Hamilton Magazine - Fall 2024

MASTER OF CREATIVITY

President Steven Tepper

THINGS YOU’LL LEARN

One Dessert Can Feed an Army

Pastry chef Stephen Durfee ’85 recently set out to create the world’s largest graham cracker, chocolate, and marshmallow treat. Read about him and “s’more” alumni in the Know Thyself section starting on PAGE 4.

Eshleman Got the Call

With the help and support from fellow former baseball player John Shinn ’02, Continentals pitcher Jack Eshleman ’25 has become the first Hamiltonian to sign a Major League Baseball contract. PAGE 18

Marriage is Complicated

More than a decade ago, Professor of Literature and Creative Writing Naomi Guttman began interviewing her parents, asking candid questions about love, gender, and fidelity. The result is now an award-winning documentary. PAGE 22

Stryker Served the Longest

Azel Backus was the first; Martin Carovano the youngest; and Joan Hinde Stewart the only woman. Some Hamilton presidents opted to forgo inauguration ceremonies, while others saw them as an opportunity to share their vision for the College. Journey back to some inaugurations past PAGE 40

Creativity Can Be Taught

Often seen as rare and exclusive, creativity is, in fact, a skill rooted in teachable moments. We asked eight Hamilton faculty members to share how creativity manifests itself in their interactions with students. PAGE 46

On the cover

President Steven Tepper surrounded by words and phrases drawn from his inauguration address presented this fall. To learn more about Hamilton’s 21st president and the path that led him to College Hill, see PAGE 32.

PHOTO BY LUKE COPPING

BY KEVIN M. WALDRON

THIS PAGE: A detail from Hamilton’s new labyrinth, a gift of the Class of 2019, located near the entrance to Root Glen. Its circular winding path encourages and facilitates quiet contemplation for those who walk their way from beginning to end.

PHOTO

COMMENTS

HAMILTON MAGAZINE

FALL 2024

VOLUME 89, NO. 2

EDITOR

Stacey J. Himmelberger P’15,’22 (shimmelb@hamilton.edu)

STAFF WRITERS & EDITORS

Holly A. Foster

Megan B. Keniston

ART DIRECTOR & DESIGNER

Bradley J. Lewthwaite

DESIGNER

Kevin M. Waldron

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Mona M. Dunn

PRODUCTION ASSISTANT

Phyllis L. Jackson

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Alejandro Sosa Hernández ’26

Dehler Ingham ’27

Holly Mirales ’26

George Spencer

Claire Williams ’25

STUDENT ILLUSTRATOR

Sawyer Kron ‘25

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Nancy L. Ford

Zack S. Stanek

WEB COORDINATORS

Esena J. Jackson

Katherine Lemanczyk Rook ’10

SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR

Zoe A. Rice

VICE PRESIDENT, COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING

Marisa S. Benincasa

CONTACT

Email: editor@hamilton.edu

Phone: 866-729-0313

© 2024, Trustees of Hamilton College

ONE OF THE BEST parts

of my job is getting to hear and tell amazing stories. And it never ceases to amaze me how many of those stories involve seemingly random Hamilton connections. Here’s an example too good not to share.

It’s the first week of classes and also Alexander Pho’s first semester at Hamilton as the Chauncey S. Truax Post-Doctoral Fellow in Philosophy. Students in his Philosophy of Games and Sport class listen attentively as the young professor introduces himself, reviews plans for the semester, and proceeds to share a bit of Hamilton history.

Alex tells his students about the work of the legendary late Professor of Philosophy Robert Simon — a man he describes as “the father of the study of the philosophy of sport.” Then Alex assigns some of Professor Simon’s articles as required reading.

After class ends, one of the students approaches Alex to introduce himself. Imagine the professor’s surprise when that student is none other than Travis Simon ’28, Bob Simon’s grandson (and son of Marc Simon ’94)!

I first heard this story when I happened to bump into Marc and Travis on campus during Family Weekend in September. Immediately I went back to my office to rifle though old editions of the College Catalogue and discovered it had been exactly 10 years since Bob had

last taught his class, Philosophical Issues in Sport.

When I called Alex to ask him what it’s like to follow in Professor Simon’s footsteps, he said: “It’s surreal that I’m here at Hamilton teaching this class a decade after Bob Simon. I can’t overstate what a huge deal he is and the influence he’s had in the field. And to have his grandson in the class — it feels like fate that I’m here.”

Hamilton connections happen all the time. Turn to page 18 to learn how John Shinn ’02 is helping Jack Eshleman ’25 get one pitch closer to his dream of taking the mound in the Major Leagues. And if you know of any recent Hamilton or Kirkland connection, please pop me an email. I’m always up for a good story!

— Stacey J. Himmelberger P’15,’22, Editor

We’re All Wet

In the Spring 2024 Hamilton Magazine, we included the article “Playing It Forward” featuring former Hamilton athletes now serving as college-level coaches. While it’s next to impossible to recognize every Continental following that path, we left out one sport that has seen a number of its former athletes go on to outstanding coaching careers — swimming and diving.

Here are just a few alumni following in the footsteps of their mentor, former Hamilton swim coach Dave Thompson:

• Tom Burton ’88, associate athletic director and head coach at Colby College for 27 seasons.

• Ben Dehlia ’05, associate head coach at Army West Point after an 11-year stint as head coach at Franklin & Marshall College.

Email letters, story ideas, and feedback to editor@hamilton.edu or mail to Hamilton Magazine, 198 College Hill Road, Clinton, NY 13323.

We welcome comments on topics discussed in the magazine or on any subject of possible interest to the College community. Please include your name and class year, and whether you intend for your letter to be published. We reserve the right to judge whether a letter is appropriate for publication and to edit for accuracy and length.

• Adam Hoyt ’01, head coach now in his 21st season at Tufts University.

• Samantha Pitter ‘07, new head coach at Miami University Ohio after roles at Pitt, Harvard, MIT, and with the U.S. national team. (See page 10 for a story on Sam’s experience at the Paris Olympics.)

We apologize for overlooking these and other coaches not mentioned, and are cheering for you all — except, of course, when your teams are facing Hamilton.

COMMENTS

AS HAMILTON ALUMS, my husband (Hugh R. Davis ’81, Ph.D.) and I (MBA and MAT) have enjoyed reading the Hamilton Magazine for many years. With multiple degrees under our belts, and parents of children with multiple degrees, our household receives numerous savvy college/university publications. That said, we always turn first to Hamilton’s.

I rarely reach out to any of the former educational institutions I’ve attended; however, feel compelled to communicate that the Spring 2024 issue is one of the BEST I’ve read. As an older alum, the contributions were still exceptionally appealing, relevant, interesting, and engaging. Well written (of course), they offered a wonderful mix of cross-generational and diverse perspectives from former alumni, faculty, and staff. Pithy and punchy, I soaked up every word.

Kudos to you, your writers, art designers, photographers, and managing staff!

Suzanne Bachner ’81

MARROWSTONE PRESS (Seattle) has recently published Old Songs Replayed by the prolific poet Peter Weltner ’64. The first section of the book, “Late Winter Storm on College Hill,” is dedicated to the Hamilton Class of 1964 and to the memory of Weltner’s friend Sam Crowl ’62, who long served as a class correspondent.

In the book, “The Campus” introduces a sequence of short and longer poems, ending with “An Open Book” about the Mohawk Valley and Rogers Glen. We thought readers of all generations would enjoy this selection.

The Campus

Hamilton College. Early sixties. Collegiate Gothic dorms, classrooms, fraternities built from local dolomite, a few of brick smoke-blackened by long, hard winters. Some New England scrubbed-clean clapboard houses with carved wood columns in each corner of their imposing white wooden porches. A Victorian mock mini-castle with spired mimic turret, romantic as a Walter Scott novel. A cottage, its oldest building, preserved as an historical relic for secret meetings by select societies.

Wide swards of grass scrupulously cared for in warm weather, fields for soccer, lacrosse a golf course, quads’ rolled lawns, a football field with bleachers seating two hundred in a small-town-sized stadium belonging to a campus so expressive and artful it might be interpretable like a poem, nearby glens, meadows, woods contributing to its lyricism.

A hill’s steep descent to village taverns, a village green, an inn, the climb back up tough and sobering.

A three-story chapel, lead paned windows, clock and chimes in its steeple, marking classes and lives, tolling each day’s passage as time moves at its own orderly, measured, ageless pace in a place like this, set aside, as if in parentheses, from the hectic, chaotic, unreflective world outside it by faith in the grace of knowledge.

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

Robert S. Morris ’76, P’16,’17

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

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

Hall of Fame Fisherman

Dan Small ’66

Among Dan Small's ’66 rich and varied life, there’s one thread that weaves through all seven decades.

In fact, that thread — fishing — is cinched to his earliest memory.

“I was fishing with my dad, and I can remember looking over the side of the boat and seeing what looked like a carpet of green and gold,” Small said. “It was a school of yellow perch.”

That outing was on Lake Erie. The string continued throughout his youth as he angled for bluegills and rock bass in a quarry near Clarence, N.Y., where Small grew up, as well as for brook trout on family camping trips to the Adirondacks.

MEET PEOPLE TAKING HAMILTON’S MOTTO TO HEART AS THEY DISCOVER AND EXPLORE THEIR PASSIONS WHILE MAKING VALUABLE CONTRIBUTIONS ON COLLEGE HILL AND BEYOND.

Even a year in France while he was a student at Hamilton couldn’t throw a backlash in this through-line. His penchant for fishing led him to the Roya River near Nice. There it was fly-fishing for brown trout.

“Talk about fussy,” Small said of the French browns. “They were survivors of the Ice Age and in that clear water as tough to catch as any fish you’ll find.”

Naturally he didn’t stop casting when he moved to Texas to obtain his doctorate in French literature at Rice University. Small recalls catching redfish, flounder, and sea trout near Galveston, largemouth bass in ponds around Houston, and trout in the Guadalupe River where the stocked rainbows “were suckers for corn or tiny marshmallows on a hook,” he said.

But arguably his fishing genes were only fully able to express themselves after Small moved to Wisconsin in 1972 to teach French and English at Northland College in Ashland, on the south shore of Lake Superior. Now, within just a long cast, he had access to inland waters with musky, smallmouth bass, walleye, trout, and panfish, and a Great Lake with trout, salmon, smallmouth, and more.

It helped jumpstart a new career. Small began writing magazine and newspaper articles on fishing. He also wrote several books on the topic and even branched into TV. As host of the Milwaukee PBS production Outdoor Wisconsin from 1984 to 2020, Small helped highlight fishing, almost exclusively in the Badger State, on hundreds of segments on the weekly, 30-minute show.

For his lifetime of work, Small was inducted into the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame in March. On its induction plaque, the hall of fame cited his more than 1,000 articles on fishing, his work as editor of Wisconsin Outdoor News from 1993 to 1998, host of Outdoor Wisconsin for 36 years, and since 2006 as host of Outdoors Radio, a weekly, regional radio program. Looking back on a lifetime is humbling, Small said, and it’s hard for him to believe how fast the time has gone. He said it was a great honor to be inducted into the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame, which boasts some 500 inductees.

“I have no regrets when it comes to fishing, not one,” Small said. “Fishing has been a joy. It’s led to so many great experiences and relationships. I wouldn’t change a thing.” •

— Excerpted, with permission, from the March 6, 2024, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article “A lifetime of angling from New York to Europe to deep South to Wisconsin lands Dan Small in Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame” by Paul A. Smith

Above: Dan Small as a toddler fishing with his father, Eugene, circa 1948.

The Backcountry Life of a Park Ranger

Kayley Boddy ’22

A classics and archaeology major, Kayley Boddy ’22 initially thought she’d one day be working in a museum dusting off artifacts. Today, you’ll find her in the weathered orange landscape of Utah’s Arches National Park where she works as a backcountry ranger.

What drew you to the National Park Service?

I grew up 45 minutes from the Great Smokies in Tennessee, but I never really knew much about the national parks. In my junior and senior years at Hamilton, I got into the Outing Club and began to really enjoy the outdoors and wanted to educate others. I found an internship at Great Sand Dunes and from there worked for six months as an interpretative ranger at Arches before becoming a backcountry ranger this season. When I first started I

thought I’d absolutely hate the desert, but I’ve gotten so excited working here that I love it now.

What’s your typical day as a ranger like?

They all look really different. As a backcountry ranger, I spend most of my time hiking the park to monitor backcountry camping, canyoneering, road conditions, and other off-the trail activities. I’m also part of the search-and-rescue team, so if I’m not keeping tabs on backcountry activity, I’m carrying someone off an arch or out of a canyon. When I was an interpretive park ranger, my job was to help park visitors. Sometimes that meant giving guided hikes, and other times it meant directing visitors to the park bathrooms. A little bit of everything — there really are no typical days.

What’s the most challenging aspect of your job?

Search-and-rescue scenarios are always high adrenaline and stressful, but honestly I find it more difficult to be outside by myself all day — on most days I won’t see anyone. I’m outdoors every day from 6 to 5, and it’s like 95, 100 degrees in the desert. Being exposed to the heat and elements all day can be pretty intense. But I’ve really developed a strong connection to the earth and the environment because of it. I might not see many people, but I do see some really cool cactuses!

What about your post-grad life are you most proud of?

I think I’m proud that I haven’t given up on the really hard things yet. I never thought I’d be a backcountry ranger, for example. I always saw them as really buff, go-getter, outdoorsy types, and I didn’t even like being outside until college. I didn’t think I’d ever want to become an EMT or enjoy rappelling off canyons, but I do. I’m glad I haven’t stopped in my tracks yet. I keep challenging myself to get out there and learn new skills.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Eventually I do want to get a permanent position in archaeology in the Park Service; those positions just come by infrequently. As part of my job now I do archaeological monitoring — visiting sites and doing condition reports on them. I want to get my master’s in the next year or two, just because it’s really helpful for those archaeological positions. Or, if not, maybe work in the Department of the Interior, which oversees the Park Service. I hope to be doing something involving archaeology and the parks, but who knows what else could come my way; I’m pretty easy to please. •

— Dehler Ingham ’27

Kayley Boddy on the job at Arches National Park.

Rowing to the Olympics

André Matias ’12

“Everybody fires off like rockets, and you’re trying to hang on.” That’s how André Matias ’12 describes what it’s like to compete in single scull rowing competitions. At age 35, he represented Angola in the Paris Olympics and competed in the men’s lightweight double sculls in the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro.

In single sculls, competitors hurl their long, narrow boats for 2,000 meters (1.25 miles) in less than eight minutes. “It’s one of the most painful sports because you sprint the whole way,” Matias said.

He trained for Paris by rowing at dawn on the Potomac River. “When it starts

hurting, you know you’re doing something right because that means you’re getting stronger,” he added.

The Potomac was a convenient spot — at the same time he was studying law at Georgetown University. Today Matias, who speaks Portuguese, French, Spanish, and English, practices law in Washington, D.C., at his firm Altius Immigration Law. He credits Hamilton’s former rowing coach Eric Summers with being the biggest influence on his development as an athlete. “I learned discipline from Eric. He was always there to counsel me and motivate me,” Matias said.

He took home no medals from Paris or Rio but still won big. He’s a fourth-generation Angolan who grew up in Angola and came to the U.S. to attend boarding school. From his early days rowing, he regarded the Games as his ultimate goal.

“I’ve always looked at hard things and thought, ‘If I fall short, I’ll know what my limits are, but I’ll keep trying to go beyond them.’ If you give it your all, believe in yourself, and push your limits every day for years, then maybe you can get to the Olympics.” • — George Spencer

André Matias on the water for Angola at the Paris Olympics.

The Making of a Social Media Journalist

Ondine Jean-Baptiste ’17

Working to pay rent in New York City, Ondine Jean-Baptiste ’17 took a job as a real estate receptionist. Her day-to-day was typical: writing emails, scheduling events, answering phone calls. As she fulfilled these duties, however, Jean-Baptiste also armed herself with the tools and mindset of an ambitious journalist: “I would bring my personal laptop with me and freelance, pitch stories, write, do research, and get in touch with editors all while working as a receptionist.”

