Olivia DrakeJanice Naegele, professor of biology, professor of neurosceince and behavior, and a group of Wesleyan students attended the Connecticut Forum on “The Glorius, Mysterious Brain” Feb. 25 at the Bushnell Theater in Hartford, Conn. The Connecticut Forum is a nationally recognized, nonprofit organization that offers live, unscripted panel discussions among renowned experts and celebrities, and community outreach programs. Nagele’s group listened to Autism advocate Temple Grandin, author and Harvard professor Steven Pinker and cognitive scientist Paul Bloom. In addition, Michael Greenberg '76, chair of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, spoke to Naegele's students about “experience-dependent changes in gene expression."
Johan "Joop" Varekamp, the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science, professor of environmental studies, was elected as president of the Board of Trustees of the Connecticut Fund for the Environment (CFE). The CFE is an organization of environmental advocacy, habitat restoration and outreach with about 20 staff members. Its mission is to protect and improve the land, air and water of Connecticut and Long Island Sound by using legal and scientific expertise and by bringing people together to achieve results that benefit the environment for current and future generations.
Priscilla Gale, private lessons teacher for jazz and voice in the Music Department, will host a show on "Sacred Song Reiki" for Internet Radio - VoiceAmerica.com. The show will be aired at noon on Saturday starting April 23. VoiceAmerica features more than 200 hosts talking about a variety of topics—from sports and finance to health, hobbies, pop culture and business. It has more than 2.5 million listeners.
Computer science majors Jeff Ruberg ’12, Michael Vitale ’11 and Katie Wagner ’12 participated in the Humanitarian Fee and Open Source Software Project summer internship program. For their project, they worked on software that is part of the Tor network. Tor is software that allows users to browse the web anonymously, and is used by human rights workers, individuals in repressive regimes, and people who just don’t want corporations tracking their on-line movements. It is implemented as a world-wide network of “relays” that are run by volunteers on anything ranging from academic servers to home computers. Ruberg, Vitale and Wagner completely re-designed and…
Johan “Joop” Varekamp, the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science, professor of environmental studies, is the co-editor of a special issue of the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, titled Continental Margin Volcanism. He's also the co-author of an article titled "Back-arc basalts from the Loncopue graben (Province of Neuquen, Argentina)," which is published in the special issue.
Cynthia RockwellRobert Block ’65, M.D., was named president-elect of the American Academy of Pediatrics, with his term as president beginning in October 2011. A biology major at Wesleyan, he earned his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania and served three years in the U.S. Army. He joined the faculty of the University of Oklahoma Medical School in 1975 and has been chair of the pediatrics department for the past 13 years. He has been particularly active in combating and raising public awareness of child abuse and has been the state’s chief child abuse examiner since 1989. The position as president…
David LowIn her Encyclopedia of the Exquisite (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday), Jessica Kerwin Jenkins ’93 is inspired by exotic 16th-century encyclopedias, which celebrated mysterious artifacts, with emphasis on the elegant, the rare, the commonplace and the delightful. Jenkins’s modern-day version combines whimsy and practicality, as it showcases the fine arts and the worlds of fashion, food, travel, home, garden and beauty. In the spirit of renewing old sources of beauty, and using an anecdotal approach, each entry shares engaging stories. Among them: the explosive history of champagne, the art of lounging on a divan, and the thrill of dining alfresco. The book…
The latest film by director Miguel Arteta ’89, Cedar Rapids (Fox Searchlight Pictures), opened to positive reviews in mid-February after being well-received at the Sundance Film Festival. The comedy, written by Wisconsin native Phil Johnston, stars Ed Helms (The Office) as an earnest insurance salesman who is asked by his small town firm to attend an insurance convention in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he learns about life in a weekend as he befriends a motley bunch of party-loving conventioneers played by John C. Reilly, Anne Heche, and Isiah Whitlock Jr. (The Wire). In her New York Times review, film critic…
Will Galison ’81 has released a new music album, Line Open, featuring his unique gifts as harmonica virtuouso, guitarist, composer, lyricist, singer and arranger. He has co-produced a collection of songs that reflects a wide musical and emotional range and reveals his sly wit and compassionate outlook. The recording features some of New York’s finest musicians, including Steve Gaboury (co-producer and keyboards), Ben Wittman and Shawn Pelton (drums), Tony Garnier and Zev Katz (bass), Marc Shulman (guitar), and Catherine Russell, Elaine Caswell and Sonya Valet on vocals. Galison is known among musicians as a premiere jazz and studio harmonica player.…
A full-page feature article in the Jan. 22 Los Angeles Times praised designer Cameron Anderson '98 for her work for South Coast Repertory’s new production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Calling the scenic design “striking,” reviewer Charlotte Stoudt also praised Anderson for her use of light. Director Mark Rucker was quoted, also: “‘Usually you get to the forest and that’s it, visually, for a couple of acts. … But Cameron found a way for the forest to continually transform,’” he said. Anderson, who works in both theater and opera set design, explained, ‘”The fairies are constantly stealing things in the…
Ellen Forney ’89 was recently profiled by Tirdad Derakhshani in the Philadelphia Inquirer, who noted the artist’s “65 illustrations, doodlings, comic panels, and assorted visual asides” that play an important and integral part in the National Book Award-winning novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Little Brown) by Sherman Alexie. Over a three-year period, Forney worked closely with Alexie who “gave her freedom to explore and contribute” based on her own inspiration. Forney’s illustrations had to reflect the imagination of the book’s main character, Junior, “who is growing up on a reservation in Washington state, … an aspiring…
Spiral, a CD by the Dave Wilson [’78] Quartet received a three-and-a-half star review in the November issue of Downbeat magazine. Released last June on Summit Records, Spiral features six original compositions by Wilson and arrangements of three contemporary classics, including the Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil. ” “With a crack band in pianist Phil Markowitz, bassist Tony Marino and Adam Nussbaum on drums, saxophonist Dave Wilson knows how to pick them and the music,” writes critic John Ephland of Downbeat. Additionally, in a review in the December issue of JazzTimes Magazine, critic Bill Milkowski observed that “Pennsylvania-based saxophonist-educator…