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A collection of Wesleyan's seniors gathered on the steps of Olin Memorial Library on April 19 to celebrate the submission of their senior theses with a champagne shower. Smiling faces, hugs between friends, and cries of joy and relief fluttered through the air alongside the popped corks and bubbly.

Michael Greenberg ’76, P’14 is one of three winners of the Lundbeck Foundation’s The Brain Prize 2023—the largest personal award for neuroscience research—for his contributions to the field. Greenberg, the Nathan Marsh Pusey Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, said it was “very gratifying” for his life’s work to be recognized by neuroscientists at the highest level. He has spent more than four decades researching the brain, specifically neuroplasticity—the ability of the brain to change in response to learning, experience, or following injury. “It's also been gratifying to see the work come to fruition in ways that we think…

Keleki Logoh ’23 lived in Togo, located in West Africa, until she was seven years old. In 2021, she went back home for the first time since she was a little girl. “I was shocked by the state of the country,” Logoh said. Food scarcity was an issue since over 60 percent of the citizens experienced moderate to severe food insecurity. Imported vegetables were expensive. People had trouble balancing financial burdens with feeding their families. Just a few months later, Logoh was back at Wesleyan going down an internet rabbit hole of videos of different kinds of farming techniques. When…

For Eugene Gato Nsengamungu ’23, his homeland of Rwanda is everything. Guided by the example of his late father, a soldier who fiercely loved his country, it’s only natural that when Nsengamungu thinks of a problem to be solved, he thinks of how he can do so back home. “This is a spirit I got from my dad,” he said. Nsengamungu, a Government and Physics major, was recently awarded a Davis Project for Peace grant from the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship to create the Rwanda Youth Tech Informants (RYTI) project, a program that will equip high school students in…

In this continuing series, we review alumni books and offer a selection for those in search of knowledge, insight, and inspiration. The volumes, sent to us by alumni, are forwarded to Olin Library as donations to the University’s collection and made available to the Wesleyan community. In honor of Poetry Month, this edition of YJHTRT features chapbooks and collections in verse that investigate grief, language, and the human condition. Ian Boyden ’95, A Forest of Names: 108 Meditations (Wesleyan University Press, 2020) When an 8.0 magnitude earthquake leveled China’s western Sichuan province in May 2008, tens of thousands of people…

Thomas J. Watson Fellow Jocelyn Velasquez Baez ’23 will travel to at least six countries in a year’s time to explore how the integration, adaptation, and practice of traditional medicine is perceived in diverse Indigenous and ethnic communities around the world. The Watson Fellowship, sponsored by the Watson Foundation, allows recent graduates from 41 partner institutions to do year-long independent exploration projects outside of the United States. Velasquez Baez will travel to the Philippines, Ecuador, Nepal, Ghana, New Zealand, and Canada—with the hope of more—to visit and learn from various Indigenous and ethnic communities in each country over the course…

Merve Emre, scholar, critic, and contributing writer for The New Yorker, had no expectation as an undergraduate that she would have a literary career. An academic one, perhaps, but a life working in letters didn’t seem to be in her future. As a government major at Harvard, Emre expected to go to graduate school to study international relations. She’d done the appropriate coursework but found herself disengaged from her own field of study. It was literature that captured her attention. “(Literature and criticism) is a process of endless intellectual renewal and gratification. It’s a constant act of communing with the…

The ability to explore, open-mindedness, diversity of thought, the culture, the community, an emphasis on the arts—these were all reasons that prospective students gave for why they were considering enrolling at Wesleyan in the Fall. “We try to create a culture where people can listen to each other; because by listening to each other, we discover things about ourselves and about the world that we wouldn't otherwise,” President Michael S. Roth ’78 said at WesFest 2023 on April 14. For Elizabeth Littell, 18, of Portland, Maine, the community at Wesleyan is the main attraction, she said. “Everyone is just so…

Five Wesleyan University faculty and students were announced as recipients of grants from the NASA Connecticut Space Grant Consortium. “I would say that these awards are a wonderful example of the broad range of research areas and activities that occur at Wesleyan. We are lucky to have such exciting research, active faculty, and motivated students, and Wesleyan always does very well. I am grateful that these NASA CT Space Grant funds enable wonderful activities here at Wesleyan,” said Seth Redfield, professor of astronomy. Candice Etson, assistant professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, received a Faculty STEM Education Research Grant for her…

Wesleyan’s Jewett Center for Community Partnerships convened a group of scholars, public policy specialists, funders, and activists to explore what community safety is, what it can look like, and the systemic barriers in place preventing an ideal version of that goal. The recent conference, “Re-imagining Community Safety,” showed the challenges in creating a more just world. The daylong conversation took place Thursday, April 13. The Center for Justice Innovation was a co-sponsor of the event. “We have a long and deep tradition of activism and community engagement, so consider yourself at home” said Clifton Watson, director of the Jewett Center.…

On August 6, 1945, Toshiko Tanaka was a six-year-old on her way to school in Hiroshima, Japan, when, at 8:15 a.m., she looked up and watched the sky overhead turn blinding white. Tanaka didn’t talk about what happened next for more than 60 years: the burns that rendered her unrecognizable to her own mother, the corpses on the city’s riverbanks, the illnesses that struck down seemingly uninjured survivors, and the once-unimaginable devastation made real after the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima—the first of two times nuclear weapons have been used in conflict—near the close of World War II.…

April is Jazz Appreciation Month, which culminates on campus with the 20th annual Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra Weekend, featuring two nights of concerts in Crowell Concert Hall. Cellist, composer, and educator Akua Dixon makes her Connecticut debut with her string quartet, Quartette Indigo, on Saturday, April 29 at 8pm. The group includes violinists Meg Okura and Frederika Krier, Judith Insell on viola, and bassist Jennifer Vincent. The Wesleyan Jazz Ensemble, directed by Noah Baerman, presents a concert with a variety of modern small-group jazz traditions and techniques on Friday, April 28 at 8pm. Assistant Professor of the Practice in Music Jin…

Gallery: Wesleyan Seniors Celebrate Thesis Submissions

Michael Greenberg ’76, P’14 Wins The Brain Prize 2023 for Neuroscience Research

Logoh ’23 to Start Up Aquaponics Farm in Togo

2023 Davis Project for Peace to Improve Technology Access in Rwanda

“You Just Have to Read This…” Books by Wesleyan Authors Boyden ’95, Schafer ’85, and Yankelevich ’95

Watson Fellow Jocelyn Velasquez Baez to Explore Ethical Understandings of Traditional Medicine in 6 Countries

Emre Named Director of Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism

WesFest 2023: Wesleyan’s Community, Culture at the Top of Mind for Prospective Students

Students and Faculty Receive NASA Connecticut Space Consortium Grants

Jewett Center Hosts Community Safety Conference

Hiroshima Bombing Survivor Toshiko Tanaka Shares Her Story of Tragedy and Resilience

Jazz Appreciation Month Features Cellist Akua Dixon