It wasn’t long before Jean-Baptiste’s hustling started paying off. She began securing interviews and writing features on women’s wellness for such publications and websites as The Zoe Report, Ebony, and Greatist

“It really grew my confidence. I saw that people were really liking my ideas and paying me real money for them,” she said. “That was the first turning point in my career as a writer and media professional. I realized, oh, I can actually do this.”

While at Hamilton, Jean-Baptiste co-founded the Catcall Collective. A member of Phi Beta Chi, Jean-Baptiste valued the ethos of trust, inclusivity, and community the sorority provided and thought it could be transformative for others. “So we literally set up in front of Burke Library with a table and a shoebox,” she recalled. “We were telling people, ‘Hey we’re the Catcall Collective, and we’d love to give you an opportunity to anonymously write down a gender-based experience.’”

Jean-Baptiste and co-founder Maude Wilson ’17 then posted these notes on Instagram. DMs flooded in, and the Catcall Collective soon went viral; countless others anonymously shared their own stories of gender-based harassment that they’d felt

pressured to keep to themselves. The Catcall Collective, which today has nearly 40,000 followers across multiple platforms, was Jean-Baptiste’s first foray into the world of social media.

In 2021, she joined InStyle magazine’s social media team. There she became social media editor and saw her work receive a Webby nomination in 2022. It’s a pressure-packed job that holds immense power. “You hold all the keys in your hand, which is a little scary,” Jean-Baptiste said. “There are a lot of factors to consider, from analytics and knowing your audience to understanding algorithms and cultural trends.”

Today, she works for the BBC’s social

team and uses her journalistic and media skills to promote stories that dive into everything from science, tech, and AI to culture, movies, and travel. The Jean-Baptiste who was pursuing her passions behind a receptionist desk and in front of Burke Library would certainly be proud. • — Dehler Ingham ’27

The Country Lawyer Meets Lady

Gaga

Dyan Finguerra-DuCharme ’92

Getting sent to the principal’s office in eighth grade might have been the best thing that ever happened to Dyan FinguerraDuCharme ’92. Her offense? She stood up in class to defend a student who was being treated unfairly.

Her earth sciences teacher told her, “Who do you think you are — the country lawyer?” Finguerra-DuCharme was 14, and as she left class she thought to herself, “Wow, I do think I’m the country lawyer!”

Since earning her JD at Brooklyn Law School, the Westbury, Long Island, native went on to become a partner at the Manhattan firm Pryor Cashman where she specializes in intellectual property law. This

KNOW THYSELF

year Forbes ranked her as one of the nation’s Top 200 Lawyers. Her husband, Seth DuCharme ’92, is a former U.S. attorney and a partner at the law firm Bracewell.

Finguerra-DuCharme has represented clients who range from Honda, Cartier, and L’Oreal to Lady Gaga. Often called on to protect — and help create — their trademarks, she decorates her office with counterfeit goods like a phony Beyoncé T-shirt, counterfeit Jimmy Choo sandals, and the herbal product Triagra.

When she walks into a drugstore, she gets a kick out of seeing shampoos and lotions she’s named. But practicing law has more satisfying rewards. “I like making a difference. I like taking positions and being able to fight for them,” she said.

Having a strong moral compass is essential. “In the law you need to make ethical arguments,” she said. If a client wants to

S’more, Please! Stephen Durfee ’85

Pastry chef Stephen Durfee ’85 took dessert to the next level — and the next size — with the world’s largest s’more. The behemoth treat measured 49 square feet and weighed in at 396 pounds. Accomplishing such a feat required clever engineering, an industrial bread oven to accommodate the 7’x7’ graham crackers, a stretcher for cracker transport, and heaps of delicious chocolate. More than 1,000 people in attendance witnessed the creation of the s’more – and participated in its destruction by eating it!

“It was quite delicious,” Durfee said. “And it was great fun! There were hundreds and hundreds of people cheering on the effort as we tried to drop the graham cracker on top.”

The gargantuan s’more was part of the Craft Chocolate Experience hosted by

take a questionable position, “you need to have the strength and wherewithal to stick to your grounds.”

Studying leadership under Ted Eismeier, emeritus professor of government, “fortified” her, but her father gave her key wisdom. As a teen she sometimes got steamed debating politics over dinner. To carry the day he told her, “Be like a seal — let the water flow off your back.” •

— George Spencer

Dandelion Chocolate, where Durfee now works. After 21 years in a professorship at the Culinary Institute of America, Durfee decided to join the Dandelion team as director of curriculum. In his new gig, he has travelled across the world to different cacao-producing regions, such as Tanzania, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, and Hawaii, to lead trips, teach classes, and sate his own curiosity about the world of chocolate. Back at their base in San Francisco, he conducts factory tours, instructs classes for chocolate enthusiasts, and acts as a chocolate ambassador through his demonstrations and outreach. •

Holly Mirales ’26

Scan to watch the s'more being constructed.

Dyan Finguerra-DuCharme in her office with her Hamilton cane.

At Home with the Mets

Scott Havens ’95

Scott Havens ’95 calls centerfield home. As president of business operations for the New York Mets, his office sits above the Citi Field bleachers that host the team’s 7 Line Army fan group.

Havens got Mets fever in third grade when his family moved from Texas to Chatham, N.J. He loved watching his childhood hero, phenom outfielder Darryl Strawberry. “I would never and have never wavered in my support since then,” he said.

Before going to bat for the Mets’ $500 million business, Havens was CEO of Bloomberg Media and held top spots at Time Inc. and Condé Nast. His hiring late last year surprised some, but Havens sees it as a natural fit.

The team, according to him, wanted a leader who thought differently from traditional baseball executives. “It’s not a big stretch,” the economics major said. “I’ve suc-

cessfully launched and built new digital and social media businesses. I understand the video and streaming world, and streaming rights are a big, big deal for us.”

Unlike at other clubs, Havens has no involvement in the day-to-day game. He only manages financial, legal, and human resources issues. However, team owner David Stearns and Havens do discuss what happens on the field. “I provide my point of view as a well-informed fan, but David has been doing this his whole career, and he’s got a long-term plan on how to rebuild this team,” Havens said.

And well-informed he is. Havens saw about 90 percent of this year’s games in person. The need to win in baseball keeps him hyper-focused. “In other businesses it’s not necessarily about winning but about growing above the market. Here the acute focus on winning creates a different cultural feel,”

he said. “I have to figure out how to rally people if we’re in a slump.”

The secret to success on and off the field, according to Havens, is humility — not intelligence or even long hours. “If you know yourself and know you’re not perfect, that you have your weaknesses, that leads to humility. That leads to being selfless and more of a team player. If you can channel that, more people are going to want you on their team.”

Did he think the Mets would rally and advance to the National League Championship Series this year? “Absolutely,” Havens said. “If you catch ‘it’ at the right time, anything, truly anything, can happen.” • — George Spencer

A view from centerfield at Citi Field not much unlike the view from Scott Havens’ office.

Making a Coaching Splash

Samantha Pitter ’07

Sam Pitter ’07 recently added two “work experience” entries to her résumé — head swimming and diving coach at Miami University Ohio and assistant coach of the Cape Verde Olympic swimming team.

A four-time All-American swimmer at Hamilton, Pitter joined Miami from the University of Pittsburgh, where she was associate head coach for the last two seasons. There she met Jayla Pina, a swimmer who had represented Cape Verde at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

“When she arrived at Pitt in Fall 2022, we made a plan with the goal of Paris 2024,” Pitter said. “I had to work very closely with the Cape Verdean Olympic Committee, and about eight months before Paris they told us she could bring her U.S. coach. I was thrilled!”

Pitter, who has also coached at Harvard and MIT, credits her decision to pursue coaching to her own former role models. “So much of this job is mentorship, and I was lucky to have some great mentors throughout my athletic career. I hope I’m making an impact on my student-athletes the same way that they did on me.”

What was it like taking her coaching talents to the international stage? “It was simply amazing,” she said. “The Olympic Games and the pride that the athletes and coaches have in representing their country, it was so cool to see. It was something I will never forget.” •

Arbitrating Internationally

Philip O’Neill ’73

Philip O’Neill ’73 gets around. His senior year winter study at Hamilton took the Soviet studies major to Uzbekistan, a Muslim republic then part of the U.S.S.R. There, looking at the distant mountains, he asked a local what was on the other side. “That’s freedom. That’s Afghanistan,” replied the man, little knowing that the Soviets would soon invade that country.

A few decades later, in 2008, O’Neill was asked to challenge the assumptions of General Petraeus’ senior inter-agency group then devising a sustainable strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. He led off with that earlier encounter and asked: “What would be the answer today?”

O’Neill, a retired partner in a Bostonbased national law firm, became an éminence grise in foreign relations and defense policy by balancing his international practice as a lawyer and arbitrator with an academic career, including teaching at Harvard and elsewhere. The author of two books on national security published by Oxford, he joked that there were “no Hollywood producers interested in them.” His arbitrator practice ranged from disputes involving genetically engineered pharmaceuticals to the development of the F-35 jet fighter.

As a counselor O’Neill guided countering terror finance efforts, while in litigation he opposed North Korea’s funding of weapons of mass destruction. “As an international arbitrator,” he observed, “it’s a weighty responsibility when you are essentially judge, jury, and the appeals court, with your judgment enforceable in over 150 countries.” Today the EU includes him among a handful of Americans found suitable to chair sovereign trade arbitrations.

A longtime participant in the Democratic Party’s foreign and defense policy brain trust, he has provided advice for presidential candidates from the 1988 through 2020 elections. In 2004, for example, he chaired Senator Kerry’s foreign policy task force on relations with Arab and Islamic nations, as well as Lawyers for Kerry, recruiting thousands of lawyers for electoral law support in battleground states. His single biggest policy contribution, he said, came in 2020 when he proposed that the Biden campaign defense policy team back a crash spending program to develop technology-identifying pathogens before symptoms become manifest and speeding vaccine development to defend Americans from attack or nature. Congress subsequently appropriated over $50 billion to fund the program.

Making waves, though, has never been O’Neill’s goal. That’s true in his personal life, too. The former varsity baseball player lives 10 minutes from Walden Pond, where he kayaks. “I find balance there because exercise triggers my creativity and enhances clarity as I puzzle through issues.” •

— George Spencer

Coach Sam Pitter (right) with Olympian Jayla Pina.

Old Age is Old School

Ashton Applewhite K’74

Anti-ageism activist Ashton Applewhite K’74 is 72 and she’s good with that. The Decade of Healthy Ageing, a U.N. collaboration with the World Health Organization, recently honored her as one of its Healthy Ageing 50 — “fifty leaders transforming the world to be a better place to grow older.”

She co-founded the Old School Hub, a website created to educate people about ageism and support movement-building at the grassroots level. “My mission is to put age bias on people’s radar alongside other forms of prejudice and discrimination,” the Brooklyn-based Applewhite said.

Before founding Old School, she wrote the well-received 2016 book This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism. Her profile got an additional boost the next year from her TED Talk “Let’s End Ageism,” which has amassed nearly two million views.

When Old School launched in 2018, it had no political-action “campaigns” section. Now it contains more than 30 initiatives around the world aimed at dismantling ageism. “That is concrete evidence that awareness is building in tangible and effective ways,” said Applewhite, who designed her own major in architecture at Kirkland. Her interest in ageism began when she looked in the mirror in her mid-50s and felt a “vague, creeping anxiety” about growing old. She wanted to understand where those feelings came from and soon began questioning why we hear only the negative side of the story.

Now, she said, “I’m in the business of helping people approach aging from a factbased perspective rather than one that’s fear-based. Sexist, misogynist, patriarchal, capitalist forces want us to be scared, and

they do not operate in our best interests. We’re aging from the minute we are born. Aging is not something icky and sad that only old people do.”

Applewhite envisions a world where “age” is neutral. She suggests decoupling the words “old” and “young” from positive or negative assumptions. “When you say, ‘I feel old?’ do you mean you feel incompetent, or sad, or lonely? You probably felt all those things when you were 13,” she said. “By the same token, you can feel engaged, vigorous, and sexy throughout life. It’s not about age.” •

— George Spencer

Scan to watch Applewhite’s TED talk.

RECENT NEWS HIGHLIGHTS From across the Hamilverse

1 WELLIN HALL, SCHAMBACH CENTER

The Common Ground event “Competing Interests: A Conversation on the Future of College Sports” brought to campus Amy Privette Perko, CEO of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics; Jim Cavale, founder and chair of Athletes.org; and moderator Jeremy Foley, director of athletics at the University of Florida.

2 MCEWEN DINING HALL

Going up? An elevator installed late last spring in McEwen is among the latest accessibility improvements on campus. In addition to prioritizing accessibility during every major renovation and new construction project, the College is budgeting about $500,000 each year for other accessibility-related enhancements.

3 BARRETT LAB THEATRE, KENNEDY CENTER

Students in the fall Theatre Department production of Our Lady of 121st Street had the opportunity to chat informally with the play’s creator. On Sept. 19, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor Stephen Adly Guirgis met for a Q/A with students prior to delivering the 2024 Tolles lecture.

4 THE LITTLE PUB

Un Verano Sin Pub! The popular campus hangout welcomed students back from summer break and the start of Latinx Heritage Month on Sept. 13. Students celebrated with Hispanic/Latinx tunes, including a few by Bad Bunny.

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.

5 WELLIN MUSEUM

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Now on display through June 8, the exhibition “Menagerie: Animals in Art” showcases hundreds of works that explore how images of insects, fish, birds, and mammals have been used in art, highlighting their roles in power, virtue, decoration, and myth.

6 SAGE RINK

The Rage in Sage will be fueled this season by $13 million in enhancements, including new exterior siding and roofing to address building envelope issues, mechanical and HVAC system upgrades, a new ice and refrigeration system, and state-of-the-art boards and glass. Fundraising is underway for new locker rooms and offices, seating improvements, and a lobby addition and viewing gallery.

7 BUNDY SCOTT FIELD HOUSE

Steven Tepper was officially installed as Hamilton’s 21st president at a ceremony held during Fallcoming Weekend. In his address, he issued a bold challenge — What if we could harness the College’s long-standing tradition of creativity to shape the future of higher education?

8 CHAPEL

Robert Tsai, a professor at Boston University School of Law, delivered the Constitution Day lecture “The Vigor of Government is Essential to the Security of Liberty” on Sept. 17. His remarks addressed the question: What would it mean for the people of the United States to have a modern constitution worthy of a 21st-century democracy rather than an 18th-century text for an agrarian, slaveholding society?

9 BRISTOL CENTER

Make way for more cookies from Mom! Due to the growing number of parcels arriving on the Hill, the Mail Center has moved from its tight quarters in Beinecke Student Activities Village to the lower level of Bristol Center.

At the Crossroads of Democracy

CROSSROADS — A point at which one must make a decision that could have critical and potentially lasting consequences. Like others throughout the country, this is where many on Hamilton’s campus found themselves in the weeks leading up to the November election.

To provide students, faculty, and staff opportunities to come together and engage in issues related to the electoral process, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty Ngonidzashe Munemo spearheaded the campuswide program “Crossroads: Elections and Practicing the Liberal Arts.”

“I’ve spent my career studying democracy and the democratic process, and I have come to understand that they offer us the chance to gather as citizens to think big, creative thoughts about who we are — and who we want to become — as individuals and a community,” noted Munemo in announcing the effort. “While, as a nation, these chances to come together to examine how we are constructing and practicing citizenship happen only periodically, the gift of a liberal arts college is that we get the chance to do this every day.”

Munemo, who is also a professor of government, led a committee of faculty, staff, and students who coordinated such programming as:

• Arts Festival In addition to featuring food trucks and conversation, a highlight of the event was the unveiling of a community mural, collectively created panels that explore such themes as the right to vote, free speech, respectful expression of opinions, and the role of elections in shaping our future.

