THOMAS A. MCGOVERN ’01. Road to the Final Hour: The Catastrophic Tax Consequences of the Professionalization of College Sports (self-published, 2025).
CLAIRE MOUFLARD, associate professor of French and Francophone studies (co-editor). Gender in French Banlieue Cinema: Intersectional Perspectives (Lexington Books, 2024).
GEORGE M. RADCLIFFE, JR. ’71. Growing Up in Oz (Salt Water Media, 2023) and Return to Oz (Salt Water Media, 2024).
Yonder Blair (nom de plume of ROD SANGSTER ’64). Side Tracked (Polyverse Publishing, 2024).
TERRY BROOKS ’66. Galaphile: The First Druids of Shannara (Del Rey Publishing, 2025).
JAMES S. BURLING ’76. Nowhere to Live: The Hidden Story of America’s Housing Crisis (Skyhorse Publishing, 2024).
NANCY AVERY DAFOE K’74. Yet in the Land of the Living (Wings ePress, 2024) and When Mine Canaries Stop Singing (Finishing Line Press, 2024).
JOHN ENGELL ’70. Party on the Point: Stories of Piedmont People (Short Story America Press, 2024).
JARED FOX ’03. Learning Environment: Inspirational Actions, Approaches, and Stories from the Science Classroom (Beacon Press, 2025).
ERIN GIFFIN, visiting assistant professor of art history. Early Modern Replicas of the Holy House of Loreto: Translating Space (Routledge, 2025).
CLAIRE GOLDSTEIN ’94. In the Sun King’s Cosmos: Comets and the Cultural Imagination of Seventeenth-Century France (Northwestern University Press, 2025).
CAROLYN WOLF-GOULD ’83 (co-editor). A History of Transgender Medicine in the United States: From Margins to Mainstream (State University of New York Press, 2025).
KIRA D. JUMET, associate professor of government (co-editor). Doing Research as a Native: A Guide for Fieldwork in Illiberal and Repressive States (Oxford University Press, 2025).
F. PAUL VALONE ’80. Rules for ANTI-Radicals: A Practical Handbook for Defeating Leftism (Bacchus USA Publications, 2022).
PETER WELTNER ’64. Old Songs Replayed (Marrowstone Press, 2024).
BOB WORDEN ’76. How to Stop Wars and Save the World: Lessons in Settlement, Negotiation and Leadership (self-published, 2024).
For descriptions of the books listed, and links to where you might purchase them, visit hamilton.edu/alumni/books.
It’s the turn of the 20th century and young Vivian Lesperance has one goal — to get far away from her hometown of Utica, N.Y. Smart, intuitive, and determined, she heads to New York City where she inserts herself into the world of the postGilded Age elite. Before long she forms a plan that includes marrying Oscar Schmidt, a middle manager at a soap company, who, like Vivian, carries the residual scars from a less-than-happy childhood. In the mildmannered Oscar, she finds a partner she can influence to build the life she wants — made easier by the fact that her husband is more interested in men and will leave Vivian to tend to her own romances with women.
With Vivian’s keen ability to forge relationships and Oscar’s knowledge of the industry, the couple connect with Squire Clancey, an eccentric heir to an old American fortune, to form Clancey & Schmidt, a preeminent manufacturer of soap, perfume, and candles. When Oscar and Squire fall in love, the trio form a new kind of partnership, with Vivian able to build her empire while operating behind the image of both men. But when exposure of their private lives threatens, all three are made aware of how much they have to lose.
A sweeping historical novel, WolfgangSmith tells the story as if engaged in conversation with the reader. She lends fascinating insight into life in turn-of-thecentury New York City as she weaves a spellbinding tale of self-discovery, ambition, and love. “In writing, I pulled quite a bit on my Hamilton experience and the fascinating history of the Utica area, still vibrant in my
Elaine
Weiss K’73
mind from my time on the Hill,” she said.
According to New York Times bestselling author Ann Napolitano, “Olivia WolfgangSmith writes with gusto, confidence and humor, and it’s a magical combination. Vivian Lesperance is a delightful, brilliant woman vying to enter a society that has no room for her, and I rooted for Vivian every step of the way. But it’s the love story that beats at the heart of this novel that won me completely: Squire and Oscar forever and ever.” •
Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools That Built The Civil Rights Movement (Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2025).
The author, whose previous work of nonfiction The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote earned national accolades, returns with the story of four activists whose audacious plan to restore voting rights to Black Americans laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement. Here is the synopsis from the publisher: “In the summer of 1954, educator Septima
Clark and small businessman Esau Jenkins travelled to rural Tennessee’s Highlander Folk School, an interracial training center for social change founded by Myles Horton, a white southerner with roots in the labor movement. There, the trio united behind a shared mission: preparing Black southerners to pass the daunting Jim Crow era voter registration literacy tests that were designed to disenfranchise them.
