Olivia DrakeFebruary 8, 20103min
Wesleyan's Project to Increase Mastery of Mathematics and Science (PIMMS) has been selected by The United Illuminating Company (UI) and The Connecticut Light and Power Company (CL&P) to provide professional development workshops for eesmarts teachers regarding energy and energy-efficient behaviors and technologies. These new contracts provide funding for a fourth year of the program and are renewable for an additional two years. The first three years of the program provided nearly $1M in funding to PIMMS to conduct the program. Funding for the next three years show a slight increase. eesmarts is an energy-efficiency learning initiative that is funded by…

Olivia DrakeFebruary 8, 20102min
The second Neuroscience and Behavior Alumni Symposium will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 20 in Science Center 121. The public is invited. Five of the department's “best and brightest” alumni from the last decade will speak at the symposium. "We invited these particular alumni because they are at different developmental stages on paths toward uniquely varied careers," says John Kirn, professor and chair of the Neuroscience and Behavior Department, professor of biology and director of Graduate Studies.  "This symposium will focus on their personal stories of post-Wes training in graduate school, biotechnology, medical school, and at…

Olivia DrakeFebruary 8, 20107min
Writing At Wesleyan, The English Department, and the Shapiro Creative Writing Center announce the Spring Readings Series. George Saunders, the Writing Programs’ 2010 Jacob Julien Visiting Writer, reads at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 24 in the Memorial Chapel. Saunders is the author of six books, including the story collection In Persuasion Nation and the book of essays Braindead Microphone. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, GQ, McSweeney's, The Guardian, and other publications. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He teaches in Syracuse University's MFA program. Event organized by Deb Olin Unferth and Anne…

Cynthia RockwellFebruary 8, 20102min
The pilot for Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders, aired nationally on PBS in late January. Described as a magazine show “about the intersection of music with life, politics and culture around the world,” it is a collaboration between two alumni of the class of ’70—executive producer Stephen Talbot and executive producer for Oregon Public Broadcasting David Davis. The first episode includes a vignette on Russian pop: "A Man Like Putin” is a catchy tune that became a generation’s anthem. Another section takes the listener to Africa, where Nigerian music legend Fela Kuti’s youngest son, Seun, has kept his father’s legacy alive…

David LowFebruary 8, 20102min
Kristin Bluemel ’86, a professor of English at Monmouth University, has edited a new essay collection, Intermodernism: Literary Culture in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain (Edinburgh University Press). This volume of original critical essays encourages readers to accept a new term, new critical category, and new literary history for 20th-century British literature. Its primary subject is the intriguing and typically neglected British writing of the years of the Depression and World War II, including the fiction, memoirs, criticism, and journalism of writers such as Elizabeth Bowen, Storm Jameson, William Empson, George Orwell, J. B. Priestley, Harold Heslop, T. H. White, Rebecca West, John…

Cynthia RockwellFebruary 8, 20102min
Something Sweet, Nina Zeitlin’s ’03 family/kids’ album, was named in the Top 10 on NPR’s “2009 Best Music for Kids and Their Families." In a story for WXPN’sKids Corner in Philadelphia, host Kathy O’Connell noted that she’d remember 2009 as “the gold standard in kids’ music,” and included Zeitlin’s musical ensemble, King Pajama, as one of the groups “whose kid-centric themes (love of the library, train rides, ice cream) provide a clue to their intended audience, since the songs themselves work for everyone.” Zeitlin, a sociology major at Wesleyan, sang, recorded and produced the collection, which also won a 2009…

Cynthia RockwellFebruary 8, 20102min
John Ravenal ’81 is now president of his professional organization: the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC). The Sydney and France Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Ravenal has become the fourth president of AAMC since the organization was founded in 2001. Ravenal joined the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) in 1998, and his exhibitions have included Vanitas: Meditations on Life and Death in Contemporary Art; Outer & Inner Space, a history of video art; and Artificial Light, displayed at VCUarts Anderson Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary…

David LowFebruary 8, 20103min
"Restrepo" filmmakers Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington. On Jan. 30, Restrepo, a documentary about the Afghanistan war co-directed by Sebastian Junger ’84 and Tim Hetherington, received the grand jury prize for a domestic documentary at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Junger and Hetherington spent a year with part of the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade in Korengal Valley, known as the deadliest valley in Afghanistan, and as a stronghold of al Queda and the Taliban. Indie Wire recently interviewed the two filmmakers and said that the documentary “may be one of the most experiential and visceral war…