Olivia DrakeMay 23, 20059min
Dr. Davis Smith, medical director of the Davison Health Center, and Joyce Walter, director of the Health Services Department, are always looking for ways to improve the university’s health care.   Posted 05/23/05 Dr. Davis Smith wants the Davison Health Center to be students’ first point of contact for their medical needs. Joyce Walter wants to constantly improve the services at the center. Together, the medical director and director of the Health Services Department’s Davison Health Center are dedicated to maintaining the highest quality of service for their patients in a confidential, convenient and caring professional setting. “We both have…

Olivia DrakeMay 23, 20059min
Andy McGadney, director of Major Gifts, travels nation-wide to recruit gifts in the form of cash, stock, planned gifts, property or rare collections.   Posted 05/23/05 Q: When did you come to Wesleyan and were you hired in as director of Major Gifts? A: I started at Wesleyan on August 4, 1994 as an assistant director within the Wesleyan Annual Fund.Q: What is your background that led you to this job? A: Mostly sales. I was working for Otis Elevator Company as an account representative for service sales out of the Stamford office. I interned with Otis during my last…

Olivia DrakeMay 23, 20056min
Amelia Long ’06, Tiffany Lo ’05, Beth Coddington ’05 and Maria Nankova ’05, students in the Community Research Seminar, completed a study titled "Hungry Children in Middletown."   Posted 05/23/05 Four Wesleyan students have discovered that one out of five local children lives in a household that suffers from food insecurity. Beth Coddington ’05, Tiffany Lo ’05, Amelia Long ’06 and Maria Nankova ’05 presented results of their study, "Hungry Children in Middletown” on May 12. The students were enrolled in the Community Research Seminar taught by Rob Rosenthal, professor of sociology. The Middlesex Coalition for Children commissioned the survey.…

Olivia DrakeMay 23, 20056min
More than 700 students graduated from Wesleyan May 22.   Posted 05/23/05 During the last four years, Wesleyan University students have generated responses to the 9-11 terrorist attacks, the war in Iraq, the genocidal crisis in Darfur, the Tsunami of 2004 and several other events. In his commencement address on Wesleyan’s campus on Sunday, May 22, Wesleyan President Douglas J. Bennet `59 urged the 718 undergraduates from the Class of 2005 to continue their good work. “My commencement wish for each of you is that you never lose your instinct for challenging the society around you,” Bennet said. Bennet exhorted…

Olivia DrakeMay 23, 200512min
]]> At top, hired students worked stuffed 3,000 packets and created nametags in preparation for Reunion & Commencement Weekend at University Relations. At left, Gemma Ebstein, director of Alumni and Parent Relations and Deana Hutson, director of Events, look over Reunion & Commencement Weekend schedules prior to the four-day event. Posted 05/23/05 It all starts the day after. Deana Hutson, director of Events, began planning for the 2005 Reunion & Commencement Weekend the day after the 2004 Commencement Weekend ended. On the agenda: Hire 150 student workers. Print 20,000 brochures. Rent 10,000 chairs. Block 900 local hotel rooms. Contact 50…

Olivia DrakeMay 23, 20056min
  Above, Rob Rosenthal, professor of sociology and director of the Service-Learning Center, draws a troubadour to illustrate how the message of music is perceived differently during a lecture to high school students. At right, high school students listen to Rosenthal's lecture during the High School Humanities Program. Posted 05/23/05 This semester, local high school students read “The Odyssey,” and watched “O Brother, Where Art Thou,” but it wasn’t with their high school English teachers. As part of the High School Humanities Program, more than 80 high school students had the opportunity to participate in six discussions at Wesleyan. Wesleyan faculty…

Olivia DrakeMay 2, 20058min
Ed Below, director of Administrative Applications helped develop systems on the electronic portfolio.   Posted 05/02/05 Q: When did you come to Wesleyan? A: I came to Wesleyan in 1987 as the director of Financial Aid. In 1998, I became the project manager for the PeopleSoft Student Administration System, and later the director of administrative applications. It was a new position. Q: What does it mean to be “director of administrative applications?” A: I have overall responsibility for how the Student Administration System (SFIS) and the Human Resources Management System (HRMS) are used by the functional offices around campus. My…

Olivia DrakeMay 2, 20058min
Kirk Davis Swinehart, assistant professor of history, specializes in early American history. (Photo by James Ward Swinehart, Jr.)   Posted 05/02/05 Kirk Davis Swinehart, assistant professor of history, has been spending most of his time in the 18th century with an Irish knight and a Mohawk woman. Swinehart’s research and teaching focus on events from the period just before and leading up to the American Revolution. He has also done extensive research on the New World soldier-adventurer Sir William Johnson (1715–74) and his families, Irish and Mohawk, both of which fought for Britain during the American Revolution. Funded by an…

Olivia DrakeMay 2, 20057min
  Above, Tula Telfair, professor of art, sits near her students' work inside her office in Art Studio South. At right, Telfair's oil on canvas, "Obscured to the Eye Apparent on the Map," measures 79 by 100 inches.   Posted 05/02/05 Many people who see Tula Telfair’s landscape painting titled “To Make Space Distant,” are confident the artist painted a place familiar to them. However, before she painted it, the grassy field, split by a pond highlighted in fire brush existed nowhere but in Telfair’s mind. It’s part of a world that the professor of art at Wesleyan creates from…

Olivia DrakeMay 2, 20059min
Pamela Tatge is Director of the Center for the Arts and spearheaded the development of the Green Street Arts Center.   Posted 05/02/05 When Pamela Tatge became the director of the Center for the Arts (CFA) six years ago, Wesleyan had a golden reputation in the arts.  Unfortunately, not enough people in the community – or on campus  –  were taking notice. “We were an undiscovered gem,” Tatge recalls.” I saw the richness in this institution and believed the resources should be shared with the community.” Tatge would spend the first five years of her Wesleyan career raising the public’s…

Olivia DrakeMay 2, 20058min
Leah Kelley, assistant dean of admission, looks through a student's file in the Office of Admission.   Posted 05/02/05 Q: When did you come to Wesleyan? A: I came to Wesleyan as an assistant dean last fall after graduating from Yale in the spring. Q: What led you into working in an admission office? A: I have a bachelor’s of arts in psychology, but in college, I became very involved in college awareness and SAT prep outreach programs. The different programs that I worked with opened up my eyes to the complexity of admissions. After working with high school students…

Olivia DrakeMay 2, 20054min
  Mark Flory, assistant professor of molecular biology, studies genomic integrity in Hall-Atwater Laboratory. Mark Flory joined the Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Department as an assistant professor of molecular biology and biochemistry in January 2005. Flory, a native of Roanoke, Virginia, completed his bachelor’s of science degree at the University of Richmond majoring in biology and minoring in chemistry in 1994. He earned his Ph.D. at the Molecular and Cellular Biology Program at the University of Washington, Seattle, in 2001. His dissertation was titled, "Isolation and Characterization of Calmodulin-Binding Centrosome Components Related to Sacharomyces cerevisiae Spc110p from the Fission Yeast…