Campus News & Events

The summer of 1964 saw thousands of young people — many from colleges and universities in the North - mobilize to register voters, educate citizens, and support other civil rights work in the Jim Crow South. What came to be known as "Freedom Summer" is credited with ending the isolation of states where racial repression and discrimination was largely ignored by news media and politicians, despite the the landmark Civil Rights Act passed that July. Wesleyan students joined the struggle. "Five Wesmen to Fight Voter Discrimination in Mississippi," said a front-page headline in the Argus. That May, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. had given…

This semester, the Shapiro Creative Writing Center is hosting three master classes taught by award-winning author and poet C.D. Wright. Master classes are open to all poetry-writing upperclassmen free of charge. Each class will last 2.5 hours and include one dinner. The classes will meet Sept. 23, Oct. 14 and Nov. 11, and the deadline to apply is Sept. 12. Wright is currently the I.J. Kapstein Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University where she teaches advanced poetry. Wright was born and raised in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. She has published over a dozen books, including Rising, Falling, Hovering, Like Something Flying Backwards: New and Selected…

Wesleyan nearly doubled its number of Teach for America participants this year over 2013, the national organization said. With 19 participants in the 2014 cohort, Wesleyan is tied for third among "small schools" (those with under 2,999 students) who send graduates into the corps. The Wesleyan alumni join the most diverse corps in Teach for America's 25-year-history, with one third of the members the first in their families to attend college, half identifying as people of color, and nearly half Pell Grant recipients as undergraduates. Teach For America works in partnership with communities to expand educational opportunity for children facing…

More than 20 student bands participated in THE MASH on Sept. 5. Inspired by Fete de la Musique, also known as World Music Day, the third-annual event highlighted the student music scene at Wesleyan and kicked off the year-long campus and community-wide Music & Public Life initiative. Bands performed concurrently on stages at Olin Library, the Butterfields, North College and at the base of Foss Hill. Bands and soloists included Jacob & The Masters, Quasimodal, David Stouck, Mixolydians, Andrew Hove, Slavei, all-caps LADD, Materiq, Trillion Dollar Boys Club (Butts Reunion Tour 2k14), jdv plus™, MFDP, Don Froot, Mazel Tones, Sam…

Scott Rohde will become Wesleyan's new director of Public Safety on Oct. 1. Since 1998, Rohde has served as director of Police Services at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse where he managed safety and security operations for a campus population of 10,000 students, faculty and staff. Prior to working in higher education, he worked for 10 years in municipal policing in a small town in Wisconsin. Rohde holds an MBA from Cardinal Stritch University, and a BS from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, where he majored in criminal justice and minored in sociology. "After an extensive search, I’m confident…

Writing at Wesleyan announces the Spring 2015 Russell House Series on Prose and Poetry. Writer/authors in the Spring 2015 series include Ron Padgett on Feb. 25, Millett Fellow Caryl Phillips on March 4, Sadia Shepard on March 25, Rowan Ricardo Phillips on April 1 and Ruth Ozeki on April 8. All events are free and open to the public. For more information on these talks visit the Writing at Wesleyan website. Support for this series is provided by Writing at Wesleyan, the English Department, the Annie Sonnenblick Fund, the Joan Jakobson Fund, the Jacob Julien Fund, the Millett Writing Fellow Fund, the Center…

Wesleyan head women's volleyball coach Gale Lackey, the senior athletics department member with 37 years of service, will retire in June. In her 30th year coaching volleyball, Lackey is also the senior woman administrator in athletics and an associate athletics director. Lackey began coaching at Wesleyan in 1978, handling both field hockey and women’s lacrosse and leading the field hockey squad to its only undefeated campaign — and a subsequent berth in the Wes Athletics Hall of Fame — in 1980. She took over as volleyball coach in 1985. “The time is right,” Lackey said. "Coaching and teaching here has…

David Rabban '71 will speak on “Free Speech, Academic Freedom, and the American University” during Wesleyan's annual Constitution Day Lecture. The event will take place at 7 p.m. Sept. 17 in the Smith Reading Room inside Olin Memorial Library. The lecture, hosted by the Friends of the Wesleyan Library is free of charge and open to the public. This talk will cover the judicial treatment of free speech and academic freedom at American universities from the 1950s to the present. It will explore the First Amendment rights of professors, students and universities as institutions, and the tensions that arise when these rights conflict. (more…)

Over the past decade, a new approach to the study of mobilities has emerged involving research on the combined movement of peoples, animals, objects, ideas and information. This can be viewed through the lens of complex networks, relational dynamics, and the redistribution or reification of power generated by movement. This fall, Wesleyan's Center for the Humanities will offer 10 lectures on the theme of "Mobilities" as part of its lecture series. Five of the speakers are from Wesleyan. All talks begin at 6 p.m., are open to the public, and are held at Daniel Family Commons. The dates, topics and…

Assistant Professor of Government Erika Franklin Fowler, Project Manager in the Government Department Laura Baum, and four students presented a paper titled, "A Messenger Like Me: The Effect of Ordinary Spokespeople in Campaign Advertising" at the 2014 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association Conference, Aug. 30 in Washington, D.C. The student authors are P. Marshal Lawler '16, Michael Linden '15, Eliza Loomis '15 and Zachary Wulderk '15. The paper considers the effects of using non-elite spokespeople (ie. "the everyman") in political advertising. The authors draw upon the Wesleyan Media Project's vast database of political advertising, as well as original…

The work of Keiji Shinohara, artist-in-residence of art, artist-in-residence of East Asian studies, will be exhibited at a gallery in Plantsville, Conn., Oct. 4-31. The exhibition at Paris in Plantsville Gallery, titled, "Whispers of the Infinite: The Art of Keiji Shinohara," represents the first time that Shinohara's monotypes will have been exhibited in the United States. An opening reception will be held Oct. 4 from 6-9 p.m. Born and raised in Osaka, Japan, Shinohara trained for 10 years as an apprentice under the renowned artist Keiichiro Uesugi, and became a Master Printmaker. Shinohara then moved to the U.S., and has…

This summer, 13 students had an opportunity to work closely with a faculty mentor to conduct research, as well as get a leg up in the grad school application process, through the McNair Program. For 10 weeks, they studied topics in psychology and neuroscience, earth and environmental science, biology, physics, and science in society. The McNair Fellows, all rising juniors and seniors, are either low-income, first-generation college students or members of a group traditionally underrepresented in graduate school. The fellows may be engaged in research in any field, though the vast majority focus their studies in the sciences. This summer, eight fellows were fully…

“Freedom Summer” Commemoration to Feature Concert, Speakers

Author, Poet C.D. Wright to Teach 3 Master Classes at Shapiro Center

Wesleyan Nearly Doubles Its Teach for America Cohort

Student Music Scene Celebrated at THE MASH (with Photo Gallery)

Rohde Hired as Wesleyan’s New Director of Public Safety

Writing at Wesleyan Announces Spring Russell House Series on Prose and Poetry

Volleyball Coach Lackey to Retire After 37 Years, Hundreds of Victories

Rabban ’71 to Deliver Constitution Day Lecture Sept. 17

Center for the Humanities Explores “Mobilities” in Fall Lecture Series

Fowler, Baum, Students Present Paper at Political Science Association Meeting

Shinohara’s Monotypes to be Exhibited at Plantsville Gallery

McNair Summer Fellows Perform Research, Prepare for Grad School