• Experts Among several electionrelated lectures and workshops, the Levitt Center hosted lunch talks with Sam Rosenfeld (Colgate University) on “The 2024 Elections in an Era of Hollow Parties;” Luke Perry (Utica University) on “The 2024 Presidential Elections: Key Issues and Regional Dynamics;” and Alan Cafruny, Hamilton’s Henry Platt Bristol Chair of International Affairs and professor of government, on “The November Election and the War in Ukraine: What are the Prospects for Peace?”

• HamVotes The student-led nonpartisan organization hosted several

voter registration drives. HamVotes’ previous work led the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge to recognize Hamilton as having one of the top six highest voter registration rates among four-year colleges and universities in New York. In addition, pop-up micro sessions showed students how to get involved in local and national politics via contacting their representatives, writing for local media, talking with friends and family, etc.

• Table Talks Each Tuesday, students strolling along Martin’s Way on their way to lunch could stop to engage in conversation about their hopes, fears, and questions leading up to the election. Faculty and staff members, including Munemo and President Steven Tepper, served as facilitators.

• Late-Night Breakfasts Whether at “Elections and Yap” in Commons or “Politics and Pancakes” in McEwen, students opted for evening study breaks to engage in facilitated discussions.

• “DIY Democracy” Burke Library hosted “Visualizing Democracy: Objects from Special Collections and Archives” along with button- and zine-making workshops in its makerspace and a session on “Mapping the Vote: Interactive Election Visualizations in R.”

• F.I.L.M. The film series featured relevant showings: Associate Professor of History Celeste Day Moore presented Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power (2022) and Assistant Professor of Digital Arts Anna Huff hosted Feels Good Man (2020), a case study in how social media and trolling have come to define U.S. politics. n

Adam Lark (left) with the Peters Observatory’s new 20-inch Planewave telescope.

Eve Rudin ’25, Sam Trombone ’25, and Annika Benn ’25 display HamVotes swag at the Crossroads Arts Festival.

NANCY L. FORD

Sharper Views of Space

EVERY 80,000 YEARS on its journey around the sun, the comet C/2023 A3 emerges from the outskirts of our solar system to pass by Earth. This fall, members of the Hamilton community had the chance to get an especially good view thanks to the Peters Observatory’s new 20-inch Planewave telescope.

Installed last spring and calibrated over the summer, the Planewave is three times as powerful as the previous 12-inch Meade telescope, allowing dimmer parts of space to be seen. Associate Professor for Instruction of Physics Adam Lark, who operates the observatory, says the new equipment has already provided enhanced opportunities for discovery — whether it’s a visitor with a casual curiosity for what lies beyond our planet or a student pursuing serious scientific study.

Consider, for example, planets outside our solar system. “There are hundreds of

billions of exoplanets out there, and thousands available to observe every night, but previously we could only observe the few targets with the brightest companion stars. Now we have hundreds of options for targets, including the Kepler-90 system, over 2,800 light years away,” Lark said.

Hamilton student researchers work with Lark to gather data on Kepler and other exoplanets before submitting their findings to a collaborative database accessed by scientists across the globe. Once synthesized, the data helps detect and confirm the existence of new exoplanets.

Physics major Isa Khan ’26 joined Lark as a co-author on a paper in draft form with the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. They, along with Amelie Heving ’27 and Beibei Chen ’25, are co-authors of another paper that will soon appear in the Astronomical Journal

A CLOSER LOOK

While the new Planewave telescope provides enhanced views of our solar system, Hamilton’s new laser scanning confocal microscope focuses on things a bit closer.

The Nikon AXR microscope uses focused lasers to excite fluorescent molecules in the sample and then collects the emitted light to form an image. Pictured above is a basswood stem sample.

“LSCMs are standard machines in biological/medical sciences. They offer superb spatial resolution of cells, tissues, and small organisms. Ours also has a resonance scanner that allows the microscope to capture images much faster than standard LSCMs,” said Assistant Professor of Instruction in Biology and Director of Microscopy Kyle Martin. “This kind of machine would be available to undergraduates of large (R1) institutions for sure, but it is uncommon for schools of our size to have one — especially one of this caliber.” n

Lark says he’s seeing a swell of students interested in the introductory astronomy class, and the viewing events he hosts several times a semester at the Peters Observatory attract not only students but also faculty, staff, and members of the local community. “Astronomy attracts all walks and connects us all with a shared wonder and beauty,” he added.

The new Planewave telescope came to the College as a gift from Peter Schloerb ’73, who is recognized for his groundbreaking work that led to capturing the first image of a black hole. He is director of the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) Alfonso Serrano, a joint project between the University of Massachusetts and Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica in Mexico. He is also a professor and director of the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory at UMass Amherst. n

Spinoza, Ravven asks students to read the philosopher’s masterpiece, The Ethics, with a view to understanding its contemporary and personal implications.

New Minor in Jewish Studies Becoming ‘Climate Smart’

ISLAMIC AND JEWISH Political Philosophy Visual Culture and the Jewish Experience. Judaism and Social Justice. These are just a few of the courses students can select to fulfill Hamilton’s new minor in Jewish Studies.

The minor was spearheaded by Professor of Jewish Studies Heidi Ravven, who joined the Religious Studies Department in 1983. She had long considered developing a Jewish Studies Program and believes now is the right moment given the war in the Middle East and tensions throughout the world.

She prompts students to consider such questions as “How can we use ceremonies, marches, and pilgrimages to enhance American democracy?” — and then asks, “What would Spinoza say?” So engaging was the exercise that students had T-shirts printed with “WWSS?” emblazoned on the front.

In some ways, Ravven sees the Jewish Studies Program as her legacy on College Hill. “As we send our students into the world, our job as educators is to help them understand the world and contribute to it in ways that are nuanced and passionate, but not so inflamed,” she said. “We want the program to give them that.” n

THE VILLAGE OF CLINTON recently received certification as a Climate Smart Community through the New York State Department of Environmental Conversation, and Hamilton students played a role in making it happen.

“I’ve spoken with students at length, both Jewish students and those who want to know how they can better understand Jewish values and culture. They want to learn about the relationship of history and politics and how it ties to the present. They want history courses, Middle East courses, courses in Jewish art and literature. Some are looking for support and a sense of belonging,” Ravven said.

The Jewish Studies minor requires five courses, most of which are already part of Hamilton’s curricular offerings. The goal is to give students the opportunity to formalize their interest in Jewish culture through a structured, multidisciplinary program that combines language, history, politics, philosophy, literature, art, and film. In addition, students will have the opportunity to learn Hebrew, ancient and modern.

A leading expert on the philosophy of the 17th-century Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza, Ravven was the first to propose that Spinoza anticipated central discoveries in the neuroscience of the emotions. In her popular course Know Thyself:

Studying Rural Perceptions

IN LIEU OF CLASSES, Senior Fellow Clare Robinson ’25 will spend the year studying rural stakeholders’ perceptions of climate adaptation in Central New York and in the Canterbury region of New Zealand.

“I spent eight months before this semester in New Zealand talking to farmers, politicians, and environmental activists about increasing environmental regulations and how they impact rural communities,” said Robinson, who is working with advisors Aaron Strong in environmental studies and Jaime Kucinskas in sociology. “Here in New York, I am looking more at renewable energy transitions and how rural communities feel about these changes and how it affects their lives.” n

The Municipal Greenhouse Gas Inventory was completed by Jason Kauppila ’22 as part of an independent study he conducted as a student with Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Aaron Strong. Kauppila presented his findings to the village board and mayor in May 2022.

The Climate Vulnerability Assessment was done by the fall 2020 Environmental Studies Climate Risk and Resilience class as the final project in the course. This was a semester-long collaborative effort in which students hosted a community meeting and produced a vulnerability assessment for the village.

Students (now alumni) involved were Gabrielle Buck ’21, Lupita Cabanas ’21, James Carhart ’21, Andrew Court ’22, Ben Given ’22, Emory Goodwin ’22, Asha Grossberndt ’21, Amy Harf ’21, Jason Kauppila ’22, Francesca Lanni ’22, Nina Merz ’22, Eric Nahm ’21, Ravena Pernanand ’21, Nick Rutigliano ’22, Sean Storr ’22, Emma Stuart ’22, and Gab Venne ’22.

As part of the Bronze certification, the village received a $10,000 grant under the Clean Energy Community Program for its work meeting “the economic, social, and environmental challenges posed by climate change.” n

— Excerpted from a story by Holly Foster on Hamilton’s news site

Drop/Add

COURSE NAME

Wonder and Certainty in Science

Recipes for the Future: Climate, Culture, and Cuisine

Philosophy of Games and Sport

First-Term Hindi-Urdu

Restorative Justice

The Politics of A.I.: Algorithms, “Big Data,” and “Humans in the Loop”

The Crime Novel from the Global South

Sociology of Hip Hop

CURRICULUM

Great Power Competition

Biochemistry of Marine Mammals

Each year, new courses pop up in the College Catalogue as Hamilton’s curriculum evolves and adapts to our changing world. Here are just a few from this fall’s offerings that caught our attention.

IT ABOUT?

Aha moments followed by doubt illuminate the divergent and sometimes abandoned paths once taken by the wisest among humankind. Journey into the history of ideas that never quite made it to prime time.

A hard look at “what’s cooking.” Implications of the climate crisis on food systems globally, regionally, and locally.

Explores “easy” questions — What is a game? What is a sport? Is every sport a game? — before turning to more complicated issues such as: Is sports doping morally permissible? Should women’s sports be inclusive of transgender women?

Introduces the basics of Hindi and elements of its closely related sister language, Urdu.

What does it take to repair harm caused by criminal or personal injury? A focus on the interpersonal work of reparations and mutual understanding of the damage done, and possibilities for healing and reconciliation.

Algorithmic discrimination, the state of consent in the age of “big data,” and the psychological toll of content moderation on social media.

What changes when a crime story isn’t set in London or New York, but in Beirut, Cairo, Pietermaritzburg, or the Niger Delta? What local and native skills do postcolonial detectives employ? How do they apply truth-seeking measures under the yoke of authoritarian regimes?

Deconstructing the messages expressed within hip-hop culture through social conflict theory, critical race theory, Black feminism, the culture of poverty, and the code of the streets.

A close look at security, diplomatic, and economic issues among great powers with a focus on arguably the most important bilateral relationship in the world — the U.S.-China rivalry.

Take a biochemical look — How do marine mammals dive so deeply and hold their breath for so long? How do they see, hear, and produce sound underwater? What are the effects of humanintroduced substances?

Jack Eshleman ’25 on the mound earlier this year for the Continentals. He recently signed with the Toronto Blue Jays organization.

Hitting His Spots and Getting the Call

ON A RARE DAY OFF from pitching for the Vermont Mountaineers last summer, Jack Eshleman ’25 was on his way to Burlington with his mom, who had traveled from their hometown in Collegeville, Pa., to watch as he played in one of the top summer baseball leagues in the country. His phone buzzed. It was former Continental baseball player John Shinn ’02.

“You’re about to make history. Let’s Go Blue,” Shinn told him.

Eshleman was about to do what no other Hamiltonian had done: contract with a Major League Baseball organization — the Toronto Blue Jays. (Stephen Royce, Class of 1914, worked out with the New York Giants in 1914, but never signed.)

Crossroads & Commitment

Just a year earlier, Eshleman and Shinn were strangers. Eshleman, then a rising junior with a dream of playing professional baseball, knew how rare it was for Division III players to get recruited and was considering transferring to a Division I program

to give himself the best opportunity. Meanwhile, Shinn, an attorney, advisor, and MLB Players Association (MLBPA) Certified Player Agent, noticed Eshleman’s name in the NCAA transfer portal with a recently inked commitment to Rutgers.

Curious about the talented player, Shinn contacted Hamilton Baseball Coach Tim Byrnes and other young alumni he knew, who all spoke highly of Eshleman and his talents. Shinn offered himself as a resource, and Eshleman took him up on that just weeks later when he came to a crossroads and needed advice.

“What if I stayed at Hamilton?” the 6’2” right-handed hurler asked. “How much

would that hurt my chances of playing professionally?”

Shinn — a bit shocked — shared his best advice: “I told Jack it’d be much more difficult and it was going to cost him,” he recalled. “He wasn’t going to pay tuition [at Rutgers], and he was at Hamilton. It was going to be much more difficult as a Division III player to get exposure. It melted my heart because he didn’t want to leave the community he built here. But I didn’t know how much I could help him if he stayed.”

Other factors were working against Eshleman, including how expensive it is to draft underclass students and amateurs with eligibility remaining. Since it’s nearly impossible for players to attend school and play simultaneously, teams are required to set aside funds for the player to use when they are able to complete their degree.

What was working for the young Continental, according to Shinn, was his character, his talent, and a community of support. Eshleman chose to return to the Hill for his junior year.

“That’s when I knew that Jack was a very different kind of player — in a good way,” Shinn said. “He’s someone special.”

Precision On & Off the Mound

Eshleman, a computer science major, approaches life like he does pitching: thoughtfully, precisely, and with focus. He identifies his target, evaluates what it’s going to take to hit it, and invests every ounce of effort he has. When he’s on the mound, Eshleman uses his deep understanding of the art of pitching and his elite-level inverted vertical break (21.2”) and fastball spin rate (2,300+ RPMs) to his advantage.

In just three seasons with the Continentals, the all-NESCAC and all-region pitcher ended up second on the program’s all-time list with 162 strikeouts in 122.2 innings pitched. He won nine games and lost just four in his career and posted a team-record 2.57 earned run average.

CONNECTIONS

Those details may make his return to Hamilton that much more surprising, but it felt right to Eshleman. His dream still felt within reach.

“I knew what I would be giving up at Hamilton — my friends, coaches, the school, and everything that it had to offer,” he said. “I wanted to come back. I just knew Hamilton was my home.”

Instead of closing doors, Eshleman’s decision ended up opening them. Following a standout junior season with the Continentals, several major league organizations were interested — some even more so once they learned his story.

“His affinity for Hamilton and his commitment to giving back what the College gave to him came up quite a bit in conversations,” Shinn explained. “It’s a testament to his character. There aren’t many 20-yearolds who act like Jack.”

Eshleman was ready to accept an offer during the 2024 MLB draft in July, but wanted to make sure it was with a club that aligned with his values and had a solid track record for developing Division III players. He compiled a list of questions that guided his research. He also leaned on Shinn, who not only provided expertise and guidance, but had also become a mentor who was invested in the player’s success beyond baseball. When the draft came and went, Shinn’s words of encouragement kept Eshleman upbeat during the signing window leading up to the Aug. 1 deadline.

“John told me, ‘You have a real shot here. Just keep doing your thing, stay healthy, and keep grinding,’” Eshleman said.

Then the call came.

Rooted in Community Eshleman has felt the support of Hamiltonians since his high school baseball days, long before he wore the buff and blue. The coach for his summer team was former Hamilton player Alex Pachella ’15, who ultimately connected him with Byrnes.

Since then, Eshleman and his Continentals teammates have benefitted from the program’s passionate and invested coaching staff and alumni network, which helped equip the Loop Road Athletic Complex with TrackMan, a high-tech system used to track player and ball movements — a rare tool among Division III baseball programs.

“It just shows you how strong this Hamilton community is,” Shinn said. “There are a lot of people supporting the program, and a lot of people rooting for Jack. He is a trailblazer, and I am overwhelmed and honored that I’ve played a role in helping him. Our Hamilton connection makes it that much more rewarding and special.”

Eshleman plans to spend the winter months getting stronger so he can hit the ground running with the Florida Complex League Blue Jays in Dunedin come spring. “I’m grateful for everyone who supported me,” he said, already focused on the work ahead. But he has another goal, too: “I still have one year left to graduate, and I want to earn my degree from Hamilton.” n — Meg Keniston

Jack Eshleman ’25 shares a moment with his biggest fan, Theodore “Tito” Shinn, son of John ’02 and Meghan Lynch Shinn ’02.

THE BIG PICTURE

Merrily He Rolls Along

TAKE A STROLL ALONG MARTIN’S WAY and you just might catch a glimpse of Sean Bennett, vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion, riding his electric unicycle. “I learned to ride during COVID-19 as an alternative to public transportation,” said Bennett, who gets a kick out of the smiles and discussions prompted by his unusual means of transportation. “It’s hilarious to the kids passing on school buses in the morning and afternoon.”

