On September 30th and October 1st 2011 St. Mary’s College celebrated its fifth annual Hawktoberfest and Parent’s Weekend. In its latest iteration Hawktoberfest is concurrent with Parent’s Weekend and includes The Great Bamboo Boat Races, athletic events, and live music, lectures, tours, and a variety of other events.

On Wednesday, Sept. 28 Salvatore P. Schipani, Engineering Psychologist for the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), presented a lecture on Military Robots at Goodpaster Hall. Schipani, while working for the United States Army at Aberdeen Proving Ground, conducted “a series of three field experiments” of the army’s Experimental Unmanned Vehicle (XUV) in order to make “an assessment of operator mental workload.”

On Friday, Oct. 1 Jeffrey Hammond, Professor of English and George B. and Willma Reeves Distinguished Professor in the Liberal Arts, asked an audience of students, parents, and academicians, “What do students really learn by reading Shakespeare, dissecting frogs, or studying European history?”