David PesciMarie Mencher '12 and Lindsay Keys were both featured in the lastest Education Life issue of The New York Times. Mencher contributed to the "Your Story" section, which features short first person essays on elements of college life. Mencher's essay is titled "Romance Crushed." Keys was featured in a photo essay titled "College Life."
Kirk Swinehart, assistant professor of history, has a reivew for The Chicago Tribune of Edmund Morgan's latest book, American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America. Swinehart says: "as so many times before, Morgan proves himself one of our deftest thinkers about race -- what he once called 'the American paradox, the marriage of slavery and freedom.'"
Elizabeth McAlister, professor of religion, associate professor of African American studies, associate professor of American Studies, continues her participation in a round table on Haitian culture in The New Yorker, discussing the music of revolution in Haiti and why it is so important within the culture.
Ann Burke, associate professor of biology, recently received a three-year, $395,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study the development and evolution of the shoulder girdle using transgenic mice, frog and salamander. The mice will be generated in collaboration with a lab at the University of Michigan and will allow Burke and her associates to turn off Hox genes, which are specific patterning genes, in specific sub populations of the embryonic mesoderm that make the musculoskeletal tissues. "Comparing the dynamics of gene expression and cell interactions during the formation of the pectoral region in a variety of embryos…
David LowTransformers: Revenge of the Fallen directed by Michael Bay ’86 with a screenplay by Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman ’95, opened in late June to mixed reviews, but the film, a sequel to Transformers (2007), sold some $201.2 million in tickets at North American theaters over its first five days as the number one film at the box office. In his review of the film in The New York Times, A. O. Scott wrote: “Mr. Bay is an auteur. His signature adorns every image in his movies … and every single one is inscribed with a specific worldview…
Olivia DrakeFor efforts with the May 6, 2009 shooting near Wesleyan's campus, the Wesleyan University Public Safety Department was honored with the Northeast Colleges and Universities Security Association President's Award for Outstanding Performance on June 14. C. G. "Neil" McLaughlin Jr., chief of police at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, Conn. nominated David Meyer, director of Public Safety at Wesleyan and the Wesleyan officers for this honor. His recommendation read: "On May 6th at 1 p.m. a man in disguise, wig, beard, mustache and glasses entered the campus bookstore about a block and a half from the Public Safety Office…
Dozens of Connecticut teachers went back to school July 7 to gain knowledge, confidence and skills for teaching their students about science, energy and energy conservation. As part of the 2009 Energy Education Workshops series, sponsored by the Project to Increase Mastery of Math and Sciences (PIMMS) and eeSmarts, teachers learned creative exercises to bring back to their classrooms. The annual program is open to all teachers in the state. During a "bottle shake" energy transformation experiment, the teachers were put into groups of four and given two plastic water bottles with a small amount of clear liquid in each…
Next fall, Wesleyan students and faculty will perform research activities on the same state-of-the-art animation computers that produced Ice Age the Meltdown, a $652 million worldwide box office hit. The computer hardware was donated July 2 by Greenwich, Conn.-based Blue Sky Studios, the creator of a number of award-winning digital animation features, including the Ice Age series and Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who, which took in nearly $300 million worldwide. In 2008, Blue Sky Studios refreshed their technology for their latest movie, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and bought racks of new computers. "The old computer racks still…
A former Middletown mayor, Olympic volleyball coach, a three-hour marathon runner, and Baldwin Medal winner are among the newest members of Wesleyan's Athletics Hall of Fame. Wesleyan will formally induct the third class into its Athletics Hall of Fame during a ceremony Nov. 6 as part of Homecoming/ Family Weekend activities. Wesleyan will enshrine four individuals and one team to join the previous two classes of inductees, bringing to total in the Hall of Fame to 20 individuals and three teams. Entering in the fall class of 2009 are Emilio Daddario '39, Winthrop “Wink” Davenport '64, Sally Zimmer Knight '81,…
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Wesleyan University has announced the promotion to full professor, effective July 1, 2009, of the following members of the faculty. Stephen Angle, professor of philosophy, came to Wesleyan in 1994. He has served as director of the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies, co-directed the NEH summer seminar "Traditions into Dialogue: Confucianism and Contemporary Virtue Ethics" at Wesleyan in 2008, was a Fulbright Research Scholar at Beijing University in 2006-2007, and was awarded Wesleyan's Binswanger prize for excellence in teaching in 2006. His research focuses on neo-Confucian philosophy, and his books include Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Philosophy…