PHOTO BY ZACK STANEK

A Marriage Story Brought to Life

MORE THAN A DECADE AGO, Naomi

Guttman, the Jane Watson Professor of Literature and Creative Writing, picked up a camera and began recording her parents. As Frank and Herta Guttman prepared to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary, Guttman interviewed them about the nature of their relationship, asking candid questions about love, gender, and fidelity. She continued the interviews over several years and, after her parents died, delved deeper into their story by reading letters exchanged between the couple during their courtship and sifting through old family photos and home videos.

screening at several events, including the Manhattan Film Festival Expo, the Maine International Film Festival, the Indie Short Film Festival in Charlottesville, Va., and Toronto Indie Shorts, where it was named Best Documentary.

Although Guttman had never made a film before, she discovered that the production process reminded her of writing poetry. “I didn’t have a script. I was trying to piece it together the way I would a book of poems,” she said. “It’s the same as when you’re working on poems and you start to see a shape.” Guttman worked with producers and an editor, and received support from across the Hamilton community. Several students assisted with various aspects of the project, including documenting archival materials, editing parts of the film, and voicing young Frank and Herta. Guttman’s colleagues provided feedback and expertise. She noted that she took her “first and only” film course with Professor of Art Ella Gant, who taught her more about videography. Hamilton College’s Dietrich Inchworm Grant, which supports faculty members “who wish to explore something new, attempt pioneering projects, or push disciplinary boundaries,” funded the project.

Guttman’s journey of family research and reflection culminated in More Than You Can Know: A Marriage Story, her debut documentary released last year. The 30-minute film has since been selected for

“I think it is provocative for people. I think it makes them think about their own families and the things that they might want to ask their parents before they can’t anymore,” Guttman said, reflecting on the audience response to More Than You Can Know. “It does seem to touch people at a personal level, and that’s gratifying.” n — Majestic Terhune ’21, who helped with early research on More Than You Can Know as a student assistant

Shaking

Up the Norms of Children’s Media

AS PART OF A RESEARCH PROJECT, Santiago “Santi” Chamorro ’25 wrote and illustrated Shaken, a children’s book that tells the story of a family in Nicaragua who must adapt to change after an earthquake strikes their region. The semi-autobiographical story is told from the perspective of a young boy.

How did you get the idea for Shaken?

Current children’s media feels a little too sanitized to me. There aren’t a lot of kids’ books or movies that talk about serious

topics. So, this was my way of reaching out to any kid who’s having such an experience and being able to help them get a better understanding of it.

What do you hope to convey with this book?

Even though things can get difficult sometimes, we should value those things and those people who can help us get through them. Overall, it is thanks to the people who love us that we are able to push forward and grow up through tough times.

What went into creating Shaken?

I brushed up on stuff that I liked as a kid and that was easy to read, such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid and The Little Prince. I also had to figure out how to talk about dark themes as a kid to a kid. Afterward, with the help of [Professor of Literature and Creative Writing] Margaret Thickstun, I drafted and edited over nearly three months. I had to watch my sentence structure, paragraph lengths, and vocabulary so it was accessible to children. Surprisingly, creating the illustrations was the most difficult part. There’s one on every other page, and I had to make sure they were both interesting to look at and simple enough that a child could understand them.

What has been the reaction to the book?

Before this, I did some other short, illustrated stories, which were pretty well-received with some local public schools back in my home country of Nicaragua. That’s what inspired me to write this book. I’ve shown copies of Shaken to some family and friends who have kids. From [feedback] I’ve gotten so far, they have really enjoyed the book. I wrote this book in English for the Levitt Center, but I think it would be pretty fun to do a version in Spanish as well, because I want to share it with a larger audience in Nicaragua. n — Alejandro Sosa Hernández ’26

Removing Carbon, Preserving Microbes

IN THE SUMMER OF 2022, Professor of Biology Mike McCormick began research on a green beach in Long Island, N.Y. Unlike his usual work at Green Lake near Syracuse, the color of the sand was not a natural scientific phenomenon; instead, the olivine sand had been placed there as part of an environmental experiment aimed at determining if olivine beaches can provide a new way to remove atmospheric carbon.

Scientists generally agree that stopping global warming will require both reducing emissions and taking carbon out of the atmosphere. Throughout geologic time, there has been one proven method for achieving the latter: the weathering and transport of silicate rocks. When the weathered silicates dissolve in the ocean, they take up protons from the water. This chemical process allows the ocean to permanently absorb carbon dioxide. The natural weathering and transport of rocks, however, takes a very long time. Scientists at the company Vesta are seeking to accelerate this process by placing olivine, a cheap and quick-dissolving mineral, on beaches where coastal erosion is already necessitating the introduction of more sand. The interaction of wind, sand grains, and water at these beaches generates the ideal location for fast weathering.

Changing the mineral foundation does not come without challenges. Importantly, it can affect beach life forms. McCormick’s work focuses on monitoring the effect on some of the smallest life forms with the largest impact: microbes.

“Humans are guests in a planet run by microbes,” McCormick said.

Microbes drive important ecosystem functions, the loss of which could transform the macro-scale environment. To ensure that the olivine is not harming the microbial community, McCormick sampled the sand before olivine placement and at regular intervals from the start of the project until October 2023. He then extracted DNA from the samples and sequenced a particular gene to identify the specific microbes in the community. Ideally, the community will look similar before and after olivine replacement — and that is what initial data shows.

A change in the community, however, does not necessarily mean a change in the functions performed by the microbes. McCormick’s other goal is to determine the impact on microbial functions. A change in these could have more significant environmental consequences.

Today, McCormick continues to meet with Vesta scientists as their work expands to other areas. Earlier this year, Vesta became the first company to obtain a federal permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to deploy a stand-alone carbon removal test in U.S. waters. Work is now underway off the Outer Banks in North Carolina. n — Claire Williams ’25

Mike McCormick at the field site where he’s working on a way to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

READY FOR ACTION

We caught up with four fall sports athletes and asked them how they prepare for game day.

PHOTOS BY JOSH MCKEE

KAMAU HOPEWELL ’26 Football

POSITION: Running Back

PRE-GAME MEALS: The night before, dinner at Commons. The morning of a game, eggs, potatoes, and pineapple.

PRE-GAME RITUAL: “I read over the play sheet while listening to Future and Chief Keef. I imagine myself playing the best while sitting at my locker to pump myself up.”

LAST-MINUTE THOUGHT: “As I’m lining up for my first play, I focus on my assignment and going 200%.”

LILLY TRUCHON ’26 Field Hockey

POSITION: Midfield

PRE-GAME MEAL: Iced coffee in the morning and then peanut-butter-and-banana toast before heading to the locker room.

MENTAL PREP: Watch film the night before and on game day listen to the same playlist while getting ready. “I try to visualize myself on the field against our opponent and picture our team having success.”

PRE-GAME RITUAL: “I always get my hair braided and go walk to find a quiet place to stretch.”

WARM-UP ROUTINE: “We walk down to the field as a team to the same walk-out song each year and then get excited to play with an awesome playlist made by fellow teammate Becky Felker ’26.”

TEAM CHEER: “1, 2, Blue!”

KENDALL SCHOLZ ’26 Volleyball

POSITION: Outside Hitter

PRE-GAME MEAL: Bacon, egg, and cheese on an everything bagel.

PRE-GAME RITUAL: Pigtails. “It’s been my trademark hairstyle since I was a junior in high school.”

WARM-UP ROUTINE: “I always go to the trainer and warm up my shoulders and back before every game.”

PLAYLIST: Kelly Clarkson and Benson Boone.

SUPERSTITIONS: “I high-five my teammates in the same order before every point and between sets.”

LAST-MINUTE THOUGHT: “I am grateful for my teammates and the fact that I’m able to play this sport at this level. Having been working to this point for so many years, I’m so grateful for all of the relationships I’ve created along the way.”

AEDAN BURKE ’26 Soccer

POSITION: Striker/Winger

PRE-GAME MEAL: Bagel with eggs and potatoes, and always two bananas.

WARM-UP ROUTINE: Jog across the field and back, once without and once with the ball. “I’ll take some shots on goal by myself before starting the warm-up with the team.”

PLAYLIST: Gunna, Playboi Carti, and Lil Tecca. “Music is a huge motivator for me to get locked in for a tough game.”

SUPERSTITIONS: “Our team takes a moment before we walk out to the field to say a prayer or thought, and I take the time to be grateful to have the opportunity to play the game I love with a group of close friends, as well as thinking about who and what I’m thankful for for bringing me to this moment.”

LAST-MINUTE THOUGHT: “Be confident, have fun, and the first thing I’ll do to make an impact in the game, whether it’s making a pass, making a tackle, or working hard to win the ball for our team.”

The Fascinating Life of Gerrit Smith

ERRIT SMITH, CLASS OF 1818, was valedictorian of Hamilton’s fifth graduating class. He was also one of the nation’s richest men — and one of the most radical, uncompromising, unforgiving, and hard-nosed leaders of American’s movement to abolish slavery.

To mark the 150th anniversary of his death, here are a dozen facts about one of Hamilton’s most inspiring and influential alumni.

1

A MAN OF STANDING

Gerrit Smith’s father, Peter Smith, worked as a clerk in New York City before joining John Jacob Astor in a fur-trading venture. Although this partnership was short-lived, the two men cooperated in acquiring real estate in Upstate New York after Smith relocated to Utica in 1789. Smith traded with the Oneidas and operated businesses in the area, but his chief preoccupation was land speculation. In 1807, the Smith family moved to Peterboro, 30 miles west of Utica at the center of their 50,000-acre New Petersburg tract of land. When he retired 12 years later, Smith turned over management of a half-million acres scattered over nearly every New York county to son Gerrit and Gerrit’s uncle Daniel Cady, the father of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who would become a leader of the women’s rights and suffrage movements.

Gerrit Smith’s cousin, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was an abolitionist, human rights activist, and one of the first leaders of the women’s rights movement. Portrait circa 1870 by Napoleon Sarony. Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery

2

A DIPLOMA AND A WIFE

In 1819, Gerrit Smith married Wealtha Ann Backus, whom he met on College Hill. The bride was the daughter of Rev. Azel Backus, the first president of Hamilton. The Smiths were married only seven months when Wealtha died suddenly of what her doctor diagnosed as “dropsy of the brain.”

Hamilton’s first president, and Gerrit Smith’s father-in-law, Rev. Azel Backus

3

A LIST OF CAUSES

With diligence and a few good managers, Gerrit Smith had expanded his holdings

Gerrit Smith portrait (circa 1860-70) by Mathew Brady Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery

“The Crime of the Abolitionists,” a speech given by Gerrit Smith at a meeting of the New-York Anti-Slavery Society in 1835 Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Printed Ephemera Collection

in the state to almost one million acres by 1837. This enabled him to crusade almost full-time against slavery, alcohol, tobacco, capital punishment, Freemasonry, and, later, organized religion, total equality — and sensible clothing — for women, vegetarianism, Irish independence, and free trade. “A steady geyser of reform,” historian Morris Bishop called him.

HILL IN HISTORY

An 1846 land indenture document transferring land from Gerrit Smith to John Bics or Bice, possibly a former enslaved man, for the sum of one dollar. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Franklin Sciacca, associate professor of Russian languages and literatures, emeritus

A PARTY FOUNDER

Gerrit Smith was one of the founders of the abolitionist Liberty Party in 1840. He ran for president as the Liberty Party candidate in 1848, 1856, and 1860, but never vigorously pursued the office.

THE TIMBUCTOO EXPERIMENT

In 1846, Gerrit Smith devised what he called a “scheme of justice and benevolence.” He divided 120,000 acres of untouched land that he owned in the Adirondacks into 40-acre plots and began granting them to 3,000 free African Americans. The settlement was known as Timbuctoo. He hoped that after farming the land, the men would be able to increase its value in order to meet the state’s voting requirement of owning $250 worth of property. Although Smith’s suffrage-seeking plan was endorsed by Frederick Douglass and most leading Black abolitionists, most settlers found the situation more than they could handle, and by

1855 the well-intentioned experiment was, for the most part, over.

PROTESTING THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT

In a celebrated 1851 incident in Syracuse, Gerrit Smith was a ringleader in a group that plotted to seize a runaway slave, “Jerry” (his name was William Henry), from a deputy U.S. marshal who sought to return him 6

7 to his master in Missouri. The conspirators rescued him and spirited him off to Canada via the Underground Railroad, in which Smith was very active. Their purpose was to dramatize their conviction that the Fugitive Slave Act was not law, but “a conspiracy against human rights,” and that obeying it would be a crime. Though Smith was not among 13 arrested (only one was ever convicted), he was active as a lawyer in the defense.

Gerrit Smith portrait (circa 1854) by Ezra Greenleaf Weld Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery

SMITH HEADS TO WASHINGTON

In 1852, Gerrit Smith became the only fullfledged abolitionist elected to Congress. His wealth and international recognition gave him prominence unusual for a newcomer (his speeches during that period filled 400 printed pages). While in Washington, he entertained liberally, hosting two dinners a week and systematically inviting every member of Congress, Southerners as well as Northerners. Despite Smith’s abolitionist views, most of his congressional colleagues accepted his invitations, including 78 of the 85 Southern representatives and senators. Nevertheless, he concluded that his influence in Congress was negligible, and he abruptly resigned in 1854 before finishing his first term.

8

THE RADICAL ABOLITION PARTY

Political abolitionists dissatisfied with the weak antislavery stand of the fledgling Republican Party met in convention in Syracuse in 1856. The gathering adopted an address drafted by Gerrit Smith that claimed the U.S. Constitution, as an antislavery document, should condemn the Republicans’ antiextension platform for permitting slavery to remain unchallenged in the Southern states. The convention then formed a “Radical Abolition Party” to replace the moribund Liberty Party and nominated Smith as its candidate for president.

HILL IN

FAILURE AT HARPERS FERRY

Gerrit Smith was one of the “Secret Six” — backers of John Brown’s attempt to incite a slave insurrection in Virginia. On the evening of Oct. 16, 1859, Brown and his men seized the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in hopes that the local slave population would join the raid. Instead, the local militia and, later, U.S. Marines arrived and stormed the engine house, killing many of the raiders and capturing Brown. He was convicted of treason and hanged on Dec. 2, 1859.

A MENTAL BREAKDOWN

Shocked by the failed Harpers Ferry raid, Gerrit Smith fell into a psychological tailspin. Five days after Brown’s hanging, Smith was committed to the State Asylum for the Insane in Utica. Not quite two months later, he returned home. His illness (and some manipulation) had spared him the investigations that followed. He burned all of the papers linking him to the plot for a slave rebellion and continued to deny any complicity. Further, he sued those who claimed he had faked insanity in order to escape answering for the raid. Aided by high-powered lawyers, he succeeded in winning out-of-court settlements, usually including retractions.

This was imperiled when undergraduates submitted to lawmakers an anti-slavery petition, which annoyed them. President Joseph Penney and the conservative faculty disavowed the petition. Smith, a trustee at the time, was of course in favor. He resigned from the board and ceased financial assistance to Hamilton. But by 1868, Smith was reconciled to his alma mater and delivered an affectionate Half-Century Annalist’s Letter in which he exulted over, among other things, “how marvelous the progress during this half century in the knowledge and assertion of human rights.”

MIXED EMOTIONS

Gerrit Smith could abide no less than 100% agreement with his causes, which led to repeated angry ruptures with Hamilton and its faculty. In 1836, the State Legislature had voted a $3,000 annual grant to the College.

