Olivia DrakeTwo Wesleyan staff members received a Cardinal Achievement Award for demonstrating extraordinary initiative or providing outstanding service with regard to specific tasks or events in their departments. This special honor comes with a $150 award and reflects the university’s gratitude for those extra efforts. The May recipients are Amy Walsh, associate director of employee benefits in Human Resources, and Katia Porter, assistant to the chief investment officer in the Investments Office. The award recipients are nominated by department chairs and supervisors. Nominations can be made anytime throughout the year. For more information or to nominate a staff member for the award, visit…
Rick Davidman '84 is hosting the opening of an exhibition of Tula Telfair's paintings on July 26. Telfair, professor of art, is known for her large oil paintings that combine images of epic landscape and dramatic weather with minimal elements of pure color. The opening will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. in the lobby of the Condé Nast Building at 4 Times Square, New York City. Admission is free and wine and hors d'ouerves will be served. For info and to RSVP, contact Rick Davidman '84 at rick@dfngallery.com. Telfair's web site can be viewed here.
David PesciOn a feature for Fox 61, Seth Redfield, assistant professor of astronomy, and Bill Herbst, chair and the John Monroe Van Vleck Professor of Astronomy, discussed the transit of Venus across the Sun, and showed viewers how Wesleyan would be marking the event with public viewings from Van Vleck Observatory. "So here we have a case, where we can see the affect of a planet on a star, close up," Herbst said in the feature, which aired on June 5. The next transit won't happen intil 2017. "It's a very wonderful opportunity to learn something new about planets and their atmospheres and…
Lauren RubensteinJohn Kirn, professor of biology, professor and chair of the neuroscience and behavior program, was interviewed on WNPR public radio on June 25 about his research on neurogenesis, or the formation of new neurons, in the brains of zebra finches. "The birds that had managed to preserve their songs the longest had the most new neurons, which was completely counter to our prediction. It suggests that maybe, at least in some cases and in some brain regions, new neurons are being added in order to preserve what's already been learned," Kirn said in the interview, describing the findings of his latest…
In an op-ed published in The Hartford Courant on June 24, Bill Craighead, assistant professor of economics, proposes a policy solution to avoid economic disaster as the U.S. confronts the so-called “fiscal cliff” at the beginning of 2013. As Craighead explains in the piece, the cliff refers to the simultaneous expiration of Bush-era income tax cuts and Social Security payroll tax cuts, as well as automatic cuts in government spending mandated following last year's debt ceiling stand-off. Craighead proposes that, "The tax increases could be made to occur at a more appropriate time by instituting triggering criteria that would delay…
The MINDS Foundation, an organization started by Raghu Appasani ’12, was recently featured in the June 6 Huffington Post. The MINDS Foundation is working to eradicate mental illness stigmas and provide mental healthcare services to patients in rural villages in India. According to the article, the conditions of many mental health facilities are inexcusable; people lack basic human dignity, and necessities such as clothes, clean water, and food; they are often locked away in prison-like rooms; and lack even the most basic legal protections. Since 2012, the MINDS Foundation has educated nearly 1,000 individuals, and is currently treating 36 patients suffering…
Peter Rutland, the Colin and Nancy Campbell Chair of Government, gave a lecture on "Democracy and Capitalism" at the Urals State University in Yekaterinburg, Russia on May 31. He published an opinion piece about the region's new governor in the Moscow Times on June 3. On June 9, he attended a meeting of the International Advisory Committee of the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian President's State Academy for Economics and Public Administration, to discuss the curriculum and select faculty for a new B.A. in Comparative Politics.
Ulrich Plass, associate professor of German studies, presented a talk titled “Metaphysics and the Body: Adorno and Nietzsche on Living Rightly” at the Philosophy Department of the University of South Florida in April. His lecture compared Nietzsche’s philosophy of the body with Adorno’s attempts to ground an ethics of the good in somatic experience, i.e., in the spontaneous articulation of impulses.
Elizabeth McAlister, associate professor of religion, associate professor of African American studies, associate professor of American studies, is the author of “Slaves, Cannibals, and Infected Hyper-Whites: The Race and Religion of Zombies,” published in Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 85, No. 2, pages 457-486, 2012; And “From Slave Revolt to a Blood Pact with Satan: The Evangelical Rewriting of Haitian History," published in Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, Vol. 41, No. 2, 2012.
Wesleyan's Green Street Arts Center received a $350,000 grant from the State of Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, Office of the Arts, to administer Connecticut’s Higher Order Thinking (HOT) Schools Program throughout the state for the 2012-13 academic year.
The Center for the Arts received two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts for the 2012-13 academic year. A $34,000 grant will support the CFA's Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance. Founded in 2010, the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) brings together artists, curators, scholars, presenters and cultural leaders to encourage innovative and relevant curatorial approaches to presenting time-based art. Another grant, worth $20,000, will support the presentation of dance artists.
John Kirn discussed his neuroscience research into song learning and production in zebra finches