David LowTen years ago, Susan Petersen Avitzour ’76 lost her 18-year-old daughter Timora to leukemia, after a six-year struggle. In her new memoir, And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones (ZmanMa), Avitzour deals with a number of profound personal, philosophical, and spiritual questions which face many bereaved parents. Using both narrative and a personal and philosophical journal, she takes the reader up close to the long years of her daughter’s illness and into her own emotional, intellectual, and spiritual journey after her child’s death. She addresses topics that range from food to fun to forgiveness, from pain to purpose to prayer—and…
Cynthia RockwellThe recently released indie film, Fly Away, written and directed by Janet Grillo ’80, explores the question every parent faces—how to learn to let go when the child becomes a teen. However, Grillo ups the emotional ante: Jeanne (Beth Broderick) is a single mother, and her daughter, Mandy (Ashley Rickards) is severely autistic. As Grillo begins the film, it becomes clear that all the coping strategies, all the interventions that Jeanne had developed for Mandy when she was a child, are no longer effective. Released in mid-April, the film had its world premier in mid-March at the prestigious South-by-Southwest (SXSW)…
Eric M. Wetlaufer ’84 was named senior vice president, heading CPP Investment Board’s public market investments division. Prior to joining CPPIB this June, he was the group chief investment officer of the international division at Fidelity Management and Research in Boston. Previously, he was a chief investment officer at Putnam Investments, and a managing director at Cadence Capital Management. At Wesleyan, he earned his bachelor’s degree with a major in earth science. He is a chartered financial analyst.
Kate Colby ’96 is the author of two new poetry collections. The first, Beauport (Litmus Press), gets its inspiration from the life of a whimsical decorator and designer Henry Davis Sleeper, the author’s memoires of her New England upbringing, and lithographs by Currier & Ives of the Victorian-era leisure class. Beauport was a seaside mansion, now called the Sleeper-McCann House, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, created about a century ago by Sleeper. In a review of the book on New Pages.com, Angela Veronica Wong writes: “These are poems of quiet beauty, wielding power through lovely simplicity. They wander through ideas and memories,…
Wesleyan soccer alumni Andrew Lacey '89 and Jared Ashe ’07 recently played (May 23) in The Macquarie Football Tournament for financial professionals in London at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea Football (soccer, on this side of the pond) Club's playing ground. “We were representing Lazard Asset Management,” explains Ashe. Lacey, deputy chairman, has been with the firm since 1995; Ashe, who had met Lacey thought their Wesleyan soccer connection, was hired by the firm in 2007. The 14 players on the Lazard team included a dozen players from their London office and two—Lacey and Ashe—based in New York City. The other three…
Olivia DrakeBill Herbst, the John Monroe Van Vleck Professor of Astronomy, is the co-author of "The Highly Dynamic Behavior of the Innermost Dust and Gas in the Transition Disk Variable LRLL 31," published in The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 732, Issue 2, article id. 83 in 2011, and "Preliminary Analysis of MOST Observations of the Trapezium," published in American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #218, #96.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43 in 2011. Herbst and his graduate student Holly Capelo are the authors of "Optical And Infrared Monitoring Of KH 15D," published in the American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #218, #226.08; Bulletin…
Charles Sanislow, assistant professor of psychology, is the co-author of a study published in the summer issue of the Journal of Personality Disorders that reports findings from the Collaborative Personality Study. The study dissociates severity and style of trait ratings and results suggest that severity plays a key role in predicting dysfunction. The work is helping to inform the organization for classifying personality pathology in the soon to be published DSM-5. The article is online here.
Patricia Rodriguez Mosquera, assistant professor of psychology, published a Special Issue on Social Image for the European Journal of Social Psychology. The 13 papers included in the special issue reflect the centrality of social image in a wide array of psychological processes. Five major themes integrate the diverse selection of papers: (i) self-presentation of social image; (ii) culture-specific conceptions of social image; (iii) the role of social image in emotion; (iv) respect and status as reflections of social image; and (v) the influence of social image on ingroup and outgroup perceptions. The Special Issue is online here.
David PesciJohn Gudvangen was hired as the director of financial aid. He starts on Aug. 17. Gudvangen comes to Wesleyan from Colorado College, where he has served as associate director of financial aid since 1995. His knowledge of financial aid policy and process, as well as needs analysis, is deep and comprehensive. He has helped to set policy and supervise staff, promoted access regardless of ability to pay, counseled students and families, analyzed data for internal and federal reporting, and presented information in print and on the web. His 23 years at Colorado College also includes service as associate director of…
Naomi Kamins, assistant director for student services with Graduate Liberal Studies Program, is retiring on July 29. Over the past 24 years, Naomi has worked in many areas of the program, and most recently has worked very closely with Graduate Liberal Studies students, ensuring that they progress through the program as smoothly as possible. Kamins also has been a GLS student herself, and is, and plans to remain, a regular at many campus cultural events. She has always been deeply involved with the Middletown community, and will continue to be as she is currently serving as the president of Congregation…
For more information on the eesmarts program, go to http://www.wesleyan.edu/pimms/
Margot Weiss, assistant professor of American studies and anthropology, received a $22,372 Post-Ph.D. Research Grant (with Osmundsen Initiative funding) from The Wenner-Gren Foundation, and a $6,250 grant from the Joan Heller-Diane Bernard Fellowship in Lesbian and Gay Studies from The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies. Both grants will support Weiss's ethnographic research project titled "Visions of Sexual Justice Among Contemporary Queer Activists" during the 2011-12 academic year.