SMITH’S LEGACY

Gerrit Smith died of a stroke on Dec. 28, 1874. The New York Times wrote in his obituary, “The history of the most important half-century of our national life will be imperfectly written if it failed to place Smith

in the front rank of men whose influence was most felt in the accomplishment of its results.” The Evening Mail called him “one of the greatest and best men who has been reared on American soil … A mind more hospitable to new ideas, more thoroughly imbued with democratic principles, more vigorous in the unselfish service of the race has not been known in this century …” n

Much of this material for this article is excerpted from “An Encounter in a Courtroom: Irony and the Evanescence of Fame” by William M. Ringle ’44 that appeared in the Summer 1999 Hamilton Alumni Review. Other sources include adirondack.net/history/timbuctoo, battlefields.org/learn/topics/john-brownsharpers-ferry-raid, and “‘He Stands Like Jupiter’: The Autobiography of Gerrit Smith” by John R. McKivigan and Madeleine L. McKivigan, available in the Hamilton College Archives.

In 1859, John Brown led a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry Ivy Close Images / Alamy

TWENTY -FIVE YEARS AGO, Hamilton launched the grand experiment of moving to an open curriculum. Entering students no longer had a list of distribution requirements to fulfill; they were encouraged to pursue their interests widely. From my current vantage point, I see that the experiment has been a success. Do some students come to Hamilton determined to avoid a dreaded subject? Of course, but our faculty and advisors are adept at gently nudging students to dip their toes into new or unfamiliar topics. Maybe they are intimidated by science but end up in a physics class on “How Things Work” helping to set up the bed of nails demonstration, or walking up the Hill to the Peters Observatory on a beautiful fall night with their astronomy class to try out the new telescope. Or they shake off memories of laboring over rote essays and take a literature class where they are delightfully spooked by “American Ghosts” or “Medieval Monsters and Marvels.” Their faculty advisors might steer them toward topics they didn’t encounter in

25 Years of the Open Curriculum

BY NGONIDZASHE MUNEMO Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty

high school, such as a class on the philosophy of “Telling Right from Wrong” or the sociology of “Global Race and Sport.” Students who don’t think of themselves as creative might find themselves logging hours in the darkroom after an ALEX advisor mentions “Intro to Photography” or becoming experts on “The Broadway Musical” after hearing their roommate sing the class’s praises.

None of this is haphazard. The open curriculum creates space for students to explore the liberal arts, to test their wings in a variety of classroom and experiential situations, to expand their ways of thinking about the world. It allows students to do this of their own volition with the guidance of a team of advisors, from faculty to ALEX advisors and staff from the library and career center. This holistic approach offers a robust support network with multiple partners to help students craft an individualized and impactful education.

Certain tangible benefits to the open curriculum have come into focus over time. Giving students autonomy over their class choices in their first years fosters active participation and investment in their college trajectory. Data shows that students choose to take a broad array of courses across all disciplines and that there has been an increase in studying abroad. We have developed and funded more summer research opportunities with faculty across disciplines to provide students additional routes to discovery. Our students are engaging the liberal arts by searching out what speaks to them and being open to surprise; they dig deeper to find their vocation.

The open curriculum is also popular with faculty, who love having students enter their classrooms with a spirit of curiosity and

engagement rather than a feeling of being forced. As academic advisors, our faculty form close bonds with students through many conversations over the years about their hopes and plans. The open curriculum encourages and enables interdisciplinary opportunities, such as co-taught classes, joint field trips, and cross-listed courses that might not be possible if we were beholden to distribution requirements.

As Hamilton looks to the next 25 years, we must consider how to sustain the successes of the open curriculum while still providing the rigorous education we are known for. I’ve begun a series of conversations with faculty about Hamilton’s curriculum and have been polling our community to identify signature Hamilton experiences. In a system where choice and flexibility are privileged, we can still have communal values, such as a commitment to breadth in one’s undergraduate education, a focus on writing and speaking well, the development of quantitative skills, and a devotion to making space to think critically together.

In the face of global issues, such as environmental challenges, political and cultural polarization, and the rise of AI, our open curriculum is even more essential because it foregrounds experimentation and self-discovery while fostering creativity and careful investigation. I look forward to seeing what the next 25 years of Hamilton graduates accomplish as they bring to their communities and the world the alchemy of passion and discernment embodied in our call to “study what you love ” n

With thanks to Associate Dean of Faculty Tina Hall who contributed to this column.

A more

confident

EU that can

provide for

its own security has advantages for both sides of the Atlantic.

Lena Klink ’25 in “Can Europe Defend Itself?” (The National Interest, Sept. 7, 2024). Klink worked as a summer intern with the publication that focuses on defense issues, national security, foreign policy, and U.S. politics.

Got a microphone, a camera, and a chair?

Good enough …

Media critic Erik Wemple ’86 explores the rise of YouTube as the dominant podcast platform in “Who’d want to watch a podcast, anyway?” (Washington Post, Aug. 5, 2024)

Associate Professor of Sociology Jaime Kucinskas in a letter responding to “Are We in the Middle of a Spiritual Awakening?” (New York Times, July 17, 2024)

Alexandra Plakias ’02, associate professor of philosophy, in “Make it Awkward: Rather than being a cringey personal failing, awkwardness is a collective rupture – and a chance to rewrite the social script” (Aeon, Sept. 6, 2024). Her book, Awkwardness, was published earlier this year.

Is this a date or a work dinner? When two people land on different answers: awkward!

Writing

on certain topics can foster debate and enhance a sense of ownership and responsibility for the community. When people recognize both the problems and positive attributes in our society, it brings us together. The spiritual are as civically and politically engaged as the religious.

Nicolai Tolstoy ’27, Opinion section editor of The Spectator, in “Why You Should Write for Opinion” (Sept. 12, 2024).

THIN KER

MEE TS

CURRICULUM OPEN

By John Bare

The moment Steven Tepper reached the summit of College Hill, he saw the magic and heard the echoes.

Taking in a view that New York City’s Sun newspaper in 1899 declared the prettiest in all of New York State, Tepper recalls that “walking down the Hill and, at the crest, being able to see the valley and the rise of hills beyond, it is the closest I get to what I believe the views looked like in the 19th century before all the trees grew tall.”

It’s the spot from which A.G. Hopkins, a member of the Class of 1866 and later chair of the Latin Department, coasted all the way down to the stone bridge spanning Oriskany Creek, a daredevil sled ride that students would spend decades attempting to replicate.

As he strolled through campus, Tepper found Kirkland Residence Hall, where just after lunch on Nov. 22, 1963, a student shouted from a window to alert the campus that President Kennedy had been shot. Nearby, Tepper ran his hands along the surface of the Chapel’s Trenton limestone trim.

The Hill is the eye of a hurricane, as a member of the Class of 1948 described it, “calm, quiet, somewhat relaxing, yet surrounded by a whirlwind of history, knowledge, unyielding standards, and a dedication to excellence in the teaching of the liberal arts.”

It’s where students in the early 1960s created cinema events and theatrical productions at a time when the College offered no film courses, no theatre department. “Hamilton made us complicit in our own educations,” Stephen Rounds ’65 wrote a few years back. “Our education was our project.”

Most of all, Tepper found the Hill percolating with hope, thanks to the students. “Standing at the top of the Hill on the day first-year students moved into their dorms, with 100 or so orientation leaders dressed in costumes and holding hilarious signs and screaming, welcoming all the cars of new students and their families coming up College Hill Road, the excitement and warmth were contagious. I could feel the heartbeat of our new students pounding away as they looked out the car windows and probably felt a bit of both panic and anticipation. But I think all of them thought, ‘This is for me ... they are here for me.’ And we are,” Tepper said.

Imagining a Different Future

A self-described Smithsonian baby, Tepper grew up in the Maryland suburbs with a mother who put him in the middle of every cultural experience on the Washington Mall.

“I can remember walking from the art museum into the space museum and just being amazed at the variety of ideas and innovations that make up our world. That glorious mix of science and art and music and history — all in the shadow of democracy — with its monuments and grand public buildings and politics, I think Washington, D.C., the way I experienced it, was a liberal arts city,” he said.

During high school, he was an exchange student in Uruguay. Then Tar Heels basketball and barbecue pulled him to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Graduate studies carried him to Harvard and Princeton and propelled him to faculty and leadership positions at Vanderbilt and Arizona State University. Along the way,

Steven Tepper, who officially became Hamilton’s 21st president this fall, outside Bristol Center.

My broad definition is that creativity reflects those activities that involve the application of intellectual energies to the production of new ways of solving problems (as in science and mathematics) or of expressing ideas (as in art). Creativity is not simply about selfexpression. It is about producing something new (or combining old elements in new ways) to advance a particular field or add to the storehouse of knowledge.”

Steven Tepper in “The Creative Campus: Who’s Number 1,” a 2004 cover story in The Chronicle of Higher Education that helped launch the Creative Campus movement across the U.S.

Tepper invented the Creative Campus leadership model and showed the world how to put it into practice. His is a curated life that a screenwriter might assign to a liberal arts superhero character, a bow-tied seeker incapable of suppressing curiosity, a polycultural figure shaped by folklore, global travel, federal arts, Ivy League scholarship, Nashville music, the energy of a boundless Arizona campus, and Carolina accents.

Tepper describes the Creative Campus as a framework for “designing and evaluating the extent to which a campus is organized around maximizing creative exchange, the development of creative capacities among its faculty and students, and the use of creativity in its approach to building community, advancing equity, engaging across cultures, and bridging divides.”

The Creative Campus emerged as an alternative to the decision-making models that the social sector borrowed from the industrial revolution’s manufacturing miracles, which depend on unwavering implementation of top-down orders and place a premium on efficiency. The Creative Campus undoes all of this and, in its place, invites individuals to dream up new ways to make decisions and to talk about and test ideas. When this occurs, effectiveness becomes more important than efficiency. The Creative Campus reflects Tepper’s unshakeable belief in the power of the human imagination and, ultimately, on what philosophers describe as “public imagination,” which materializes when individuals who share a mental picture of a desired future self-organize in order to create the future they all imagine.

As Tepper wrote in a 2023 book chapter, “Cultural change demands the ability to imagine a different future. It requires powerful stories to move people to action. It requires making the invisible visible so that we can address issues of equity and injustice that undermine our communities. Cultural change requires play, even when the issues

and challenges are urgent and serious. Perhaps most importantly, cultural change requires reappropriating or reassembling symbols and narratives that perpetuate the dominant view of gender, sex, and power. Imagination, storytelling, play, and symbolic reassembly: These are the tools of the artist and designer. It is hard to imagine culture change without the arts at the center.”

Pure liberal arts with a side of green dumplings

Tepper’s groundbreaking work on the Creative Campus, of course, was prelude to his move to Hamilton, a place Life Magazine singled out in 1953 as the exemplar for “pure liberal arts.” It seems inevitable that Tepper and Hamilton would find each other, the open thinker and the college with the open curriculum. Writing about Alexander Hamilton and his peers, the biographer Ron Chernow observed that “the Revolution produced an insatiable need for thinkers who could generate ideas and wordsmiths who could lucidly expound them. The immediate utility of ideas was an incalculable tonic for the founding generation.” Today, at a moment when the world can feel heavy with uncertainty about the future, Tepper’s Creative Campus is the tonic for a new generation of restless students.

“Creativity and innovation are in the DNA of Hamilton College,” Tepper said. “Our namesake and original trustee, Alexander Hamilton, was our nation’s creative founding father. He was a designer. Other founding fathers were content with borrowed models or sticking to the old agrarian order. Hamilton knew that a new nation needed new ideas. Ever since, the College’s history has been punctuated by moments of innovation and creativity and invention.”

Tepper’s own choices reflect the expanse of a liberal arts adventure. His playlist includes Bill Withers, Earth Wind and Fire, Daddy Yankee, Talking Heads, The Chicks, and the California rock band Cake,

whose 1998 album cover features the image of a hog that is a near twin for the logo of Crook’s Corner, a legendary Chapel Hill restaurant that was serving up pork barbecue when Tepper was an undergraduate there. It’s a reminder that Tepper grew up loving his grandmother’s comfort food, namely kasha varnishkes, before finding collards and cornbread and smoke pits in North Carolina. Now, wouldn’t you know it, he’s a sushi fan.

“I love to cook. I cook on instinct. Whatever is in the fridge. Grilled fish is probably my go-to, and I make a mean chicken and green dumplings,” he said.

He turns to tennis and daily stretching for physical activity. He’s a loyal consumer of This American Life podcasts. Recent reads include Richard Powers’ The Overstory, Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, and

Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, and, he said, “I’ve become obsessed with the Octavia Butler books, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents.”

Books always mattered. From his youth, important reads included Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Tepper’s movie picks stretch across seven decades, from the 1967 classics The Graduate and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, to the 2021 films King Richard and CODA

He owns about five dozen bow ties and says he needs more. In Nashville, Tepper discovered Otis James’ original bow tie designs and bought every item in the line. He possesses one of the only Hamilton bow ties in existence, thanks to the quick work of an artisan who turned a Hamilton necktie

President Tepper addresses those gathered in the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House on Sept. 28 during his inauguration.

WHAT IF

we combined art and science to reimagine sustainability?

into a bow tie just in time for Tepper’s first speech on campus.

Comfortable being uncomfortable

At Arizona State, Tepper appeared in three seasons of the YouTube series Crafts With Tepper. In each of the 18 episodes, he holds conversations with students while they take on arts projects. The series opens with Tepper chatting with a music student as they make a kalimba. In the series blooper reel, Tepper stumbles over his own name and fumbles the introduction to his own show. It’s not slapstick. He’s clearly trying to nail it. Instead, it is the type of reveal that is rare among high-profile leaders: evidence that Tepper, when it comes to creative pursuits, derives as much joy from the polished moments as the clumsy ones.

Tepper, it turns out, is comfortable being uncomfortable, and he operates in a manner free of cynicism. Without sneer and snark, there is no room for embarrassment, nothing to crimp creative ventures. Crafts With Tepper is compelling viewing because it offers a glimpse into the way he engages as a professor, a dean, a friend, and a family member — and now as a college president. Conversation and creativity are what you get from Tepper, whether the camera is rolling or not.

“People who have met me know that I think out loud. I like to process ideas with people. So let’s talk out loud together. I also like improvisation, which often comes about through really random and fun questions,” Tepper said.

Chasing fun questions has helped him disrupt the usual structure of course

NANCY L. FORD

TEPPER’S TIMELINE

1967

Born in Silver Spring, Md.

1989

Bachelor of Arts, International Relations (Latin America), The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

1989–94

Executive Director, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Bicentennial Observance

1996

Master of Public Policy, Harvard University

1998

Master of Arts, Sociology, Princeton University

2001

Ph.D., Sociology, Princeton University

9/1998–6/2004

Deputy Director, Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs; Lecturer of Sociology and Public Policy, Princeton University

8/2004–6/2014

Associate Director, Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy; Associate Professor of Sociology, Vanderbilt University

5/2012–6/2014

Facilitator and Program Lead, Leadership Music, Nashville, Tenn.

7/2014–6/2024

Dean, Director, and Foundation Professor of Arts, Media and Engineering, The Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Arizona State University

7/2024–

President, Hamilton College

In addition to more than 100 invited talks and conference presentations, Tepper has published some 60 articles, chapters, essays, and book reviews, plus four books and edited volumes. His current book project is Creativity at Social Scale: A Blueprint for Innovation and Democratic Renewal, co-authored with Terence McDonnell.

His research has been supported by several dozen grants from such organizations as the Kresge, Mellon, and Ford foundations, Pew Charitable Trusts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

He has served in numerous volunteer leadership roles, including most recently as a board member for the National Humanities Alliance (202123) and as a member of the American Academy for Arts and Sciences’ National Commission on the Arts (2019-21).

offerings. At ASU, for example, Tepper stitched together a program on Water Narratives and Societal Change. For anyone accustomed to choosing stand-alone courses from a catalogue — biology or sociology, art or geology — take note that Tepper’s Creative Campus model unlocks learning opportunities that defy easy description. And that’s the point: the Creative Campus encourages — requires, really — faculty and students to dream up the most compelling learning experiences, prioritizing purpose over task. This means disallowing any version of “that’s not how we do things here” as a response to ideas.

