Lauren Rubenstein#THISISWHY Lily Herman '16, co-founder of The Prospect website on college admissions and college life, has been named one of Glamour magazine's Top 10 College Women of 2015. Herman, of Jacksonville, Fla., told Glamour that while her mom helped her to choose the right school, many first-generation and international students don't have the same resources. (more…)
Professor of Religion Peter Gottschalk has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities “Enduring Questions” grant for approximately $20,000 to develop and teach a new course on different understandings of “the sacred.” Over the last five annual competitions, this competitive grant program received approximately 200 applications each year on average, and funded only 19 awards each year. (more…)
(Story by Lily Baggott '15) Emmakristina Sveen '17, co-founder of the Wesleyan Republican Committee, spoke on a “Women in Politics" panel at the University of New Haven on March 31. (more…)
Associate Professor of History Erik Grimmer-Solem’s research on a celebrated German general, known as an “anti-Nazi,” is continuing to have an impact on the ground in Germany today. Over the past year, Grimmer-Solem’s findings have ignited a public debate in the country over General Hans von Sponeck’s place in history—a debate which has now turned to the matter of a commemorative stone honoring him. Since World War II, von Sponeck had been celebrated in Germany with an Air Force base, city streets and other monuments named after him. All this has changed since Grimmer-Solem’s research shed new light on the…
This month, the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life is presenting three linked panels in its Right Now! series titled "Drugs, Harm and the Campus." Drug Use @ Wes At 4:30 on April 7, Michael Whaley, vice president for student affairs, will moderate a panel discussion, "What are we doing about drugs at Wes and why?" Tanya Purdy, director of health education at WesWELL; Beth DeRicco, higher education outreach at Caron Treatment Centers; and Ashley Fine '15 will discuss education, support and policies at Wesleyan. The event will be held in PAC 002. (more…)
Graduate Liberal Studies will host an information session for prospective students at 7 p.m. April 29 in the Office of Continuing Studies, 74 Wyllys Ave. Attendees will meet with Office of Admissions staff, hear a full overview of the program — including curriculum and requirements — and receive materials (more…)
Psyche Loui, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, was awarded a grant of $20,000 in March from the GRAMMY Foundation Grant Program to study a musical biofeedback-based intervention for epilepsy. The grant will fund three different studies that combine EEG sonification, translational research and basic neuroscience for this type of intervention. Loui anticipates that the results will apply music technology as a possible solution to a neurological disorder affecting 65 million people worldwide. Loui noted that for the approximately one-third of patients with epilepsy who don’t respond well to seizure medication, (more…)
Psyche Loui, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, discussed the phenomenon of tone-deafness on Radio Health Journal. Millions people go through life thinking they're hopelessly tone-deaf when they are not--they can distinguish between correct and incorrect notes, yet they're just unable to sing them properly. Ironically, those who are truly tone-deaf cannot hear such distinctions, and thus may be unaware of their condition. "You'll see some people who don't really know that they're tone-deaf," said Loui. Identifying tone-deafness can be done by having people listen to, rather than sing, music. Many people who are tone-deaf don't enjoy music. "Some people think it all sounds the same,…
Professor of Theater Ron Jenkins wrote in The Jakarta Post about recent performances of Rateb Meuseukat, a form of Acehnese dance from Indonesia, at Wesleyan and a few other New England colleges, which gave American audiences "an eye-opening introduction to an aspect of the Muslim world that is rarely seen in the West." The group "Tari Aceh" performed at Wesleyan's Crowell Concert Hall on Feb. 27. The day after the performance, some audience members returned for a workshop in which they learned how to do the movements they had seen onstage. Jenkins writes: Images of Muslim women in Western media often focus on the restrictive nature of…
Alive: New and Selected Poems, a new volume of poetry by Elizabeth Willis, the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing, professor of English, was recently published by New York Review Books. The book contains poems spanning more than 20 years. According to the publisher's website, with these poems, Willis "draws us into intricate patterns of thought and feeling. The intimate and civic address of these poems is laced with subterranean affinities among painters, botanists, politicians, witches and agitators. Coursing through this work is the clarity and resistance of a world that asks the poem to rise to this, to speak its fury." Willis is…
#THISISWHY Kai Blatt ’17 has been selected to take part in the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program at the University of Washington. This eight-week, all expenses paid “classroom-in-the-field” program helps students develop their vision for conservation, and gives them the natural and social science skills to become a conservation change-maker. The program is just entering its second year of existence, and this will be the second year a Wesleyan student has participated. Blatt, who is from Los Angeles and plans to major in studio art and biology, learned of the program from her friend Joseph Eusebio ’17, (more…)
Wesleyan has accepted a second cohort of Posse Foundation Veteran Scholars into the Class of 2019. The group, which includes three women and seven men, come from all over the United States, and have served in Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, Italy, South Korea and Germany. Seven served in the Army, one in the Marine Corps, one in the Air Force, and one in the Connecticut Army National Guard. The group's faculty mentor will be Giulio Gallarotti, professor of government, professor of environmental studies, tutor in the College of Social Studies. In 2013, Wesleyan became only the second institution, after Vassar, to partner with the…