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Paint what you know is the maxim and Katharine Steigerwald ’07 (Fayetteville, N.Y.) is taking that advice. An artist and dancer, her summer research focused on the ballerina as a figure. Her project, “Classical Ballet and the Figure, a Study in Painting,” will be expressed as four large paintings and a paper on the experience of creating the project. With this work, Steigerwald hopes to “render the figure of the classical ballet dancer in painting in a way that causes ordinary people to be able to relate to the experience of dance.”

Nicole Tetreault ’08 (Schenectady, N.Y.) and Amy Klockowski ’09 (Rome, N.Y.) spent their summer in the lab of Silas D. Childs Professor of Chemistry Robin Kinnel working on what is affectionately known as “the butterfly project.” They studied the Phyciodes tharos (pearl crescent) butterfly in conjunction with the chemical germacrene D, a natural chemical produced in plants.

Science research is popular as a summer activity for Hamilton students, but most of them do their work on the Hill in the new Science Center. Matthew Crowson ’09 (Kanata, Ontario) was one of the few who worked off-campus. Crowson, an undeclared biology or biochemistry major, spent his summer as a research assistant/intern at The John & Jennifer Ruddy Canadian Cardiovascular Genetics Centre at the Ottawa Heart Institute.

Almost a year ago, Joseph Jansen ’07 took a State and Local Politics class with Professor of Government Ted Eismeier. For the class, Jansen wrote a paper about the effect of the Supreme Court on Federalism as regards religion. “It interested me,” Jansen said, and as a result, he found himself applying for and receiving a Levitt Fellowship to research the progression of the understanding and interpretation of the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses from the colonial period to the modern era. He is advised by Eismeier.

Victoria Jenkins ’09 (Yonkers, N.Y.) was on campus this summer to study reverse micellar solutions in the lab of Assistant Professor of Chemistry Camille Jones. Jenkins was also involved in a larger project which deals with clathrate, or gas, hydrates. The lab had as a final goal the synthesis of a hydrate from a reverse micellar solution although the project was then split up so the component parts could be studied. Jenkins was studying the basic reverse micellar solution of isooctane, sodium docusate salt, and water in order to understand the fundamentals of water behavior in the solution.

Rebecca “Ruth” Dibble ’07 (Raleigh, N.C.) spent her summer as an intern at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The rising senior art history major had a position as a volunteer intern in the department of European Decorative Arts assisting Jeff Munger, a curator of the collection.

Like many of his classmates, Luke Forster ’08 (Averill Park, N.Y.) opted to do research this summer. Forster, a world politics major and Chinese minor, spent his summer on the Hill, working with Assistant Professor of Government Sharon Rivera on a comparative study of democratization in Ukraine and Belarus.

Maxwell Akuamoah-Boateng ’09 (Syracuse, N.Y.) is at Hamilton for his first summer of research, working in the lab of Professor of Chemistry Timothy Elgren. Akuamoah-Boateng is investigating a more efficient way of encapsulating an enzyme in silica sol gels. Sol gel is glass made from mixing a solution of silica (tetramethylorthosilicate) with water and acid. This solution mixture when allowed to dry forms the silica (glass) gels used in this experiment.

There are at least three Hamilton students in Japan for their summer research, but Lily Yu ’07 (Livingston, N.J.) wins for immersion: the comparative literature major spent her junior year abroad in the country and then stayed to do her research. Funded by an Emerson grant, Yu spent her summer investigating the formation of identity in burakumin literature.

When YiYang Cao ’09 picked up National Geographic in the spring of his sophomore year in high school, he read an article about pollution in China; later, visiting Shanghai, he saw the extent of the local water pollution. But it was the industrial accident which, in November of last year, caused the dumping of toxic carcinogens into a major river that really prompted Cao to act. “From then on,” he said, “I decided that if I was given a chance, I would study China’s pollution problems and its waters.” Spurred by this ambition, Cao applied for and was granted a Levitt Fellowship to research water pollution in China. He was advised by William R. Kenan Professor of Government Cheng Li.