David PesciMention “records and documents of a large bureaucracy” and images of stacks of dense paperwork, rows of beige filing cabinets, and perhaps even a slight sensation of suffocation comes to mind. But mention the same phrase to Laura Stark and her pulse steps up a beat as she sees something quite different: buried treasure. “I am interested in the power of bureaucracies and the discretion people within them have to interpret rules,” says Stark, assistant professor of science and society, assistant professor of sociology. “How people who work in big organizations, including government agencies, apply general rules to specific cases…
Olivia Drake[youtube width="640" height="400"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGlPlEEmZlE[/youtube] This issue, we ask "5 Questions" of Eric Aaron, assistant professor of computer science. His article, "Action Selection and Task Sequence Learning for Hybrid Dynamical Cognitive Agents," was recently published in Robotics and Autonomous Systems. Aaron has a bachelor of arts in math from Princeton University; a master of science and Ph.D in computer science from Cornell University. Q: How did you become interested in computer science, and specifically artificial intelligence? A: I’ve always been interested in logical problem solving and how people think. As an undergraduate, I majored in mathematics and took courses in psychology and philosophy, but each…
Brian KattenWesleyan's varsity four entry Elliot Skopin '11, Terrence Word '11, Trevor Michelson '13 and Spencer Hattendorf '12 with coxwain Peter Chu '14 turned in an outstanding performance during the Collegiate Four event at the prestigious Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston Sat., Oct. 23. With a time of 17:41.27 over the three-mile course, the Cardinals quartet of rowers bested 39 other crews in the 41-boat affair, trailing just WPI by a seven-second gap. Wesleyan made up more than two minutes in moving past the University of Massachusetts team. (more…)
The Wesleyan Media Project has received a $100,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Wesleyan Media Project is a non-partisan initiative designed to perform comprehensive tracking and analysis of federal and gubernatorial political advertisements by candidates, parties and special interest groups. It also provides experiential learning for graduate and undergraduate students in the review, coding and analysis of political advertisements. Since its launch in late September 2010, The Wesleyan Media Project (more…)
David LowIn September, Dina Kaplan ’93, co-founder and COO of blip.tv, appeared on Fortune’s list of the 2010 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs. According to Fortune, the “idea was to find the most innovative, ground-breaking, game-changing female entrepreneurs in the U.S.” Kaplan recently talked to BusinessWeek about “Making More Women Entrepreneurs.” In the Q&A, she says: “There is a very strong camaraderie emerging among women in digital media. Women founders can encourage friendships and build a support network and potential business relationships to try to create a bit of an ‘old girls’ club’ for digital media.”
Cynthia RockwellSinger and composer Peter Durwood ’86, who crafts music and sound design for Sesame Workshop digital products, recently created the sound for a Sesame video that has become popular on YouTube. In it, Grover, the furry blue monster, riffs on the Old Spice web-ads. “I was an art major at Wes, but an unofficial music minor, particularly enjoying Mark Slobin's Worlds of Music course, several semesters of African Drumming with Abraham Adzinyah, and Bill Lowe's remarkable History of African-American Music,” says Durwood. His album, Peter Durwood, will soon be available on iTunes.
Most people don’t become CFO of a national organization just one year out of Wesleyan—as a first job, no less—but Seth Halpern '09 did just that. A government major, he moved to Washington D.C. after graduation to look for employment, but the job market was difficult and a month later he was still unemployed. One morning at a local cafe he got to chatting with someone who said he worked at a software start-up, NationalField. Halpern admits that he’s always been “tech savvy” and the two hit it off. From there, he was introduced to the NationalField founders and he…
Wah Do Dem, the delightful and often surprising indie film directed by Sam Fleischner ’06 and Ben Chace, is now available on DVD, after a successful theatrical tour in June. The film centers on a young man named Max (Sean Bones) who lives in Brooklyn and is abandoned by his girlfriend (Norah Jones) two days before they are set to take a cruise they won to Jamaica. Max winds up alone on the high seas navigating through crowds of grey-haired cruisers. When the cruise liner docks in Jamaica, he quickly escapes the tourist zone, loses track of time and his…
Work by writers Steve Almond ’88 and Wells Tower ’96 have been selected for the recently published The Best American Short Stories 2010 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), edited by fiction writer Richard Russo. Almond’s story in the collection, “Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched,” about a psychoanalyst who plays poker, was published originally in Tin House. The story will appear in his next story collection God Bless America. Almond is the author of two previous story collections, My Life in Heavy Metal and The Evil B. B. Chow, the best-selling Candyfreak, and most recently, the nonfiction book Rock and Roll Will Save…
The Wesleyan Alumni Crew partipated in the 46th Head of the Charles Regatta, Oct. 22 in Boston, Mass. This is the second year in a row that the alumni have rowed in this event. The race takes place on the Charles River. The Founders of Wesleyan Crew, circa Class of 1968, also rowed in the race. This was their 18th time participating in the Head of the Charles. Rowers included David Myers '82; Mike Greenstein '82; Bill Davies '79; Dave Gruppo '79; Anthony Phaigian '82; Alex Thomson '82; Paul Slye '84 and Kevin Foley '82.
Thomas Cowhey ’94 was appointed vice president of Aetna Investor Relations, responsible for maintaining the company’s relationship with the investor and analyst communities. Cowhey, who joined Aetna in 2007, has most recently served the company as managing director of new business development. Prior to his affiliation with Aetna, he was a principal with Legacy Partners Group, an independent investment banking firm, and also had been a vice president at Credit Suisse First Boston. At Wesleyan, he majored in economics. He holds an MBA, with a concentration in health sector management, from Duke. Aetna Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer…
Several distinguished alumni have been declared the winners of their elections this week. They include: John Hickenlooper ’74 – elected Governor of Colorado; Michael Bennet ’87 – elected Senator from Colorado; Peter Shumlin ’79 – elected Governor of Vermont; Kathleen Clyde ’01 – elected to the Ohio State House of Representatives; Matt Lesser (in-process) – re-elected to Connecticut House of Representatives; and Dan Wolf ’79 – elected to state senate in Massachusetts representing the Cape and Islands.