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Nicholas Tampio, visiting assistant professor of government, presented a paper on “Kantian Encounters with Islam” at the 2006 Association for Political Theory Conference at Indiana University. The paper constructs a dialogue between John Rawls, Gilles Deleuze, and Tariq Ramadan to consider how Kantians and Muslims may interact politically. The paper is part of his book manuscript on Kant’s legacy in contemporary political theory.

David Paris, the Leonard C. Ferguson Professor of Government and senior fellow of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU), presented a talk at an assessment conference titled “Closing the Loop: Using Findings for Improvement” sponsored by the New England Educational Assessment Network on Friday, Nov. 3, at The College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. Paris’ presentation, titled “The Assessment Loops: Lessons Learned from Hamilton College’s Assessment Project,” described Hamilton’s assessment project and some of the lessons learned about feedback loops. According to Paris, the key to successful feedback is constant focus on student perceptions and recognition of the several loops involved in assessment. Paris’ presentation will also connect Hamilton’s project with some undertaken by the AACU.

Brian Rosmaita, assistant professor of computer science, presented "Accessibility Now! Teaching Accessible Computing at the Introductory Level" at The Eighth International Association for Computing Machinery SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '06), held in Portland, Oregon, Oct. 22-25.

Bill Purcell ’76, mayor of Nashville, Tenn., will be honored as one of nine “public officials of the year” from across the country, a prestigious award for effective leadership, by Governing magazine. David Ewing, senior vice president for government relations and community improvement at the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, nominated Purcell for the award based on the mayor’s work on education, public safety and economic development. Purcell, formerly a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, took office in 1999 and is credited with “…Nashville’s emergence as one of the top business locales in the country” in the November issue of Governing magazine.

In preparation for Halloween, the earliest surviving film version of Dracula will be screened on Sunday, Oct. 29, at 2 p.m. Nosferatu (1921), directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, will be screened in the Kirner-Johnson Auditorium in the Kirner-Johnson Building. The event, which is free and open to the public, is part of the F.I.L.M (Forum for Images and Languages in Motion) series organized by Visiting Art History Professor Scott MacDonald.

Visiting Instructor in Art Sylvia de Swaan presented a lecture at the State University of New York in Oswego as part of their Visiting Artist Lecture series on Monday, Oct. 23. She also conducted a workshop for advanced photography students focused on constructing narrative in relation to local history and geography while creating an emotional connection.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Government Brian J. Glenn has been named chair of the public policy section of the 2007 New England Political Science Association (NEPSA) annual conference, which will be held in Newton, Massachusetts.  The section covers a wide variety of subjects, from health care to welfare to environmental and education issues.  In 2001, Glenn received the Robert Wood award, presented annually for the best paper presented at NEPSA by a graduate student.

Hamilton’s computer science department recently received a grant award from Microsoft Corporation's research division. The title of the funded grant proposal is "Using Phoenix in Computer Security Curricula."

Derek C. Jones, the Irma M. and Robert D. Morris Professor of Economics, and Antti Kauhaunen of Helsinki School of Economics presented a paper at the Conference on the Analysis of Firms and Employees (CAFE): Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches. CAFE was held on September 29-30, in Nuremberg, Germany. The paper, titled “Teams, Performance-Related Pay, Profit Sharing and Productive Efficiency: Evidence from a Food-Processing Plant” was co-authored by Jones, Kauhanen and Panu Kalmi. It investigates the impact of important changes in human resource practices on firm performances for a food-processing plant.The paper is one outcome of a National Science Foundation-funded project.

Douglas Weldon, Stone Professor of Psychology, presented a poster in Atlanta at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience with Carlyn Patterson ’06 and Erica Colligan ’06.  The poster was titled “Neuron Activity in the Rat Superior Colliculus during Reward Magnitude Task Performance.”  The paper showed that some neurons in the midbrain of the rat show cellular activity that differs when the animals retrieve high versus low reward.  The context of the work is that this area of the brain is known to be involved in sensory processing and in generating visuo-motor orientations and is thereby thought to be involved in the neural basis of attention.  The data are meaningful in suggesting that the brain area participates in processing information about significant events.