Kate CarlisleEchoes of the fight song were still bouncing off Foss Hill after Commencement when word got around about a big offseason win for Wesleyan athletics: a generous commitment by Frank Sica ’73 to endow the position of athletic director. Sica is a former trustee who wrestled and played football at Wesleyan. The gift to fund the post currently held by Michael Whalen ’83 firmly establishes the importance of athletics in co-curricular learning at Wesleyan, according to Dennis Robinson ’79, P ’13, immediate past chairman of the Athletics Advisory Council. “Nearly 25 percent of the entire student body plays a varsity…
With the U.S. Capitol glowing to the east, the White House 10 blocks west and Pennsylvania Avenue buzzing eight stories below, a crowd of more than 160 Wesleyan alumni, parents and friends gathered June 19 to “Talk Politics” with three high-profile Wes alums. The event, a fundraiser for financial aid and the annual Brown Lecture, featured a lively discussion among Colo. Gov. John Hickenlooper ’74, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin ’79 and U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet ’87, who all credited Wesleyan’s interdisciplinary programs and spirit of inquiry for their political success. “If you were to ask any of the people I…
Natalie Robichaud ’14Postdoctoral Associate Intan Suci Nurhati ’05 and others from the Center for Environmental Sensing and Modeling at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) are the first team to drill for coral samples in Singapore waters. Nurhati is a climate scientist but she works alongside a marine biologist and a professor of ocean geochemistry, creating “an interesting synergy where [they] work on different topics" but use the same material - corals. As a climate scientist, Nurhati’s main focus is changes in the climate that have been recorded by the coral. “By studying the chemistry of corals, you can tell…
David LowFor his new study Japanoise (Duke University Press), David Novak MA ’99 has conducted more than a decade of research in Japan and the United States to trace the "cultural feedback" that generates and sustains Noise. Noise is an underground music—made through an amalgam of feedback, distortion, and electronic effects—that first emerged as a genre in the 1980s, circulating on cassette tapes traded between fans in Japan, Europe, and North America. This unusual kind of music has captured the imagination of a small but passionate transnational audience, characterized by its cultivated obscurity, ear-shattering sound, and over-the-top performances. For its dedicated…
Cynthia RockwellSasha Chanoff ’94, founder and executive director of RefugePoint, hosted an inaugural event on June 19 in advance of World Refugee Day in Cambridge, Mass., near the organization’s headquarters. Featured was the work of photojournalist Amy Toensing, a regular contributor to National Geographic, whose latest project, In the Shadows: Urban Refugee Children, documented the lives of urban refugee children in Africa, one of the populations RefugePoint works to protect. RefugePoint, an action-oriented organization, is focused on locating people whose lives are caught in an untenable zone—unable to go home, yet unable to find themselves a new, safe place to live—and helping…
In her new book Geographical Diversions (The University of Georgia Press), Tina Harris ’98 employs cultural anthropology, human geography, and material culture to explore the social and economic transformations that take place along one trade route that extends through China, Nepal, Tibet, and India. She makes connections between the seemingly mundane motions of daily life and more abstract levels of global change by focusing on two generations of traders and how they create “geographies of trade that work against state ideas of what trade routes should look like.” She observes the tensions between the apparent fixity of invisible national boundaries…
Tejas Desai '03, author of The Brotherhood and creator of The New Wei Collective, will release Dhan's Debut and Other Stories, his first collection of short stories, this fall. Desai's previous novel, The Brotherhood, the first book in The Brotherhood Trilogy, is a noir thriller that deals with contemporary social issues facing the Indian-American population.While at Wesleyan he wrote a collection of short stories with the same title and similar themes. Reworked over the years into its current version, the novel expresses Desai's interest in “the different ideologies inherent in Hinduism and Buddhism, differences of personality and outlook, the relationship…
Maya Gomes ’06 and her co-author Matthew Hurtgen published their paper, “Sulfur isotope systematics in a permanently euxinic, low-sulfate lake: Evaluating the importance of the reservoir effect in modern and ancient oceans,” in the June issue of the journal, Geology. In the paper, the authors present data that shows how geologists can use sulfur isotope compositions of marine sediments to discover variations in oceanic sulfate levels through Earth history. Gomes explained that the paper is very important to researchers who study the climate of the past because “marine sulfate levels play a role in regulating oxygen and carbon dioxide levels…
Bill FisherAt a special Reunion & Commencement appearance with all ticket sales going to financial aid, Amanda Palmer '98 played the piano and the ukulele and joyfully performed a set of her inimitable songs on the stage in Crowell Concert Hall on May 24. Her husband, Neil Gaiman, winner of writing honors from the Newbery Medal to the Hugo Award to the Will Eisner Comic Award, read from his work and joined Palmer in fielding questions from a rapt audience of alumni, parents and students. [youtube width="640" height="420"]http://youtu.be/v8GwhGkZauI[/youtube] More information about Wesleyan's THIS IS WHY campaign and upcoming events can be…
Olivia DrakeSeveral Wesleyan alumni, staff and friends participated in the four-mile Hartford Marathon Foundation's Legend Run June 30 on Wesleyan's campus. The Legends Run brought legends Bill Rodgers ’70 and Amby Burfoot ’68 back to campus, along with some running stars of younger generations. (Photo by Steve McLaughlin) View more photos of the event in this Hartford Courant article:
Lauren RubensteinAward-winning writer, director, and producer Joss Whedon '87 delivered the Commencement Address during the 181st Commencement Ceremony. Watch a video of his address below, or read the text of this speech. [youtube width="640" height="420"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn866ryQ5RY[/youtube] "Commencement address—it’s going well, it’s going well. Thank you, Jeanine, for…making me do this. This is going to be great. This is going to be a good one. It’s gonna go really well. Two roads diverged in a wood, and… no. I’m not that lazy. I actually sat through many graduations. When I was siting where you guys were sitting, the speaker was Bill Cosby—funny man…
Record-busting gifts from the classes of 1973 and 1963 pushed the combined reunion gift total to more than $47 million, as alumni refused to let cold rain and umbrella-threatening winds dampen their generosity. The class of 1973 with more than $15 million and the 50th Reunion class with more than $10 million led the way as gifts and pledges from all increased the total raised in Wesleyan’s campaign to more than $298 million, according to Vice President for University Relations Barbara-Jan Wilson. The campaign has so far raised $107 million in endowment for financial aid, which is the university’s main…