The Wesleyan Connection

Holding a globe model of the planet Venus, Martha Gilmore, associate professor of earth and environmental science, and Phil Resor, assistant professor of earth and environmental science, will study an area on Venus that contains the oldest rocks on the planet’s surface. (Photo by Olivia Bartlett)

Thanks to NASA, two Earth and Environmental Science faculty are going to spend the better part of their next three summers on Venus looking at volcanoes and mountain ranges.

Specifically, Martha Gilmore, associate professor of earth and environment science, and Phillip Resor, assistant professor of earth and environmental science, will be using a three-year NASA grant to examine an area of Venus called the Tellus Regio, which is contains some of the oldest rocks on the planet’s surface.

“It’s an area of interest for two reasons, primarily,” says Gilmore, who has done work on Mars and Venus missions, among others for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “First, it’s an area that is high on NASA’s list of (more…)

The Wesleyan University Board of Trustees affirmed the promotion with tenure, effective July 1, 2009, of the following members of the faculty:

Jane Alden.

Jane Alden, associate professor of music, was appointed assistant professor of music at Wesleyan in 2001. Prior, she was an acting assistant professor at Stanford University, and an instructor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Alden was awarded a Wesleyan Center for the Humanities Fellowship and was a visiting research associate at Harvard University. She has been the recipient of a Mellon Center Mini-Grant, a Wesleyan University seed grant, and Wesleyan University Snowdon funding for a symposium.

Her research and teaching interest include manuscript production and music books in the 15th century; historiography of chanson in the late 19th and 20th centuries; The “New York School” of American experimental (more…)

Ellen Thomas.

A paper by Ellen Thomas, research professor of earth and environmental sciences, is listed as one of the 100 most influential papers in the earth sciences by MantlePlumes.org.

Thomas’s article, “Trends, rhythms, and aberrations in global climate 65 Ma to present,” was originally published in Science, 292, in 2001. Also included in the top 100 are Charles Darwin’s The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs, published in 1842, and British geologist Sir Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology, from 1830-33.

The same paper was also identified by Thomson Reuters Scientific’s Essential Science Indicators as one of the most highly cited papers in field of geosciences, and has been designated as a “Current Classic” in October 2008.

In addition, Thomas was recently a co-author of another paper published in Science magazine Dec. 15 on the “long record of the Ca-isotope composition of seawater.”

Area coodinators Jonathan Connary and Alex Cabal have replaced their plastic trash cans with recyclable containers in Residential Life. (Photo by Intisar Abioto '09)

Trash bins may find themselves down in the dumps, at least around Wesleyan’s campus.

The university is replacing them – one by one – with recyclable containers in attempt to make Wesleyan a “greener” campus community.

“Most everything we throw away at our desks – paper, plastic water bottles and soda cans and cardboard packaging material – is recyclable,” says Jeff Miller, associate director for facilities management. “So why keep a trash can under your desk?”

Miller and other members of Wesleyan’s Recycling and Waste Committee, a subcommittee of Wesleyan’s Sustainable Advisory Group for Environmental Stewardship (SAGES), are spearheading efforts to remove the trash bins from all individual administrative and academic offices. (more…)

Suzanna Tamminen

Suzanna Tamminen, director of Wesleyan University Press, received a “2008 Outstanding Service to Dance Research” award from the Congress on Research in Dance (CORD).

The CORD Awards were established in 1995 to recognize excellence in the field, contribute to motivating further research, and signal to the scholarly world at large that the works and individuals recognized are highly valued by those involved in dance research.

Scott Plous

Scott Plous, professor of psychology, was quoted in a Dec. 14 issue of The Washington Post in a story titled “Choosing Not To Choose: Ever feel lost in a maze of too many options?”

The article, which focused on the overwhelming abundance of life-changing decisions such as finances, health care and career moves, mentions Plous’s book, The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making.

“There’s no question that we have more choices than ever before,” Plous agreed. “And decisions are generally harder and more time-consuming when there are lots of alternatives.”

Ellen Thomas, research professor of earth and enviornmental sciences, is a co-author of an article on the “long record of the Ca-isotope composition of seawater,” published in Science Magazine Dec. 15.

The Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research.

Johan Varekamp, the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science, is a co-editor of a special volume on “Volcanic Lakes and Environmental Impacts of Volcanic Fluids,” for the for the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, Volume 178, Issue 2, published Dec. 10, 2008. He’s worked on the publication for more than two years. The publication contains 17 articles including one of Varekamp’s own papers titled “The volcanic acidification of glacial Lake Caviahue, Province of Neuquen, Argentina,” found on pages 184-196.

Richard Grossman, professor and chair of economics, was interviewed on the National Bureau of Economic Research’s determination that the United States has been in recession since by KFAB in Omaha, Neb.; WXNT in Indianapolis, Ind., and most recently by KTRH in Houston, Texas on Dec. 2.

Grossman also spoke on the recent financial crisis to the Rotary Club of East Hampton, Conn. on Dec. 3.

Katja Kolcio, associate professor of dance, is co-author of “Faking It: The Necessary Blind Spots of Understanding” in the journal Cultural Theory-Critical Methodologies 9:2, published in May 2009. Kolcio wrote this article in collaboration with Wesleyan dance major, Ellen Gerdes ‘06. Gerdes is currently doing graduate studies in dance at Temple University.