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Editorial StaffFebruary 21, 20247min
By Rose Chen ’26 Wesleyan University’s Democracy in Action convening kicked off Feb. 16 in the John B. Frank Public Affairs Center with a media literacy workshop.  Led by Associate Professor of Government Logan Dancey, the session was designed to teach participants to laterally read and ask questions when consuming content. Dancey’s tutorial of government students helped attendees—students, other professors, and community members—fact-check claims across a variety of sources, determine the credibility of claims, and critically engage with political media. During the session, Dancey and those students, Julia Armeli ‘25, Sophie Fetter ‘25, and Rory McClenahan ‘24 discussed a selection…

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Mike MavredakisFebruary 14, 20247min
Wesleyan is home to a wide cast of identities, life experiences, and traditions among its over 3,000 students. Each bring their own stories and backgrounds that combine to make campus a place where difference is celebrated. At Wesleyan, each person has a place to find their community. For some of Wesleyan’s students, finding community lays in sharing where they come from outside of the borders of campus. The university’s second annual Power of Language Week is a chance to set aside time to cherish and display those identities and the many languages that can come with them. The Fries Center…

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Sarah ParkeFebruary 13, 20247min
The U.S. Department of State has released its list of Fulbright Program Top Producing Institutions for the 2023-2024 academic year and Wesleyan University has earned a spot for the fifth consecutive year. The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government's flagship international academic exchange program. Since 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided over 400,000 talented and accomplished students, scholars, teachers, artists, and professionals of all backgrounds with the opportunity to study, teach, and conduct research abroad. Fulbrighters exchange ideas, build people-to-people connections, and work to address complex global challenges. Six Wesleyan University students were selected for Fulbright awards for academic year 2023-24,…

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Mike MavredakisFebruary 7, 20244min
Wesleyan’s Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) chapter is inspiring the next generation of scholars to dig into the world of science and lend a hand to energize the young crop of students that will follow them. SACNAS, led by Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology & Biochemistry Tere Padilla-Benavides and a group of student officers, is dedicated to supporting diversity and inclusion in the sciences and helps to foster the success of underrepresented groups in STEM. The group’s mission is to show students from underrepresented backgrounds that a career in science, or an adjacent path,…

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Mike MavredakisDecember 12, 20237min
Wesleyan’s newest Phi Beta Kappa Society members plan to impact the world through service, research, policymaking, music, literature, and art.  There were 15 high-achieving Wesleyan students inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society at a ceremony in the McKelvey Room on Dec. 6, joining over 500,000 members from 293 campuses across the country. They join former presidents, members of Congress, and Nobel Laureates as part of the nation’s oldest scholastic honor society.  “It is really an impressive honor,” said Wesleyan President Michael S. Roth ’78, who is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. “It's not just your grades, it's not…

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Andrew ChatfieldDecember 12, 20237min
Four prototype mosaics sit on display in storefront windows along Main Street’s Downtown Business District this fall. The quartet are a sample of what Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art and Art Studio Technician Kate Ten Eyck will install in the pedestrian tunnel connecting downtown Middletown to the Connecticut River as part of a new public art project. The ongoing multi-year mural installation project, called “Mosaics on Main/TunnelVision," will showcase 200 million years of local history. Ten Eyck’s mosaic depicts the dinosaur Anchisaurus, one of the few fossilized skeletons found in the region, in Manchester and East Windsor. Ten Eyck held…

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Mike MavredakisDecember 4, 20236min
Newly published research on cognitive remediation’s impact on those with mood disorders calls for public health officials to consider assessing and treating cognitive deficits. Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and Behavior Matthew Kurtz said offering those people with mood disorders and cognitive deficits some type of behavioral treatment may help mitigate their difficulties.  Kurtz, Zoey Goldberg ’21, and Brina Kuslak ’21 published “A meta-analytic investigation of cognitive remediation for mood disorders: Efficacy and the role of study quality, sample and treatment factors” in the June edition of the Journal of Affective Disorders.   By meta-analyzing 22 unique, controlled studies with nearly…

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Mike MavredakisNovember 29, 202316min
In a piece for Time Magazine, Wesleyan President Michael S. Roth ’78 and Yale School of Management Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld argue university leadership has an obligation to speak out to ensure safety for students and employees. "It’s not an infringement on free expression to take a stand as an institutional leader, whether it’s to condemn perpetual military occupation, to denounce scientific falsehoods during a pandemic, to defend the importance of telling the truth about the legacies of Black slavery, or to point out that progressive pieties often make use of ancient anti-Semitic tropes to promote sick silos of solidarity," they…

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Mike MavredakisNovember 10, 20238min
The path from military service to the classroom varies from veteran-to-veteran. Some spend four years in active-duty service straight out of high school and then utilize their educational benefits immediately. Others spend decades serving the country before venturing out to pursue personal enrichment through academia.   Regardless of a veteran’s journey to education, Wesleyan University offers its student-veterans a holistic approach to reintegrating them into the classroom.  The path for Chase Williams ’25 was a long and winding one. He first came to the United States in Aug. 2001, a month prior to the Sept. 11 attacks. He took an English…

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Mike MavredakisSeptember 1, 20237min
Open trunks as far as the eye could see. Open eyes wandering all over—up into the rainy sky above, out past Andrus Field and up Foss Hill toward the Van Vleck Observatory, and down toward Usdan where Wesleyan’s newest attendees would eat their first meals as students. The new students arriving in Middletown on Aug. 30 for their first day on campus had an air of openness and curiosity about them. For many of the students moving in, it was that same openness that drew them to Wesleyan in the first place. An open-minded community, an open curriculum, being open…

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Steve ScarpaAugust 29, 202312min
  The interests and accomplishments of Wesleyan’s current cohort of Fulbright Fellowship recipients is diverse, ranging from education to translation to refugee reception to tracing ancient trade routes across the Mediterranean. “This reflects something that I’m not sure people realize about the Fulbright program: with hundreds of distinctly different grants available across more than 140 countries, there’s no one cookie cutter Fulbrighter,” said Erica Kowsz, Associate Director for Fellowships. Nick Bowman ’23, Margalit Katz ’22, Ben Levin ’23, Emily McDougal ’23, and Anna Tjeltveit ’23 will fan out across the globe for their Fulbright years starting this Fall. “With two…

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Mike MavredakisAugust 8, 20236min
On the surface, the annual poster session held in Exley Science Center looked like an average scientific poster presentation. A couple hundred students lined up side-by-side, standing anxiously next to their tripod-hoisted poster boards waiting for passersby to ask them about their colorful charts and graphs. For the attendees, it could be their chance to learn about something new. For each presenter, the poster was the culmination of their curiosities, a spotlight on all their hours spent tucked under the lab lights or sifting through ocean sediment samples. “I love coming together as a community on this day,” Seth Redfield,…