Lauren RubensteinA partnership between Wesleyan’s Cognitive Development Labs and the Connecticut Science Center recently received a $3,000 Partner Stipend from the National Living Laboratory® Initiative, which receives support from the National Science Foundation. The Cognitive Development Labs received an additional $1,000 Educational Assistance stipend. Hilary Barth, associate professor of psychology, oversees the Living Laboratory® site located at the Connecticut Science Center. Since 2013, researchers from Barth’s lab have been visiting the museum on Saturdays to collect data for current studies, speak with children and families about child developmental research, and guide visitors through hands-on activities that demonstrate important findings in developmental psychology. The National Living Laboratory® Initiative Partner Stipend…
In this News @ Wesleyan story, we speak with Yamil Velez, a new member of Wesleyan's Government Department. Q: Welcome to Wesleyan! Please tell us about your background—where did you grow up, go to school, etc? A: I grew up in Miami, Florida as the only son of two immigrant parents. My parents divorced at an early age and since my mother had to work and go to school to support us, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. It was my grandmother who instilled a passion for politics in me, as I would spend every afternoon listening…
In this News @ Wesleyan story, we speak with Scott Rohde, who marks his one-year anniversary as Wesleyan's Director of Public Safety on Oct. 1. Rohde reflects back on his first year at Wesleyan, changes he has overseen, and what's to come. Q: What has struck you most about the Wesleyan community during your first year here? A: I was stuck by the significant focus on students, and student success. Not only the faculty, but administrators and staff, want every student to succeed here at Wes but also in the global community. The liberal arts tradition is vibrant here and offers a “true college experience.”…
President Michael Roth reviewed Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder in The Washington Post. While many other historians have emphasized structural elements that made the Holocaust possible, Snyder focuses on Hitler's personal ideology "as essential for grasping the history of Nazi efforts to eliminate Jews from the planet." Roth writes: In “Black Earth,” we are reminded that for Hitler, Jews were the explanation for everything that went wrong. The health of the human race was dependent, he shrieked, on protecting it from Jewish pollution. There was talk among Nazis and others of isolating the malignancy — maybe shipping Jews…
In this News @ Wesleyan story, we speak with Ian Rice from the Class of 2017. Q: Ian, where are you from and what is your major? A: I’m from Boise, Idaho and I’m double majoring in physics and film as well as getting a Writing Certificate. Q: Why did you decide to study abroad in Copenhagen through the Danish Institute for Study Abroad (DIS) in Spring 2015? A: I was very interested in Scandinavian culture, partially due to the modern portrayal of Scandinavia as a haven of progressiveness and equality as well as the incredibly high standard of living.…
For the third year in a row, Wesleyan will welcome members of the community and Wesleyan faculty, staff, students, alumni and families to Middletown Day—a day of family fun and athletic events on campus. The theme of this year’s event, taking place Sept. 26, is “Salute to Service, Honoring Our Veterans.” "We are excited to once again welcome Middletown families to campus, and honored to partner in saluting veterans from campus and the community," said Cathy Lechowicz, director of the Center for Community Partnerships. "It will be a celebratory day that highlights the assets of our campus and the community." The…
The campus planning project begun last January has resulted in a report. The planning team from Sasaki Associates, Inc. and Eastley & Partners, who worked with Wesleyan’s Facilities Committee and others during the spring semester, has recommended a set of five principles to guide campus development over the coming years. These principles have been developed through an online survey and discussions with faculty, staff and students about how they use the physical spaces on campus. Many of the conclusions were presented to the Board of Trustees and later to senior administrative staff in late May. The principles are designed to align the physical…
This month, Wesleyan will launch a new specialization on Coursera in the rapidly growing field of data science. The four-MOOC (massive open online course) sequence, together with a final capstone project, will offer learners a verified certificate of completion that they may share with prospective or current employers. Wesleyan’s specialization, Data Analysis and Interpretation, is one of more than 30 new business, computer science, and data science specializations starting on Coursera on Sept. 15. (Learn more on Coursera's blog.) Wesleyan is continually expanding its offerings on Coursera, and in January 2016, plans to introduce a new Creative Writing specialization. (more…)
Annie Dillard, who taught writing at Wesleyan for more than 20 years, will receive the 2014 National Humanities Medal, the White House announced on Sept. 3. President Barack Obama will confer the medal on Dillard and nine others at a ceremony at the White House on Sept. 10 (which will be live-streamed at 3 p.m. here). The National Humanities Medal honors an individual or organization whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the human experience, broadened citizen’ engagement with history and literature or helped preserve and expand Americans’ access to cultural resources. The medal was first awarded in 1996. This year’s…
Registration is now open for Fall courses through the Wesleyan Institute for Lifelong Learning (WILL) in topics including art, literature, poetry and meditation. A special one-day program will take place at the Florence Griswold Museum, the internationally-known home of the Connecticut impressionists, on Nov. 14. It will coincide with the museum's exhibition, The Artist in the Connecticut Landscape, drawing from its Hartford Steam Boiler Collection and that of ten partner institutions from around the state. This marks the 10th semester of courses offered by WILL, an initiative that began in 2009. The program features short, intellectually stimulating and lively courses taught by current and retired members of…
Wesleyan has hired Greenskies Renewable Energy LLC, a Middletown-based solar energy company, to construct a new ground-mounted solar array at the corner of Long Lane and Wadsworth Road. The 750 kW-AC solar PV array will produce 1.2 million kilowatt hours of clean renewable energy each year. Construction will begin in spring 2016, and the project is expected to be completed by Sept. 1, 2016. The array will be set back from the road, and screened by the arboretum along Long Lane. "We are excited to partner with Greenskies on this project, which will take us closer toward our goal of…
This fall, Wesleyan welcomes to campus 15 new tenure-track faculty and more than 40 visiting faculty with research interests ranging from ecological and evolutionary functional genomics to behavioral economics; from Chinese history to sociological and cultural studies of knowledge, medicine and health; from psychosocial determinants of healthy aging outcomes among women to political psychology.
On Sept. 1, the new faculty members attended an orientation program that included discussions on classroom climate; active learning, service learning and community service; flipped classrooms; and effective lecture styles for larger classrooms, among other topics.