“ Together with beautician-turnedteacher Bernice Robinson, they launched the underground Citizenship Schools project, which began with a single makeshift classroom hidden in the back of a rural grocery store. By the time the Voting Rights Act was signed into law in 1965, the secretive
undertaking had established more than 900 citizenship schools across the South, preparing tens of thousands of Black citizens to read and write, demand their rights — and vote. Simultaneously, it nurtured a generation of activists — many of them women — trained in community organizing, political citizenship, and tactics of resistance and struggle who became the grassroots foundation of the Civil Rights Movement.”
Beautifully told, this riveting account of ordinary people who find the courage and resilience to stand up for their rights is not only a powerful reminder of our past, but also an inspiration for a path forward •
Upon Fur ther Examination, Let’s Not Write the Blue Book Off
BY Jim Memmott ’64
THERE THE BLUE BOOKS WERE , in a box with letters and papers and even my Boy Scout merit badge sash.
Those small, line-ruled exam notebooks were proof that more than 60 years ago I took tests while I was an earnest, though not particularly impressive, student at Hamilton College in Clinton, Oneida County.
The books, a remnant of a longhand, cursive age, had power, traumatizing decades of college students. Teachers passed out the exam questions, then the blue books. You sat in a room, tried to fill them. Shook, sweat, struggled. Time ran out.
I’m not sure why I still have the books from so long ago, why they moved about as I moved about until they finally settled in our basement near where mice have taken up residency.
I brought them out after one of my friends wondered if teachers still used blue books for exams. It’s not that he liked the books; it’s just that they came with the college experience. First test. First blue book. First “C.”
My friend reasoned that blue books might be in vogue because students were doing more in-class writing, taken away from their computers and Google and all the electronics that might tempt them to borrow someone else’s words.
He may be on to something. Kristen Allen, a vice president at Roaring Spring Paper Products in Roaring Spring, Pa., tells me that demand for their blue books is up over the last 12 months. This represents a comeback of sorts from the pandemic when so much of education was online.
“From what we’ve heard from college bookstore buyers, professors are increasingly uncomfortable with online exams because of AI,” Allen wrote in an email.
Playing reporter, I also checked back
Jim Memmott shared a few of his Hamilton blue books, safely stored away in a box since his days on College Hill.
with my alma mater, the place from which all those blue books in the basement came.
Helping me out, [Professor of Literature and Creative Writing] Margaret Thickstun did a quick survey of her colleagues. Turns out that some have stayed true to the blue; others haven’t. It may be too early to declare blue books dead, or alive and well.
Russell Marcus, who teaches logic and philosophy at Hamilton, suggests that any falloff in blue-book use may have something to do with handwriting, which is essential when it comes to the blue book.
“Students are rarely taught how to handwrite,” Marcus wrote me in an email. “Indeed, some of my students come to my office asking me to translate my handwritten comments on their essays because they do not know how to read cursive writing. I’m guessing that many of the others just ignore my writing.”
My blue books show that I once had a clear enough cursive. This surprises me, as my fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Currie, held up my papers as a model of bad writing. Perhaps she shamed me into improving.
It’s surprising and humbling to read my words from so long ago. There was a time, it seems, when I sort of knew what Iago was up to in Othello. But there were lots of times when I scrambled, searched, looked in vain for the right answers.
On the cover page of my old blue books I wrote, “I have neither given nor received aid on this examination.” The vow was required by Hamilton’s Honor Code, a promise not to cheat that we made upon entrance to the college. (Thickstun tells me the Honor Code is still in place.)
Inside the blue books, there were my answers, complete with my teachers’ comments.
“How do you know this?” one teacher asked. Another professor noted, “This never really connects with the topic.” Yet another suggested I break up my answers into more paragraphs, perhaps because I marched on for nearly 10 pages without inhaling, never indenting. It’s a wonder carpal tunnel didn’t set in.
It’s surprising and humbling to read my words from so long ago. There was a time, it seems, when I sort of knew what Iago was up to in Othello. But there were lots of times when I scrambled, searched, looked in vain for the right answers.
Still, my teachers were patient, occasionally sprinkling a “good” in the margins, just often enough to keep me going, just enough to make me save the blue book.
After the passing of so much time, it’s hard to link a teacher with the comments. It could be Nesbitt, Johnston, Barrett, or Briggs writing in the margins.
Whoever they were, I still have their advice, their encouragement, their scolding, all because of those well-traveled, but indelible blue books. There’s my academic life. Not in the cloud, but right there in my hand. The blue books have stood the test of time. I can’t write them off. n
Jim Memmott, a former senior editor with the Democrat & Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y., continues to write columns for the paper in his retirement, including this piece that originally appeared in the Oct. 13, 2024, edition. We are happy to share it here with permission.
Capturing Opportunity
IF A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS, a painting can surely tell a story that spans over half a century.
This 4- by 7-foot work of art, created by Nat St. Helen ’27, features some of the events, people, buildings, and symbols that celebrate the history of Hamilton’s Opportunity Program, which began in 1969 with the Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP).
Of course, legendary former directors Christine Johnson and Phyllis Breland ’80 are included, along with the Afro-Latin Cultural Center, students demonstrating in Albany on New York Student Aid Alliance Advocacy Day, and a joyous graduation celebration. To learn more about the artist and the painting, which now hangs in the OP headquarters in McEwen Hall, visit hamilton.edu/OPpainting.