For Water Narratives and Societal Change, ASU mixed core curricula with complimentary lines of study. The blend enabled students to examine water issues through scientific, political, economic, Indigenous, and aesthetic lenses. Instructors offered a suite of five or six learning tracks — depending on how you count them — that engaged students in multiple storytelling modes, including audio, visual art, music, and creative writing.

“Asking a group of faculty to each build an entire course related to a single theme is nearly impossible,” Tepper said in a 2023 ASU article. “But asking 10 faculty to find a week or two and an assignment on a theme within the context of something they are already doing, to help students see and connect their ideas with other students across the college and the university? That’s a much easier lift, allowing faculty and students to adapt their classes in ways that make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. It’s infinitely scalable, and there are many important themes that would fit this model.”

Hamilton is the model Tepper’s Creative Campus makes these opportunities the norm, not the exception. The approach embraces complexity and turns away from the faux precision of templates. Tepper has figured out that it’s from

WHAT IF

we could make our campus spaces

and

uncertainty that enlightenment emerges. And the road trip to enlightenment, for Tepper, is the greatest adventure imaginable. To paraphrase the singer-songwriter Robert Earl Keen, the road goes on forever, and the learning never ends. It’s the combination of Tepper’s imagination and his personal touch that enables him to bring others along.

“I love Steven. We will miss him deeply. He was an incredible inspiration,” said Nonny de la Peña, the journalist and virtual-reality pioneer Tepper hired as founding director of ASU’s Narrative and Emerging Media program.

“Steven’s colleagues want to follow his lead because he has an exciting vision, collaborates well with others, has a terrific sense of humor and genuinely cares about his mission, the institution, the students, the faculty, and making a difference,” said Hamilton Trustee Dan Nye ’88, P’24, who served as a member of the presidential search committee.

Bill Ivey, who hired Tepper at Vanderbilt’s Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy, believes Tepper’s “lively, disciplined imagination” helps set him apart. “Steve is willing to put himself in challenging situations and then work his way out with some kind of larger consensus. He’s great at that,” Ivey said.

Quentin Messer ’26, a student representative on the presidential search committee, recognizes that Tepper “is talented at getting people to answer deep-rooted questions naturally, pushing one’s thinking. Even in his question-asking, he pushes the creative campus ethos and gets you to think across academic contexts.”

For Tepper, the key to higher education is removing rules and customs that suppress learning. The Creative Campus trusts the human imagination and knows curiosity is humanity’s pilot light. Tepper sees the fire burning in the students.

“Hamilton students — they are remarkable and unlike any students I have ever worked with or taught. Our open curriculum, an exploratory mindset, our orientation programs, the way faculty design the learning environment, the fact that 25 percent of our students every year serve in some official role mentoring or advising other students — these things combine to create this extraordinary place, to create motivated learners, open and engaged, without the arrogance and the ‘means to an end’ mentality that exists at a lot of other highly selective colleges,” Tepper said. “I don’t think there is another institution that has created a better environment, so Hamilton College is the model.”

Tapping our feet

Tepper’s Creative Campus is marked by abundance, not scarcity. This is a critical distinction for Tepper. In a culture that celebrates rarities and oddities and superlatives that set individuals apart from the rest — Warren Buffett for his stock picking, for example, and whoever is named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” — Tepper’s Creative Campus is predicated on the belief that everyone is possessed of curiosity, creativity, and imagination.

In the Creative Campus, the many do not wait on the few to hand down a solution. Instead, everyone engages in the work of leveraging culture for the public good. Further, there is no zero-sum game. That is, one student’s success does not come at the cost of another’s. Mind you, this belief in abundance does not translate to a dumbing down, everybody-gets-a-trophy mindset. Instead, the Creative Campus takes on a kind of Buddhist view, one where we first

The new president gets the grand welcome from orientation leaders during new student move-in day.

more inclusive

welcoming?

WHAT

IF we could use AI in a new way to advance our teaching and learning?

“WHAT IF” CREATIVITY KNEW NO LIMIT

In his inaugural address, President Steven Tepper announced a new platform designed to encourage students, faculty, and staff to think boldly, collaborate across disciplines, and transform speculative ideas into impactful action.

The “What If” Initiative builds upon the creative spirit that’s been “a part of Hamilton’s DNA” since the founding of the Hamilton-Oneida Academy in 1793. Ideas from across campus will be gathered with some selected to receive the resources necessary to turn them into reality, whether through smaller Spark Propositions, Catalyst Propositions, or larger Transformational Propositions.

“We can design a future that allows us to leverage our history to expand opportunities and to create that national differentiation to lead,” Tepper said. “Many of you have ideas you’re walking around with for how to make this College a better place — new ways to engage in difficult conversations, new ways to encourage approaches to our democracy, new ways to practice the liberal arts, new ways to engage in technology, new ways to connect art, sustainability, and science.

“I believe Hamilton can be a model for the type of creativity and exchange that the world so desperately needs. … Let’s try things. Let’s start experimenting, prototyping, piloting. We do not have to wait. The future is now. Let’s begin.”

The first round of projects will be announced in early 2025.

acknowledge that the universe has supplied us with what we need to flourish, and then we take on the job of using the gifts to create the futures we imagine.

Tepper is aware that he has arrived at a campus where imaginations have been whirring for centuries. “Creativity emerges from a unique culture and the constellation of people, place, history, and opportunity. So, I need to understand that culture first. That means meeting lots of people and asking lots of questions,” he said.

In sociology, the field in which Tepper holds a Ph.D., there is a body of literature describing a utopian society as one filled with experimentation and learning, where there is a bias toward action. Tepper shares this view.

“I do want us to begin tapping our collective feet — the motion that happens around the edge of the dance floor before anyone jumps in, the build-up of some positive energy, feeling the beat, watching other people begin to move. In this first year we are launching a program to support ‘what if’ ideas — experimentation and pilots — to build positive momentum, to begin tapping our feet. The campus is alive with ideas.”

About the Author

John Bare is a writer and photographer based in North Carolina and the author of the 2024 novel My Biscuit Baby. He serves as the Charles Shaffer Distinguished Fellow and Professor of Practice in Philanthropy at the University of North Carolina.

Bare is also a longtime friend of Steven Tepper and had this to say about Hamilton’s new president:

“It was in Chapel Hill, more than 30 years ago, where I first saw Steven’s brilliance. He was directing UNC’s bicentennial celebration. I was in graduate school at UNC and writing a local newspaper column at the time. Leading a complex public initiative, Steven eluded bureaucratic sclerosis and cultivated authentic emotional engagement in all of North Carolina’s 100 counties. At the time, before the Creative Campus label emerged, we’d have called it wizardry. By pollinating everyone’s ideas, Steven was figuring out how to ‘leverage public culture for public good.’ It worked. Under the spell of an experience from which the Creative Campus idea would grow, more than 300,000 people participated in bicentennial events.”

President Tepper outside the Romano Theatre in The Kennedy Center for Theatre and the Studio Arts.

LUKE

COPPING

HAMILTON’S FIRST LADY

Dana Mossman Tepper is an art conservator who specializes in works of art on paper and photographs. Throughout a career that has spanned more than 25 years, she has served as chief conservator at the Arizona State University Art Museum and in private practice as a conservator in Nashville, Tenn. In addition, she has worked as a contract conservator in the New York City area for clients including

the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Princeton University Art Museum, and as a fellow at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The recipient of a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she received a master’s degree from Winterthur-University of Delaware. Her research interests include the materials and techniques of early American

modernist painter Arthur Dove, the longterm impact of conservation materials and treatments on works of art, and the contemporary mounting practices of photographic materials.

Since joining the Hamilton community, she has been exploring the history and traditions of the president’s home, also known as Davenport House, located at the foot of College Hill Road. n

Steven and Dana Mossman Tepper (center) with their children, Sam and Sally, and canine friend Chewy on the porch of the Davenport House.

NANCY L. FORD

he was the first to don the presidential chain of office. A gift from the Class of 1968, the chain bears the College seal and was designed by Ralph Menconi, a New York City commercial artist and sculptor. According to the April 26, 1968, issue of The Spectator, College Marshal Thomas Colby said, “The idea behind a chain of office is to symbolize both the burden and the distinction the man is asked to assume.”

A look

HAMILTON PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATIONS

he Nov. 4, 1858, inauguration of Samuel Ware Fisher as Hamilton’s sixth president was an all-day affair that began with a service at the Congregational Church in Clinton and concluded on campus with students and faculty enjoying the “Illumination of College Buildings” and a “Torchlight Procession.”

The first Hamilton president installed following the Civil War, Samuel Gilman Brown was inaugurated as the seventh president in July of 1867, the same month that the U.S. Congress passed the Third Reconstruction Act over President Andrew Johnson’s veto.

When Frederick Carlos Ferry was inaugurated as 10th president on July 1, 1917, it marked the first time in the College’s over 100-year history that Hamilton would not be led by a Protestant minister. He was also the first to hold a doctoral degree, having received his Ph.D. in mathematics.

Robert Ward McEwen, Hamilton’s 14th president from 1949 to 1966, opted to continue the practice begun by his two predecessors — David Worcester (194547) and Thomas Brown Rudd (1947-49) — and forgo a formal inauguration ceremony. “In my honest opinion, the turnover in college presidents is so frequent that the publicity value of an inauguration would not be worth the expense,” he said in the May 1949 Hamilton Alumni Review. Had he known he would go on to serve for 17 years, perhaps he would have felt differently.

Former U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale spoke at the inauguration of David Wippman, Hamilton’s 20th president, on Oct. 8, 2016.

All told, there have been 21 presidents in Hamilton’s 212-year history — including the College’s newest leader, Steven Tepper. To mark his inaugural celebration on Sept. 28, 2024, we thought we’d share some highlights and interesting facts from inaugurations past.

AZEL BACKUS

First president, 1812-16

INAUGURATION DATE

Dec. 3, 1812

LOCATION Village of Clinton

INTERESTING FACT: Backus, Hamilton’s first president, shared the same hometown (Norwich, Conn.) as his “predecessor,” Samuel Kirkland, founder of the HamiltonOneida Academy.

FROM HIS ADDRESS: Rev. Backus’ “Inaugural Discourse” was largely a passionate call to heed the word of a Christian God; however, he did speak about his thoughts on the fledgling institution: “Let it never be imagined then that the sole objective of education is to make youth acquainted with languages, sciences, and arts. The governors and instructors of a literary institution owe to God and society the sacred duty of guarding the morals of the youth committed to their care. An attention to order, and the early formation of habits of industry and investigation, I venture to assert, are more important than knowledge …

“Give me leave, on this occasion, to invite the zealous cooperation of all the friends of

SIMEON NORTH

Fifth president, 1839-57

INAUGURATION DATE

May 8, 1839

LOCATION

Stone Presbyterian Church, Clinton

INTERESTING FACT: North was Hamilton’s first president to rise from the ranks of the faculty; he came to College Hill in 1829 as a professor of ancient languages. In 1836, he was named the Dexter Chair of Classical Literature, the first member of the Hamilton faculty to hold a named chair.

FROM HIS ADDRESS TITLED “THE COLLEGE SYSTEM OF EDUCATION:” “He who plants the acorn may indeed see it germinate and grow, but he who knows that posterity alone will look up to the full-grown oak. In the meanwhile it will have planted deep its roots in the rugged soil, and spread out wide its arms in the face of heaven. The thunderbolt may then fall upon it, but it will stand. The tempest may battle with its trunk, and howl through its branches, but it will remain unbroken. Thus should it be with colleges. They who

religion and sound science, with the immediate instructors, in nurturing your best hopes. Should we be so happy as to succeed, informing some for usefulness in church and state, we may expect our numbers to increase, and that the future legislators of a great and free people will enlarge our means of accommodation and instruction.”

IN THE NEWS IN 1812

• The Boston Gazette prints a political cartoon coining the term “gerrymander,” after former Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry’s approval of legislation creating oddly shaped electoral districts designed to help incumbents win re-election. (March 26)

• Louisiana is admitted as the 18th U.S. state. (April 30)

• The War of 1812 involving the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom begins with U.S. declaration. (June 18)

plant and who foster them in their infancy, should feel that they are laboring for coming generations, and take care that their work is so accomplished that posterity may have occasion to bless them for their labors.”

IN THE NEWS IN 1839

• First photo of the Moon is taken by French photographer Louis Daguerre. (Jan. 2)

• Cherokee Indians came to the end of the “Trail of Tears,” a forced march from their ancestral home in the Smoky Mountains to the Oklahoma Territory. (March 26)

• First Opium War begins between the British Empire and the Qing dynasty of China. (Sept. 5)

MELANCTHON WOOLSEY STRYKER

Ninth president, 1892-1917

INAUGURATION DATE

Jan. 17, 1893 LOCATION Stone Presbyterian Church, Clinton

INTERESTING FACT: Stryker is not only the longest-serving Hamilton president (25 years), but also the only alumnus (Class of 1872) to fill the post. Richard Watrous Couper ’44 served as acting president (1966-68).

MUSICAL HIGHLIGHT FROM HIS INAUGURATION: Students performed the “College Song,” eight years before Stryker himself would pen the alma mater, Carissima

FROM HIS ADDRESS: “But this much I must say, that is with unfeigned humility that I venture to accept this high charge, and that none can hold more important than I do certain specific qualifications for it in which hitherto I have been but little schooled. For the functions of my office require a quality, a variety, a facility, which will not only now demand my strenuous best, but an increasing better as time runs. May I never forget that one can only be a leader as he is a

servant, only be a teacher as he is a learner, and so may I neither become a laggard nor a pedant.”

WHAT FACULTY SAID: Rev. Dr. W. R. Terrett spoke at a dinner on behalf of faculty: “The faculty of the college desires to assure you and the public that a sound, thoro satisfactory college education can be obtained at Hamilton to-day. It is commonly said now that Hamilton is a hard college to get thro. We are proud of that reputation. We believe that it is deserved.”

IN THE NEWS IN 1893

• Cracker Jack introduced, consisting of caramel-coated popcorn and peanuts. (June 16)

• English author Beatrix Potter writes the story of Peter Rabbit for a 5-year-old boy. (Sept. 4)

• Henry Ford completes his first useful petrol/ gasoline-fueled engine. (Dec. 24)

A Richard W. Rummell landscape illustration of Hamilton as it looked during Stryker’s presidency.

WILLIAM HOWARD COWLEY

Eleventh president, 1938-44

INAUGURATION DATE

Oct. 29, 1938 LOCATION College Chapel

SAMUEL FISHER BABBITT

Kirkland College, 1968-78

INAUGURATION DATE April 19, 1969 LOCATION Alumni Gym

President Cowley (left) shaking hands with his predecessor, Frederick Carlos Ferry, who served in the office from 1917 to 1938.

FROM HIS ADDRESS: “Intelligence is not enough because thinking is only part of living; because students come to college not only for the training of their minds but also for the enrichment of their lives as people; because college students need the advice and direction of mature and experienced adults who understand their problems; because as expressed in the motto of Hamilton College they seek to know themselves; because such self-knowledge is emotional and social and spiritual as well as intellectual; because not only the student’s mind comes to college but also his body; because, as most alumni will testify, the lessons in human relations learned from one’s fellow students complement the lessons

learned from books and professors; because college is not only an intellectual enterprise but also a social and spiritual environment; because society expects from college graduates not only intelligence but also civilized attitudes, matured emotions, and cultivated character.”

IN THE NEWS IN 1938

• Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first cel-animated feature in motion picture history, is released in the U.S. (Feb. 4)

• DuPont announces a name for its new synthetic yarn: “nylon.” (Oct. 27)

• Foreshadowing the Holocaust, Nazis launch Kristallnacht, a campaign of terror against Jewish people in Germany and Austria. (Nov. 9)

INTERESTING FACT: Babbitt served as the first (and only) president of Kirkland.

FROM HIS ADDRESS: “Finally, we choose to educate young women. Why women? It is a question we are often asked, and there are three instant replies. First, the situation which gave birth to Kirkland required a complementarity to the all-male world which was here before us; second, women are reaching an increasingly sophisticated and diverse role in society, and they must be prepared to meet it; finally, the young women you see here today in a real sense demanded that Kirkland be born. They are ready to try new forms, to suffer mud and inconvenience for the sake of the possibility of a college responsive to their needs.”

