Grant Supports Partnership between Cognitive Development Lab, CT Science Center

Faculty and student researchers from Wesleyan's Cognitive Development Lab recently received a $3,000 stipend from the National Living Laboratory® Initiative, which receives support from the National Science Foundation. The award will support an ongoing collaboration between Wesleyan and the the Connecticut Science Center. Hilary Barth, associate professor of psychology, associate professor of neuroscience and behavior, oversees a Living Laboratory® site at the science center's museum. For the past year and a half, Wesleyan researchers have visited the museum on Saturdays to collect data for current studies, talk with children and their families about child developmental research, and guide visitors in hands-on activities that demonstrate important findings in developmental psychology. The…

Loui is part of a quartet that uses music to explore mental illness from a different angle

Richard Grossman, professor of economics, was invited to become a Research Network Fellow of CESifo, a leading European economic research organization based in Munich, Germany. The CESifo Group consists of the Center for Economic Studies at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the Ifo Institute of Economic Research, and the CESifo Munich Society for the Promotion of Economic Research. CESifo combines the theoretically oriented economic research with empirical research and is often at the center of economic policy debates in Germany and throughout Europe. As a fellow, Grossman will be a member of the Network’s Money, Macro, and International Finance area and…

"A World of Dreams—New Landscape Paintings" by Professor of Art Tula Telfair will be on exhibit through Dec. 7 at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. "A World of Dreams" includes new large-scale paintings in which Telfair presents monumental landscapes and epic-scale vistas that are simultaneously awe-inspiring and intimate. This is her second exhibition in the Zilkha Gallery. Read more about the exhibit here. The exhibit's opening reception was held Sept. 16 at the gallery. (Photos by Dat Vu '15) (more…)

President Michael Roth discussed "The Future of Education" at the 92nd Street Y's Social Good Summit on Sept. 21. The event is the focus of his popular MOOC on the Coursera platform, which will be offered again starting in Nov., 2014. In his second appearance at the annual two-day festival of ideas, Roth discussed why education is still the best vehicle for social change, even while it has become more controversial then ever. Watch the video of his talk. "Education remains the most potent tool for changing the world, " he said. "And training teachers who can help students acquire the…

In 1961, the Communist government of the German Democratic Republic began constructing a 96-mile-long dividing wall in attempt to prevent Western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state. The Berlin Wall, made of concrete and barbed wire, prevented emigration and more than 170 people were killed trying to cross or get around the wall. On Nov. 9, 1989, the head of the East German Communist party opened the checkpoint, allowing thousands of East and West Berlin residents to pass through. Elated residents, later known as "wallpeckers" used hammers and picks to break apart the wall. In 1990, East and West Germany reunified…

Abigail Hornstein, associate professor of economics, and her former thesis student, Zachary Nguyen '12 are the co-authors of a paper titled "Is More Less? Propensity to Diversify via M&A and Market" published in the International Review of Financial Analysis, June 2014, pp. 64-88. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) could lead to a firm diversifying into new industries, and the impact of this may be related to the firm’s prior diversification. By using a panel of 1,030 M&A transactions from 2000-2010, Hornstein and Nguyen found that that previously diversified firms are more likely to pursue industrially diversifying M&A. "Both previous and contemporary diversification…

Chakravarti explains the personal history behind Obama's cautious response to Ferguson

"A World of Dreams—New Landscape Paintings" by Professor of Art Tula Telfair will be on exhibit Sept. 16 through Dec. 7 at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. The exhibit's opening reception will be held 5 to 6:30 p.m. Sept. 16 at the gallery. "A World of Dreams" includes new large-scale paintings in which Telfair presents monumental landscapes and epic-scale vistas that are simultaneously awe-inspiring and intimate. She combines stillness with motion, solitude with universality, and definition with suggestion in her bold and quiet works. This is her second exhibition in the Zilkha Gallery. All paintings are oil on canvas. "The work…

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…

The mysterious disappearance of millions of honeybees - known as colony collapse disorder - has frustrated and worried scientists around the world for more than seven years. The visiting scholar at Wesleyan's College of the Environment explores this mystery in a new exhibit at the Green Street Arts Center that opened Sept. 4. Joseph Smolinski, a noted artist who has exhibited in many venues ranging from MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass. to the Cleveland Institute of Art , uses 3-D printing, video and other media to show the scale of the honeybee crisis - and note that environmental stressors (more…)

Grant Supports Partnership between Cognitive Development Lab, CT Science Center

Loui Plays at the Intersection of Music, Medicine

Grossman Joins Economics Research Organization in Germany

Telfair’s Paintings Celebrated at Zilkha Gallery

Roth Discusses “The Future of Education” at Social Good Summit

Faculty, NPR Reporter Speak at Berlin Wall Commemoration

Hornstein, Nguyen ’12 Published in International Review of Financial Analysis

Chakravarti on Why Obama Can’t Show His Rage

Telfair’s New Landscape Paintings on Exhibit in Zilkha Gallery

“Freedom Summer” Commemoration to Feature Concert, Speakers

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

COE Scholar Presents Multi-Media Exhibit on “Colony Collapse”