Families Celebrate, Alumni Unite at Homecoming/Family Weekend

More than 2,200 students, alumni, parents, friends and family attended Homecoming/Family Weekend activities Nov. 4-6. Campus guests participated in numerous academic, cultural and athletic events while reconnecting with Wesleyan and with each other at a host of special seminars and social gatherings. Key events this year included the homecoming football game against Williams College; a celebration of Alvin Lucier, the John Spencer Camp Professor of Music, emeritus; a Randy Newman P’14 benefit concert; a Homecoming Day Lunch, Fall Harvest Brunch and All-College Dinner; an Athletics Hall of Fame induction ceremony; Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship Ribbon Cutting; the 19th Annual…

In China, rapid economic growth and social transformation have stimulated interest there in how societies have dealt with dramatic change. Some of China’s foremost scholars reached out to colleagues at Wesleyan, seeking to discuss the meaning of “tradition” in historical and philosophical perspectives. “Wesleyan publishes History and Theory, the leading journal on the philosophy and theory of history in the Western world,” says Brian Fay, professor of philosophy, and the journal’s executive editor. “This subject area is intellectually and politically very important in China, and hence the journal was well known to them.” It was in part because of History…

In the summer of 2010 Craig Malamut traveled to the Easter Islands to study and photograph a rare solar eclipse. Soon after his eclipse observations were completed, NASA used one of his photographs in their official materials on the event. He also spent a week collaborating with astronomers from the University of Chile in Santiago to study Pluto’s atmosphere as it obscured the light from a faint star. This year, Malamut has coauthored two papers for astronomical journals and is analyzing data from the Hubble Space Telescope on gas and dust clouds lying near the sun and other nearby stars.…

At 1 a.m. on Nov. 15, the New York Police Department began clearing Manhattan's Zuccotti Park of all Occupy Movement protestors. About 70 protesters and eight credentialed journalists were arrested that morning. From his dorm room in Lo-Rise Residence Hall, sociology major Ben Doernberg '13, followed the police raid through Twitter and various news sites. For eight hours, he tracked the story online. Although he was 100 miles away from Zucotti Park, Doernberg, an active supporter of the Occupy Movement, served as a "citizen journalist" from his laptop at Wesleyan. He used the new social media site Storify to re-post…

Wesleyan inducted the fifth class into its Athletics Hall of Fame during a ceremony Nov. 5 as part of the university’s Homecoming/Family Weekend activities. The addition of five individuals and one team will bring the total in Wesleyan’s Athletics Hall of Fame to 30 individuals and five teams. (more…)

In the video below, Laura Grabel, Lauren B. Dachs Professor of Science in Society, professor of biology, discusses teaching cell biology, her research into neurogenesis of embryonic stem cells, fate of embryonic stem cell-derived transplants in the brain, and cell migration in the early embryo: [youtube width="640" height="420"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2O3P97vnu8&feature=relmfu[/youtube]

For 40 years, Alvin Lucier, the John Spencer Camp Professor of Music, emeritus, has pioneered music composition and performance, including the notation of performers’ physical gestures, the use of brain waves in live performance, the generation of visual imagery by sound in vibrating media, and the evocation of room acoustics for musical purposes. On Nov. 4-6, the Music Department and Center for the Arts celebrated Lucier’s remarkable musical career and contributions. Lucier retired in June 2010. Photos of the event are below. (Information provided by Andy Chatfield, press and marketing manager for the CFA) (more…)