WHAT STUDENTS SAID: Daphne Petri K’72, secretary to the assembly, spoke on behalf of the students: “You are the president that knows what it’s like to be a student in 1969. You are the president who has deep faith in

your students. You are the president who told us at our first meeting on September 16 that this was our college and therefore you would support the rules we adopted if we sincerely believed they were the rules that we wanted. You are the president who has a wonderful knack for saying the right thing, at the right time, in the right way. You are the president who is not too proud to walk in the mud. No, you are not the ordinary president. … For you are the president of Kirkland College — and we do not consider either you or our college ordinary.”

IN THE NEWS IN 1969

• President Nixon announces the first major U.S. troop withdrawal from Vietnam. (June 10)

• Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to walk on the Moon. (July 20)

• The Woodstock Music and Art Fair opens with over 400,000 people in attendance. (Aug. 15)

J. MARTIN CAROVANO

Sixteenth president, 1974-88

INAUGURATION DATE

Sept. 8, 1974 LOCATION Sage Rink

INTERESTING FACT: At age 39, Carovano was the youngest person selected as Hamilton president and the second president to rise to the position from the faculty ranks. He came to College Hill in 1963 as an instructor in economics.

FROM HIS ADDRESS: “If our primary objective is not to produce professional scholars, not to provide technical training, not even to supply the currently accepted answers to interesting questions, what is it? It is, I believe, something that is both simple and marvelously complicated. Namely, to teach students how to think, or, perhaps more accurately, how to learn. It is not the answer to a question that is important, but rather how one goes about seeking an answer. The student’s experience here, then, should develop and sharpen his powers of observation, discrimination, analysis, and synthesis.

M. TOBIN

Eighteenth president, 1993-2003

INAUGURATION DATE

April 30, 1994

LOCATION

Margaret Bundy Scott Field House

INTERESTING FACT: Tobin came to Hamilton in 1980 for a tenure-track faculty position in the History Department. In May 2003, he received the inaugural Alumni Association Distinguished Service Award.

FROM HIS ADDRESS: “I consider one of my most important responsibilities the task of recognizing that our strength lies both in the fabric and tapestry of our heritage and in finding the courage to see ourselves with fresh eyes and to push off in new directions. As an historian, I recognize the importance of balancing tradition and change. … there is a seamless thread that has knit us together across generations. It is an unquenchable love and affection for Hamilton, an enduring belief in the integrity, wisdom, and compassion of this College to act honorably, and to lead with vision, courage, and understanding. We must draw on our unity and pride to draw out the best in ourselves.”

It should implant in him an inclination toward critical disciplined speculation and a propensity to search for relationships. It should, to use a term [my predecessor] John Chandler introduced me to, make him tough-minded.”

IN THE NEWS IN 1974

• Barbra Streisand has her first #1 hit, “The Way We Were.” (Feb. 2)

• Grand jury concludes U.S. President Richard Nixon is involved in Watergate cover-up.

(March 2)

• Hank Aaron hits his 715th home run, breaking Babe Ruth’s record in Atlanta. (April 8)

IN THE NEWS IN 1994

• Wayne Gretzky sets NHL record with 802 goals scored. (March 23)

• Nelson Mandela sworn in as South Africa’s first Black president. (May 10)

• Amazon.com is founded by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Wash. (July 5)

EUGENE

JOAN HINDE STEWART

Nineteenth president, 2003-16

INAUGURATION DATE

Oct. 18, 2003 LOCATION

Margaret Bundy Scott Field House

INTERESTING FACT: Stewart is the first woman to serve as Hamilton’s president. She was also the first in her family to attend college. Musical selections performed at her inauguration included “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No. 1” by Joan Tower.

ANOTHER MUSICAL HIGHLIGHT: The ceremony opened with the Inauguration Brass Ensemble performing “Fanfare,” a piece composed for the occasion by Sam Pellman, professor of music.

FROM HER ADDRESS: In a light-hearted moment midway through her speech, Stewart recounted a conversation she had had with a first-year student her first day in office. When Stewart told the student that she had majored in French, the student replied, “French? Then how did you get to be president?”

“How did I get to be president?” Stewart said rhetorically. “I am not at all sure. But maybe what the student was getting at was the question of preparedness. How did my career as a student of French prepare me for this new assignment? I will never stop believing that there is no better preparation

College Presidents Through the Years

AZEL BACKUS, 1812-16

HENRY DAVIS, 1817-32

SERENO EDWARDS DWIGHT, 1832-35

JOSEPH PENNEY, 1835-39

SIMEON NORTH, 1839-57

SAMUEL WARE FISHER, 1858-66

SAMUEL GILMAN BROWN, 1866-81

HENRY DARLING, 1881-91

MELANCTHON WOOLSEY STRYKER, 1892-1917

FREDERICK CARLOS FERRY, 1917-38

WILLIAM HAROLD COWLEY, 1938-44

DAVID WORCESTER, 1945-47

THOMAS BROWN RUDD, 1947-49

ROBERT WARD MCEWEN, 1949-66

JOHN WESLEY CHANDLER, 1968-73

SAMUEL FISHER BABBITT, 1968-78 (Kirkland College)

for any way of life than the study of literature or any of the other choices a liberal education offers.”

WHAT THE GUEST SPEAKER SAID: Stewart’s former colleague, University of South Carolina Professor of History Patrick Maney, offered some “advice” for the new president prior to her inaugural address. Recounting how various U.S. presidents through the years approached their remarks, he cautioned against following the example of William Henry Harrison, who gave the longest address at over two hours — and then died a month later … “and it’s doubtful that his audience lasted that long,” Maney quipped.

IN THE NEWS IN 2003

• The Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry over Texas, killing all seven astronauts on board. (Feb. 1)

• The Iraq War begins with the invasion of Iraq by the U.S. and allied forces. (March 20)

• Social networking service Myspace is launched. (Aug. 1)

J. MARTIN CAROVANO, 1974-88

HARRY C. PAYNE, 1988-93

EUGENE M. TOBIN, 1993-2003

JOAN HINDE STEWART, 2003-16

DAVID WIPPMAN, 2016-24

STEVEN J. TEPPER, 2024-

Creativity Taught Can be

Steven Tepper

CREATIVITY IS A POWERFUL FORCE to advance our democracy and our planet because it helps us imagine alternative futures, fuels empathy and connection, drives civic engagement, and fosters adaptable and resilient individuals and communities.

Yet, as much as creativity is celebrated, it can also be misunderstood. Our notions of creativity often feel fragile, unpredictable, and temporary — tied to charismatic artists, inventors, or entrepreneurs, and, importantly, rooted in historical notions of individual genius. Creativity is seen as a rare and exclusive innate trait, something specific people have that others do not.

Research, however, proves otherwise. As I’ve studied and written about with my colleague Terence McDonnell at the University of Notre Dame, creativity isn’t simply a product of personality or individual psychology, but rather is rooted in a set of teachable competencies.

In many ways, Hamilton embodies the spirit of a “creative campus.” Our commitment to an open curriculum encourages connections between students and faculty across disciplines. Ideas that occur outside the classroom are brought into the classroom, leading to research and original discovery. This is a place where students are encouraged to cultivate creative competencies — break from conventions, embrace ambiguity, take risks, learn to take feedback and radically revise a concept or design, collaborate on emerging ideas, and

pursue “what if” thinking, storytelling, and reasoning with analogies.

These competencies require rigor and practice, building muscle, mastering tools and methodologies. They also require the right culture, where creativity is about the better, the revised, and the evolved.

Developing and refining such skills seem to be exactly what 21st-century undergraduates want. In a continuing national study of creativity and academic choices, 84 percent of undergraduates said creativity is an important or very important skill. As many as 54 percent said pursuing careers that allow them to be creative is important or essential. Other studies have noted the high percentage of students today who express their creativity by designing websites and blogs and posting their own music, fiction, or poetry online. With new digital technologies, open-source networks, and a proliferation of highly skilled amateur artists, scientists, designers, and inventors, we are witnessing a renaissance in creativity and culture that colleges and universities can ill afford to ignore.

Creativity lies at the heart of artistic practice, of course, but it also leads to innovations in technology, public policy, business, and medicine, separating leaders from followers. By encouraging our students to build creative competencies, they’ll have the courage to imagine a better future and the skills to inspire others to help achieve it.

Introduction by President

Creativity — Imagining and developing original ideas, approaches, works, and interpretations, and solving problems resourcefully.

Others include:

• Intellectual Curiosity and Flexibility

• Analytic Discernment

• Aesthetic Discernment

• Disciplinary Practice

• Communication and Expression

• Understanding of Cultural Diversity

• Ethical, Informed, and Engaged Citizenship

“ We all have the capacity to dream, explore, discover, build, ask questions and seek answers — in other words, to be creators. Creative selfexpression opens us up to who we are and invites us to explore and express our own unique set of qualities and experiences, to play with ambiguities, and to connect the dots in a way that they’ve never been connected before.”

Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire in Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind (2015)

One of Hamilton’s eight educational goals as approved by the faculty in 2011.

We asked several professors representing various disciplines to share how creativity manifests itself in their interactions with students. What follows are their responses.

CREATIVITY IN TEACHING depends on instability — that is, moments at which the stability of what you anticipate or plan breaks down and requires you to adjust. In our day-to-day lives, we have often seen a particular moment of instability before, so in responding we choose from a set of options provided by our experience. In contrast, in intellectual endeavors, and especially in the midst of new subjects, instability requires a creative response. So, I attempt to build instability into my courses or introduce instability into my individual conversations with students. This can be achieved by leaving space for junctures in discussion at which students might turn in multiple, hopefully unanticipated directions or by simply bringing to discussion questions to which I, the instructor, genuinely do not have answers. Students are never more focused than when the instructor does not know how to proceed or is stumped by a question — especially a student’s question. The students are focused because at that moment they really get to see how the instructor thinks. At that moment the students and the instructor are in it together with no specific end in sight. That’s when creativity happens.

Kevin Grant, the Edgar B. Graves Professor of History

AS A CREATIVE WRITING PROFESSOR, I think a lot about how to inspire creativity in students and myself. Over the years, I’ve found two surefire approaches.

Slow Down

The conventional advice to aspiring writers and artists to put down the phone and really engage with the world is easier said than done. Some people use journaling to take note of the interesting and bizarre and delightfully mundane happenings of everyday life. Some people use Instagram posts. Whatever works for you, take a few moments each day for deep observation. Keep a scent diary or a flipbook of bitter things. Make a running tally of favorite

overheard phrases. Start a sketchbook of neighborhood dogs or an herbarium of humble weeds. Take a photo of the same tree every morning at the same time for a month or a year or a decade.

Speed Up

In class, I often make use of timed writing exercises. The more constraints we add to our writing, the squirmier our brains get, which leads to exciting leaps and breakthroughs. So, set a timer for 90 seconds and write something using only one-syllable words. Add a chicken. Make it a love poem to a stranger or an item in your house that you couldn’t live without. Start over. Write for two minutes about gifts you’ve given and received. Spend another minute construct-

IN THE SPORT OF BASKETBALL, creativity manifests itself in some of the exceptionally artistic feats seen in an athletic dunk by LeBron James, an amazing no-look pass by Nikola Jokic, or an incredibly long 3-pointer from Steph Curry. The creativity of players like these to perform in a way that has never been seen is a consistent trend that happens over and over again as decades pass in sports. Unique players push the comfort of what was traditionally done and display something imagined and

original. This creativity fuels the passion around sports for fans and spectators as there is always the possibility of seeing something unique, historic, or creative at any game.

Coaches have the wonderful up-close opportunity to support athletes as they strive and grow to reach their individual potential. Positive reinforcement, consistent communication, and building relationships centered on trust are tremendous tools for coaches to encourage athletes. Ultimately,

ing the history of one of the gifts — dream up the backstory of your grandmother’s hairbrush or the quarter for the parking meter or the cake left on the doorstep. Use the last two minutes to write an unexpected consequence for the gift — is it a murder weapon, the impediment to an engagement, an artifact found in a dig 400 years from now, the thing that will be saved from the fire?

Whether we speed up or slow down, the key is to momentarily break our normal patterns and allow our thoughts to get strange, to go to unexpected places, to find the cracks that suddenly widen into beautiful expanses that feel like freedom — and then start exploring, line by line.

Tina May Hall, associate dean of faculty and professor of literature and creative writing

coaches who use these tools well allow athletes the courage to make mistakes, achieve at unique levels and, in many cases, see creativity flourish.

Adam Stockwell, men’s basketball coach and professor of physical education

CREATIVITY COMES IN MANY FORMS In academic research, you might raise a question that has not been previously asked. Or you may find a new way to address an age-old problem. Perhaps you combine methods in a manner that has not been done before. Or your results may suggest a novel policy recommendation. So how do you teach students to ask good questions? Or to think of new ways to solve a problem? One way I do this is to walk them through my own thought process. How did I come up with this research topic? Why did I choose to use the methods that I did? What are the potential implications of my results?

As a social scientist, I am interested in understanding how the world works, how people interact with one another, and how they respond to various incentives. In my classes and meetings with students, I encourage them to observe the world around them, and to be particularly mindful of even small details that at first glance might seem inconsequential, but could lead to interesting research ideas.

Research questions could originate from one’s personal experiences: Can having an unfamiliar name hurt my job prospects? Or through hearing stories about people in the local community: How does the connection with one’s local community impact the well-being of refugees in Utica, New York? Or by reading about changes in state laws: How does the legalization of sports betting impact people’s mental health?

Stephen Wu, the Irma M. and Robert D. Morris Professor of Economics

ILIKE TO REFER TO HAMILTON’S educational goals, the fifth of which is creativity. The preceding four goals — intellectual curiosity and flexibility, analytic and aesthetic discernment, and disciplinary practice — are the necessary preconditions for creativity.

As teachers we model being curious and flexible. Rehearsals do not always go as planned, so I regularly find myself reaching for something new and out of the box to shake things up. Last night it was having students stand on the podium and try to “lead” the orchestra by counting aloud the meter and tempo. It definitely gave them a different perspective on what it takes (from both conductor and players) to hold the orchestra together!

Analytic discernment includes learning how to play in tune, with accurate rhythm. Aesthetic discernment encompasses learning how to play in a particular style (Romantic, Renaissance, jazz, etc.) and the right sound quality and balance. Disciplinary practice is getting command of your instrument so that you can produce all of these musical possibilities at a high artistic level. While getting all of these things in place, an artist also needs to find their voice

both literally and figuratively. If we’re playing (or conducting) a piece by Beethoven, or Tchaikovsky, or Susato — once we have the basics down, then we can get creative in our interpretation and color the music with our own artistic voice.

For musicians, creativity and a level of spontaneity are what allow the music to sound fresh whether it was written last week or 500 years ago. As a classically trained musician, I feel the need to challenge myself creatively by exploring improvisation and composition. I encourage students to push their own comfort zones to explore all of these creative pathways.

Heather Buchman, the John L. Baldwin, Jr. Professor of Music and director of the College Orchestra

PHILOSOPHY IS AN INHERENTLY creative activity: we listen to others and attempt to create and articulate our own views in response. Humility impels us to learn what others have said about difficult and complex questions, about freedom and justice, about the nature of the universe and our role in it. Reading philosophy prepares us for the real creative work. We want good answers: we want to be good people and we want to understand the truth. But no single person has the answers by themselves. We have to listen, and we have to add our voices to the conversation. It’s only in trying to develop our own ideas that we can even understand those of others.

To help students perform the creative acts that make learning exciting and useful, about a decade ago I started to develop classroom practices called team-based learning for philosophy. In classes on logic, epistemology, or educational theory, students spend their class time in small teams working through carefully crafted activities designed to help them approach complex questions collaboratively. They hone skills of listening and responding, of working together in the space of reasons. They share their stories and seek consensus. They form productive working relationships that help them to understand the big questions and to discover and refine their own views about them. And, even in this frustratingly polarized time, they learn to embrace differences.

