Olivia DrakeFebruary 8, 20101min
Sheryl Culotta has been appointed director of Continuing Studies and Graduate Liberal Studies. She has served as interim director of the GLSP since April 2009, and in that time has demonstrated outstanding skill in managing the GLSP as well as taking administrative and logistical leadership of the coming Summer Session. Culotta earned her bachelor's of arts degree from Colgate University and her J.D. from the University of California Hastings College of Law. "She has been at Wesleyan for four and a half years, all at the GLSP, taking on increasing levels of responsibility each year, and bringing a spirit of…

Olivia DrakeFebruary 8, 20102min
For the fifth year in a row, Wesleyan students, faculty and staff are becoming "recycle maniacs." RecycleMania, a national recycling and waste minimization competition for universities and colleges, began Jan. 17. For 10 weeks, Wesleyan will record the volume of paper, cardboard and glass/metals/plastics collected from most academic, administrative, on-campus student dormitory facilities and the Usdan University Center. Wesleyan also will record the amount of garbage. This year, all plastic items identified as numbers 1 through 7 can be recycled in Wesleyan's “glass/metal/plastic” recycle containers. "In the past we have only been able to recycle No 1 and No. 2,"…

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…