Campus News & Events

Kindergarten Kickstart, a research-based, summer pre-K program for children in Middletown created by Associate Professor of Psychology Anna Shusterman and her students, is celebrating its fifth year. It’s marking the occasion with an event July 20 at the Middletown Roller Skating Rink (free for any current or past Kickstart family, 4 to 6 p.m.) and using a new grant to further develop student innovation in the program. Shusterman and three of her students first launched Kindergarten Kickstart in summer 2012 as a pilot program with 15 children at MacDonough School. They designed the curriculum and taught the program together with…

In a July 11 Roth on Wesleyan blog, President Michael Roth responds to two recent killings of black men by police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota, and the murders of five police officers in Texas. In the blog, titled, "On What Matters" Roth shares his own thoughts and the reflections of others that he found meaningful. He writes: Too often I have written blog posts about tragedies, violence, injustice. From attacks in other parts of the world to devastation right here in the USA, I have expressed sorrow, anger—and often a feeling of solidarity with those who have suffered, are suffering. Readers have pointed out that…

Two Wesleyan students, one recent alumna and a faculty member contributed to a groundbreaking discovery of the first Philistine cemetery, a crowning achievement of more than 30 years of excavation in Ashkelon, Israel. Archaeologists and scholars have long searched for the origin of the Philistines, and the discovery of the cemetery is poised to offer the key to this mystery. Findings from the cemetery, dated to the 11th–8th centuries BCE, may well support the claim – long inferred and recorded in the Bible – that the Philistines were migrants to the shores of ancient Israel who arrived from lands to the…

Wesleyan recently received a $100,000 grant through the Humanities Open Book Program for digitizing select titles in the areas of dance and theater that were previously published by Wesleyan University Press but are no longer in print. The Open Book Program is sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities, and is part of the agency-wide initiative called The Common Good: The Humanities in the Public Square. The purpose of the Open Book grant is to make out-of-print titles previously published by academic presses widely available in an open access (free) e-book format. (more…)

Twelve oral history interviews of Wesleyan community members, including faculty emeriti and administrators, are available at Olin Library. Transcripts and recordings have been deposited in Special Collections and Archives, and Leith Johnson, university archivist, has worked to make the transcripts available on WesScholar. (A link to the collection of memoirs will also be available from the Wasch Center website.) The set includes an extensive interview with Bill Firshein, the Daniel Ayres Professor of Biology, Emeritus, who passed away in December 2015. In this interview, Firshein related a whole complex of matters having to do with his Wesleyan career—his work as a scientist, his…

During the Roman Empire, the art of gem carving or intaglio provided a way to characterize one's self, family or acquaintances. This summer, three Wesleyan students with an interest in classical studies worked with a Roman intaglio collection previously owned by J. Pierpont Morgan (father of J.P. Morgan) at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford. As interns, Maria Ma '17, Margot Metz '18, and Emma Graham '19 collaborated on documenting and cataloging about 200 intaglio gems, which made the collection accessible to a wider audience of scholars and museum visitors. The gems were hidden from public view for decades. "It's so exciting that our students had the opportunity…

Ben Model, visiting assistant professor of film, is spending the summer months composing scores and arranging music with the Frederick Symphony Orchestra in Frederick, Maryland. Model, a silent film accompanist, performs on both piano and theater organ. The orchestra will perform a concert on July 20 at Baker Park in Maryland, including Charlie Chaplin's The Immigrant; Buster Keaton's Cops; and Felix the Cat in Pedigreedy. Model also is performing live music this summer, including a Leo McCarry retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art; at a festival in South Korea in August; and a silent movie festival in Northern Norway in early September. Learn more about Model online…

On June 23, Information Technology Services hosted a Eduroam Summit to discuss innovations in wireless technology. Eduroam (education roaming) is a secure, world-wide roaming access service developed for the international research and education community. Eduroam allows students, researchers and staff from participating institutions to obtain Internet connectivity across campus and when visiting other participating institutions by simply opening their laptop or smartphone. Representatives from Wesleyan, Russell Library, the Connecticut Education Network, Middletown Public Schools, and the Connecticut Commission for Educational Technology attended the summit, which included a talk by Eduroam's U.S. founder Philippe Hanset. Employees from Wesleyan included Karen Warren,…

Michelle Personick, assistant professor of chemistry, received the Victor K. LaMer Award from the American Chemical Society Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry. The honor, which comes with a $3,000 monetary award, was presented at the ACS Colloid and Surface Science Symposium June 5-8 at Harvard University, where she presented a plenary talk. The Victor K. LaMer Award is presented to the author of an outstanding PhD thesis in colloid or surface chemistry. LaMer was the editor of the Journal of Colloid Science (now the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science) from its founding in 1946 to 1965. In addition to his seminal…

In the wake of the unparalleled homophobic violence committed in Orlando this month, and the Islamophobic and anti-Muslim sentiments expressed only hours later (notably, by presidential candidate Donald Trump), Professor of Religion Peter Gottschalk writes an op-ed for Inside Sources about the deep roots of all three in America. He opens on a personal note: "As a boy in the late 1960s and 1970s, I knew there were few more destructive suspicions that could be voiced about me than those connoted by the label 'gay.' While the term might be flung at someone by friends as a joke, it could be a…

On June 16, the Astronomy Department hosted the Van Vleck Observatory Centennial Symposium: A Celebration of Astronomy at Wesleyan University. Wesleyan’s observatory has been celebrating its centennial during the 2015-16 academic year, with a series of events and an exhibition, "Under Connecticut Skies." The symposium was co-sponsored by the Astronomical Society of Greater Hartford (ASGH), and held in conjunction with StarConn. The exhibition was spearheaded by Roy Kilgard, support astronomer and research associate professor of astronomy, and Amrys Williams, visiting assistant professor of history. At the meeting, they discussed the exhibition, which was developed by a team of faculty, students and staff using the observatory's extensive collection of…

This month, the Cardinal community is joining together to secure up to $1 million for financial aid for Wesleyan students by taking the $1 Million Cardinal Challenge. “Thanks to the generosity of John L. Usdan '80, P’15, P’18, P’18, this is the perfect time to make a gift to Wesleyan,” says Chuck Fedolfi ’90, director of annual giving for the Wesleyan Fund. “John will give $500 for financial aid for every gift of any amount to any Wesleyan cause received this month—for a total of up to $1 million.” So far, more than 568 people have accepted the challenge, which translates to $284,000 so far for financial aid.…

Wesleyan Students Help Local Preschoolers Get a Kickstart on Kindergarten

President Roth, Ulysse Respond to Recent Black Men Killings, Police Murders

Wesleyan Group Helps Discover First Philistine Cemetery

Humanities Open Book Program Supports Out of Print Book Digitizing

Wesleyan Oral History Project Available on WesScholar

Students Catalog Roman Gems during Museum Internship

Model Composes Music for Silent Films

Wireless Technology Innovations Discussed at Wesleyan’s Eduroam Summit

Personick Wins LaMer Award from American Chemical Society

Gottschalk writes on Islamophobia, Homophobia and Orlando

Astronomy Department Celebrates Observatory Centennial with Conference, Reception

Wesleyan’s $1M Cardinal Challenge Is On!