As one student, Chloe Knerr ’26, said about her team, “All of us were consistently eager to consider viewpoints beyond those that we had chosen.”

That’s where learning, and creating, begins.

Russell Marcus, the Christian A. Johnson Excellence in Teaching Professor of Philosophy

MOST PEOPLE WOULD NOT describe chemistry, with its rigid-looking periodic table, facts about atoms and molecules, funny-looking glassware, and expensive instruments, as a creative endeavor. But, I argue, that the research lab is very much a creative space where chemists pursue processes never before observed, create new molecules, find patterns in reactivity, and design ways to measure the molecular world. Research rarely proceeds by-the-book. It asks potentially unanswerable questions and will likely involve many false starts, some blind alleys, and abject failures. This is what starts the creative process again — What different approach could I use? Is there a better way to see what is happening? Can I build the molecule from different building blocks? Furthermore, collaboration is key in chemical research and is the ultimate creative space where the laboratory is a “studio” where we make and measure together. At Hamilton, we initiate and foster students’

creativity in our courses and by inviting them to work with us in our research labs. I think visitors to our labs would witness the creativity emerging from the hive of activity in the summer research lab with students in lab coats and safety glasses and in the conference room of the Research Methods 371 as students formulate ideas for their own research projects.

Someone (not a scientist) once remarked to me that “it must feel great to finish an experiment.” I was puzzled, because, yes, it is great when an experiment works, but the fun of science isn’t really about getting the “right” answer, but rather in the “chase” of doing experiments and in thinking about all the new questions that follow. In a way, then, chemistry (and science and all knowledge pursuits) involves a lifelong addiction to creativity.

Karen Brewer, the Silas D. Childs Professor in Agricultural Chemistry

IN THE EARLY 1960S, art pedagogy pioneer Roy Ascott presented a new approach to creativity and making in art schools, inspired by cybernetic theory and early Bauhaus models called Groundcourse. It means building from the ground up, but also relies on structured disorientation as a path to creativity. He would set up a series of instructions to guide students into just the right amount of disorientation so they could locate themselves as creative agents.

I lead my own classrooms in very similar ways. I start courses by telling my students they are tasked with locating their voice within a shared cultural framework. Their voice should stand out as a rupture. Creativity is inherently connected to their ability to disrupt, and then resynthesize ideas they encounter or may even take for granted. Some specific examples of cultivating creativity in my classes involve getting students outside of the classroom or trying to create an environment for them to encounter something in a way not originally intended. For example, what happens if they use a real estate touring app to tell a personal story? What happens when a set of open lockers becomes a projection surface for videos? What kinds of new ideas will they generate if they all read a different theoretical text and form a shared question by translating across those different perspectives? Along with disorientation comes an opening and a space of access. I hope to create permission for them to fail, then piece things back together again.

Ascott believed that the self is a process always in a state of becoming and always informed by our changing cultural environment. My hope is that through encouraging students to locate their voice, and to step into these moments of disorientation and reorientation, they can find themselves in a generative community of learning, creating, and unlearning again.

Anna Huff, assistant professor of digital arts

Sophie Gordon ’26

BUNDY RESIDENCE HALL

A creative writing major from New York, N.Y., Gordon describes her room as a combination of Enid Sinclair and Wednesday Adams from the Netflix series Wednesday. “While it is partly goth and dark [there’s a mirror shaped like a coffin!], it is simultaneously cozy and adorned with pops of pink,” she said.

Gordon, a member of College Choir, Hamilton Voices, and the Figure Skating Club, said her room reflects her personality, which fluctuates between moody and upbeat. “The pops of pink, Sanrio characters, and Ghibli posters bring a lighter energy, while objects like my mirror, jewelry case, and black furniture bring in a dark whimsical energy.”

Dorm Room Decor

A double in Dunham. A quad in Carnegie. A single in Bundy. A suite in Milbank. The architecture, location, and features of living experiences certainly vary among Hamilton’s residence halls.

But step inside a student’s room, and you’ll soon discover what makes these spaces truly unique — reflections of personal style, interests, and creativity.

By Stacey Himmelberger P’15,’22

Photos by Erin Covey

Lizzie Baseley ’26

WERTIMER HOUSE

With the eclectic assortment of wall art and knickknacks, it’s hard to know what to look at first in Baseley’s room — but no matter what catches your eye, she hopes it makes you smile.

“My decor reflects my personality as it has a multifaceted presentation and proclivity for humor,” said the biology and creative writing double major from San Antonio, Texas. “I enjoy many different things like gardening, visual art, embroidery and collaging, and also love when things make me laugh.”

Her favorite object? A large tapestry featuring the rapper Pitbull. “Every morning, I wake up to the glorious face of Pitbull telling me to gaslight, gatekeep, and girlboss the day away.”

A Community Advisor (CA), she is also secretary of Gamma Xi and in Hamilton’s Plant Club.

Toby Weissman ’25

KIRKLAND RESIDENCE HALL

Weissman’s walls are lined with posters from his semester abroad in Germany, but that decor is overshadowed by the spiral stairs and stunning view found in the coveted Kirkland Loft suite he shares with three friends. From New York, N.Y., Weissman is a physics and literature major and a member of the ski team.

Tafara Godo ’27

BUNDY RESIDENCE HALL (EAST)

Blank walls and a row of books lined on his desk. That pretty much sums up Godo’s decor.

“I’d describe my room as minimalistic, kept tidy and functional with a focus on simplicity, as I find that an uncluttered space helps me stay organized and focused on my studies.”

A prospective economics major, Godo is from Mutare, Zimbabwe, so coming to Hamilton meant he had to pack lightly. “If I could bring one item from home, it would be a picture of my mother. She’s my biggest motivation, and seeing her face each day would keep her voice close to my heart, even though she’s halfway across the world.”

Nickie Conlogue ’25

MILBANK RESIDENCE HALL

Barbie would feel right at home! A world politics major and DaysMassolo Multicultural Center fellow from Mesa, Ariz., Conlogue chose her favorite color — pink — to decorate her room, which perfectly matches her sunny personality.

“My room is a reflection of the constant joy I feel and my overall optimistic attitude,” said Conlogue, whose favorite object is her tulip lamp.

Dehler Ingham ’27 & Tarun Korwar ’27

BUNDY RESIDENCE HALL (WEST)

With a magnet board to display ticket stubs and mementos from places visited, and a projector to illuminate images onto a blank part of the wall or ceiling, this room is described by its occupants as “revitalizing.”

“Because we’re in Bundy, we often don’t return to the room during the day. So, when we do, it’s nice to have a tidy space with a lot of character that feels personalized, cozy, and relaxed,” said Ingham, a literature

and government double major from Oregon City, Ore., who is active on campus with the CSI (community service internship) program, as a student writer in the Communications Office, and on the club soccer team and Hamilton Democrats.

Korwar, an economics major from Hyderabad, India, is on the varsity tennis team, works at the Mail Center, and participates in the Asian Student Union and the Finance Club.

Leyna Schlaefer ’28, Claire Neumann ’28, Kenna White ’28 & Keira Nyarady ’28

SOUTH RESIDENCE HALL

This spacious suite is on the fourth floor of South, but the hike up the stairs is nothing for its six residents — all first-year athletes.

“Our room is eclectic but cohesive. We all coincidentally wanted to do blue and white as our room colors, so it worked out nicely! However, we are vivacious people who enjoy making our space equally fun with knickknacks and photos. As student-athletes, it’s been essential to us to make our

room a happy yet ‘chill’ space to come back to,” said Neumann, a lacrosse player from Skaneateles, N.Y., who shares the space with Schlaefer, (lacrosse) from Manhasset, N.Y.; White, (field hockey) from Charlotte, N.C.; and Nyarady, (soccer) from Irvington, N.Y.

Missing: Ainsley Haut ’28 (swimming) from Concord, Mass., and Sophia Wright ’28 (lacrosse) from Longmeadow, Mass.

Ainsley Novack ’25 BABBITT RESIDENCE HALL

When it comes to her living area, Novack considers herself a maximalist. “I love filling my space with trinkets and posters to combat the fact that dorm rooms can feel very soulless, empty, and temporary when they aren’t decorated,” said the government major and French and women’s and gender studies minor from Boxford, Mass.

Novack’s decor reflects things she loves (Lord of the Rings, Hozier, French artwork) as well as interests she hopes to share with others. On campus she’s involved with WHCL and as a research assistant in Associate Professor of Government Erica De Bruin’s Policing Lab.

Among the most eye-catching pieces in her room is a large tapestry she crocheted and framed with the help of her dad.

“My room decor is a true reflection of who I am and who I want to be,” she said.

Bookshelf

Stuart Kestenbaum ’73 and Susan Webster

A Quiet Book: Collaborations in Writing and Visual Art (Brynmorgen Press, 2024).

More than 50 organic collages and hand-crafted musings (such as the one at left) complement each other as naturally as do their creators, the husband-and-wife team of printmaker Susan Webster and poet Stu Kestenbaum. They had this to say about their process: “From the start, whenever we have made our collaborative art pieces, we don’t actually work together in the same space. We work separately, passing work back and forth, without conversation. Perhaps because we’ve known each other for a long time, we find being in this unspoken place allows us to communicate differently. As in any making process, there is something beneath it or within it that we’re trying to get at (or it’s trying to get at us). In this back-and-forth between our studios, we are thrilled when we discover something unexpected — something that is more than the two of us emerging.”

Kestenbaum, the author of six collections of poetry and a book of essays, served as Maine’s poet laureate from 2016 to 2021. For A Quiet Book, he crafted his reflections by making letters out of dots as a way to slow himself down and concentrate more. He acknowledges that he never knows where his words will take him — he is limited only by a “box” he’s traced that matches the size of Webster’s print.

“It’s an improvisation within a specific space,” he noted. “Sometimes I stretch letters out when I need to fill the right-hand margin; other times I make letters smaller to get the final word in as I reach the end. I feel like I’m a cross between a Torah scribe and a jazz musician ”

As for Webster, the raw materials for the book’s collages come from small fragments of unresolved prints and drawings that she had been storing away in a shoe box. She added: “Like assembling pieces of a puzzle, over time each segment eventually finds its proper place. … A world of possibility exists for every collage, and it’s my job to discover it.” •

ALAN CIENKI ’82 (editor). The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

JOHN ELDEVIK, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY. Reading Prester John: Cultural Fantasy and its Manuscript Contexts (Arc-Humanities Press, 2024).

STEPHEN ELLINGSON, PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY. Planting with Purpose: How Farmers Create a Resilient Food Landscape (New York University Press, 2024).

SUSAN WEISSBACH FRIEDMAN ’86. Klara’s Truth: A Novel (She Writes Press, 2024).

MAURICE ISSERMAN, THE PUBLIUS VIRGILIUS ROGERS PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN HISTORY. Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism (Basic Books, 2024).

BRUCE LEVINE ’77, ELAINE WEISS, and KIMBERLY STERIN. Critical Conditions: Addressing Education Emergencies Through Integrated Student Supports (Harvard Education Press, 2024).

JACK MARTÍNEZ-ARIAS, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HISPANIC STUDIES. Te he seguido (Dendro Ediciones, 2024).

CLAIRE MOUFLARD, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE STUDIES (co-editor). Gender in French Banlieue Cinema: Intersectional Perspectives (Lexington Books, 2024).

KATIE NAUGHTON ’08. The Real Ethereal (Delete Press, 2024).

ELLEN O’GRADY ’90. How Are We to Live? Comics for a Free Palestine (Paper City Publishing, 2024).

ROD PARKER ’65. The White Book and I Want to Fly (BookBaby, 2024).

ELIZABETH BASS PARMAN ’83. The Empress of Cooke County: A Novel (Harper Muse, 2024).

JOANNE RAPPAPORT K’75, LINA FLÓREZ G., and PABLO PÉREZ “ALTAIS.” Historieta Doble: A Graphic History of Participatory Action Research (University of Toronto Press, 2024).

MELVIN ROSH ’56. Anatomy of Antisemitism: A Must Read for all Jews and Gentiles and Anatomy of Addiction (self-published, 2024).

JESWALD W. SALACUSE ’60. The Institution Builder’s Toolbox: Strategies for Negotiating Change (Business Expert Press, 2024).

PAVITRA SUNDAR, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF LITERATURE (co-editor). Thinking with an Accent (University of California Press, 2023).

William H. Luers ’51

Uncommon Company: Dissidents and Diplomats, Enemies and Artists

(Rodin Books, 2024).

From growing up in Springfield, Ill., to service in the U.S. Navy; from a career in the Foreign Service to the presidency of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, former Ambassador Bill Luers takes readers on a journey of his life in public service.

In his memoir, Luers shares stories from his long career as a U.S. diplomat to European and Latin American nations, where he introduced art and culture to forge common ground and community. According to the publisher, “From touring the Soviet Union with playwright Edward Albee in the 1960s to bringing such famous writers and artists as John Updike, Arthur Miller, William Styron, Peter Matthiessen, Francine du Plessix Gray, Richard Diebenkorn, and Frank Stella to Venezuela and Prague during his ambassadorships in Venezuela [1978-82] and Czechoslovakia [1983-86], Bill Luers’ practice of cultural diplomacy became known as his ability to wield ‘soft power’ that strengthened U.S. relationships wherever he served.

“After more than 30 years with the State Department, Luers brought his art expertise to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art as its president [from 1986 to 1999], where he secured the Annenberg Collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works by such masters as Van Gogh, Picasso, and Cézanne, among many other accomplishments.”

Following his time at the Met, Luers served from 1999 to 2009 as president of the United Nations Association. He is an adjunct professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University and chairman emeritus of The Iran Project, a network of leaders from across American political, diplomatic, military, and scholarly communities who work to reduce misunderstandings between Iran and the U.S. and advance diplomatic solutions over military escalation.

“Uplifting and inspirational, William Luers’ Uncommon Company is the true story of a life well lived, celebrating the challenges and triumphs found in the virtues of being a servant leader,” the publisher notes. •

ELIZABETH HORNER TURNER ’98. Horsemouth and Aquariumhead (Black Lawrence Press, 2024).

ZHUOYI WANG, PROFESSOR OF EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES (co-editor). Teaching Film from the People’s Republic of China (Modern Language Association of America, 2024).

PETER WELTNER ’64. After (Marrowstone Press, 2024).

ELIZABETHADA A. WRIGHT ’82 (co-editor). Catholic Women’s Rhetoric in the United States: Ethos, Patriarchy, and Feminist Resistance (Lexington Books, 2022) and A Charge for Change (Parlor Press, 2023).

David Toomey ’78

Kingdom of Play: What Ball-bouncing Octopuses, Belly-flopping Monkeys, and Mud-sliding Elephants Reveal about Life Itself (Scribner Books, 2024).

Like the book’s title suggests, animals’ activities are anything but mundane — and they certainly find time for play. As Toomey explains, animal play can be defined as a distinct behavior that is ongoing and open-ended, purposeless, and provisional, rather like natural selection. Through a close examination of both natural selection and play, the author, a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, argues that life itself is fundamentally playful.

Readers are invited to join in exploring such questions as: When did play first appear in animals? How does play develop the brain, and how did it evolve? Are the songs and aerial acrobatics of birds the beginning of avian culture? Is fairness in dog play the foundation of canine ethics? Does play direct and possibly accelerate evolution?

A reviewer from Scientific American had this to say about the book, “Toomey makes a compelling case that not only does play offer advantages in natural selection and serve as a potential generator of animal evolution, but the innovation it sparks may even help primates like us influence our own evolution.” •

Autumn’s Brilliant Palette

THE MOST COLORFUL TIME OF YEAR , when Hamilton’s campus is draped in a tapestry of majestic hues and every step feels like a stroll through a painting.

PHOTO BY SCOTT ALEXANDER

WHAT IF,

here on this Hill, with this history, with this extraordinary commitment to the liberal arts — what if Hamilton College liberates and harnesses all of our collective energy, all of our ideas, to become the most important liberal arts college in the world, a model for the exact type of creativity and exchange that we so desperately need right now