College to host 11th Academic Festival

“Celebrating Excellence” is the theme for this year’s Academic Festival at Skidmore on Thursday, April 30. Free and open to the public, the event is the college’s 11th academic festival and its largest to date, with 321 students participating and a record 55 sessions scheduled at various sites around campus. The first sessions begin at 8:30 a.m.; the last ends at 5 p.m.  Throughout the day, refreshments will be available at locations in Palamountain Hall, Tisch Learning Center, Ladd and Harder Halls, Filene Music Building, and the Gannett Auditorium lobby.

“The day is a celebratory showcase for our students’ most impressive work this past academic year,” says math professor David Vella, director of the Honors Forum program that sponsors the festival.  “It’s filled with talks, readings, panel discussions, performances, films, and more—created and delivered by Skidmore students eager to share their best work with friends, classmates, professors, and the public as well as the campus community.”

This year’s topics hail from all corners of the academic world, from biology (for example, a talk on sexual selection as practiced by a local songbird, the Common Yellowthroat) to classical literature (a treatment of the emotional dynamic in a poignant scene from Homer’s Iliad.) In addition, there are sessions on Shakespearean monologues, Japanese television drama, the economics of land-locked African countries, and “transformation geometry” (which approaches the math “from a transformational point of view” that touches on topics like music, the art of M.C. Escher, and integral triangles).

Among sessions of practical interest to both campus and community are presentations about Skidmore-Saratoga Entrepreneurial Partnership business projects and local environmental issues, such as a survey of the Loughberry Lake septic system, an examination of the Saratoga Wastewater Treatment Facility, and a study of the local planning process for “smart growth” in the Saratoga Lake watershed. Service-learning presentations also offer applications beyond the academic, such as “Making a Difference: The Hunger Project,” which will be presented by students who helped collect data for the national "Hunger in America 2009" project. The students will provide an overview of hunger issues like food stamps, homelessness, and welfare reform.

Some of the more unusual topics include a pilot episode for a travel show called Lost on Purpose (its cast sails a 37-foot boat around the world); female athletes’ potential as CEOs; a theatrical presentation of the 1969 gay liberation Stonewall Riots; 16th-century sea monsters; exercise for the elderly; Tibetan Buddhist art and architecture in Ladakh, India; and “Music and the North Woods” (one student’s video homage to nature, complete with original hip-hop and chamber music selections). For the festival’s complete schedule, click here.

Given the diversity and range of academic and co-curricular activities at Skidmore, students often get little time during the school year to savor the success of a project well done, let alone to share their work with others from different areas of academic interest. But Vella points out, “Academic Festival offers a time for that sharing.”